Running Into the Fortified Tower

The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.  The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale. Proverbs 18:10-11

While in Ireland in 2014 our family saw and walked through several fortified houses or strong houses.  The one pictured here has a fortified tower in one corner of the building.  The fortified tower looks to be the safest place to be if this building was attacked.  Those fortified towers were needed during times of attack to preserve the local community and its people. 

God's Wisdom for Navigating Life by Tim and Kathy Keller, includes a beautiful entry for April 26, that reveals the truth of a healthy response to our need for security.  We all have a place of ultimate security, some fortification of some sort that we run to for our protection.  The wealthy imagine that their financial security will be that fortified tower.  To those who have been put right with God through God's great mercy (the righteous), God's name is to become the fortified tower that they run to.  Keller further explains that God's name in the Bible is a way of speaking God's nature and attributes.  Thus, to run into God's name is to rehearse and tell yourself about who God is, and what his nature and character is all about.  When we panic during times of crisis or stress and try to find some other "fortified tower" to run to, we are failing to run into his power, his wisdom, his love for us.  

Going one step further, we learn of the nature and attributes of God by worshiping him, by studying the Bible, and by testifying to one another of his character and goodness.  We do all this so that when the trials of life come our way, as we know they will, we can run into God's attributes and find our security in him. 

Submitting My Will to God's Will Concerning My Condition, and Receiving a Blessing

Yesterday I participated in a 5K event that I've done for several years for the Ugandan Water Project ( http://ugandanwaterproject.com/  ).  But, for at least two reasons, when I signed up for the event, I realized that I could not participate as I wanted to participate.  I am being treated for prostate cancer, and its been 5 weeks since having brachytherapy (radioactive seed implants) surgery, and the side effects of my treatments are peaking and wearing me out.  On top of that, the entire month of April to date has been miserable for doing any outdoor training.  My obvious desire was to be well and to participate in the event as a runner and compete for a top three spot in my age (60 - 65) group.  My focus was all about wishing I could be better so I could participate in the way I desired to participate.  On top of this I was able to get my company, Bergmann, to be a sponsor of this event, and two of my colleagues showed up. 


Within this backdrop, I have been reading Jeremiah Burroughs' The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment ( http://www.chapellibrary.org/files/1113/7658/4062/rjoc.pdf ) to help me learn contentment during this time of personal suffering, when I am not in the condition I wish to be in.  One of the hard learned lessons for me has been achieving a grateful heart that's content with having my will and desires be blended with God's will and desires. Burroughs explains that such a thing is mystery to the carnal heart.  One breaks through the mystery by having one's desires satisfied not by obtaining the thing or condition that's originally desired, but instead he makes his will to be at one with God's will.


Thus I determined that I would enter as a walker, begin walking the event, and then continue it as a training run if I felt up to it.  As I got ready for the race, God connected me to an energetic and fit man named Mike, age 72, who was wearing a neck brace and sporting walking poles.  He explained to me that he had run this event in the past but that he had recently fallen during a training run, and would need to walk the event this year.  As we walked together to the starting line, I explained to him my medical situation, and when we reached the starting line he placed his hands on my shoulders and prayed a powerful prayer for my healing. I then prayed for his complete healing from his fall.  He told me that my radiation treatments were God's gift to me for my healing, and need to be embraced.  He then went on to explain that he had received radiation treatments for testicular cancer many years ago, which he remembered wore him down for a while too.  He also explained that he recovered and fathered a child after those treatments concluded.  Even these words provided hope to me that our son Tim may someday father a child after having chemotherapy treatments for, you guessed it, testicular cancer.  So after walking the first 0.8 miles to the top of a hill, I took off at a typical training pace for me and finished the 2.3 miles running.  I spent some time enjoying the post-event foods and chatting with my Bergmann colleagues.  I returned home with a joyful heart.


So when suffering, instead of wishing I was not suffering so, if I instead work through the mystery of abandoning the end I desire, but look to be satisfied to make my will God's will, I will actually receive the blessing that God intends for me.  The blessing I received during yesterday's event was better for me than anything I received out of the past events, because it's what God wanted for me.

The Business of Our God Is Redemption

I read an amazing article ( https://world.wng.org/2018/04/through_fire_to_forgiveness ) in the 4/28/18 issue of World Magazine that took me back to my high school days.  The Vietnam War was a daily tragedy that we lived through as we watched the evening news.  But the image of a naked little girl fleeing her village that was being napalm bombed by the US military in one picture captured the horror of that war.  The photojournalist won a Pulitzer Prize for their work.  June Cheng's World Magazine article chronicles this little girl's life after the photo, and is a must read.   In short, God saved this little girl so that He could eventually redeem her.  He saved her from a brutal attack, and eventually she came to faith in Christ and now lives in Canada.  Think of some horrible situation that faces you or a loved one, and imagine that there's a heavenly Father, a savior, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who as a 3 in 1 God who is in the business of taking the worst of situations and human conditions and doing a work of restoration that seems beyond miraculous.  Yet, if we could comprehend the the many acts of this God we would have faith to believe that he does works such as these daily in lives and hearts that are open to Him.

The People of FCWC 2017

 

 

Everyone who participated in Flower City Work Camp has a unique story to tell.  I want to tell my story in terms of some of the people who God spoke to me through and who blessed my time this week.

Rob – I went to High School with Rob.  He lived a few doors down the street from the church on Pixley Road.  He attended our youth fellowship here with me when I was a student at GCHS.  Like many of you young people, God became real to me and to Rob through youth ministry.  We lost track of each other after High School, but several years ago I reconnected with Rob at FCWC.  This year he and a buddy of his were gofors for another group of sites that didn’t include ours.  On Wednesday we ran into a problem with the electrical system.  He happened to show up on our site just to pay us a visit and in one of my better decisions of the week, I asked for his help (instead of saying that I could figure it out) in resolving the problem.  He not only dove right in, he reached the limits of his expertise and needed to call in an even bigger expert to trace down the electrical problem.  You see, the electrical wiring in these old homes is pretty poor.  There are no ground wires, and the manner in which things were wired together was not up to the electrical codes we have today.  His expert found the problem and the next morning he went over to our site and installed a new ceiling light that we didn’t planned on and a new electrical outlet to replace a very unsafe one.  Best of all, I deepened my connection with him, met his wife and HS sweetheart and made a commitment to keep in closer touch with him.

Savannah – Sometimes we give special attention to the juniors and seniors on our sites, and we make some of them “student shepherds”.  The student that I was most impressed with was Savannah, a homeschooled 8^th grader who lives in Pittsford and worships with people in Chili.  This girl was so willing to help in whatever way we asked her, she didn’t waste time socializing too much, and she was curious about everything.  At the end of one of the days at our site, she came upstairs to where I was discussing the electrical wiring problems we were having and how we were going to sort them out.  I thought she might be stopping up to urge me to leave because everyone else was ready to go.  Instead, she told me that she wanted to understand more about the electrical problems we were having and how we were going to solve them.  At the end of the last day, she was there to help me reinstall the blinds that two of my other students repeatedly failed to properly install.  I told Savanah and I wrote to her and told her that she was going to become someone special in this world because she applied herself to whatever task she took on at camp.

Tyreese and Marcus – These boys lived at the house we worked on with their grandmother.  I think I met Marcus’s father once when I was there but essentially their dads were absent the three days we were there, and sadly they are probably absent most of the time.  We had planned to paint their bedrooms with a basic off-white paint, but one of ours site leaders, Scott, asked them what color paint they wanted, checked it with their grandmother, and went out and bought the paint for the rooms.  Then our students worked along with each of these boys to paint their rooms, and in the process of working with them, I got to know them.  Yes, they lacked some discipline, and they lacked some confidence in taking on some of the repairs but they were willing to learn and to work.  They showed pride in some of the things they had done.  One had built a stool at Boy Scouts.  The other ran 5K’s and showed me some of his medals.  So although these boys lacked the good parenting that most us have, they showed a willingness to learn and took pride in their work.  We gave them buttons and shirts to make them “official” and they certainly felt included by our students which was such a blessing to them.

So, yes, some work was done on 53 homes this past week, but the best work of all was the work that God in us through the relationships that were either formed or rekindled at FCWC.  That’s what FCWC, that’s what Christianity, is all about.  It’s about the relationship between us and God and about the relationships between all of us who receive Christ.

Using Native Vegetation in Ecosystem Restoration Projects

Ecosystem and streambank restoration projects use a wide variety and large quantities of native vegetation to economically restore wetlands and streambanks, while providing adequate armoring to withstand the velocities and shear stresses from river flows.  Vegetative materials include: wetlands or uplands seed mixes; bare rooted seedlings or saplings; balled and burlap trees; dormant live cuttings (brush, stakes, poles) and potted plants.  This photo shows a dormant live willow stake that has sprouted in Spring after being driven into a bare bank during the dormant.  This stake is about ½” diameter, and projects about 12” from the bank.  The stake is buried 3’ to 4’ into the bank.  Native cuttings can also be used to provide brush layers, fascines, dormant live stakes and poles and vegetation soil reinforced systems. 

The use of vegetation can reduce the extent of riprap armoring, while still providing the necessary resistance to shear stresses and velocities on the upper banks of a stream.   The upper range of permissible shear stresses of soil bioengineering measures has been found to range from 1 to 5 lbs/square foot, with a corresponding range of permissible velocities from 3 to 10 feet/second.  Velocities and shear stresses need to be determined through hydrologic and hydraulic modeling of the river reach to determine worst case velocities and shear stresses.  See link to publication below: http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/elpubs/pdf/sr29.pdf

On many of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park projects, we utilized native plant materials found within the park, rather than having the contractor provide cuttings from off site.  These included: sandbar willow; black willow; red ozier dogwood and some others.  The Park’s landscape architect would identify areas within the park from which the contractor could harvest plant materials.  This is both economical and environmentally sustainable, since the harvested plant material will eventually grow back, and the cost to cut and deliver the plant material from within the park is significantly lower than purchased material.  One should be aware not to specify plant material that is under distress from an invasive species, as is the case with Green Ash.  At one time cuttings from Green Ash were specified for use in the upper zone of restored riverbanks until it became known that ash trees were being harmed by the Emerald Ash Borer.  Plant material cannot be relied upon to provide armoring below mean water level.  In those areas, a riprap revetment should be used, and should extend up the bank to a level corresponding with the channel forming discharge or ordinary high water.

Plant material, when properly engineered, is an environmentally sustainable means to effectively stabilize riverbanks.

The Importance of Engineering in Ecosystem Restoration

Here’s a streambank restoration project on a Cuyahoga River tributary that, from the photo, looks to have been missing some important engineering.  The designer placed a woven drainage filter fabric on a steep, excavated bank, and installed rounded cobbles against the fabric to restore the eroded streambank. The streambank restoration failed during a subsequent flooding event, destroying the repair and exposing bare banks that will contribute detrimental sediment to the aquatic ecosystem.  This failure, like many, can be attributed to at least three factors: the rock; the filter drainage fabric; and the toe protection.  

Rock used to protect a streambank must be engineered because the stability of the rock must conform to the laws of physics.  Those laws, when applied to streambanks, account for: the median size of the stone (D ₅₀), specific gravity of the stone, specific gravity of water, a metric to represent the uniformity of the gradation of the stone, the relationship between the thickness of the layer and the largest (D₁₀₀ ) particle size, channel bend radius, channel bottom width, water depth, bank slope, stream velocity, and a stone stability factor.  The stability factor varies depending on whether the stone is angular, typical of quarried rock, or rounded, typical of glacial material found in a gravel pit.  Studies have shown that rounded stone is 20% less stable than angular stone of the same size and specific gravity.  The angularity naturally interlocks, tying the entire rock layer together.      

Drainage fabric is available in two types: woven and non-woven.  The woven fabric is thin, smooth, and slippery.  The non-woven is thick, soft, and spongy.  In this application, the woven fabric could have contributed to the failure due to its slippery properties.  Better yet, the fabric could have been eliminated entirely and replaced with either an engineered bedding layer of smaller size stone, or by using a thicker layer of armoring stone that is self-filtering. 

The photo does not indicate whether some type of stone toe protection was provided.  All streambank restoration projects should have either a launchable stone toe or a stone toe that’s excavated into the channel bed at the toe of the slope to prevent failure of the bank when scour occurs in the channel, and it will scour.   Although scour at the toe of a slope is most likely to occur at the outside of a bend, in this photo the stream is flowing into the picture, and the failed streambank protection is located in a straight section of the channel just upstream of a bend.  Even straight sections of channel will experience toe scour and should have a stone toe.

On riverbank restoration projects, therefore, it is essential to do the engineering studies to properly design the restoration to provide long term stability to the streambank so that the aquatic, cultural and other resources can be preserved. 

Understand How the River Works...Before You Begin Work

Those of us who work with rivers and natural ecosystems need to approach our work carefully, with a measure of ignorance, remembering that rivers are complex. We must come with a clear set of objectives, and seek to understand how the river is working before we can begin our work. I’ve read many books and journal articles but Luna Leopold’s A View of the River ( http://www.amazon.com/View-River-Luna-B-Leopold/dp/0674018451 ) has been most helpful. Leopold theorizes that the river system has two tendencies: to minimize total work done in the system, and to equalize the power per unit bed area. He ties these tendencies back to entropy as used in the second law of thermodynamics, indicating that as energy becomes more evenly dispersed in the river system that the possibility for energy to be used for mechanical work is decreased, thus increasing entropy.

The river system, with both its natural and man-made obstructions, and its sediment load are significant aspects that play into the dynamic equilibrium of the river as expressed in Lane’s relationship.

Qs ds ∝ Qw So

Lane theorized that the product of sediment discharge (Qs) and sediment size (ds) is proportional to the product of river discharge (Qw) and channel slope (So). The side by side photos of a riverbank restoration project are a story in how rivers respond to changes to these variables.

The photo on the left shows an area of significant bank erosion between the downstream end of an earlier bank restoration project and the upstream side of a bridge from which the photo is taken. The missing piece of information is that the former single span truss bridge was replaced with a two span deck girder bridge at about the same time as the first riverbank restoration project was constructed. I have never been a fan of two span bridges over water because the center pier ends up as an obstruction located in the highest velocity portion of the river causing a rise in backwater from losses caused by the pier, and bank instabilities caused by changes in sediment carrying capacity. In this case, during larger floods, the pier presented a greater obstruction, raising the water surface upstream of the bridge, reducing channel velocity, and depositing sediment that created a center bar. The center bar became armored with cobbles, causing flow to become divided and directing the flow to the unprotected bank, downstream of the first riverbank restoration project, which contained finer particle soils. Scour at the toe of the bank resulted in a translational failure of the upper bank. The restoration, shown in the photo on the right, included removing the center bar and extending the bank protection (riprap to the 2-year flood level and dormant live stakes on the upper slope) to the bridge’s abutment.

As this example shows, understanding how the river system works on both a macroscopic and within the river reach being considered is essential before beginning our work.