Haitian cathedral destroyed

I received an email earlier today, announcing that the Episcopal cathedral in Haiti "is gone." That was a secondhand report, but I've now seen it confirmed in a news article at the Episcopal Church website.

I visited that cathedral two years ago. It was adorned with beautiful folk-style art. Here are some photos. The destruction of art is by no means the most important measure of the tragedy—for that we have to look to the destruction of homes and bodies. But since I haven't yet heard about how anyone I know personally was impacted by the earthquake, the announcement of the destruction of the cathedral has been the thing that, thus far at least, has made the tragedy hit closest to home for me. It would be good if this is the closest the tragedy comes to hitting me personally, because it would mean that the people I know survived relatively unscathed. (My contacts lived on an island off the mainland, and I think there's a good chance the damage there will be minimal.)

All photos taken by Grace Camblos.

Haiti relief efforts

When I saw pictures of the giant dust cloud hanging over Port-au-Prince because of all the collapsed buildings, I realized this was going to be even worse than I'd first envisioned. My God, so much of this city is going to be reduced to rubble. Beyond the deaths and the wounded and the people trapped in collapsed buildings, there are going to be so many survivors left with nothing.

I'm relieved to see how quickly governments and relief agencies are mobilizing responses. So many resources are going to be needed, though. We're talking about a country that has such incredibly limited resources and infrastructure of its own already.

Donate to the Red Cross

I'd have liked to provide links to either LDS Humanitarian Services or the Community of Christ's responses to the earthquake, but there's nothing up online yet, though I assume that some kind of mobilization is underway by both institutions. I'll check back later.

UPDATE: LDS Church response to Haiti earthquake

UPDATE: Community of Christ, Haiti earthquake relief

I know disasters happen all the time, and I know my sense of investment in this one has to do with my connections to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. But I hope Americans generally will be seized emotionally by this disaster, the way we were by the tsunami five years ago. This disaster is going to prove to be particularly bad, and it's happening at our doorstep!

Haiti earthquake

I just caught part of a news story on CNN about the earthquake in Haiti. I expect this to be very bad, with many casualties and extensive damage to already weak and precarious infrastructure. Of all the setbacks this country did not need...

What do I pray for in this situation? I don't begin to know what to say. What can God do?

Be with the dying, let help come speedily to the wounded, comfort those who mourn. Keep the survivors safe. Clear obstacles from the path of those who are trying to bring aid. Touch the hearts of governments and individuals to give generously, and let the money be used wisely to accomplish the maximum good. Give hope to those who now have to rebuild. In Christ's name, amen.

I need to figure out how/where to make a productive donation.

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She shall cover thee with her feathers,
and under her wings shalt thou trust.
(Psalm 91:4)

Bring my sons and daughters

The Old Testament reading in church today was from Isaiah 43, on which the hymn "How Firm a Foundation" is based. (We sang that hymn today as well, though it has a different tune in the Episcopal hymnal than in the LDS.) The theme of the reading was the gathering, which struck me because that theme has been on my mind lately.

Here are some selections from the passage (the text mostly from the NRSV, but with a few liberties).


Thus says the Lord,
who created you,
who formed you:

Do not be afraid,
for I have purchased your freedom.
I have called you by name;
I have claimed you.

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
through the rivers,
they shall not overwhelm you.
When you walk through fire,
you shall not be burned,
and the flames shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
You are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you.

I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you.
I will say to the north, "Give them up!"
and to the south, "Do not withhold!"

"Bring my sons from far away
and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
all who are called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed with my hands."

(Isaiah 43:1-7)

Manly Book of Experiences—WTF?!

I was having lunch just now, leafing absently through the Deseret Book catalogue that arrived in the mail a few days ago (I'm not really sure why we receive it), and I saw an advertisement for the product pictured above. It's a journal for boys, basically, created on the assumption that boys need to be convinced that journaling won't compromise their masculinity. Note that the cover is designed to look like something assembled from cardboard and duct tape, and that it carries the both defiant and assuring disclaimer, "Not a diary!" We're evidently to understand that a "diary" would be girly. Ditto for a journal made in the conventional style: the elegant binding, the faux gold lettering, the inkwell engraved on the front cover—the kind of journal I and most every other elder I knew took on our missions. How did we fail to recognize the feminine nature of these products?

According to Deseret Book's ad copy, "this one-of-a-kind journal has an important benefit, as the author states, 'The following pages will prove to future generations that you were indeed a manly man.'" Among the topics the book gives you to write about are: "manly injuries: stitches, broken bones, and lacerations," "moments of manly courage and bravery," "video games I've mastered or conquered, "sports I play," and "times I've shed a manly tear."

Extending the logic of this product, perhaps Deseret Book could persuade the Church to start producing editions of the scriptures designed to look more "manly." There are plenty of evangelical models on the market they could emulate: Bibles sold in metal casing stamped with the emblems of the different branches of the armed forces; Bibles with color inserts featuring athletes bearing their testimonies; just a couple weeks ago I saw a NASCAR edition. Those are scriptures that will prove to all who see you reading them "that you are indeed a manly man." What kind of limp-wristed pansy carries around leatherbound scriptures with gilded pages?

Jana Riess pointed out, like, 15 years ago how Mormon pop culture and marketing reinforce gender stereotyping. So I can't say I'm surprised by this product. But I'm still going to treat myself to the moral luxury of being appalled.

And I'm going to toss out a half-formed idea for consideration. Let's say you're a pre-teen Mormon boy growing up in a culture that equates masculinity with mastering video games and playing sports and breaking bones. But let's say that you're not really into sports and video games. Let's say you're more of the pensive, bookish, artistic type. Let's say you're sensitive and emotional, prone to shedding much more than the occasional "manly tear." And as you're growing up, approaching adolescence, you're becoming increasingly aware that you don't fit what your culture and your church regard as the conventional masculine mode. And at the same time, you're growing up in a church which equates homosexuality with gender confusion; and adults who are aware that you're out of step with what they regard as normal gender behavior are getting worried about what this means for your sexuality, and intentionally or not they're sending signals about that; and then you may have peers who are perfectly blunt in expressing their suspicions about your sexual identity ("Are you a fag?"). And as you grow into adolescence, you absorb these suspicions so that they become your own...

And thus a self-loathing candidate for Evergreen is born—a product, ironically, of the very same gender stereotypes that Evergreen is supposed to help confused, "same-sex attracted" people learn to live by.

The Book of Mormon tells us that "male and female . . . are alike to God" (2 Ne. 26:33). Latter-day Saints, however, are still far from convinced.

Epiphany

In honor of Epiphany, with its theme of the light of Christ bursting forth to the nations, a passage from the Doctrine and Covenants. I read it in light [no pun intended there, honest] of my experience as a gay Mormon and a liberal Mormon.

I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
I came to my own,
and my own did not receive me.
I am the light that shines in darkness,
and the darkness does not comprehend it.
I am the one who said to my disciples,
"I have other sheep that are not of this fold,"
and there were many who did not understand me.
(D&C 10:57-59)

New Year, 2010

I realized today that it's been 10 years since the Y2K scare. That scare is one of the landmarks I use to remember how long my partner and I have been together, since our relationship started the Thanksgiving before Y2K. I remember us going together to visit a friend of his, with the big worldwide millennium celebration playing on TV in the background.

Ten years... In a society that doesn't yet lend same-sex relationships the logistical support structure of marriage—though it's starting here and there—and where so many couples who do have that legal structure end up divorcing anyway, these ten years feel like an accomplishment. More importantly, I feel very grateful for these years together.

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As a kid, I watched the movie 2010 (pronounced "Twenty Ten," by the way, so when are people going to quit calling this year "two thousand ten"; we only said "two thousand" during years 0-9 because pronouncing 2009 "twenty nine" would be confusing, though I guess we could have said "twenty oh nine"; anyway, we didn't call 1999 "one thousand nine hundred ninety-nine," so why are we setting ourselves up now to be saying "two thousand ninety-nine"; sheesh, people, catch up already)... Anyway, as a kid I watched 2010, and that year was tantalizingly close enough to make you wonder "What will the world really be like then?" (not like the Star Trek movies, which were set so far in the future that they might as well have been set in a realm of pure fantasy); but that year also felt far enough away that you couldn't really wrap your mind around the fact that you would, presumably, live to it, not in the same way you envisioned what you'd be doing in just a year or two...

But now here we are. Living the future. No manned spaceships travelling to Jupiter, though. And the Soviet Union's an anachronism, though at the time the movie was made, its longevity just seemed like something you had to take for granted. Of course the Soviet Union would still be around in 2010. Just as you take for granted that the United States will still be around in, say, 2050. Won't it?

I grew up as a kid taking it for granted that by the time I reached the year 2000, the world would be caving in under the calamities leading up to the Second Coming. I quite seriously imagined that as a draftable young adult, I would have to be on the run as a draft dodger to avoid being sent by the U.S. government to fight against the nation of Israel in the battle of Armageddon. When I was in high school, in the late 1980s, I assumed that by the late 1990s there would probably have been a nuclear war. These beliefs weren't active in my life in the sense that I actually planned around them. I wasn't holing up in the mountains; I was preparing for college and some kind of future career on the assumption that the system would be around indefinitely. But in the back of my mind, I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be.

Looking back, I find it a strange way to have lived. Now I live with no mental roadmap for the future. I take nothing for granted anymore. There are no prophecies telling us how the story will end. We've been given sketches of what God would like the future to look like. But whether that happens or not depends, collectively, on the agency of the human family.

OK, I admit it: I still live my life assuming, in the back of my mind, that I'll probably live to see Western civilization collapse; to see global warming soar out of control; to see the electrical grid go dead, and the Internet and all the vital information on it dissolve like a mist. I think it's entirely possible that when I die, it will be of starvation. That's partly just the apocalyptic frame of mind I was schooled in as a Latter-day Saint; but it's also because the people running the show aren't giving me much reason to be more optimistic.