Prayer poll

This has come up a couple of times over the last few days, and I realized it's been well over a year since making this poll, so people I friended afterwards most likely don't even know it's there. See, when bad or even just stressful things happen to people, it's an instinct to say a prayer for them, but not everybody is okay with that, especially given as I tend to be praying to different Gods than theirs. Some are also just wigged out by the whole concept or feel it creates pressure to buy into a belief they really don't share. None of those are feelings I want to be evoking in someone when they're already having a rough time.

Thus, the poll. If you have a strong opinion or, really, any opinion at all on whether I say a prayer for you when you've got stuff going on, please let me know here. Who selected what is only visible to me, though I think it does display the overall stats. I do refer back to it any time the question comes up. Also, comments are screened but encouraged, as the whole question raised some very intriguing discussions. I re-screen comments after replying unless you tell me it's okay to leave them visible.

Help for Haiti

Reposted from bethbethbeth, some ways to send help to Haiti.

I don't know if you've seen the news yet, but a massive earthquake - the worst in 200 years - hit Haiti last night (7.0 at least, with at least two major aftershocks measuring 5.5 and 5.9). Television news reports are estimating that thousands of people have died, with millions more displaced (in a country of 9,000,000) with the capital, Port-au-Prince hit particularly hard. Hospitals, police stations, homes, supermarkets, churches and the U.N. headquarters have all been reduced to piles of rubble, many roads are impassible, and communications are spotty at best.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (average income is about $2.00 a day), and even without a disaster of this magnitude, there's always been great need. But now...rescue services, medicine, ready-made food, water: all are needed urgently. If you can donate anything at all, consider some of the following:

*UNICEF

*The Red Cross

*An updated list of many organizations needing help on SFGate

(note: The link to "Wyclef Jean's Haiti initiative to assist his native Haiti" has been timing out for me, but information about how you can text donations to this initiative or to other groups can be found in this post from Vulgarweed)

Also, I discovered you can donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to 90999. (I double-checked, and while their main website doesn't reference that means of donating, that is the official Twitter account, linked from the RC website.)