Buddhism and "The Gift of Men"

I was reading the introductory chapter on Buddhism in Finding God Among Our Neighbors earlier today and was struck by the description of Dr. Largen's description of the Buddha's final moments:

"The Buddha lived and taught for eighty years, choosing for himself when it was time for him to end his life and attain final nirvana. He entered into final meditation peacefully, lying on his side, surrounded by all manner of animals, disciples, and even gods..."[79]

For those that aren't familiar with Buddhism or may have an incorrect knowledge of it, nirvana can be described as a release from the cycle of samsara or the cyclical nature of our universe. The reason I was struck by this passage is because although I was familiar with the concepts of samsara and nirvana before reading this chapter I did not remember hearing the description of Buddha's death, if we can use that term for his final moments. The way Dr. Largen phrased Buddha's choice also brought this passage from a favorite book of mine to mind:

"Nay, lady, I am the last of the Númenóreans and the latest King of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will, and give back the gift. Now, therefore, I will sleep."

 This passage is of course from The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. The reason this came to mind was the gift that Aragorn refers to is what is called "The Gift of Men." The Gift of Men was given to humans by Ilúvatar and part of the gift was the ability to lay down at the time of their choosing and die. The Kings of Númenór had the custom of using this gift to escape Middle Earth before they became too feeble to rule and this is exactly what Aragorn was doing when he lay down and slept. Another aspect of the Gift of Men was a complete release from Middle Earth which is opposed to the Elves which have their immortality. While immortality may seem like a greater gift the Elves came in time to be jealous of the Gift of Men because their immortality lead to a longing for release due to the ages of care and woe they would experience as the millennia wore on.

While Middle Earth does not have a cyclical nature like the Buddhists believe in, I was struck by this similarity between the religion and the story. In both there are the very wise which have the ability to choose their own time to depart their world. These very wise are the leaders of the people and they are given a great amount of dignity to deal with how and when they depart the mortal coil, and I find that a wonderful and enlightening coincidence.

Theodicy and A Song of Ice and Fire

One of the assignments my MAR Keynote course in January was to write a paper that engaged a theological loci with popular culture. For my paper I wrote on theodicy and engaged with George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. The title of the paper is "Theodicy and a Song of Ice and Fire, or Why do so many bad things happen to the Starks?" It is a very brief treatment of the topic and only addresses a potential theodicy surrounding the old gods worshipped by the Stark family but I thought some folks might enjoy reading it.

The paper is embedded in an iframe below. If the iframe isn't visible the paper is also available via Google Drive.

Religion and Digital Technologies

Last week I attended a one day conference at The Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University titled Religion and Digital Technologies. It was an interesting conference and I wanted to share some notes and observations from the talks. Some of the speakers employed more technologies in the research than others and I'm only highlighting things here that I found especially interesting.

The first speaker was John Boy from CUNY. His subject of research is church plants in Europe and part of his research necessitated searching websites for specific subject matter. He used data from commoncrawl.org which provides "an open repository of web crawl data that can be accessed and analyzed by everyone." The data is accessible via the Amazon Cloud so John had to do some coding in order to perform his research.

A few of the speakers used Amazon's Mechanical Turk service at various points in their research. The Mechanical Turk allows you to create small jobs which they call Human Intelligence Tasks or "HITs" that you pay workers to complete. One speaker used Mechanical Turk to find websites for over six thousand non-profit organizations so that she could analyze their websites (the IRS provided the organizations but not the websites). Other speakers had used the service to field test surveys, which was an interesting concept. An unexpected conversation around Mechanical Turk was the ethics of using a service that pays workers the equivalent of less than $2/hour of labor.

Thomas Carlson from Princeton spoke about the challenges of developing a hierarchy to classify religions as part of the syriaca.org project. They felt a need to classify religions in some way in order to enhance the search methods available on the site but things get messy very quickly when you start to consider the different possibilities. There weren't any clear cut ways to setup a meaningful hierarchy so the project is still looking for a good solution to the issue. A term which came out of this discussion that I enjoyed was "fuzzy specificity" which refers to using dates (and other data) that we aren't sure about.

Joseph Blankholm spoke about a website which came out of a class on the religion life in Harlem. The religionsofharlem.org site has lost much functionality due to maintenance issues but everyone agreed that it was a wonderful idea. Students in the class were tasked with visiting sites of religious significance in Harlem and blogging about them. The blog posts were geolocated and the website had a map showing the blog posts by location. Joseph shared that the students got a lot out of the course and the professors had hoped to use the site as a resource for future classes but that didn't turn out as they planned. We had a discussion around the value of maintaining digital work like this and why it isn't always necessary to move course work into a permanent repository, and indeed why sometimes that would be problematic.

Marcus Bingenheimer from Temple shared some challenges that arose when digitizing Dunhuang Manuscripts. An interesting part of this discussion was how complex text encoding can become when you are working with non-western languages.

Ben Johnston and Michael Myers, both from Princeton, spoke about two projects they collaborated on and Ben mentioned a term that he holds to and I really liked. The concept is called "modest DH" (digital humanities) and it speaks to not using the technology to dazzle the audience but to make sure there is a focus on functionality. The point of digital humanities should be to allow great research and interpretation, not necessarily make things look awesome. There is a place for design and for sites meant for a broad public audience that's important, but when working on sites intended for scholars flashy elements should be left behind.

Overall I found the day enjoyable and picked up some great resources and areas that I'd like to spend more time on. If you have any questions about the day's topics, please feel free to leave a comment.

Inter-religious Dialogue Prezi

In class last week Dr. Largen covered three reasons why Christians should practice inter-religious dialogue. The reasons started with ourselves as Christians, cycled through other religions, God and then came back to Christians in a way that reminded me of the three arrows in the recycling logos. I turned this idea over in my head for a few days (turned over, recycling, get it, ha ha) and finally put together a Prezi to illustrate it. Unfortunately you can't embed Prezi presentations in Blogger so I'll have to link to it: http://prezi.com/b0wwwtcogxmk/why-should-we-practice-inter-religious-dialogue/

The value of silence

I just read an interesting piece on the effects of iPhones on our neurology by Ian H. Robertson: http://theconversation.com/weve-got-the-iphone-habit-so-whats-it-doing-to-our-brains-21768

The big takeaway I took from the article was the need for silence after learning something new. Since I'm still in the religious mindset from class this morning I of course started to think about how this applies to worship settings. The traditional liturgy has times of silence built into it and I'm wondering if this tradition has carried into contemporary services at all. My recollection from the few that I have attended is that there was not much time for silence. This is probably because society seems to be losing its willingness to suffer silence so the designers of new worship liturgies have removed them. The evidence would suggest that this silence is more valuable than we thought.

Why I link to Worldcat

We make choices every day and one of the things that I have learned while at seminary is to try and look at the deeper meaning behind our choices and to really think deeply about our actions. One choice you have to make when blogging involves what to do when mentioning a book. It seems like the norm on the internet is to link to the book's Amazon page. On many levels this makes good sense

• if someone is reading your blog then there's a very good chance they will know about Amazon
• they are a trusted seller on the internet
• it is very rare to find books that aren't listed and available on Amazon

Personally when it comes to books I prefer Barnes and Noble. I still enjoy going to a brick and mortar store to peruse the shelves and I realize the financial realities that they need to also sell books online in order to keep those physical locations open. Because of that I used to link to the bn.com pages for books instead of Amazon.com.

The more I thought about this practice, however, the more I started to question my motivations. I also gave some thought to the explicit and implicit messages I was sending to whoever clicked on the link I had made. I was certainly endorsing whichever company I linked to and recommending their services to those that trusted me enough to read my words. But what wasn't I saying at the same time? What options were being left out?

Whenever I mention a book title I have now made the choice to link to Worldcat. Worldcat is "the world's largest library catalog" and links to libraries worldwide. Because the website can find your location geographically they can find the libraries closest to you that have the book you are viewing. I feel that linking to this kind of resource sends a different message, and it is one that speaks a message about community and not capitalism. The Library used to be as much the center of community as the church, but many local libraries no longer have the funding they need to stay viable and are closing. One of the reasons they are closing is because people just aren't going to the Library anymore so local municipalities don't feel the need to provide funding. Also, the library doesn't have the opportunity to build relationships with local donors.

If more of us start directing our readers to the local library instead of the huge booksellers, that might change. In my opinion more community is a good thing, more relationship with the others around us is a good thing. And that's why I link to Worldcat.

Hey God

Yesterday we talked about being in relationship with God (it's really been a theme of the entire week, I guess) and the language we use for God came up during the lecture at some point. I was reminded about a woman from Pittsburgh that would sometimes open her prayers by saying "Hey God...". She spoke this unconventional prayer opening once and said that it helped to remind her that she has a deeply personal relationship with God and that she needs to remember that even though God is much greater than her, God is still close to her like an earthly parent. Looking back I think it's wonderful that she had this insight and was also able to share this comfort with the rest of us.

I just read "A Big Heart Open to God" from America and while there were many interesting thoughts there I wanted to highlight Pope Francis' thoughts on art. It's worth seeing who he lifts up as authors and artists and he mentions a particular piece by Mozart, so of course I had to find a performance of it on YouTube. I have listened to three performances of Et Incarnatus Est at this point and have loved each one. Here's the one playing right now:

Can you Google troth?

I read an interesting blog post on the NYTimes today by Haider Javed Warraich titled When Doctors ‘Google’ Their Patients. As I was reading it I started to wonder what would happen if we replaced doctors with pastors and patients with parishioners. I can imagine that this is happening already in the world already, although I have a feeling that pastors might not be as willing to discuss it as this doctor was. For some reason it seems like an even larger violation of trust in my eyes.

In his book "To know as we are known : a spirituality of education"Parker Palmer talks about truth which comes from relationships and a deeper knowing that we can attain when we really enter into an understanding with a subject. This deep relationship leads to "troth" between the two subjects, which is a covenant that binds the two together. This relationship is possible because God knows us first.

When pastors enter a relationship with members of their congregation there should be intent to build those relationships to the point of gaining this kind of troth. Part of this relationship should include an honesty and openness on both sides which I think should mean we don't have to Google in order to know. Dr. Warraich is saying the same thing about the doctor patient relationship, I think. Doctors should be speaking with their patients and asking the right kinds of questions and patients should be answering truthfully and not holding anything back. This is the only way that trust can be gained between both parties and truth can be learned which leads to troth.

Webcam video from January 7, 2014 9:49 PM

In light of today's discussion I made a Vlog post instead of a blog post today.

What's on the front page?

One of our readings for the MAR Keynote course is from Heidi A. Campbell, titled Understanding the Relationship between Religion Online and Offline in a Networked Society. The article is quite long and covers a wide range of other literature (the references section is eight pages long!) but gives an interesting look at some of the differences and similarities between how religion is practiced both offline and online. Dr. Campbell lays out five central traits of what she terms "networked religion:" networked community, stored identity, shifting authority, convergent practice, and multisite reality.

The section that I found most interesting was on shifting authority and in particular there is one passage that I wanted to lift up for thought: "It is recognized that the structure of web sites and discussion forums offers a platform of influence often not available to users offline, as they become interpreters of religious belief and culture online." (page 11). This made me pause and consider how the structure our a church's website may relate to what that church is trying to say and to whom it is saying it. This topic is also discussed in the Click 2 Save book that I mentioned yesterday.

When my church first started to talk about setting up a website I encouraged that those involved with the design be very intentional about the entire thing. Unfortunately there was very little interest in being involved and I ended up putting together the site myself quickly. The result is a very basic site with quite limited functionality. My initial intention was to provide the information that I thought was most pertinent to people that are searching the web for churches to visit, so I included our address and when we worship. Since that first debut I have added a nicer cover photo and we now have archived recordings of sermons, so the audience may have widened to include parishioners that couldn't attend and want to listen to the message, but for the most part there really isn't much content there.

In light of this I'm now wondering what a fresh pair of eyes sees when they view our website. If the major thing we are presenting is where and when we meet, what does that say about our message? Does it say anything about us at all?

 

MAR Keynote Course - getting things started

Despite my best intentions I have not made any blog posts since last January when they were required for my 21st Century Media and Religion course. My one solace is that most of my classmates also haven't been updating their blogs, so that does help a little.

One of the reasons that I haven't been posting is my personal struggles with my online brand. In their book Click2Save Elizabeth Drescher and Keith Anderson speak to this. One of the things they talk about is how your online presence is going to be a mix of your personal and professional lives but I'm still not comfortable with that entirely. Part of me has avoided blogging on technology topics here because I'm not sure what the audience will be (I have posted on technology topics on other forums like ITNinja.com), but then I also don't put effort into blogging religious topics because frankly most of my efforts on that front go into class work.

Regardless, here I am taking another course that requires blogging so at least for another week things will be active in this space again. Perhaps this time I'll get more into the habit of blogging and will also become more comfortable with a mixing of my technological and theological selves. I'm hoping that this course will lead me to resources that will help with that process. I can already see that there is a lot of discussion happening in the area of media and religion but so far I have not been plugged into the right people and places where those discussions are happening.

We have already been exposed to a few people that I'm sure I'll want to read more from, including one of our professors Dr. Mary Hess. I just finished reading her paper titled "Mirror Neurons, The Development Of Empathy, And Digital Story Telling" in which she briefly discussed the differences between sympathy and empathy and urges that as Christians we should prefer empathy. I found this interesting in light of recent news that Facebook is testing a "Sympathize" button. If Facebook were to provide a function to sympathize with others how would we approach that from a Christian perspective? Are the subtleties between sympathy and empathy too little to urge Facebook to provide different functionality? Would the majority of Christians put enough distinction between the words to justify the need? Incidentally, Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly an atheist, so would he even care if Christians urge a distinction?

These are interesting questions that I'm hoping to develop the tools to help try and answer.

Media Meets Religion - Day 5

We started today with two speakers and the pace was a bit slowed because one of the speakers originally scheduled couldn't make it. Elder Fred Kinsey has a long history working in media, he got his start as a rock DJ and made a deal with God that he would go to Seminary but if it didn't work out God would leave him alone. It turns out that it did work out and Fred has been working in the church and communications for quite a while. Fred gave us a great quote: "We are in a world that is so connected that it is disconnected." That's a very cogent thought and reflects on how our relationships have changed with the advent of new technologies that are supposed to make us more connected to each other. In some ways we are more like a small village since we know what everyone is up to but in some ways all of that knowing is leading us to be more selective about the things we talk about online.

Next we heard from The Reverend Kellie Anderson-Picallo from Auburn Media. Kellie is part of an interesting project that is trying to make religious professionals more media savvy. Kellie took us back to day two with her reminder that we need to be very aware of our personal brand and how we present ourselves online. This was a good reminder at the end of the week that has been very busy and focused on learning so many things that it's easy to forget about ourselves.

Media Meets Religion Day 4 - Mixed bag

Today was a bit of a mixed bag for me. The speakers were again excellent but my energy is flagging. There's only one day of class left but I don't have rest to look forward to since I'm getting on a plane early Saturday morning for New Orleans and a week of service with college students. I always look forward to the Dickinson trips but this two weeks is going to be grueling for me.

I took the time today to send some tweets while we were speaking with people. It occurred to me that I had been announcing who we were speaking to, but I never really shared anything that we learned on Twitter, so I made an effort to find the people and then share a quote from them that I found thought provoking. The first thought that I shared was from Ash Greyson when he spoke about the roads built by the Romans. They built them for trade and kept them secure, but the early Christians used them for evangelism. He urged us to think about the social media tools that exist in the world today as the new roads that we can use to spread our word.

Our next speaker was Pastor Elise Brown from Advent Lutheran Church in Manhattan. I was honestly too engrossed with the conversation with Elise to even tweet that we were talking with her. She was willing to share the details of her church re-branding efforts with us (something I'm wondering if even members of her congregation have seen). I have been a part of the logo design process for both professional and personal organizations and it's always interesting for me to see the formation of an identity take place. Tristan offered some very good insight into the process as well and really got to highlight his background in the arts.

The next speaker was Frankie Fredericks, a very accomplished young man. He had a lot of what I would call "big ideas" to share that took us back to thinking about bigger picture things and I think he might have been a better fit for an earlier class session. The pearl of wisdom I took from Fankie was that technology is a how that answers a bigger why. This fits in with how I view technology but Frankie puts it very well.

Next up was Paul Edison-Swift from the ELCA. Paul went beyond the Click 2 Save book and talked about some of the places where he saw gaps. Paul's talk was informative but coming where it did at a low energy point of the day it was difficult to process it all. I'm glad he setup some web resources for us to look at so that I can go back to them later.

The last speaker of the day was the Rev. Peter Panagore from Daily Devotions. Peter talked about how they use social ministry to achieve saturation in the market of their videos. He puts a lot of work into making sure they are posted to seven different networks although he said it only takes him about twenty minutes every day to get it done. I shared a quote from Peter: "Social media is a beast you need to feed." Peter was referring to the fact that if you don't pay attention to social media every day you'll lose your following and then all of the work you did in the first place will have to be repeated.

Media and Religion Day 3 - Crisis, Ethics and Getting Noticed

I keep trying to think of synonyms for interesting, because I feel like I have used that word too often here in the past few days. The class has already been more than I expected in several ways. The speakers we have had so far in addition to the expertise brought by Mat and Eric has really added to the course.

Neva Rae Fox works in the Public Affairs Office for the Episcopal Church of America. Yesterday provided a perfect developing case study for us because the news was breaking that the National Cathedral just announced that they would be using the new provisional rights for blessing same sex unions. This was huge news for the Episcopal Church and Neva Rae gave us lots of information about how to keep up with the news in a "crisis" situation. One of the important learnings we all had from her talk was that we don't have to work in this type of situation alone. Neva Rae herself doesn't use Twitter and relies on another person in the staff for that work. She also spoke to not needing to respond to every thing that's out there, especially those that are known to be hostile to your cause. It's sometimes important to let someone else respond first and give yourself a moment to calm down and think through the situation.

Neva Rae had prepared several case studies for us to work through and reflect on. They included handling requests by the media to attend a funeral, dealing with a congregant that is charged with a crime, and having a dignitary attend a dedication for a new church ministry. These were helpful exercises to work through with someone that has been dealing with public relations and crises like Neva Rae.

In the afternoon we spoke with John Brooks from North Park University in Chicago. John is their Director of News and he had extensive experience as a news director and was able to share many techniques that he has used successfully to get his institution noticed by mass media outlets. One thing that struck me was his emphasis on the importance of relationships. John seems to put a lot of time into building relationships with reporters in the area where he is working. In today's age where there aren't as many dedicated religion reporters it takes more effort to become noticed, but by making sure that the local reporters know who John is, they are more likely to be receptive to the stories he sends their way. John is also very selective about sending stories to reporters and puts an emphasis on local stories of interest. By local he also looks for news outlets that aren't geographically local to him but have a connection somehow to the story. For instance, a story about a student will be sent to the hometown paper of that student. While many of the things John spoke to were more applicable to a large institution it was valuable advice on dealing with the media even for a local congregation.

In the afternoon we had some time to compose some tweets and I had asked on twitter whether "No website is better than bad website" is true or false. I haven't received a ton of feedback but one insight was related to how we are defining bad. If bad is incorrect then that is a definite problem. One commenter (@syre) noted that if the website had incorrect information that is more damaging. A very simple website with just the basics like time of worship is better than no website.

Other Media Meets Religion Bloggers

For those interested in others in the When 21st Century Media Meets Religion class, here's a list of their blogs. Some of the members are still new to blogging, so the blog titles are a little messy:

Media Meets Religion Day 2 - Branding and Language

Day two was great for me. Not only did I survive through most of the day without any coughing fits but the discussion was excellent, too!

We started off the day talking about branding and what that means. Parts of this discussion got pretty personal since we were talking about our personal brand. Mat asked who among us had given thought to our personal brands and then asked me specifically. I'm wondering if that was partially influenced by our brief conversation the previous night about my political aspirations but it might have just been the attentive look I had on my face (I think that's how I looked, at least). Since I am interested in pursuing a career in politics I have given quite a bit of thought to my personal brand. I shared some of the things that have gone into that thought process and also the struggles that this had led me to.

The discussion morphed into the possible clash between our individual brands and our corporate brands that we might represent. The entire class was very engaged in trying to sort out the ramifications of what we were talking about and topics ranged widely from theologies to praxis and all sorts of things. In the end I found the entire discussion to be very helpful, especially once we were assigned the task to start developing and writing down our personal brand. I found myself going back to this document throughout the day and adding things as I thought of new aspects about myself that I wanted to be included in how others perceive Chuck Steel.

The bulk of the afternoon was spent speaking with Verity Jones who is the Director of the Center for Pastoral Excellence at Christian Theological Seminary and also the Director of the New Media Project now at CTS (formerly Union). Her brief lecture provided a lot of points and one of the most salient for me was concerning the language used on Facebook pages. Because it is a social network churches should be sure to use welcoming language when posting on a page, rather than treating it like an advertisement of old. For instance, instead of saying "Bake Sale on Saturday. Volunteers Needed" a much better tone would be "We're having a bake sale this Saturday and would love to see you there. Let us know if you can help out."

This focus on language has been a theme in my learnings when studying theology. Often times the language we use plays a key role in how we think about a subject, and this language will cast overtones on how we interact and relate to the thing we're describing in ways that we may not fully understand at first. This also goes back to some of the things we said yesterday about being very intentional with how we are using social media.

Day 1 Recap

Today was a long day, both in class and then afterwards for me, at least. First off, I actually woke up feeling pretty well this morning which was a minor miracle considering how I felt going to bed last night. I think that Barbara Bradley Hagerty was right when she said in Fingerprints of God that modern medicine is like a miracle.

Anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about the class, so I'll get on with it. We spent a lot of time today getting to know one another and the course instructors, Eric Shafer and Matt Tombers. They both have a lot of experience in the area of media and religion but their backgrounds are different enough that I think they will complement each other very well throughout the week. The morning was wrapped up with looking at an article on the Simply Zesty site showing some interesting trends and metrics on social media. I think that one of the more interesting statements for me was the following: "Auto-posting to Facebook decreases likes and comments by 70%". This prompted some discussion of some of the things Michael Hyatt said in his book Platform with regards to twitter. He mentioned having a set of links periodically tweeted to his account on a rotating basis based on a schedule and it seemed to me that I would find this rather annoying. I know that the volume of tweets on twitter is large enough that I don't see everything that is posted but I got the impression that these links would appear with enough frequency that I'd remember them.

Our afternoon session began with a very good talk by Dr. Scott Thumma from Hartford Seminary. Dr. Thumma studies the sociology of religion and he shared some very interesting statistics regarding growth (and decline) trends of churches over the past several decades. It was also intriguing to see towards the end that using technology in the church doesn't guarantee that membership will increase. This further emphasizes the point that we must be deliberate and intentional about how we use technology. Just as "no website is better than a bad website" it's also important to remember that any use of technology and media needs to be matched to the needs of the congregation at hand.

The rest of the afternoon was spent creating blogs and twitter accounts for everyone in the class. This led to some confusion which I think could have been alleviated if some of the terms were discussed prior to having everyone go through the process. It might have been helpful if Eric went through the process on the classroom computer and everyone else followed along while he created his Wordpress account and blog. As it was we had different people progress through the process at different rates and that led to more confusion in a few instances. I also might have reversed the order that we setup our accounts so that everyone could have posted their blog URL to twitter, making it easy for everyone else to click on the link and get to the sites to follow it from there.

All in all it was a good beginning to the week and I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

When 21st Century Media Meets Religion

I'm taking a course at LTSG called When 21st Century Media Meets Religion and we will be blogging for class. This is my first post related to this class and there should be a few more to follow. 

Haiti 2012

I promised folks that I would write something up about my mission trip to Haiti from November 30th through December 8th, 2012, so here we go...

We gathered at Allison United Methodist Church in Carlisle at about 2:00am on November 30th. Our trip leaders Rich and Mira had already put a lot of organization into this moment so we were quickly in our vehicles and on the way to Reagan International Airport. Despite a slight detour through downtown D.C. and Arlington we made it to the airport on time and the American Airlines staff got us checked in and ready to fly quickly. We didn't have any issues getting through security, which was a minor miracle, and before we knew it we were in the air bound for Miami and then on to Port au Prince.

The airport in Port au Prince has gone through some renovations and was in much better shape than when I was there in May/June of 2011. The immigration and customs process was smooth and getting our luggage together was much less of an issue. The airport was very crowded, however, so moving around with all of our luggage (we each had a carry-on bag plus two suitcases of donations) was difficult. When you exit the airport there are a lot of Haitians there to "help" you with your luggage. Walking into this unprepared would be a difficult experience but we had warned everyone about how things work. Fortunately we quickly found our contact from the Methodist Guest House and he was able to assist us with getting to the parking lot to load into the vehicles.

The trip through Port au Prince to Petionville did show some signs of progress. There were still some piles of rubble to be seen, but not as many as previously. There also weren't nearly as many piles of garbage littering the streets, although there was still a fair amount in some places. During the week we learned that the government has been paying for people to collect garbage and I did see at least one garbage truck while I was there and men were shoveling garbage into the back of it. There was also some construction going on in the city and later in the week we even saw heavy machinery being used to install sewers and make road improvements.

We spent the rest of Friday getting settled at the Guest House and took a tour of the campus there. The Guest House is part of a large complex in Petionville that houses a school, church and the offices of the Methodist Church of Haiti. In many ways it is like a little oasis amongst the chaos that seems to define much of the country. The Guest House even has a pool which was a welcome treat Friday night.

Saturday was another traveling day. We drove from the Guest House to Cariesse Ferry Terminal.  The trip gave more opportunities to see progress in the country, including a large complex of houses being built outside of the city. Many were painted in bright colors which are evident in other areas of the country, although here in what is now the middle of nowhere made them seem out of place. I was wondering what kind of lives the people that move into these houses will have waiting for them. There wasn't any evident industry in the area that I could see, but perhaps that will come with the houses once they are complete and people begin moving into them. Haiti does have a good (if confusing) system of transportation provided by the private tap taps, and I'm sure they will begin servicing these neighborhoods once there are people in them. The tangled traffic in Port au Prince already has people accustomed to long commutes, so perhaps moving miles outside of the city won't prove a barrier. I'm also guessing that people would rather live here than in a tent city, as they are now.

We took the ferry to Anse-a-Galets on the island of La Gonave. The ferry was supposed to leave at 12:00pm but instead left around 1:30pm for the two hour trip. It was a bright sunny day, however, so there were plenty of opportunities for naps and working on tans. The port we landed in was small and we experienced a similar desire from workers trying to help us with our baggage there. We were met by some drivers from the church and loaded into two vehicles and went to the church where we would be working and staying for the next week.

The island did not experience any damage from the earthquake and we were there working on a church that they have been working on for about nine years. The compound we stayed in housed the church and a school where a little over two hundred students between kindergarten and twelfth grade are taught. The building will be two stories tall and the walls and second floor were complete. Our task for the week was to remove the old cement floor and install a new one. All of this would be done by hand, of course.

On Sunday we attended their worship service which was a joyful experience. The sermon was titled "The Price You Pay" and it was interesting to hear the pastor speak about sacrifice and giving in a community that does not appear to have much to give. It was an excellent stewardship sermon and I think it highlighted something that exists in Haitian communities that we don't see much of in the States. It showed that no matter how bad things may be and how poor they might be, they are still a tight knit community that will look out for one another and protect each other when they can and need help. The service included a lot of singing and lasted about two and a half hours, which is on the short side for them. We spent the rest of Sunday getting to know the community a little by taking a walk around the town. La Gonave has about 60,000 residents and close to half of them live in Anse-a-Galets, so the town is more urban than I was expecting. On our walk we stopped at one of the locations where they weigh fish that are caught and provide the major industry for part of the community.

The area had some beautiful sites although similar to what I experienced on my last trip they were tainted by the amounts of poverty that are also there.

One of the places we visited was a school started by a woman from California called Great Good Haiti. They provide education for students that have difficulty in other schools and work with them to pass their sixth grade exams. Throughout the trip I learned more about the Haitian school system than I knew before and it was interesting to learn that some of their standards are higher than what we have in the States. For instance, all students in school are required to learn French (the official language), Spanish and English. Our interpreter was a little taken aback to learn that in the States every student isn't required to learn a foreign language to any proficiency (they have to take an exam in each language). Before graduating each student has to take fourteen exams to show their proficiency in many subjects including the sciences.

Monday morning came bright and early and our day began with breakfast at 7:00am. By 8:00am we were on the worksite and work we did. We worked along side about twenty Haitian men throughout the week and formed relationships with them that added to the meaningfulness of the trip. Most of Monday was spent breaking apart the old cement floor which looked like it was either very old or had been put into place as a temporary measure. The floor was broken apart with pickaxes and shovels and then removed by buckets or picked up if there were large pieces. The rubble was placed in a pile which we would be dismayed to learn the next day had to be moved again, this time into the street. It would have been more efficient to move it directly into the street, but that's how things tend to work in Haiti.

On Tuesday we started putting the base coat of rocks into the church and then the Haitians laid out rebar on the floor. Once the rebar was all in place we started pouring concrete one bucket at a time. We formed a bucket brigade and started passing buckets down the line. We did this most of Tuesday afternoon and all of Wednesday, but by Wednesday afternoon the church had a nice level floor that would be ready for whatever kind of finished flooring the church would choose (either tiling or smooth cement). Also on Tuesday or Wednesday we visited an orphanage in the town. The woman who started it has no formal supporters and just gets along however she can to provide a home for the children that don't otherwise have a place to live.

Since our work was completed on Wednesday we spent Thursday morning sorting the donations we brought for the school and distributing them to the schools. Most of the team had the opportunity to go back to the Greater Good Haiti school and swim at their beach, which included a barrier reef suitable for snorkeling. This was a nice treat for the end of the work week and we felt it was well deserved after the long workdays we spent there.

On Friday we woke early for a 5:15am breakfast so that we could get to the ferry by the 6:30am departure. Unlike the trip to La Gonave, the ferry to the big island left promptly. Once we reached port we had to wait for our ride back to Petionville but we didn't mind the downtime by this point in the week. It also gave us the opportunity to see some of the commerce that takes place at the port, including the many goats that where brought from the island being herded through the port. On the trip back to the Guest House we stopped at the memorial site where over 200,000 people were buried in a mass grave after the earthquake. It was a humble site with a fittingly humble memorial. At the time I was struck with the how small it was but it now seems fitting, especially since the resources that we would normally put into a large memorial have much better uses in a place like Haiti.

After a brief break at the Guest House we had lunch at what amounts to a fast food place and then visited another orphanage in Port au Prince. The conditions there weren't excellent but are better than what some of the children could have had if they were left in the streets. Many had sad stories of how they were in the orphanage, most of them related to parents suffering from alcoholism or drug abuse or simply not having the resources to take care of a child. The director of the orphanage said that some children are returned to their parents once they have a place for them to live in a safe environment, but I got the impression that most of them stayed there until they were old enough to move out and live someplace on their own.

Saturday was our travel day back to the States and it was a long day getting from Petionville back to Carlisle, PA. We were all tired by the end of the trip, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience that none of us are soon to forget.

More pictures from the trip are available on the group's Shutterfly page. As of this writing only two of us have uploaded photos, but more should be available soon.

Mobile Deposit

This morning I deposited a check to my bank account while eating breakfast, in my kitchen. This amazing feat was made possible with the updated version of the PNC Mobile App for Android.

Part of my morning routine is checking my phone for email and what not and this morning there was an update for the app. One of the new features listed was mobile deposit, which piqued my curiosity, since I had two checks I need to deposit but kept forgetting to stop at the bank. Once the update installed I fired up the app and logged in. Sure enough, there was the button labeled Deposit. After clicking on it I had to agree to terms of service and got some instructions on how it worked. Afterwards I was presented with a clean interface prompting for the account to deposit the check, the amount and two buttons for taking pictures of the check (front and back). The photos were taken quickly and the deposit was "made" within a minute. Pretty slick overall.

You're supposed to hold onto the check for two weeks before destroying it. Right now the deposits show up on my account as pending transactions, so we'll see how long it takes to get them processed through to my account. I'm anxious to see what happens, and also to curious how things will get resolved if it doesn't work out. How will the tellers in New Oxford PA react when I show up and walk up to the counter with an issue on my phone, I wonder.