Week 3, post 1

I have my Christmas lights up! I bought a string of beautiful red crawfish lights at the Cajun store at the mall. They now hang over my door on the camper. I'll post a picture if I can ever figure out how!

As I began creating this blog in my head, I began to realize that I cannot and will not ever share any details of the pastoral care and counseling work I've begun to do. Anyone in the world can read this, including relatives and neighbors of people I'm helping. Confidentiality cannot and will not ever be compromised.

So how do I let you know the real heart of what I'm doing? I can be very free with my personal adventures and play, but that's not what I'm here for, and not likely what you're most interested in as a reader. I will do my very best to walk that tightrope, and trust that you will offer me feedback as we go...

My pastoral care and counseling work has indeed begun in earnest, and I am gratified. Today I was privileged to make a grief call on a family and was graciously received. I believe that the contact was meaningful and useful. I want to tell so much more about this dear family, their strengths and inner beauty, but I cannot. Sigh.

One prophetic note: the man commented with some passion that he has given "so many interviews in this house" over the past 20 years regarding costal erosion that he is just sick of them. Study after study has been done, without action, that he is thoroughly fed up with it all. Will action ever be taken, or will the patient be studied to death? Talk is not always cheap, but in this case, the bayou people are indeed weary of "studies," and time is running out.

I am personally aware of how inefficient this work is that I'm presently doing. It is indeed way more efficient to operate in a clinic on a tight schedule, like I did for 19 years. But it is not always more life-giving. Jesus did not himself establish a "Center for Spiritual Growth and Enlightenment" a block away from the Temple. He wandered, itinerant, homeless, and met the people on their turf and their terms. Bureaucracies are created out of a desire for efficiency -- and they usually are. But they can also be incredibly stifling and just plain destructive. Flood victims here experience FEMA as a third disaster, just short of Katrina and Rita in its devastation. The very word "FEMA" provokes all manner of intense emotion on the part of area residents, and the foul taste of the acronym in their mouths is not likely ever to recover to the point of mere emotional neutrality. FEMA may have to be carried out to the town dump along with all the moldy mattresses and other flood refuse.

Please pray for me as I work as hard as I can to make the best possible use of the resources of time and money with which I have been entrusted.

Peace, Warren.