Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
"Set us free to serve You"
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/27/2007 - 19:39
It was the fall of 1980. I had left college and moved to New York with a few of my friends from school. We were all artists, painters, photographers, sculptures, and writers. I had come to New York to write poetry. I would support myself writing computer programs. I searched out a community of believers to become part of and started attending Grace Episcopal Church in Manhattan.
Every Wednesday evening, many of us young professionals would gather for a Eucharist and then break into prayer groups. We would gather together, share stories of our work lives, our concerns and pray for one another. It was a place of stability for many of us in our turbulent years in a turbulent city.
It shaped all of us, and many of my friends went on to become priests and missionaries after following fairly serpentine paths. Today, these paths crossed once again. One of the women I met back in 1980 was Kate Heichler. We traveled in the same circles, prayer groups, trips to Ocean Grove in the summer and weekend retreats at Camp Incarnation in the springs and fall.
I moved to Connecticut, and slowly lost touch with many of my old friends from Grace Church. In 1999, I started dating Kim and in September, her mother ended her battle with cancer and went to be with God. Kim was attending a small church in her home town of Bethany Connecticut. The evening Kim’s mom died, the rector of the church came and sat with us. That whole time is a bit of a blur, but figuratively, if not literally, Peter brought donuts. He sat with us and provided comfort.
Sunday morning, Kim and I went to Christ Church, Bethany, were Peter was the Rector. The news had spread through the congregation about Kim’s mother’s death. Kim’s mother was a well beloved teacher and member of the community, and many people had prayed long and hard for her. Everyone came up to comfort Kim and offer words of condolence.
It was the first Sunday of September, and Peter was introducing a new seminarian that Sunday. Her name was Kate Heichler, the same Kate I had gone to Grace Church with nearly two decades earlier. We looked at each other and both asked, what are you doing here?
Kim and I got married and we settled at my old house in Stamford. Christ Church flourished with Peter as the Rector and Kate as seminarian, and later as an assistant. Then, earlier this year, Kate accepted the calling to become Priest in Charge at Trinity Emmanuel Church in Stamford.
Trinity Emmanuel is a small church in North Stamford. I had attended it briefly when I first moved to Connecticut. Later, when a friend of mine was fighting cancer, Kim and I attended Trinity Emmanuel to be with him the worst part of his struggles.
Now, Kate was the Priest in Charge. Kim and I returned to Trinity Emmanuel during the summer. We prayed for the church and continue to pray for it. As our own lives continued to become more complicated, between Kim’s Lyme disease and our difficult finances, we moved to Woodbridge, the next town over from Bethany and started attending Christ Church, Bethany.
Members of Trinity Emmanuel came to our house to help us move, as well as prayed for us in our struggles.
This morning, I returned to Trinity Emmanuel to celebrate the new ministry of Kate and Trinity Emmanuel. Peter provided the sermon. Friends from Grace Church in Manhattan were there, as were friends from other churches in the Stamford Deanery.
The band for Christ Church, Bethany provided most of the music, and during the service, members of the congregation presented Kate with a bowl of guitar picks say, “Kate, receive these guitar picks, which you so liberally scatter, and be among us as one who teaches us a new song in worship.”
It was a wonderful service. Not only was a great celebration of the new ministry of Kate and Trinity Emmanuel, but it was also first such ceremony that The Right Reverend Doctor Laura Ahrens celebrated as Bishop Suffragan of Connecticut.
For me, the words that summed up the service were the refrain from the Litany of Prayers for Ministry, “Set us free to serve You”.
As I thought about all the things that have happened in my life since those days at Grace Church, as well as all the things that have happened in Kate’s life and the lives of some many of my friends, the idea of being liberated to serve God ties it together very nicely.
So, my prayers are with Kate, with the congregation of Trinity Emmanuel, and with all of us that needs God’s grace to set us free to serve Him.
Random Stuff
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 10/26/2007 - 10:15I’ve been on the road a lot over the past three days, so I’m behind on my emails and behind on the blogs. I did manage to get a few posts up while I was on the road.
As I read through my email today, I found a message pointing me to Assumptions? Do me a favour....
In it, Loz writes,
If you read this please leave a comment as to who and where you are and maybe if you feel like it why you visit here. If you are a blogger please visit the other bloggers who comment and maybe leave a comment on one of their posts saying Loz sent you ;)
I left my comment on Loz’s blog:
Who I am:
Hi. I'm Aldon, an old guard hardcore geek with interests in technology, politics, social media and networks.
I've been blogging for several years, including being credentialed to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston and the Libby Trial in Washington DC.
I live in Woodbridge, CT, just north of New Haven.
My blog is Orient Lodge. Please, stop by and say hi.
I first found your blog through MyBlogLog.
I like to come back because there is a little more personality and reality to it than many of the political and technical blogs that I visit.
I've been on the road a bit over the past few days, so I'm way behind in my emails, blog reading and so on.
So, I will try to visit the blogs of other people posting here, but it I probably won't get to them all immediately.
My blog is using Drupal and requires registration and validation of an email address. Some people don’t want to give out their email address or go through the bother of registering on another site. If you are already using a site that supports OpenId, you can use that registration instead. However, a lot of people don’t know how to use OpenId yet either, so if this is too complicated for some of you, I can understand.
However, if you can leave a comment about who you are and why you stopped by, especially if you can via Loz’s post, it would be greatly appreciated.
The San Diego Fires
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 10/22/2007 - 19:49As I continue to dig through the messages in my inbox, another theme I’m finding is one about how we respond to disasters. The fires in San Diego bring an immediacy to these issues, but the issues are much greater.
One group that is doing important work on looking at how we deal with disasters is the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP). It was founded by Ben Smilowitz, a UConn Law student who volunteered with the Red Cross and a managed a client service center in Gulfport, MS, during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Around a week ago DAP sent out a press release critical of the timing of the TOPOFF4 exercise,
because an updated National Response Plan is not yet in place. Originally, the Exercise was planned to follow the close of the comment period for the newly proposed and highly controversial National Response Framework (NRF). In a large-scale emergency, it would be critical for plans at all levels of government to be aligned with the national coordinating plan. But, state and local officials have not had time to align their plans with the NRF because it has not been finalized.
They also point out
that the Department of Homeland Security made a similar error in April 2005, when it held TOPOFF3 before the deadline by which state, local and other federal agencies were to have revised their own plans to reflect the National Response Plan (NRP) issued in December 2004 with little input from state officials.
While the timing of the exercises might not have been optimal in terms of making the exercises as effective as they should have been, they do illustrate what seems to be a key aspect of dealing with disasters. Disasters often come unexpectedly or at inopportune times.
Today, DAP issued a press release about the comments they are submitting on the NRF. They note that "The description of the FEMA Director and DHS Secretary's responsibilities conflicts with requirements of the Post Katrina Reform Act…Federal exercises frequently ignore recovery or give it lip service if addressed at all… Not all 'lessons learned' are publicly reported or followed up with changes to plans… the TOPOFF III after-action report still has not been issued."
Only seven and a half hours later, they had their next press release out about San Diego.
Noting that ‘Gaps In Disaster Services [are] More Likely To Get Fixed If Made Public’,
The Disaster Accountability Project's toll-free hotline (866-9-TIP-DAP) is ready for CA wildfire-related calls. California residents, firefighters, and relief volunteers can report problems or whistle-blow gaps in disaster relief services in the wildfire response and relief effort. Individuals should use the toll-free hotline (866-9-TIP-DAP) to report the specific location and nature of the disaster relief/response gaps.
Soon afterwards, I received an email from a good friend of mine who is a therapist in San Diego. She notes that two of her friends have lost their homes and were evacuated this morning. Her family is still safe, but they have been close before. She notes a huge dislocation of people, currently over 250,000 evacuated. She urges people to send money to the Red Cross and to help out in other ways because, she notes “this is not going to be over soon as so much housing and business has been destroyed.” She also notes that the therapy community is mobilized and helping, which I believe is too often overlooked in the aftermath of a disaster.
So, for the people of San Diego, I offer my prayers. If you know people struggling with the disaster in California, make sure they know about DAP’s toll-free hotline. It might not help with the current disaster, but it will help as we all learn to deal better with disasters in the future.
(Technorati tag San Diego Fire)
Random Statistics
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 10/19/2007 - 21:30Second Life Net Worth: L$ 4500 (Down about L$ 462)
Unread emails in my main account: 620 (Down something like 900)
Monthly Unique Visitors to Orient Lodge: 2152 (Down from around 3200)
So, I’m catching up on my email as my blogging and Second Life trading falters.
An Accident Waiting to Happen
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/16/2007 - 09:48At Poets and Writers for Avery, Andy Thibault described Wally Lamb as an accidental novelist and an accidental activist. In many ways, it seems that Avery is an accidental activist as well.
As Wally spoke about his writing he talked about one writing teacher telling him there are no new stories and it is best to go back to the stories that have lasted through time, myths, because they contain the compelling elements of the stories we still need to hear to today.
Joseph Campbell, borrowing the word ‘Monomyth’ from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, talks about these compelling elements in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. Perhaps that is part of what is so compelling about Avery’s story. It isn’t just an issue about defending our basic freedom of speech, it is following the hero’s journey very nicely.
The monomyth starts with the hero’s call to adventure. The hero perceives a threat to the community, such as the threat to our basic rights, or simply stumbles into the adventure, such as using the word ‘douchebag’ in a personal blog, to set of the whole adventure.
Often, the hero is reluctant to take up the adventure or continue the adventure. The great adventures always seem so improbable. The hero is often asked to do something that seems impossible. This is important. If the hero goes out and wins what appeared to be a sure fire victory in the first place, then it doesn’t seem that heroic. There needs to be the possibility of loss, even significant loss. There needs to be fear of such a loss, but a girding up of the loins and a willingness to take up the challenged based on a belief that what the hero is doing is right.
Another part of the hero’s journey is the supernatural aid that the hero receives. These days that aid might come in the form of a community of supporters gathering around the hero, the way we did at Poets and Writers for Avery. As a community, we do not have any magical amulets to provide. However, with the sense of poetic justice, the Internet, which helped initiate the call to action, is also a tool to gather the community of supporters and I hope will be a sort of magical amulet.
Then, there is the return of the hero. The hero, upon returning from the adventure helps those around her by bestowing knowledge gained from the adventure. This is happening as Avery gets a chance to tell her story to people in schools, in the media and in daily life.
Perhaps this is where the real magic and power of Avery’s hero journey is hidden. We read the myths of old. We see them as they get portrayed today in movies. However, we all, too often forget that the heroes of these stories were regular people just like you and I. We are all potential heroes, waiting for our call to adventure, for our accidents to happen.
