From Bishop Scarfe, 6/26/08

On Tuesday I got my first sight of the devastation that has occurred in Cedar Rapids. Thanks to Lisa Butler, the tireless parish life coordinator of Christ Church Cedar Rapids, I was able to visit one of their eleven families who have incurred severe damage to their home. They are one of 98% of the household in Palo, outside Cedar Rapids, where the river first overflowed its banks. Their houses look fine in the now blue skies above, but on the doors are the telltale signs of contamination and instability. The signs mark each home according to their degree of habitability. Most read yellow which means uninhabitable until further notice. Families come each day from other locations to do what they can in clean up and recovery. One of these families from Christ Church is teamed up with parishioners who have “adopted” them for however long it takes to get them back in their home.

I met later with the faith community in Cedar Rapids as we shared a prayer service together – an interfaith service where the hug and embrace of the Muslim imam with the Jewish rabbi brought as much of an ovation as any words of reflection and prayers of hope that night. A subtext of a deeper hope was being lived out even in the midst of all of the suffering. This is a community which I believe will show the way forward in coordinating efforts and bringing people closer together by mutually sharing resources and personnel. Our Episcopal Churches both now house local agencies – one for the disabled and another for the elderly – which had been flooded out in the downtown area.
Home after home along the downtown streets have the “flood crud” piled high on the curb. It is hard to imagine how high the waters came, and how whole churches were covered. Thirty one religious buildings were damaged some beyond repair.

I took an amateur video of my travels and will repeat it today as I go through Iowa City and back to Cedar Rapids on the way to Mitch Smith’s celebration of new ministry in Waterloo. As I write the clouds are indicating that Mother Nature is not finished with us yet. I hope through Catherine Quehl Engel to meet with workers who have been serving under horrendous conditions.

I will see some of you in Grinnell.