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Deja Vu all over again


Those not in the Knight circle of information (in other words, not Facebook friends with my wife) probably don’t know that I have done it again! Yep – three weeks ago I tore the achilles tendon on my left leg. Once again I was playing tennis and it snapped (it was the right leg in Feb of 2009). It’s such a weird feeling, that now unfortunately I am too familiar with, but it really feels like someone has SLAMMED your calf with a baseball bat. Of course, you have that feeling as you are falling, unable to walk (the achilles is what allows you to raise up on your toes when walking and running – it’s by far the largest tendon in the body and is under great tension, so when it ruptures completely (tears in half), the torque it’s under causes the feeling of being hit in the calf as it retracts up into your calf muscle). On the way down I thought “Who hit me?”, then “did I run into a fence?” then “have I been shot?” then “oh crud I know what THIS means – lots of pain here I come!”.

And I was right.

So here I sit, leg in a boot, non-weight bearing for at least 6 more weeks, post-op two weeks. UGH!
Surgery was in Hattiesburg at the most excellent Southern Bone and Joint (my ortho from 09, like many other fine doctors on the Coast, has left for other pastures). We go back first of next week to get stitches out and hopefully enjoy at least a few moments boot free (while a boot is better than a cast, for at least the time being I am not allowed to remove the boot EVER! I begged Jennifer a few days ago to take it off just for a bit, as over activity was swelling the foot and I was in agony. Being the good nurse, she refused).
Pain management is working out ok and I almost never take any prescription meds now for it. Getting-around management is another story. Crutches are just SO MUCH FUN, making every activity we take for granted a pain in the &*^%. .
The LW bull dogged the insurance company and doctor’s office and got me a knee walker thing couple days ago – WAY better than crutches. Ideal for rolling around the house or church, frees up a hand and even has a little basket! Great invention! Can’t do stairs with it but other than that it’s great. You kneel on it with the bad leg and propel with the good one.
Meanwhile, many other things to talk about and I think this down time will allow me some blogging time so look for much more frequent posts, if anyone is still out there. I hope to begin rehab in December, so listen for the screams!
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Five Year Thoughts

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All week we’ve been flooded with images – special reports each night on the news, the obligatory “before and after” shots, the interviews (often with the tears and shock of 5 years ago coupled with either “we’re back” or “we are still struggling”). A great editorial on our local channel, WLOX, read it HERE , calling the President out for helping the nation to, as usual, focus on New Orleans and manage to ignore what happened over here, reminds us of our struggle just to stay in the mindset of people.

I don’t even know where to begin, in reflecting on these five years. Do I talk, again, about those early days? The horror of riding that storm out, how it FELT, SOUNDED, SMELLED? The incessant howling (SCREAMING) of the wind, the nauseating feeling in my gut, the way the very low pressure made our ears hurt, the terror of watching a roof peel off behind you and wondering if you’ve put your family in harms way, grateful so much for the friends who sheltered us and took loving care of us for weeks after, the miracle of our own home surviving when so much was destroyed, the church flattened, finally being able to make phone calls – randomly and not often – finding my oldest daughter with the mentally handicapped people she evacuated from the group home she worked in, evacuated to Lord-knows where, took us 3 days to find her and see her and know she was ok, the utter despair and destruction, the mountains of debris (tens of millions of yards, trust me it is incomprehensible), the “Dorothy houses” sitting in the middle of roads they were deposited on, the unbelievable flooding of every stream, river, bayou, bay, creek and drainage canal, helicopters and National Guard trucks, and people simply undone.
Remembering the blur of day after day, waking up wondering, crying out to God – “What am I supposed to do today?” Here I was a person who actually prefers a little structure, a plan, something to attack and measure, and each day brought complete chaos with no plan and way too much to tackle, too many people with such great need, too much destroyed to even imagine it rebuilt, so we just got up, early, Jennifer and I and headed to the relief center, helping the volunteers who came by the hundreds to setup and unload, to tend to medical needs in the miracle of a medical clinic run and managed by my wife, to begin the clean up and removal, to hold a hand and say a prayer. How many times I followed someone out to their car, helping them with their load of water and food and clothes and diapers, heard their story, slipped them a hundred dollar bill from the checks I had cashed which had been given to us to help, cashed on road trips to Alabama since we had no banks, helped this one woman who loaded her old beatup Dodge Caravan with supplies, who then broke down crying on my shoulder, this worried and burdened woman who told me she had six family members sleeping in that car, nowhere to go, and I went with her and took more stuff and some sleeping bags and a tent and prayed for them and with them, never to find them again, hoping they moved to a shelter. Being so proud and teary as some teens from my church came and helped us at Camp Coast Care, they laughed and worked and played with kids that came in, all these teens also had lost THEIR homes, were staying with others, as so many families were, if you had a house standing you had other people in there with you, recalling my son, about 8 months into this thing asking, not in a mean way, but just in a curious-will-normal-ever-come way, “Dad will we ever have a night where someone I don’t know is staying with us?’, and Dad has no answer. We were blessed, very much so, so it was no big deal.
Do I move on or talk about the woman who almost died in her home, water to her neck, neither she nor her daughter could swim, how a neighbor rescued them out of a window and lashed them inside a boat tied to a tree, where they watched it all play out, tornadoes and wind and water and prayed the tree held, watched her home and car wash away, knowing her story was just one story of so many JUST LIKE THAT. Do I step away or talk about the friend in Hattiesburg who is a Chevy dealer who loaned me a pickup truck that I would fill up with supplies and drive around to all the tent “villages”, especially in the Bay, and hand out what I had and money if I had it too, and then go back for more supplies and do it all over again. What a gift that truck proved to be, just in the nick of time. So much came to us just in the nick of time, over and over again God provided, in the triple digit heat and the dust and the great despair, God kept showing up, looking different every time, but present and there always. Always.

Should I talk about that or let you browse the archives of 2005 from this blog and see the images yourself in the media reports. Going there, just a little, just in writing this, is hard. So this must do for me, I can’t go there too much, still.
Do I reflect on that 1st anniversary service, down at our outdoor chapel, looking towards our former church where the green tentacles of nature have taken over, where we sang and prayed and anointed and shared Christ and baptized two of our own, reclaiming water as a creative and cleansing force instead of a threatening and destroying one. If nothing else, go HERE and read friend Bruce Colville’s account of that service, his prose capturing the moment beautifully. Please read it…
2nd anniversary, no big production, did a treadmill stress test and wept in my car as I looked at the picture of my seminary class, sent to my from the death bed of a dear classmate, letting all that sweep over me, the terror and loss and despair, sometimes it can creep up and tug on my sleeve, if I let it, and that moment in the lonely parking lot of a still-rebuilding hospital I had my time with crushing sadness and grief. Why did it take so long? I have no idea. Read more about it right HERE.
Three more years of rebuilding, of watching people come and go, of praying for direction, of traveling the country, of meeting so many people whose hearts were changed because Jesus said GO and they did, not looking back, and so what was once despair turned to joy, oh how I prayed Psalm 126 over and over, declared it for us, made it our own personal promise from God – “WHEN the Lord restored Zion, THEN we were like those who dream, our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of JOY. The Lord has done great things for us, and we ARE filled with joy”. And then 45 months after the storm-that-must-not-be-named, we moved in, into our new home, our own holy space, missing still our volunteer friends, we claimed holy ground and sang with joy, we said yes that night to laughter, we said yes, oh yes, to joy.
There is such a big gap, so much more to say, people to thank, stories to recall, trips to remember, victories and frustrations, so much more. The archives of this blog have some, my heart has so much more. But this has been long enough. 5 years we will mark on Sunday. We won’t look back much, or even dwell too long in sadness. We have a new playground to bless, new stations of the cross to dedicate, new (to us) vestments to pray over. We will give thanks to the army, God’s army, that have given time, money, prayers, support, their very selves, to help us. We will count those blessings and many others, share a meal together, and proclaim that the Lord has restored our fortunes, though we may still have far to go we too will fill our mouths with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy. For this is what the people of God, supported and loved and helped and made whole by our brothers and sisters in Christ, this is what we do. May God be pleased.
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So we wait and watch….again

It’s really hard to describe to folks who are not from here, haven’t been through the post-Katrina years. In August we will pass the 5 year mark since the storm-who-must-not-be-named. And here we sit, anxious and worried, confused and angry, puzzled and pretty helpless as oil pours into the Gulf of Mexico and drifts our way, bringing with it the great unknowns – do they have a CLUE how to stop the leak? Do they know what the environmental impact will even be? How will our poor fishermen, shrimpers and others, ever survive this hit?
What have we done? Why isn’t more done? How could this happen? WHY IS THIS FAIR?
I kind of lost it a bit with someone the other day, someone who doesn’t live here, who hasn’t even seen “here”, other than the news reports that would, on occasion, wander over from New Orleans to show where Katrina actually made landfall. His comment was something about “can you believe this oil spill mess? I mean, people just don’t understand what it will mean to our nation and our economy and how much it’s going to cost me in seafood price increases and gasoline price increases”.
Really? That’s the concern? It might impact the pocketbook and bank account of people far away, who only get their news in the sound bites they are fed and who for the most part are shocked to learn just how ravaged the coast of Mississippi was by that DAMN HURRICANE?
I was not kind in my response….

I am not one to panic. I know that there is much to be done and much I don’t understand about how this stuff works. I don’t think anyone knows enough to scream that this is the end of the world as we know it – it’s all guesswork. But common sense tells us, even if they stop the leak tomorrow, there are ramifications on both fishing and tourism industries that absolutely cannot take such a hit. And they really don’t know if they can stop it, which is what the little voice in my head keeps reminding me. But I refuse to panic without more information, and I am (recognizing I am in the minority here) not going to scream at the Feds or BP for their “slow” response. I think, like Katrina, this is something no one had really prepared for (although in this case THAT is inexcusable). And while they try many, many approaches to both stop the leak and contain the spill, some of those will fail, fail hugely, but that’s ok – keep trying. We live in a world where we expect our government to snap it’s huge, money-printing fingers and fix all our ills overnight, friends that’s just not reality.
Meanwhile, as usual, there is another side, another story that has been told. Thousands of people have already signed up to volunteer to help with cleanup. Many, many local folks already have gone through training on beach and animal cleanup procedures, many more from all over are waiting on the chance to come and help. As I told my parishioners Sunday – don’t forget you are incredibly resilient – you KNOW you ARE. You CAN get through this. God is with us, in the faces and voices and hands and feet of our neighbors. We can pray and we can dig in when it’s time. And we will, of that I have no doubt.
In someways the anxiety and the “it’s so unfair-ness” is more distressing than the smell of oil or the images we watch. It triggers something in folks who have been here, it weighs on us, it haunts us. This is the part I pray would go away, and the part I don’t think anyone else really understands. A friend called it a “tipping point”. Perhaps that is the best way to describe it. Friends – pray we don’t tip. That may be the best thing you can do for us, for now, as we wait and watch again.

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The 100 Word Sermon

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A few folks had asked me to post this – it’s from a few years ago. As a fund raiser at an auction, the highest bid item was the right to select what Sunday I would preach a 100 Word Sermon! They fought over this! Hmmph!

Anyway, the winner, a mom, picked, of course, Mother’s Day. So I did it – here is the result. By the way at our auction last fall we auctioned another one of these, I am waiting for the winner to tell me when I have to do it!
I had fun with this….
100 Word Sermon
You are wondering, can it be done.
Will it be good? Will it be fun?
You know, this is hard to do
Preaching this gospel, can my words be few?
Jesus promises the Spirit to lead us and guide
To help us love, in Jesus, we abide
I will not leave you orphaned, I am coming to you
The promise of our Lord will certainly do!
The Spirit of truth, the Spirit of love
Sent by Jesus on the wings of a dove
I must stop now, hope it’s been fine
That’s all – it’s a blessing, that’s just ninety-nine.
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Holy Holy Week, Batman!

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I said on Twitter/ Facebook / Lkendin / Plaxo that this was not the Holy Week I envisioned. Of course that prompted lots of responses. Most were reminders that perhaps someone a couple of thousand years ago said the same thing.

Not that I am Jesus. Or crucified. I am just reporting.
It began the Thursday before Palm Sunday. I had the AWESOME privilege of Celebrating Eucharist at Coast Episcopal School, where we had a “Palm Thursday” service. It was really great. Their chaplain, The Rev. Liz Jones, who was my Rector when I was a Curate out of seminary, at St. James in Greenville, had prepared them so well. Liz was out of town attending her daughter’s graduation, so asked me to step in. I was so blessed to do so! The 6th graders (the top class at this school) did the Passion Gospel, not just reading it but acting it out also. They were really fantastic. Great time.
Later that day was at the doctor with my LW (lovely wife), once again. She has been battling terrible headaches and sinus “issues” for months. Had an operation in the fall, and was hospitalized after that for complications. Things hadn’t gotten any better, she is obviously allergic to something(s) down here, has started allergy shots, but meanwhile her face swells terribly along with the headaches. After months of trying different ways to deal with it, we agreed to surgery on the frontal sinuses. Since we wanted to go on vacation the week after Easter Day, decided to do the surgery the Monday of Holy Week, our understanding was a 2-3 hour surger, out patient, home later Monday, and some discomfort and pain post-op. We could not have been more wrong.
Meanwhile, my daughter comes down with a stomach virus, while at home watching a friend’s baby that often stays with us.
So here I am Thursday afternoon and Friday – trying to think and began writing Holy Week sermons, still working on the liturgies (we were doing some real different stuff for our first Holy Week in our new buildings), sitting in the den as the LW is in the bed suffering from more headaches, and daughter is puking her guts up, needing my attention a good bit (and rightfully so). I was not feeling good about all this.
I managed to get Palm Sunday sermon done, and able to communicate to the secretary to use same bulletins as last year for MT (Maundy Thursday) and GF (Good Friday) services. Saturday was more of the same, with daughter still pretty sick and LW not able to get up much.
Palm Sunday was fun and good. I preached on the Philipians passage. Passion Sunday is a favorite of our parish and we began the procession this year in the center of our recently constructed outdoor labyrinth. My son played guitar as we processed and folks actually sang (Sing Hosanna, Sing Hosanna, Sing Hosanna to the king of kings!). At the doors of the worship hall, we said another collect and switched to the more traditional All Glory, Laud, and Honor.
Monday was surgery. I did ask a dear friend who is a retired priest in our parish to take the Monday evening Eucharist, in case I got delayed at the hospital. Boy, was that an understatement! My poor LW’s surgery took 6 hours! It’s very meticulous going, working on the frontal sinuses by entering in through the eyebrows, avoiding nerve bundles (and of course, the brain!), but the doc felt great about all he had done. No question of the need to do it, lots of thick mucous that was not draining. He put in stints to create bigger “drain holes” from the frontal to the nose, which should stay in a couple of months to make sure scarring does not close up the holes. Since the operation took so long, felt LW should stay overnight with some pain management too.
My daughter has by now recovered, and as a soon-to-graduate nursing student, did me the huge favor of spending the nite in the hospital. Brought LW home Tuesday afternoon, got another retired priest to take the Tue night Eucharist.
Tuesday night was miserable – LW in much pain and discomfort. Looks HORRIBLE from all the bruising from the procedure. Breaks my heart to see her suffer so.
Wednesday I keep a promise to my son to take him to the DMV to take his driving road test for his license. He’s ready – we’ve spent a lot of hours on the road. While we are there get a frantic call from LW, daughter has sliced her finger open cutting some cheese and they are on the way to an Urgent Care clinic, probably need stitches. My LW has NO business being out of bed but off she goes with daughter. My son passes (yay) the test and we head straight there. We are not happy with the care at this place (wound is deep and on the joint so we prefer stitches, they offer glue) and then go to the ER. I finally convince the LW to go home and go to bed, so the newly minted driver takes her home. This event will take a lot out of her. 5 stitches later, daughter is ready to go home. The ER visit has taken forever, of course, and our Tennebrae service has already started. This is the first time for us to do Tennebrae, EVER, at our parish and I had to turn it over to the very capable hands our our Deacon and Verger. They did a great job. I learned that doing the whole thing can be too long, so if we do it again we will take the shorter version I think.
So now I am oh-for-three on Holy Week services, have no sermons done for the rest of the week (although I did sketch out MT, GF, and a little of Easter Sunday while in the waiting room for 8 hours Monday morning). And Wednesday night turned into a terrible nightmare for LW, tremendous pain and discomfort, no sleep at all, misery. We go straight to the doctor’s office and he decides to admit her to get a handle on things. Thank you!
We get her checked in and when my daughter is able to come up, I arrive at the MT service 2 minutes before kickoff, sermon somewhat done. It’s a nice service, I think the sermon is an interesting one, I took a very different approach this year. I am disappointed in the turnout. I know I shouldn’t worry about numbers but so much work goes into these Holy Week services that it does disappoint me to have such a small turnout. Maybe Foot Washing just is too gross for folks to come participate? But isn’t that kinda the point?
Back to hospital until about midnight, daughter stays again, LW is only slightly improved.
Electronically I edit and update bulletin for the Easter Vigil – it’s a biggie! I have crazy ideas about baptism and rearranging space that I am very excited about. We had reoriented the worship space for Lent, turned chairs to a semi-circular seating, moved the altar to a different wall, etc. During Holy Week I turned the chairs again, this time to a choir-type seating (facing each other). The center aisle quite wide and in the center is where the Tennebrae candles went, the Foot Washing stations were, and Veneration of the Cross was to take place – and then the baptisms at the Vigil.
Early Friday morning I write GF sermon, think a little about Vigil homily, finish proofing Vigil bulletin and Sunday bulletin, go to hospital to hang out with my poor wife, still not better, go back to noon GF service to find my Deacon is ill and won’t be there, Verger and I do the service, it goes very well, go back to hospital until time for the 6 pm service, do it all again, go back to hospital. Thankfully my sister-in-law and mother-in-law spend afternoon and evening at the hospital, a big help.
My oldest daughter arrives in town to help out, and she spends most of Saturday at hospital. LW is improving. Saturday from 10 to about 3 we setup church for the Vigil, move the altar and chairs, clean up the buildings, cut the grass, prepare to light the new fire in the center of the labyrinth, mop and sweep and you name it. A great group of St. Pat’s folks are on hand to do all this work. I meet with baptismal families for rehearsal, then head to hospital for couple of hours.
The Great Vigil of Easter was one of the best services we’ve ever done. We do the salvation history lessons by using storytellers and they all did a great job. In the center is the Paschal candle and a huge wash tub for baptisms. Stories are told by candlelight, and then I baptize a baby, a 4 yr old and 6 yr old. The older two are siblings. I baptized the baby first, dipping the shell into the sanctified water that was blessed in the tub. Then the siblings stepped into the tub, the older girl giggling, the younger boy smiling. Liz was on hand to help and she baptized the girl, who giggled the whole time, and then I did the boy as he laughed. It was FABULOUS!
Following the baptisms, the first Alleluias are shouted, all the lights come on, bells ring, you know the drill. I called the congregation’s attention to look out the back windows, and there illuminated was a cross made out of the floor beams of our destroyed church on the beach. It was quite a moment!
After the 2 1/2 hour service, all family went back to the hospital where we did “birthday” for our oldest daughter, who turned 25 on April Fool’s Day. Cake was shared with nursing staff. LW is lot better. Got home about 12:30, started writing Easter Sunday sermon, while replaying the Butler-Michigan State game which I had recorded. Stopped about 2 with it half done, got up at 5 and finished the sermon, headed to church for a very nice Easter Sunday celebration – packed house, pretty outfits, glorious service, wonderful Easter egg hunt on the grounds put on by one of our families who work so hard to offer this gift every year.
Back to hospital, sending my kids home to cook Easter dinner and the first meat we will eat since Lent started, LW and I wait for the doc to send her home. Have a good visit with him and finally she comes home, 3:00 on Easter Day. We enjoy dinner and then put her to bed.
As I said in my Easter Sunday sermon, I could not have been more proud of the St Pats people who worked so hard to pull off Holy Week. We know how to do HW at St Pats, and it’s way not about me, obviously. They all did their jobs and did them well, and for most of the services, I was only able to show up just before kickoff yet everything went extremely well. My secretary, for whom this was her first Holy Week as secretary, did an amazing job with all the bulletins. Altar Guild, choir, vestry, many others worked to make the place shine and do make sure the liturgy went off like clockwork.
This is a long post, but it felt good to get it all written down. Way more importantly than Holy Week is my LW’s ongoing health battle. As I write this, she’s not well yet. She’s better, for sure, but long way to go. I covet your prayers for her complete healing, for strength, for Peace. This has been a long ordeal and I cannot see the end of it yet, so I ask your prayers for me as well.
God bless you all – and remember – The Lord has Risen Indeed. Alleluia!

Itinerant: noun. a person who alternates between working and wandering.