peru update

i've received some very good news from peru. the pastor we worked with, whose church was in chincha alta, and his family are safe. so far we have not heard from him that any of his church members have lost lives though many have lost everything else. i still haven't received word about my godson david and his family - they lived right on the coast. the campamento we worked on received some damage; we don't know the extent yet. still it sounds hopeful that so many people seem to have escaped death.

tragedies always seem to bring people together, but i have been amazed at some of my friends and some total strangers who have come together through a mass e-mail and started coordinating aid to our brothers and sisters in peru. everyone has been sharing information and plans to help. we each wait eagerly to hear the next word of news someone has received from a contact. i am hoping some of us will be able to coordinate a trip down to peru to help in any way we can. i'm certain quite a bit of money will be sent, and that is a blessing. but to me there's something about being present with people during times of disaster. we show those hurting that they are not alone and that they matter greatly to us. we show that what unites us is greater than what divides us. my good friend andrew noted the coordinated effort through e-mail and called it the work of the Holy Spirit. i think he's absolutely right. i've never believed God causes disasters, but i do believe God causes the outpouring of love that follows.

continue to pray for the people of peru, and please give as you are able.

in times like these

i know we're not supposed to worry about anything, but we're supposed to pray about everything. but for the past few days i've worried and i've prayed. while i was in college i did mission work in Peru. i went there twice - only for two weeks at a time, but it truly changed my life. it taught me more about what it means to live in a Christian community where your primary identity is baptism rather than skin color, language, or birthplace than i had ever learned before or since. being in Peru taught me about a staggering faithfulness - one not linked to possessions in any way. the people i came to know and love there didn't think the way i thought - that if things were going well God loved me, but if things were going bad, God must be mad at me for something. they knew without a doubt God loved them and everything from God is good. and now i struggle as i think some of them, maybe all of them could be dead.

we did most of our work in tambo de mora which is right on the coast. judging by what i've seen, i'm guessing tambo de mora was as close to the epicenter as possible. we went to chincha alta almost everyday. it was the closest big city. we went and ate there. we used the internet in computer cafes. we watched soccer with hundreds of people in the plaza de armas. i haven't seen the plaza on cnn yet - i'm wondering what still exists.

we went to ica and pisco as well. chincha, ica, and pisco all have buildings that could be destroyed. tambo de mora didn't have much that could be destroyed. i'm praying that because the homes there were so modest, maybe there was little damage and death. i've come to terms with the reality that the campamento we help build is probably no more. it's unreal to think that something which took one hundred years to build can be destroyed in seconds.

i pray most for the people. for pastor pedro and his church. for all the people we worked with and worshipped with. i pray especially for my godson david tantachuco burgos and his family - for his mother soledad and his sisters lisbeth and lizette. i don't lift them up in prayer nearly enough. often i think i've failed as a padrino. i pray for the chance to know they are safe and see them again.

God have mercy. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

the only way i can get a photo on here

here's a picture of me and my dog nineveh. she just got a new fence today, so we're gonna go out and play as soon as it's not 100 degrees.

where's my slurpee?

i haven't lived in that many places, but i've lived in enough places to get mad that different places have different things. well, i guess it works both ways. like a place doesn't have good bbq, but it has a soft drink i like that other places don't have. i guess i just wish this country weren't so huge and then maybe we could have everything everywhere. but for now, here's a few words about favorite foodstuffs that seem to exist only in certain places.

i guess maybe the one that has come to be the biggest issue for me is bbq. i grew up an hour from memphis, and i truly feel that the tomato based sweet sauced pulled pork is the only way to go. so living in north carolina for a few years was tough because the bbq there was like the stuff you get when you clean out a pencil sharpener. it was dry and chopped and gross.

on the other hand, north carolina had cheerwine which is an amazing soft drink that seems to exist only there and in parts of east tennessee. it's hard for me to go long without that sweet nectar.

then there's stuff at the grocery store. this really should be everywhere, but it's not and that's so weird. frankenberry is my favorite cereal, but i couldn't get it in north carolina. they have it here in alabama. but they don't have my favorite kind of powerade. i don't know the name - i think it's "arctic" something. it's kinda white/clearish. pretty much the only certain place for that has been my hometown of jackson, tn.

jackson also has a dunkin donuts which is by far superior to krispy kreme. but they don't have 7-elevens there, so i can't get slurpees. chicago has both in abundance, and so often i really think i want to live there. but for now, chick-fil-a doesn't exist in the windy city, and i just don't think i could live there long without my favorite fast food.

perhaps someday the free trade of food will be limitless, but for now i'll keep traveling in search of my foodstuffs nirvana.

too comfortable to care?

The bridge collapse in Minnesota was certainly a tragedy on many levels. In such times of disaster the conversation quickly shifts to the source of the event and the focus of blame for the event. I don’t have cable, and I haven’t checked the web today to see if any further evidence has come forward to help us learn what “caused” the collapse. But I heard quite soon after the event that the bridge did not really have let’s say a clean bill of health in its structural integrity. Actually, I heard this on the radio while driving, and the voice informed me that thousands of other bridges were as structurally deficient or more than the one that collapsed. The voice then told me, “You might be driving on one of these bridges right now!” As luck would have it, I wasn’t driving on a bridge at all – thank God.

It’s always dicey to speculate whether or not this or any disaster could have been avoided. But, if the bridge truly was not up to code, and if there are many other bridges that could suffer the same fate at any moment, shouldn’t the government be spending money on these repairs rather than funding an endless war in Iraq? Did the debacle of the levees in New Orleans teach us nothing? I guess the outrage over the scores of people who died unnecessarily when Katrina came through wasn’t enough to teach anyone who holds the purse strings a lesson. Perhaps the outrage wasn’t expressed by the right “kind” of people – the “kind” of people our elected officials listen to and are concerned about. Maybe this disaster in Minnesota will bring about enough outrage to do something different. Maybe the message will reach our leaders that funding death and destruction is not something we are willing to do anymore. The price is simply too high.

But what are we doing about it? I’m continually saddened at the lack of political action in our Church. I don’t want to return to the days of Constantine or even the days during the nineteenth century when the Methodist Church was all but a state church. I’m not asking for Church and State to collapse into the same thing. I’m simply begging the pastors and members of our Church to live our beliefs in a way that can no longer be ignored. Do we not want an end to this war – to all wars? If so, why aren’t we ending it? If we put all we have into such an effort, I believe it would take no time at all.

We’re comfortable. We want others to think for us and run things so we can play golf and go nice places to eat. I’m just as bad as anyone else – except I don’t play golf. But seriously, things have gone way down the toilet and I’m sick of whistling a happy tune. When we prayed the Prayer of Confession before celebrating Holy Communion yesterday, I became ill at the truthfulness of it all. I have drowned out the cry of the needy with my iPod for far too long. If we believe what we say we believe, we must start living these beliefs in ways that shake up the world. We can do that, or we can wonder how things would be different if we weren’t too comfortable to care.

making things harder

during my last year in seminary i started visiting the local jail because jesus told us to do things like that from time to time. i won't romanticize it; it was difficult on many levels. many times i felt like i had nothing in common and nothing to say to the men i visited. what did i know of the kind of life they experienced? what could i from my place of privilege say to them?

so instead of trying to talk i just listened most of the time and apologized a lot of the time. i apologized for a corrupt system and a flawed society that no doubt contributed to their imprisonment at some level; after all, no one is born wanting to be incarcerated. the advocate in me wanted to know everything about them and go to court with them to make sure they at least got a fair trial (something the constitution guarantees but governments often find ways of obfuscating). but currently i'm starting to wonder if anything could possibly be called fair and just from the perspective of someone in jail.

when they point out to me that lewis "scooter" libby was found guilty and never served a day in jail because his sentence was commuted by the president, how can i, how can anyone think things are fair?

i suppose it reinforces the point that our faith is not in human structures like the court system or the oval office, and that ultimately God will judge justly even as humans are incapable of it. but such continued hypocrisy and blatant disregard for what is just and right from a president who claims to be a Christian (and a United Methodist at that) makes everything - but especially being in ministry with those in prison - harder.

catching up

well i started a blog a couple weeks ago through 7 villages, and it's been alright but is sometimes a little less than i'd hoped for concerning options. so i'm going to start by posting my first two posts from that site. this will become my main site, but i'll still post most things there. i love creating more work for myself. i guess for those first two posts to make sense it might be helpful to explain that i'm a united methodist pastor. so it's not like i assume everyone reading my posts is a united methodist - but for the most part that's the case on 7 villages. hope this clears most things up.