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Tom has extended experience with FEMA, in Florida, last year. So whereas my outrage at the media reports (NPR, Washington Post) describing the National Guard’s ice-hearted disregard for the chaotic, befouled, dangerous misery of the evacuees in the Ernest Morial Convention Center derives from a fundamental sense of human decency — Tom speaks from the bitter aftertaste of his own sips of the poisonous draught force-fed the desperate residents of New Orleans.

Micahel Chertoff, August 31: “I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food and water.”

Michael Brown September 2 [?]: “I think it was yesterday morning when we first found out about [the Conference Center]. We were just as surprised as everybody else. We didn’t know that the city had used that as a staging area.”

Oh, and this.

A lot of what I said last Wednesday drew on arguments I’ve made before in more technical, less theological language. I didn’t come up with a whole new outlook for the occasion. Roughly summarizing, this is the first part of what I said.

I don’t want to persuade anybody of any particular biblical interpretation today. In fact, for today’s purposes, I want to strengthen even those interpretations with which I disagree, because my assignment is not to arm-twist anyone into thinking this or that, but to help clarify the grounds on which we can exercise our best interpretive judgment.

I try to frame the task this way: How can we best cooperate with the work of the Spirit? We know that he Spirit can accomplish whatever God wills; we can’t stop God. But we may, and sometimes do, resist and impede the Spirit rather than cooperating with the Spirit, and today I want to help us dedicate our energies toward cooperating and not resisting.

How do we resist the Spirit’s work of reconciliation? Oftentimes we resist the Spirit by making flat absolute claims about what something means. We may be right, of course — I’m not suggesting that you aren’t right; I’m pointing out that simply saying “I’m right and you aren’t” (however true the claim may be) doesn’t advance the discussion, doesn’t give our sisters and brothers any particular reason to assent. The claim, “This means X” short-circuits an opportunity to learn; the claim, “The reason I say ‘This means X’ is that [da da da da da da da]” gives us something to work with, helps us to see the basis for an interpretive claim. When we dig our heels in and say only, “I’m right and that ends it,” we give the Spirit less to work with in convincing our interlocutors that they should change their minds.

We impede the Spirit by introducing claims that others can’t examine or test. When we say, “The Spirit is doing a new thing here,” well, who’s to say? People over here think so, people over there don’t. That’s not evidence in an argument, it’s another flat claim — but it raises the stakes by introducing the idea that some people recognize the Spirit at work where other benighted souls don’t. In the context of a discussion, an exploration of how we should interpret the Bible, I find such claims insulting and presumptuous.

We impede the Spirit if we admit of no possibility that we may be wrong. I frequently cite Article 19 of the Articles of Religion: “As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred: so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.” If the Church is susceptible to error even in matters of the faith, then all the more each of us must be ready to consider the possibility that our favored interpretation may be erroneous. I’m not saying anyone specific is wrong; I’m simply saying that if we refuse to admit the possibility that we’re as fallible as the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, that we give the Holy Spirit less to work with.

This is a hard one: if we simply pick interpreters based on their proposing readings that throw the names of our favored interpreters at one another, we aren’t advancing the work of the Spirit. We can help others understand our arguments if we explain the basis of what we propose, and we can strengthen those claims by associating them with recognizable authorities — but our authorities aren’t intrinsically more authoritative than their authorities (they don’t deliberately seek out inferior scholars, or less admirable theologians; once we get past the initial invocation of reputable witnesses, we need to let go (respectfully) of them. The game of “my hero is a greater scholar than your scholar” doesn’t facilitate the Spirit’s mission of bringing us to the mind of Christ. Yes, you have favorite expert interpreters who propound good arguments for your position, but we have favorite expert interpreters who propound good arguments for our position. There’s no disinterested point from which to ascertain that one person’s favorite has formed a stronger argument than another’s (if we could tell, we wouldn’t opt for the weaker side).[*]

Finally, I suggest that we impede the work of the Spirit when we ascribe others’ positions to motives less worthy than our own. When we arrive at our interpretations on the basis of high-minded, objective reflection, and explain our neighbors’ interpretations as the ideologically-determined, morally-compromised (or “bigoted”) capitulation to mortal frailty, we give these neighbors no reason to see matters any other way. We can make room for the Spirit by accounting our adversaries every bit as intelligent and clear-sighted as we, or we can resist the Spirit by abusing and insulting our sisters and brothers.

I’ll continue tomorrow (before or after Hope and Andrew’s wedding. This is just one part of the broader case I made to my hosts in Northern Indiana.

[*Later: I remember now that at this point, we had the occasion to emphasize that expert scholarly opinion can certainly shed precious light on interpretive truth, but it can’t claim to determine interpretive truth. For one thing, the best conclusions of interpreters keep changing — and the conclusion that seems not to have changed for so long as to constitute a fixed point of orientation may be the premise most likely to be changed, refined, reversed tomorrow. Further, the whole industrial structure of biblical scholarship depends on lack of consensus — we can practically guarantee that there’s hardly any interpretation so bizarre that some credentialed biblical scholar hasn’t propounded it. There are defensible (if tenuous) biblical reasons for any of the biblical interpretations prominent enough to trouble the church. Most important, though, the Spirit about whom I’m making so big a deal here doesn’t depend on technical expertise or academic credentials. The people of God have been interpreting Scripture wisely and truly (and sometimes unwisely and falsely) for centuries before the advent of what counts nowadays as academic expertise — and any account of interpretive truth must take into account, or more precisely depends for its credibility on, the saints who have handed along to us the Scriptures and the interpretive traditions in which we stand.]

I really wiped myself out yesterday — more of an outlay of energy than I had guessed — and I spent today mostly gathering myself to re-enter life at school, doing errands with the inimitable Pip, and taking a very restorative nap.

One odd element of today was the arrival of my copy of the French collection of interpretive essays that includes a piece I wrote about a year and a half ago. It had been translated, of course, but also re-titled (I thought I’d provided a snappy title that would do as well in French as in English, so that was a bit of a disappointment) and re-edited for structure! I didn’t see any major disruption of my argument, but until it sank home I was staring blankly at the first few pages asking myself, “I didn’t write it that way, did I?” I also had a hard time reading the French and figuring out whether the translator had made me sound more like myself or him — but it’s been so long since I wrote any extended prose in French that there’s not really a “myself” to have a particular style.

The nap was really good, though.

I’ll try to cobble together a condensed version of my South Bend talk tomorrow. That’ll be a good discipline, plus it will enable me to avoid working on the wedding disquisition sermon homily aphorism.

Today involved several surprises. The first was that I was still in bed at 6:27 AM, when I thought I had set the alarm for 6:00 (I had started the radio a few minutes before the alarm was supposed to go off; the alarm was set to “radio”; hence, there was no change to hear when alarm-time came). Not a big deal — I hustled through my shower, gathered my notes and supplies, and sprinted to the car.

The second was that I hadn’t put my clergy collar on. Luckily, I noticed before I had driven more than a few blocks.

The third was that three times as many people showed up for clergy day as I had been told to hope for (four times as many as I8’d been told to expect). That sorta shot my “small seminar-like discussion” premise to pieces. (I’m leaving out the cavernous pothole I hit on Lake Shore Drive. That was the next surprise, but really, I should have expected potholes on Lake Shore.)

The fourth was that once I got rolling, I had way more material to work with than I had time to squeeze it into. I was surprised; Jane was not.

The fifth was that the whole day went much better than I expected (especially better than I expected when I saw how many more people showed up than I was prepared for). They had invited me down to talk about Biblical Hermeneutics in light to present ecclesiastical stresses, so I tried to talk about how we all might think through our disagreements in ways that made room for the Holy Spirit most easily to bring about clarity and reconciliation. That entails acknowledging that difference in interpretation is not an intrinsic problem, and if we talk as though difference were intrinsically problematic, we impede the work of reconciliation. Second, I urged us not to just invoke the name of an admired authority figure who says what we like; that amounts only to choosing up dodge ball teams, not really to giving reasons for our hope. There are card-carrying experts who propose all sorts of silly ideas about the New Testament; invoking the name of an author whose work you like doesn’t advance a mutual exploration of contested ideas. Third, I proposed that patience — uncomfortable though it be — provides us the surest way of ascertaining the Spirit’s guidance. (Bishop Little threw me a hanging curve on that one by referring to the Nicene Creed; that gave me the chance to point out that the creed we call Nicene wasn’t simply the product of the first Ecumenical Council, but it preceded a widespread relapse into Arianism, all of which provoked an extended process of deliberation and negotiation at the end of which the church devised the Nicene-Constantipolitan Creed. Plenty of ardent defenders of Nicene theology died before they had the chance to see their arguments vindicated. Patience.)

Then we had a mass (worship often stirs in me the spirit of Ernie Banks, so that I want to burst out “Let’s pray two!”) and ate a delicious lunch that actually included a tasty vegetarian chili.

After lunch, I grasped the nettle and argued that “the literal sense” or “the plain sense” doesn’t solve hermeneutical problems. Partly, that’s an empirical observation. If we’ve gotten into an argument about things, it’s hardly ever because someone hadn’t noticed what certain expressions literally (or “plainly”) mean. It’s also partly a historical argument, since people like Thomas Aquinas argued that “the literal sense” itself engendered multiple meanings. The Doctors of the pre-Reformation Church generally saw multiplicity in interpretation as a good thing, and many taught that “the literal sense” was at least duple, if not multiply various. It’s perfectly fine to regard something as the literal meaning of a text, but our job in controversy is to explain why we regard it as the literal sense. I had a bunch more to say, too, but Pippa’s about to get out of choir and I have to hurry away.

But the big surprise was that it all went so very well, thanks to the patient and charitable participation of fifty or so wonderful Northern Indiana church leaders. Thanks!

• Doesn’t FEMA have two fundamentally different (if not outright antithetical) missions: to maintain a constant, static bureaucracy for overseeing resources (on one hand) and generating a rapid-response, adaptive, improvisational team of disaster-relief specialists (on the other)?

• I’m on the road today, leading a Clergy Day in Northern Indiana (on which more later). I miss Day Two of the Faculty Marathon at Seabury, but also miss Pippa today.

This morning, I awoke this way:

I had been approaching a coffeeshop on Nantucket (none the I know specifically, though I would have placed it on upper Broad Street, near the Bookworks), when four women walked up, and I could hear them singing “We,” from the Roches’ first album. I looked more closely, and realized that two of the four were Maggie and Terre. I nodded and said something like “Thanks, that’s a favorite of mine,” and opened the door for them.

I ordered a cup of coffee and a bagel, and noticed that Suzzy Roche was working at the coffee bar. I walked away from the counter with an espresso cup, which I would never have asked for since I’m not an espresso drinker. Odder still, I think the cup had tea in it.

The Roches all started to sing again, and this time Suzzy sang her part, only for some reason she wasn’t having a good voice day, so she sang her part into a glass (!?).

Everyone laughed. I woke up.

Then I showered, walked the dog, and headed to Day One of Seabury’s traditional two-full-day faculty meeting.

This morning, I was struck yet again with how absurdly foolish our small Bichon Frisé can be. On our morning walk, she cowered submissively for the half block as a Doberman approached, then barked and leaped at the Doberman as it walked past us. I apologized — the Doberman could have swallowed Bea whole without even noticing. Then, as if to adjust her standards, she tried to pounce on the next dog we saw, a miniature poodle that walked by us (again after crouching in submission). The poodle was actually Bea’s size, but the poodle was behaving herself.

With all this manifestation of her diminished capacity, I reflected that she had no problem at all with what seemed to me an impressively abstract problem. When she’s on the leash, whenever we pass a tree, street sign, lamp post, or whatever, she always walks on the same side as I do.

The leash hangs behind her head, so she doesn’t have visual stimulation telling her she’s tied to me. I’ve never scolded her or deliberately given training relative to tree navigation. The concept of “connectedness” is pretty fluid and elusive. Yet even though she would walk out in front of a moving car, though she would challenge a Doberman, though she treats her red doggie toy as a great threat to family security, yet she understands not to try to walk around the opposite side of a tree when she’s on a leash. Strange dog.

I’ve marveled a couple of times at how the rhetoric of emergency response has descended to the hideously banal. Why, for just one instance, didn’t Michael Brown say, “Maybe I screwed things up at first; someone’ll track that down in an investigation a few weeks from now. But the very highest priority at this point must involve rescuing and caring for the vulnerable, stabilizing the community and turning the corner from catastrophe to healing. Therefore, I ask that you give my record a righteous grilling — four weeks from now. At that point, you can have my head on a platter if you want, but I will have been able to do all in my power to save lives and rebuild New Orleans, Biloxi, and the hundreds of thousands of lives affected by this terrible storm.” That’s not exactly Jeffersonian, but it beats whimpering about being criticized and mistreated.

Ron Jeffries wondered bigger; he went right to the top and wrote a speech for President Bush.

How cheap does an iPod Shuffle (or equivalent) have to get before their target market forgets that they’re paying for the material device? In other words, if I wanted to do something sweet for Margaret and make her the digital-music-era equivalent of a fancy mix tape with carefully-designed cassette/CD cover — if I wanted to make her an iPod Shuffle/Nano with a dozen or twenty love songs on it — when can I pick up a digital music device that’ll allow me to upload a modest selection of music at a cost so low (and physical size so small) that it’s not an obstacle?

Again, in other words, when does a physical receptacle for recorded music become self-playing, at a convenient size and affordable price?

Or is this already happening, and I just didn’t notice because I was looking too fixedly at storage capacity? (A quick check at Amazon suggests that it hasn’t; the cheapest alternatives I see are relatively clunky 64 MB devices for about $50.)

I’d think this would stand to complement the Coates Effect (practically infinite capacity relativizing the importance of “ownership” and selection — at a certain point, it becomes easy to “own” more music recordings than you can listen to). Since Tom wrote his first brilliant peices on the topic, the actual developments suggest to me a somewhat different trajectory from that which he proposed.

As flash storage gets more capacious and less expensive, the worth of lossless (and eventually, at denser-than-CD quality) recordings increases. We can easily foresee, say, 100-GB flash drives (roughly the size of the iPod Nano) filled with CD-quality recordings. That’s what, 150 albums worth of recordings? 3000 audiophile-caliber selections? If you devoted eight hours to listening, seven days a week, it would still take you almost three weeks to hear your whole collection. If you reduce the daily listening to four hours and sometimes miss a day, it’ll take proportional longer to listen through. We’re extraordinarily near a watershed in our listening culture — as Tom Coates indicated.

So I wonder whether we may not see the advent of both the portable musical encyclopedia, and the pocket album — say, about $10 for a Nano-sized device that holds twenty-five selections, a programmable mixtape for your friend a price you can afford, a manufacturable promotional device for music distribution (“Buy the new Kanye Spears Pod for $10, with special design on the faceplate,” or “Buy a Pod with our latest songs on your way out of the club”). That’ll influence DRM implementation (we’ll always be able to record and transmit audio output, so why invest large sums in ineffective DRM schemes?), but if a fast-acting music (or Pod) company were to get to this point first with the most, they might stand to redefine the recorded-music industry.

Maybe this, too, explains why Steve Jobs shows so little interest in a video-capable iPod: consumers probably want more music at higher quality in a small for factor (and I bet the Nano has hit that form just about exactly right) — but consumers want their video on a large screen and, increasingly, with theater-like audio. These paths seem to diverge markedly until the point that the Pod has enough capacity both to hold high-quality recorded music and to serve as a storage-space for video that will mainly be played on a laptop or big-screen TV. Ok, keep imagining: The PC-slot-pluggable Pod about which some reviewers have been talking, really high capacity, and Pods for individual movies (as well as MegaNanoes for mixed storage). . . .

There are eight million stories in the naked city, and many more than that among the people with their clothes on. Take, for instance, last night.

The plan was simple: go to Heather’s for the first hour of her birthday party, leave for O’Hare, where I would pick Joi up and walk him to the hotel (where he’d leave his bag), roll into town where we’d connect with Jeff, have dinner at the Bad Dog, from which I’d scoot out a little early to return home to pick Pippa up. Easy as pie, right?

Well, there’s some backstory. Joi needed a battery for his Powerbook (and I couldn’t let a brother technophile face a plane flight to Japan without a battery!), so I made some weird phone calls to Apple venues around Chicago trying to track down a battery for him. The first place I called got confused and tried to tell me that batteries are now classified as “service items” and they’d couldn’t sell me one without looking at the machine, running diagnostics, and perhaps sending the Powerbook in for service. As you may guess, I was utterly incredulous; even Apple isn’t usually that bizarre. But I called around several other venues, the first of which was willing to sell me a battery but didn’t have any on hand, and the second of which had batteries and was willing to sell, but was inconveniently remote. I decided to call back to the first place and see whether I dould reason with them. It turns out that I got through to a different call-answerer this time, and he was delighted to sell me a battery. Cool. (I brought my iBook with me, since I needed a replacement for one of those little gray rubber feet on the bottom, and the same guy who helpfully sold be Joi’s battery took me to the Genius Bar and insisted to the Genius that I needed a Powerbook thingy. “No,” I said, “I need an iBook thingy.” “No, a Powerbook — you just bought a Powerbook battery.” So I took my iBook out of its carrier and showed the Genius and sales guy the missing foot, after which they finally believed me.)

So Pippa and I drifted down to Heather’s, where we gave her her birthday ice-cream supplies (a bowl, some fudge sauce, and a water bottle — Pippa chose them). I excused myself and headed out for O’Hare, where I picked Joi up right on time. Everything was going like clockwork.

It was, until Joi pointed out that his hotel reservation was at the O’Hare Westin, not the O’Hare Hilton. I knew where the Hilton was (right dead center at the airport), but I had no idea where the Westin was, and the helpful security guy who offered us directions sent us out to Terminal Five (why? I don’t know). We sat in the breakdown lane for a while as Joi connected to the Net via Bluetooth, to get a map to the Westin. Eventually we called the Westin and got directions, and drove directly to the hotel, only a little behind schedule.

Joi registered and dropped his bag in his room, and showed me a couple of video clips on his Powerbook (he wants me to join his tribe, or guild, or something in World of Warcraft). We descended to the car, and headed off to dinner with Jeff.

We had a lovely, far-reaching conversation. We covered Warcraft, family systems theory, theological education, current events at the Creative Commons, music, Joi’s Chicago period, and various other topics. Our conversation was so vivid that I had to point out a couple of times that I was keeping an eye out for Lincoln Avenue (our destination), and I’m sure Joi was looking out, too.

Unfortunately, we missed Lincoln, and had to stop for directions at a gas station. Chicagoans being as helpful as they are, we got a whole boatload of directions — none of which agreed with the others. It was all I could do to get back into the car and suggest to Joi that he call Jeff directly, and get directions from him.

It didn’t take that long for us to get to the Bad Dog — or more precisely, the Bad Dog’s neighborhood. We ended up circling the tavern several times, peering intently out the windows, trying desperately to spot our restaurant destination.

By now — due to traffic, confusion, lostness, engaging dialogue, Warcraft video clips, et cetera — the time had come for me to pick Pippa up from Heather’s. Only one catch — I was no where near Heather’s. The logical thing would have been for me to call Heather up and explain, but (sad to say) I didn’t have her phone number. No problem — call information! But Information claimed not to know anything about Heather Voss, H Voss, the Rev. H Voss, the Rev Heather Voss, or Canterbury Northwestern. Phooey. OK, call Beth — she was at the party. But Beth diidn’t answer her phone. Call Josiah — no answer. Call Frank — he doesn’t have any of the phone numbers (he lost his directory when he moved). Call Jane — she has Heather’s and Hope’s numbers. Whew. Called Heather — no answer.

Called Hope (last — that was unintentional, but richly evocative) — she answered, brava! We straightened things out (by now I had dropped Joi off; it was great visiting with him, wish I could have joined him and Jeff for a fascinating dinnertime, and although I brought my camera along to take the canonical dinner-with-Joi picture and maybe stealth disco him, I didn’t have an occasion to take any pcitures) and was talking with Pippa on Hope’s phone. The exchange went this way:

AKMA: I’m sorry, princess, but we got lost; I’m not wasting time, hanging around on a street corner somewhere, gambling.

Pippa: Of course you aren’t gambling!

AKMA: Thanks, sweetie.

Pippa: You’re a priest!

AKMA: (flustered, thinking of several priests for whom that would not constitute prevention against profligate behavior): Well, thank you, Pip — I appreciate your confidence in me.

Pippa: And a responsible teacher!

At this point, I was quite speechless.

Anyway, I got back to Heather’s before the Big Domino Game was over, and Pippa triumphed over all her older competitors, so no one was put out at me. I was ravenous, wolfed down some carrots and hummus, edamame (thanks again for the tip, Kevin), chips and salsa,washed down with an Iron City (which Whole Foods now sells, for reasons I can’t quite fathom, but I buy out of cheapness and historic loyalty).

And so to bed.

Here’s a follow-up on yesterday’s shout-out to the Rev. David Knight of St. Patrick’s Church, Long Beach, Mississippi. Someone took a picture of David standing where the church used to be (this is what it used to look like):

Here’s the message I got from David last night:

Today was better. We saw at least 1000 people. The medical clinic was booming and we almost ran out of food in the relief center – but more is coming.

Jennifer went with a mobile medical clinic to Waveland, a town that basically no longer exists. They went door to door and saw about 40 people who have no way to travel. Good work.

Today our diocese came down with some clergy who are coming to help us. I have two WONDERFUL Priests assigned to St. Patrick’s. The BIG question everyone asks is – what do you need? It’s the one question that is impossible to answer, other than to say, everything. Beyond that, I don’t know what I am supposed to be doing, so I just try to do something every moment. Some of it helps, some of it does not, but if I HAD a manual about this, it got blown away with every other book I have ever owned (they were all in my office – including all my notes from every class in seminary. I grieve that as much as anything).

A couple of Seaburians will be traveling down to Long Beach to lend David a hand — blessings to Mitch and Patrick, and take our prayers and hopes with you.

I’ll be sending some books to David once I hear that package deliveries are getting through (at 982 Glen Oaks Dr., Pass Christian, MS 39571) — maybe you also have some duplicates to help one of our former top students restore his library. And I’m sending a check to St. Patrick’s. You can, too, at

Katrina Discretionary Fund
C/O St. James Episcopal Church
1026 S. Washington Ave
Greenville, MS 38701

(A note to the cautious: Discretionary Funds are carefully restricted in the Episcopal Church these days (they used to be a lot more discretionary than they are now!), and David is a model of integrity; I vouch for his trustworthiness, and church structures will be keeping a close eye on how the money gets disbursed. It’s not just for parishioners — it’s for anyone who walks in the door.)

Most importantly, everything I write here reflects what I read and hear elsewhere, and my inferences from that. I haven’t been to the Gulf Coast for several years, not to Washington DC since my participation in F2C this spring, never to Crawford, Texas, and nobody in a policy-making position has been filling me in on the behind-the-scenes details. I’ve been writing out of my horror and frustration that people who can command vast resources to evacuate and rescue people stranded in Katrina’s path did not put those resources into play promptly (I trust this is not a controversial point, since the President himself described the government’s response to this emergency as “unacceptable”), and out of my continuing anger at the mixed reports about how relief efforts are going. In part, also, I’ve been writing out of my frustration that much of what I’ve seen has focused solely on New Orleans (for obvious, painful, reasons) and has neglected the devastating effects of Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I spent some sleepless time and pained prayer worrying about people I know down there.

That said, I defer entirely to my brother and trusted friend David, whose comments on a post below I’ll reproduce up here where they’ll be more visible:

As someone in the thick of it, I wonder if you should turn a critical eye to the media? The story in Mississippi is about UNREAL destruction. Beyond that I see people (about 500 today at our relief center) determined to rebuild AND to help one another. We are seeing groups from as far a way as Canada, many from the east coast, all helping SO much. We have thousands of National Guard here and they are ALL, EVERYONE, so polite and helpful and wonderful to us all. In our center there were white faces and black faces and old faces and young faces and crippled bodies and old bodies and just-born twins bodies. And all were together, bonded in this crazy time where we have all been reduced to just being humans without power or privilege or prestige.

And yet at a press conference in Biloxi, several media folks just wanted the EOC director to admit that the poor in Mississippi were treated differently than others.

It just ain’t so. And if the reporters would DO THEIR JOB and REPORT ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON and TALK TO THE PEOPLE – ALL THE PEOPLE they would see a very very different picture.

Maybe that does not sell papers or CNN ad spots. But it’s the truth. I know it. And today I lived it, seeing Jesus over and over and over again. It was SO very hot and SO very hard and the people, ALL the people were SO very grateful and expressed it.

There is a different story out there. And it has nothing to do with feeble administrators and aid that is too slow (although we have been pained by both). I wish they would report that.

And guess what – tomorrow, we do it all over again.

David has more to say in his blog. The school at the place where his church used to be has been set up as a medical clinic and relief center; David’s been knocking himself out cleaning up and fixing up the school buildings, and his Lovely Wife Jennifer has been putting her extensive experience in medical missions to work administering the clinic. I can’t think of anyone with less patience for racism, or more determination to build a community grounded in love and respect. And David’s mileage in Long Beach will differ from somebody’s in Slidell or the Ninth Ward.

It won’t be over for David and Jennifer and the people of St. Patrick’s any time soon; I just emailed David to ask how I could contribute directly to their work. Maybe you could, too.