Watch it all–it will make your whole day. This is the stuff from which the saying truth is better than fiction comes (Hat tip:ML)–KSH.

I have always believed in a threefold way of looking at the journey of life. I need to acknowledge the past, live in the present and anticipate the future.

In relation to the cathedral building I acknowledge the forebears. I go further and honour them, because for many years I have been a beneficiary of their efforts.

When it comes to living in the present, my life, like so many others, has been drastically changed by the seismic activity. Life cannot return to what it was. I live in a house which is to be demolished and hopefully rebuilt. This is just one of the constant reminders of the change that has and is occurring for so many.

The present situation, dominated as it is by change, is forcing me to think more and more about the future and try to anticipate what that might look like.

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The Loma Prieta earthquake tore through northern California in 1989, shaking the ground for 10 to 15 seconds, killing 63 people and doing extensive damage to bridges, roads and buildings. Much of the worst damage was in built-up areas around San Francisco Bay, including Oakland.

This could be sounding like a familiar story by now. One of the casualties was a 96-year-old Gothic brick church, the Catholic diocese of Oakland’s Cathedral of St Francis De Sales. Rather than simply rebuild, the diocese opted to be even more radical: it built a new cathedral on an entirely new site. In 2008, the Cathedral of Christ the Light opened on the shores of Oakland’s Lake Merritt and it is already regarded as one of the greatest of contemporary church buildings.

It has been called the first cathedral to be built in the 21st century, and that has become a symbolic value as well as a chronological fact. It says to others that this is the future of church buildings.

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The Anglican diocese will tomorrow release detailed information on how it arrived at cost estimates for three design options for the Christ Church Cathedral.

Gavin Holley, of the Church Property Trustees, told last night’s Press-hosted public forum on the proposals for the city’s Gothic landmark that he hoped to have the information up on its website by late tomorrow afternoon.

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“Saving abandoned animals, one ride at a time…”

Guaranteed to brighten your day–watch it all (Note: video is linked at the top, if no video capacity you can read the story. Make sure to check out the map of how long the ride is from Texas to Tok, Alaska where the dog was delivered).

Also, please note that the website for Operation Roger Operation Roger (a ministry which, as the video notes, was begin through a prayer) is there.

Some dodge the stones and bottles thrown at their tents in the dead of night, others watch helplessly as their tarpaulin shelters, huddled in camps sprawled across the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, are destroyed with knives and sticks.

Rights group Amnesty International has collected dozens of such testimonies from Haitians who have been kicked out of makeshift camps set up by those left homeless by the January 2010 earthquake. Many camp residents have moved out, but just over 320,000 Haitians still live in them.

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The ”˜”˜overwhelming majority’’ of Anglican leaders are in favour of a new, modern Christ Church Cathedral with not a single person voting for restoration.

The church held its synod yesterday where more than 220 Anglican representatives across the diocese expressed their views on the design options for the earthquake-damaged cathedral.

Last week the church revealed three designs for the Christchurch icon ”“ restoration, a reinterpretation of the original cathedral in modern materials, or a completely new building with a sculptural spire.

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Anglican leaders cannot spend insurance money from the Christ Church Cathedral on the new cardboard cathedral, a judge has confirmed.

In a judgment released yesterday, Justice Graham Panckhurst ruled that the use of $4 million of insurance money from the cathedral to fund the $5.3m transitional project near Latimer Square was a breach of the terms of the Cathedral Trust.

Church Property Trustees (CPT) asked the High Court for direction on whether the money could be used to fund the cardboard cathedral after it was called into question last year.

Read it all and the judgment is here [pdf]

The Anglican Church has revealed three options for the rebuild of the ChristChurch Cathedral.

The public can now vote for their favourite, before the church leaders make the final decision.

The fate of the most well-known church in the country has been tied up in court cases and shrouded in secrecy since the big quake in 2011, but today the three final options for the cathedral’s future were unveiled to the public.

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Members of the Anglican Communion have been asked to provide prayer and financial support for the Diocese of Seychelles which has been badly hit by flooding due to recent extreme weather.

The Primate and Bishop of Mauritius, Archbishop Ian Ernest, has written to supporters to raise awareness of the crisis–which appears to have been largely ignored by global media–and to ask for assistance.

“Following the natural calamity which has hit the Seychelles in the past days, I am sad to inform you that the country and the diocese have suffered heavy losses from the floods,” he wrote. “Church buildings and other important structures have been destroyed. However we give thanks to the Lord as there has been no loss of life.

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A bishop in flood-hit Mozambique has warned of greater suffering if the flooding disaster that has displaced around 70,000 people is not properly addressed.

Bishop of Lebombo Diocese in southern Mozambique, the Rt Revd Dinis Salomão Sengulane said in a recent statement sent to supporters, “The situation is dramatic and it calls for our response if we are to avoid more damages to the lives of people”.

The bishop’s plea comes after devastating floods hit Mozambique following severe rains in southern Africa during the past two weeks.

The United Nations reports that at least 36 people have died and nearly 70,000 have been displaced because of flooding in the country.

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One would have hoped that the Seattle opinion and common sense would be sufficient, but FEMA has apparently reverted to a position that provides less than full participation for religious institutions. Its reasons for doing so are not entirely clear but seem to include a mix of constitutional, statutory and regulatory concerns.

Many of these concerns should have been put to rest by the Oklahoma City experience and Congress’s approval of aid to religious organizations there. Nobody suggests that government should entirely rebuild sanctuaries or pay for the printing of prayer books. But if roofs are being repaired and other structural damage is being remediated, the religious nature of what might occur below shouldn’t matter. That is consistent with the reasoning of a 2003 Justice Department opinion that permitted the federal government to provide assistance to help restore the landmarked Old North Church in Boston.

In essence, federal disaster relief is a form of social insurance meant to help repair a tear in our social fabric. Houses of worship are an important part of that social fabric and are often where people turn for comfort and support after a disaster. After Hurricane Sandy, they are equally in need of repair and should be equally eligible for assistance.

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch it all–very heartwarming.

Almost three years after an earthquake toppled the Roman Catholic and Episcopal cathedrals in Haiti’s capital, visions for their resurrection have started to take shape as officials from both churches begin considering proposals to rebuild them.

A six-member panel led by the dean of the University of Miami’s School of Architecture met this week in South Florida to choose the winner of a design competition that sought ideas for rebuilding the Notre Dame de l’Assomption Cathedral.

Meanwhile, Episcopal Church officials have selected a Virginia-based architectural firm to design a new Holy Trinity Cathedral.

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Volunteers from the Church of the Holy Cross barely had time to warm their feet after a relief trip to New Jersey last week before others from the church headed north to deliver 300 appliances to Hurricane Sandy victims.

What started with a simple desire to help blossomed into a huge response of giving.

“I feel like I’m holding on to a freight train,” said Chris Donavan, a church member who experienced Hurricane Hugo with three small children and wanted to assist Sandy’s victims. She put out a call for donations and was overwhelmed with response.

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A piece of Christchurch’s cardboard cathedral is on display outside four major Anglican churches around the country as part of a new fundraising drive.
With the scheduled opening of the transitional cathedral just four months away, the church is exhibiting four giant cardboard tubes as it looks outside Christchurch for financial help.
“They’re huge and it gives us a real idea of what’s going on, lots of excitement and people coming in and going,” says Auckland Anglican Dean Reverend Jo Kelly-Moore.

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The recession continued to affect how much Americans gave to charity last year, and the triple whammy of Superstorm Sandy, a national election and the looming fiscal cliff may cut how much we donate in the crucial final month of 2012, experts say.

Charitable giving overall increased by $6 billion in 2011, an increase of almost 4 percent from 2010, according to the 2012 report by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Individuals gave $217 billion, compared with $209 billion in 2010.

“A little less than two years out from the end of the Great Recession, we’re starting to see charitable giving increase modestly each year,” said Geoffrey Brown, executive director of the Giving USA Foundation, which publishes the report.

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The gray clapboard church with the red door had stood near the New Jersey coastline for more than 125 years, surviving floods and fires, hurricanes and northeasters. So when its senior warden left the church on the Sunday before Hurricane Sandy hit, he tucked the church records into a drawer for safekeeping and kept everything else in place.

That moment keeps replaying in his mind, said the warden, Dennis Bellars, because this time, luck ran out for St. Elisabeth’s Chapel-by-the-Sea, a tiny Episcopal chapel in storm-ravaged Ortley Beach, N.J. The church is marked now by nothing but a field of sand and broken pavement. The pews, the brass candlesticks; the 1885 stained glass windows, the needlepoint kneelers sewn by a parishioner; the wooden baptismal font ”” the sea or the sand took all of them.

Mr. Bellars, 70, said he had evacuated to the mainland that afternoon with the family Bible, a change of clothes, his dog and some dog food. Devastated, he found the destruction hard to talk about….

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A 123-year-old church is close to reopening after it sustained significant damage during Tropical Storm Irene last year. According to church officials, doors might open at the Gethsemane Episcopal Church in Cavendish by Christmas.

“The builders are working very hard on it. The target date is Christmas, but it will open when it opens,” said Barbara Dickey, the church treasurer. “Because of regulations of public buildings, we can’t open until the handicap bathroom is ready to go among other things. So we’re hoping it will open up very soon.”

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has paid tribute to the resilience of the people of Christchurch while visiting the city’s devastated red zone – but refused to be drawn into the debate over the fate of the cathedral.

Speaking after a bus tour of the city’s red zone, the Archbishop says it was important for him to see the remains of the Christ Church Cathedral.

“It’s different when you see a great building, historic building, very much loved, in ruins like that. You can read stuff on a page, you can even see pictures, (but) it does feel very different….”

“The only thing I’ve seen like this really is when I was in Beirut a few years ago. But somebody was saying to me just now, ‘there are no bomb craters, there’s no enemy. You can’t hate somebody out there, it’s just something that’s happened’. And in some ways that’s even harder to come to terms with I think.”

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You know I am a mush for these kinds of things but please go and look for yourself.

On the third day after Hurricane Sandy soaked Hoboken in several feet of water, leaving the city one of the most crippled in the region, those with the least found themselves suspended in the storm’s cold, dark aftermath. Late this week, Hoboken started to hum with generators and a taco truck.

The projects where [Grace] Rodriguez and her daughter, Jayleen Avalos, lived were still at the bottom of the world. The 25 or so buildings operated by the Hoboken Housing Authority were clustered together on 17 acres at the city’s southern edge. They were hemmed in by gentrification on one side ”” $600,000 lofts with same-day shirt service dry cleaners ”” and a steel fence in the back. Two feet of floodwater created a moat around the buildings. The National Guard brought water and MREs. The Red Cross brought bologna-and-cheese sandwiches.

But the one commodity residents were starved for was information, and the absence of it deepened their sense of isolation. The city government used social media to update citizens. Grace Rodriguez would have appreciated a bullhorn.

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“In the wake of disaster and trauma, a city has to decide what is it that binds it together ”“ above all, what are the promises that we make to one another,” the Archbishop said.

“Because a truly healthy and just city is a place where people make promises to one another. They promise to be there for one another’s safety and welfare.”

Archbishop Rowan then went to the heart of God’s promise in Ezekiel: “I will resettle your towns, the ruins will be rebuilt.”

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Two days after the superstorm Sandy struck the East Coast, rescue officials confronted flooded cities and battered beach towns that remained dangerous and chaotic, particularly in pockets of hard-hit New Jersey.

Large portions of this old factory city were still flooded, and pumps were working round-the-clock to clear a toxic and potentially deadly mix of water, oil and sewage estimated at more than 500 million gallons. National Guard troops in 2.5-ton Humvees patrolled the flooded streets, seeking to evacuate the most vulnerable of the city’s 20,000 stranded residents, nearly half of Hoboken’s population, who were told to stay inside and signal for help with pillowcases….

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The members of the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, today expressed their concern, compassion and prayers for all those caught up in the impact of Hurricane Sandy. Members heard of the scale of lives lost in the Caribbean, in the eastern USA and Canada, and of the devastation wrought in the wake of the hurricane
Condolences were expressed to the Anglican Province of the West Indies, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and the Diocese of Cuba.

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There are 42 in all, check them out (autoplay slideshow option available).

Make no mistake – the storm will lead to historic levels of financial damage, not to mention dozens of lives lost. It has claimed 69 lives in the Caribbean.

Apart from the physical destruction of property, there are additional costs to governments, businesses and individuals. These are often more about the human cost and less to do with the physical wealth destroyed by a storm.

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Check it out, especially the NY skyline shot(s).