Random Reports (and Mis-Reports) (Day 24)

EDH: 9:30PM-11:30PM, 9:30AM-7:10PM (!!!)

Today the gods of power gave us a full day’s share of electricity. As a consequence, we spent from 9:30AM-1:30PM doing the laundry which had piled up for several weeks. Eight loads is a lot of sheets and towels. In order to do the wash, we have to fill up the machine with wash-water and soap, then let it run through the clean cycle, draining the water into the dirt (all of the machines are outside), then filling it up again for the rinse cycle. The rinse cycle water gets poured into the neighboring machine (we have six in a row in various stages of functionality), then the whole process begins again. After rinsing we have to hang all of the sheets either in the washing courtyard or upstairs on the roof. Then we fold them and organize them according to size so that we can make and change beds quickly between large groups. It takes a lot of energy, at least for me, unaccustomed to such honest labor.

It was a hot day, so I took off my shirt to garner a nice burn, which I hope will turn into the tan I expect people assume I have absorbed here in the Carribean. A sneak rainstorm approached this afternoon, so we had to rush to get the remaining towels off the lines.

The remainder of the day I spent relaxing, napping, and reading in my air-conditioned room, so that the Lord’s Day had some resting involved.

I realized last night that I had reached a turning point about being ready to come home. This is because I only have five days left, not simply because I miss everyone and my life in Lexington—though this is true to some degree as well. If I had to make my life here, I could do it and get by gladly; but, as the trip winds down, home seems more graspable and therefore wanted. I was at Mass this morning thinking about what I would be playing at church today had I been there. These thoughts led to all sorts of “what-ifs,” but not so much that I could not enjoy my day here completely. It will just be good, different, to be back home. I will have to jump right into all sorts of projects, which may be even more stressful after such a quiet time here. Of course, I am already anticipating Edinburgh in August.

Living in community here with Father Alan, Ted, and Helene has helped me to reflect on how many moments I control at home without having to make a sacrifice of any kind. This is something I have known for awhile, that my alone time at home can let me do as I please. It is very difficult to be with someone 12 hours a day. I have tried to reclaim some personal time and space alone, but this can be very difficult even in this relatively large house. There are limited resources—one computer, for example—that must be shared. I live on my own schedule most of the time, so to compromise and make room is not a bad thing, but often surprisingly difficult for me. Everyone has been easy to get along with and pleasurable to be around, but I have been challenging myself to imagine married life or monastic life. After this experience, I am not sure I could do either, which means I will hopefully be led to one in order to practice yielding more often.

I hesitate to post this because it may seem like I am besmirching the good workers of Matthew 25; it just an odd set of occurences that I must relay. I have begun to suspect that someone working here in the house is taking my personal belongings. Obviously this is not an accusation to take lightly, even though I am not going to pursue any possible punitive results, so I underscore the fact that I may simply have misplaced them under accidental and unknown circumstances.

I had a camera disappear right around the trip to Carrefour, which I simply shook off as Ted mistakenly putting it in his bag, or my inability to keep up with my things--I had taken it out of my room as I was packing for the day, leaving it on the kitchen table. Then the day Ted left my toothpaste went AWOL. Again, I thought that an accidental packing by him or the guests who stayed in his room that night was to blame, though it seemed obvious that it was not a communal toiletry. Today I discovered that my razor was gone. This is more than just taking something off the common shelf accidentally--my razor was packed under the table in the bathroom in my toiletries bag. I am trying not to be angry about things being stolen, if indeed they were, because they are simply things and can be replaced; I had intended to leave most of the belongings I had brought down anyway. I can also, understandably, not assume that it is one of the staff here--our house is open at all times that we are here. But, I am a bit concerned how, should a security guard, for example, be bogarting my goods, I can trust him to protect us during the night! Mostly I am just very disappointed at that chance that someone would not ask us and take advantage of our trust. These are materials which could so easily be provided by us or the supplies stockpiled in the house--because there are, in fact, stockpiles of toothpaste and razors, and even a few extra cameras around. I also hate to be suspicious of anyone around here, so I write this to cleanse out the suspicions and let the matter go; similar things have happened to me before without resolution, so I set the scenario down to bed here.

Speaking of, perhaps I should check to see if they have been pushed under my bed by my carelessness. Nope.

If someone has indeed taken them, may God bless their wants and needs, and may He bless the using of what I do not really require.

***
Our Internet suddenly decided to work again, so I just read on Yahoo that a Canadian missionary who was kidnapped last week in northern Port-au-Prince was freed last night during the awesome rain storm we had. Both of these pieces of news were, well, new to me (“If I haven’t seen it, it’s new to me!”). The byline of the piece mentioned “an upsurge of violence in the capital.” This is also news to me. As always, I cannot tell if this is the typical misreporting (the standard whipping-boy, “gangs loyal to former President Aristide,” was, of course, to blame) and sensationalism (though I only went to church today, everything seemed fairly quiet on the block-and-a-half drive—and I have yet to hear gun fire at any point this whole month, though there are police and UN tanks with all sorts of large weapons) about Haiti, but this man had definitely been kidnapped. We were also definitely stopped at a checkpoint the other night (though not by the UN as listed in the report). I post this not to make anyone fearful for my well-being, but to say that not everything is as is reported; we certainly will remain vigilant and cautious, but this reminds so much of the terrorist alerts we have to endure back in the US, not to mention all the false information coming out of the city into the rest of the world. “Upsurge of violence” indeed! It’s equally strange that I have not heard a word about this kidnapping until a week after the fact, though I do not doubt its authenticity.

Yielding Returns (Day 23)

Today has been a true day of rest and catching up on lost sleep. It has been a lazy, thinking day, with some light grocery shopping thrown in, plus some reading and World Cup matches. We got an e-mail from Ted, which was wonderful; he is missed, though Helene and I are still kicking it, gangster-style, as evident from our adventure with the police. I am not so sure Ted isn't glad that he wasn't here for that.

We found out today that Theresa, our boss, will be flying in Wednesday. We will have to prepare the house for her. I am glad that I took Ted and Father Alan's room with the double bed in it, having lived in the office for three weeks; Helene will have to move into it next week.

The rest of today's writings are highly philosophical and are dedicated to Dane Boston, Daniel Brinson, and Harry Pemberton, whose free-time and class-time allowed such thoughts to be birthed and discussed. Sometimes the baby is unruly, other times it is tame, other times, simply ridiculous. Read on if you dare.

The thought occurred that if Tao (is) yielding, free will can enter in.

Yielding (is) open to all, including non-yielding. If yielding (is) the way of the universe, it can admit of the capacity for non-yielding. To use an example from Heidegger, if someone is blind, it is because he always already had the ability or capacity for sight; it is simply now dysfunctional: sightedness is a prerequisite for blindness. Similarly, yielding is a prerequisite for non-yielding. The simple use of the prefix “non” must include the “yielding” portion of the phenomena to make sense, otherwise it would just be “non” with no other phenomenal characteristics whatsoever. Yielding allows non-yielding to pass by.

One could argue that you could simply chose “closed-ness”, for example, as a descriptor, but closed-ness does not allow for the possibility of motion; it is locked up, unable to breathe. If the universe (is) non-yielding, it cannot admit of anything—no motion, movement, creation, destruction. It could have no (is) about it, because it would [(be)] (not-is). Some openness must exist to allow safe passage of existence. Yielding and non-yielding are active, both noun and verb, and so do not have the finality of either “closedness” or “openness,” though “openness” is pregnant with potential to both emptiness and form—in a word, the ability to yield to such appearances or non-appearance. As such, yielding can admit of its opposite, while non-yielding cannot.

With the open space of yielding possible, the ability to form a block to its movement, non-yielding, remains in-tow. The blockage of the movement only serves to more fully define the openness. We can view the un-viewable: emptiness. To overturn the aforementioned illustration in order to show the phenomenological nature of this freely admitted limitation (because yielding admits of non-yielding), we are actually blinder to what we experience because we are mostly living in the world of form—the blocked movement, and what we underlies this form is free of quality: it is emptiness, ether.
The blocking nature of non-yielding shows allows us to see the emptiness as emptiness, because it is form defined as form.

This yielding is beyond the pull of Being and beings, of the ontological difference. It is, in fact, the movement, the worm-hole, between the two that allows existence to exist and move to be experienced. It allows us to experience and make experience happen—the safe passage of existence. It is like a tunnel, open to movement and defined by its walls, its limits. In the realm of its openness it is the clearing for appearing and non-appearing, Being, emptiness; in the realm of its limits, it is form, beings. It lets loose the space between noun and verb, subject and object, subjectivity and objectivity—but it (is) beyond these, prior. It moves with and through and under and around.

It (is) of its own accord. Being the ground of all existence, movement, and reality, it (is) itself in the moment of interaction with it. It yields choice or not-choice. With yielding inherent to non-yielding and non-yielding the defining limits of yielding, the echo of such movement can be found in choice: to be or not to be, for example. Free will can open up to choosing or not choosing. Further, we can choose to align ourselves with such yielding, or choose not-to-yield. Yielding must yield to choice, otherwise, it would [(be)] not-yielding.

EDH: 9PM-4:30 AM

"Protection"

This is one of those bizarre stories from Haiti that you hear about. I am not going to try and pretty up the prose, because this story needs to be protected in memory simply for what it is.

Last night we went to the Hotel Olaffson, one of Port-au-Prince’s best known landmarks, to hear the band RAM, one of Port-au-Prince’s best known bands. The Olaffson was made famous as the setting of Graham Greene’s novel The Comedians, and has been a meeting place for Bohemians, ex-pats, and “journotrash,” as author Bob Shacossis has dubbed them, for about fifty years. The building itself is, well, infamous as a monstrosity: white gingerbread, turn of the 20th Century, three stories tall, built into a rock face on a hillside, part art nouveau, part haunted house. The décor is vodoun oriented with statues and flags and so is RAM’s musical style, a mix of konpa and vodoun rhythms. RAM, founded by ex-pat Richard Morse, a disgruntled New York musician searching for new beats in the era of New Wave schlock who bought the hotel on a whim, weathered the political turmoil of the first coup d’etat in 1991 and the preceding unrest, writing subtly subversive songs in the racine style, using tradition drums in addition to drumset, bass, guitar, keyboards, and vocals. Richard Morse himself was routinely shaken down by the Tonton Macoute even as the Cedras government used his band as a front of faux democracy and false freedom of speech. At the return of Aristide, they performed at the National Palace to thousands of fans. Subsequently, one of their songs was used on the soundtrack to the movie Philadelphia.

We arrived at the Olaffson around 10PM. This is very late for my standards, but we went with two students who are staying here and their German friend, Marin, who has been working in Port-au-Prince for several years. They had been to see the band during their last trip in March, so I felt that taking a small risk was warranted; they themselves thought nothing about going, but, though I was encouraged by their attitude, I thought them to be a bit gallant. Nonetheless, we loaded up the Pathfinder and went downtown.
We passed by a police checkpoint, but they were stopping people going in the other direction. “Helene,” I said, “It’s funny that we weren’t stopped because when I changed shirts today I left my driver’s license in the other shirt pocket!” We laughed at our brazen luck. I also said that if anything should ever happen on the road, Helene should start calling me “Monpere” which is “Father”—as in priest—in Kreyol, because priests seem to have special status in Haiti. We laughed at how funny that would be too.

On arriving we were directed to a parking space on the road beside the hotel. Suddenly teenage boys are clamoring around the car. As we got out, it finally dawned on us, with some help from Marin’s French and Kreyol skills, that we were going to have to pay them to “protect” our car. This protection is basically a racketeering and extortionist ploy: they are protecting your car from themselves. People who refuse to pay up front routinely return danced-out and a bit inebriated to find their tires slashed.

We walked up the torch-lit driveway to the massive staircase leading up to the wrap-around porch and front entrance. The bar and club rooms were full of people, gathering en masse closer to show time. As clubs go, this was no exception—we waited at least an hour for the band to start. They finally exploded onstage with the polish and energy of a decade-old house band. The real coup, I thought, was that Richard Morse bought this decaying edifice and made his band the weekly act. The subsequent turmoil mixed with steady performances has made RAM coltishly legendary to anyone who knows anything about Haiti. I could write more about the music, the drumming, the fervent dancing of the crowd, but it has to be heard and seen to understand the experience.

Helene quickly found herself dancing with a Haitian man and having a good time. Marin and the two students were drinking beers as I watched from the side room where the music was not too loud for my ears (I did bring earplugs, but I thought that I did not need to stick out anymore so than I already did). At around 1:30AM I started to feel tired and cautious about the drive home. One of the students had had enough as well, but the other three were still partying. Helene was now wearing the hat of the Haitian man. Marin and the remaining student were downing a glass of the hotel’s celebrated rum punch. I consoled myself with the fact that this was a one-time experience. I was still entertained by the scene, but I was getting restless.

At the band’s break, Marin, the two students, and I convened on the porch to take in the breeze, watch the Haitians grinding to Kreyol rap and pop tunes, and conversing about politics, religion, and other topics about which I am all together too ready to discuss but which require some alcohol for others to feel at liberty. Suddenly, a series of hits on my shoulder revealed Helene wandering off, being dragged by the Haitian man and carrying his hat. I didn’t realize until later that she was trying to be rescued, so we all just waved at her as she passed by.

The band resumed but was soon slowed by a power outage. There were enough safety lights to keep things unhidden and people dancing. Resistant to the end, RAM carried through with drums and a capella chanting. By now I had enough excuses to try and call it a night, but one of the students reminded me that this was prime RAM, just like in the coup d’etat days when machete-wielding soldiers cut the power to silence the seditious guitars only to discover that the power of the African drum, the power of Ginen, could not be silenced. I sank back to listening for a few moments until Helene showed up saying, “We have to go. This guy won’t leave me alone.” We escorted her, a scrum of handlers protecting her from an unwanted suitor, to another room. Her shadow was fleet. We actually went outside to a back area to hide but he still appeared like a high-schooler in heat.

“He kept telling me that he loved me—in English,” she muttered, “and that”—and I quote—“he could ‘go for hours.’” I finally turned this charade into the strong suggestion that we would now be leaving. Marin curtly but warmly confronted the poor and lonely man thanking him for a pleasant time with Helene, but that we were all going home for the night.

We wandered through the jungle of side-stairs and palm trees to find our car, safe as promised. The boys demanded payment, which we gave to them. I was willing to give them a $10 bill, but Marin insisted only on 100 Gourdes or so, which is about $2. We paid one boy and began to drive off. In a typical Haitian situation, another boy knocked on the window demanding his payment too. We told him that we had already paid someone and that he would have to work it out with the other kid. He was resilient and even annoying—this quotidian scenario plays itself all over the city constantly. We finally just drove away.

It was now about 2 AM.

The two students argued on the way back how we should have treated the boy, pity or loathing. I sat silently, not knowing what to think, watching the darkened streets for potholes. We came around a corner. Police checkpoint. Men with machine guns and shotguns. Waving us to stop.

This is not the first time I have had a gun pointed at the vehicle I was in, nor will it be the last, I am sure. Everyone was very calm. Routine checkpoint at 2AM.

There are commercials on during the World Cup matches that inform you how to identify real policemen from fake policemen. Many men in Haiti have acquired uniforms and use it to their advantage in all sorts of ways, ranging from mostly harmless to deadly.

The first identifying attribute is to check the identification cards hanging around their necks, “Not inside the shirt, nor pinned to a pocket” the commercial instructs in Kreyol. These men had chains, but no cards. Anywhere.

The second trait is that they will be driving a vehicle marked with the police seal, a number on the side, and a special license plate with the same two marks. Their vehicles did actually have all of these.

Were these real policemen or not? What is one to do when men have weapons?—it makes authenticity a moot point. Demanding to see their badges—where would that lead us?

We rolled down our windows. The lead officer demanded, in perfect French, to see my “license de conduit” and my passport. It was ironic for him to ask me for my papers, while none of his could be found.

It’s a funny thing, speaking Kreyol daily—the French is still there in the brain, but it is much more difficult to pull out on demand, hidden—like the policemen’s ID badges— nowhere to be found; it comes out conjugated sometimes, and not others, confused and unclear, a pastiche as vague as these men’s truck markings. I attempted to speak back in French, but not quick enough. It was clear that I had left my license at home.

It’s a funny thing, leaving the license at home. I actually pulled it out of the other-shirt pocket and locked at it, then put it back in, not feeling like it was important—no little warning voice of intuition—thinking, “I’ve never had to have this before—it’s not like anyone respects the police here anyway.” So odd how much respect a man with a shotgun garners on the Haitian roadside after midnight.

It was now 2:15 AM.

He berated me, nicely but sternly, for a minute for not having my license or my passport. No foreigner carries his passport in Haiti, and one of students in the back seat—did I mention before that they were law students?—said as much in French. Not good French, but better than my now-faltering conversation. The lawyer took over in a series of well-played, but unsuccessful tricks.

I always carry my license with me, but had left it at home tonight on accident.
--No excuse.
He had his driver’s license and a photocopy of his passport in his wallet. Could he drive?
--But I was the one driving now.
He and everyone else had been drinking, so I, who had not, was sober-driving.
--But if there was or had been an accident, I would be the one liable.
Not if it was his car and I was sober-driving.
--(This apparently does not work as well in a country where people drunk drive often—but not so often because no one drives after night here. It’s not safe.)
--Could we please step out of the car?
Absolutely not.
--Are we hiding anything illegal in the vehicle?
No. Search the whole car, from top to bottom, we have nothing to hide,
--What are you doing here?
We are working on a student research paper. Here are our student ID’s.
--What school?
The University of P***
--You should all have your passports and driver’s licenses.
We don’t carry our passports in this country—it is unsafe and there are bandits about.
--It is national law that you carry your passport for identification at all times. Do you think I could go to the Dominican Republic and drive and not carry my passport there?
But no visitors here carry passports. We are warned not to.
--But it is the law.
Then can we send someone home to pick up the driver’s license and passports and return?
--You are already breaking the law.
But if someone could just go get them, we could show you that we are not here illegally.
--It is too late for that.

This went on for about 5 more minutes or so until Marin, who was ahead of us and had already passed the checkpoint, was returned escorted by two armed men after she explained that we were following her back to the road that we all knew so that we could make it home safely.

I started asking Saint Brendan to make a way for us.

Marin jumped right in, blond hair, dimples, an angel from Almagn—so we all thought after this adventure—in French and spoke with the police. After several more minutes of discussion, in which she basically said “Give us the ticket or a fine or let us go” (but in much more diplomatic terms), he said the infraction would cost us $300 Haitian. This equals 1500 Gourdes. Or, $40 American. The exact amount we had in the car.

It’s funny about this $40. A week before the trip to Haiti, one of Helene’s friends was discussing the trip with her and said, “Here is $20. Keep it in your pocket for something important.” It sat in her pocket through all of her travels up until this point. Just before leaving the house, one of the students paid me for some crafts, so I had put that, you guessed it, $20 into my pocket—just in case. I had the feeling I should. (Strangely, not my license, but $20.) If I had paid the boys outside the hotel as I had thought reasonable, we would have been short $5-10.

There was another five minutes spent trying to assure the policemen—if they even were policemen—that $40 American equals $300 Haitian, one policeman actually calling someone on his phone to make sure this was correct.

It was 2:30 AM.

After this resolution the situation lightened up considerably. They had told the student that his French was very good and we all had agreed that it was a frustrating experience, but suddenly things became even less official. They said that there was another checkpoint on the road to our house and that they would call ahead for us. We watched one “officer” do it. They gathered around our car and told us that the road ahead was very dangerous, so we should follow them and they would protect us. We felt this a welcome piece of news. Helene, who did have her license on her, switched places so that we would be on the road legally. The men got up into their truck with their gear and arms and took off into the night, us trailing behind. At the main road they waved and we thanked them as they wished us good night. We made it home safely.

2:45 AM.

We discussed with Thay, who was working security on our arrival, what had happened.
He sort of laughed but also warned us about fake policemen, but then added that if they had the police truck, then it was okay; we were home safely; oh, and if they had not been real policemen things would have turned out very differently. For the worse.

Great.

Now, could it be that I did not bring my license for our own safety, so that we could be stopped, hassled, but then kept safe on the dangerous road? I wanted to think that as I wandered off to sleep. I never felt like I was in danger, nor was I afraid. Mostly I was annoyed and tired. But, was there a point, if any? To prove God’s love and protection?

As Theremise prepared to cook dinner and clean the kitchen this morning, I told her the whole story as a way to practice my Kreyol. She was concerned for most of it, saying, “They are not real policemen if they don’t have their papers around their necks.” This was validating because it seemed like the government was aiming for transparency after months of vigilante justice and hooded men dressed all in black disappearing dissidents; policemen must be identified as such (though, I wasn’t sure how broadcasting exactly how was going to stop bandits from copying those features also); even more so validating because the publicity gained through the World Cup matches was actually being seen and people were receiving the word on the police force. After asking why we were leaving the house way after the time we should be returning to it on any given night, I told her I was well aware of the safety concerns, that the young were often too gallant, and that it was a one-time event only. Besides, we had learned our lesson. She was confused about the badges and the police vehicle, though. We decided it wasn’t important whether they were real police or not, because “N’ap viv”—we were still alive.

I turned to telling this tale as a lesson to myself and everyone else. But the moral of the story is not whether we were foolish or whether one should not go out after dark in Port-au-Prince.

I started thinking about how Marin would not have taken us through any place dangerous, and so I wondered why we needed their protection. From who? Their “protection”…..

We had been scammed.

Confirmation from Helene that the men did have some sort of badges, only put into shirt pockets and….and in places where we would not be able to identify them by name or number. With a real police truck. I suddenly remembered them waving a Haitian motorcyclist through after a brief chat and maybe even a car or two with no problem….
They were real policemen hiding their identity but using their legitimacy to make money. Here we were, an SUV full of white people, in the middle of the night….It suddenly dawned on me: we needed to pay them for their “protection”—from themselves.

Little boy racketeers grow up to be men racketeers.

With guns.

If someone requires you to pay them for protection, just remember whose interests they are protecting, and from whom they are likely protecting you.

EDH: I was told 11PM-4:30AM

Non-Yielding: Exception, Rules, and Riddles (Day 21)

I cannot give any solid explanation to today’s writings, but merely shadows of understanding that may lead someone else to a better way. I have no answer to these problems, only more riddles.

At home I bug people by asking, “Do passing lanes exist because we have no patience, or do we have no patience because we have passing lanes?” This question cannot reveal any truth here in Haiti, because it pre-supposes order and law on the road—and even staying on the road, for that matter. We could reform the question for Haiti as: “Is there chaos on the road because there is no patience, or is there no patience because there is chaos on the road?”

In Rockbridge County I very often use slow traffic and country roads as a mindfulness practice—I can remain patient because I have nowhere to be (even if I do) and I can enjoy the beautiful scenery as I go. I often do not pass a tractor when I could in order to remember and implement the training of Buddhist teacher Thich Naht Hahn: “Wherever your car goes, you go too.” I have been having an internal struggle as I drive in Port-au-Prince, because I do not know if this mentality can even work. There is so much aggression here on the road that, even if you let someone pass by you or yield to their wanting to enter the stream of traffic, three cars will pull around from behind and go around you, making the traffic even more confused and belligerent.

Basically, if you yielded all the time, you would get nowhere. Order is maintained by taking initiative.

There is a certain level of aggression that has to be maintained in order to survive, road wise. Then that aggression eases into situations where you do not necessarily need to pass a tap-tap stopped on the road, but you feel like you want to anyway. Then you realize, “I am driving aggressively with people in the car, and, therefore, not as safely as I should.” Then three people come around you from behind and pass you by veering into oncoming traffic. Of course, no one wears seat belts of any kind, nor are there regulations enforced that say that you must drive with headlights at night.

Often more difficult to deal with than other drivers, there are poor children that come and beg money from you as you drive by. Some of them are obviously malnourished, streaks of red-hair framing their dull, angry faces, “M grangou!”

I am hungry.

Normally I would have no thought in giving some change to anyone who asked for it. It is a good practice to keep a pocket full of ones and change in all big cities for the homeless and the downtrodden. If you were to do that in downtown Port-au-Prince, you are in for a lot of trouble.

First, if you give money to one child, all three other “ti moun” with her want, even demand, money, too.
Second, if you give money to a child on one block, somehow the children on the next block know that you are coming, waiting for your car.
Third, if you give money to children on a regular basis, they recognize and mark your car for repeat business.

They are aggressive, clingy, often rude, and subtlety racist (all white people are rich and therefore must give me money), but one cannot blame them for their misery (how much we complain at even less in our well-fed, well-lit, well-built lives in the United States).

Our Lord mandated that we give money to those who ask us. At what point, then, does practicality stop you from actively feeding the poor?

I have been in the orphanage where children are sick, dying, have tuberculosis, probably HIV or AIDS, and it gives me pause—but I would not discourage anyone from giving of themselves by picking one of them up, comforting their broken bodies, staring into their often empty eyes. In fact, I would always encourage the experience. How then, could I withhold something as hollow and empty as money? One could use the anti-capitalistic “love of money” argument, that money will not make them any happier, but this concept does not fit the situation, like trying to teach a parrot sign language. If someone cannot eat, then they cannot worry about their spirit—they are in too much pain. Only those who can eat freely can fast freely. What to do when this nurturing act is overwhelmed with exceptions and even danger?

Richard Rohr points out that masculine spirituality is that of action, making a difference, asserting oneself; for him, feminine spirituality is that which is normally taught by the church: silence, contemplation, simplicity. He wonders, though, if the church has focused too much on yielding (to use my own words for sake of summary), this feminine receptivity, instead of teaching us to move forward, actively, as Jesus did, trusting the masculine version of God, Abba, Father. The end result, however way you approach it, is integration of the two poles into one spiritual reality.

Last night I chanced upon the daily reading for July 9th in my Taoism reader, titled “Nonyielding.” It discusses the reality of the world’s competitiveness and suffering. For Taoists, the world is an arena for warriors (for masculine action, Father Rohr would likely concur), but outside the ebb, flow, and sway of this aggression, one must affirm compassion always. One must return inwards to the source of life, which they call Tao, which we call God, Father and Mother, having been involved in activity during the day.
It is a spiral staircase of polarities.

I forgot it was the solstice yesterday. “All of life is cycles. All of life is balance,” reminds master Ming-Dao. The sun has reached its peak of light, then returns to the ebbing darkness of winter—only to rise again; it is a “resurrection of the spring” as my friend Chris Edwards and others have dubbed it. But it is not permanent. It goes back and forth, fading and appearing. I have been writing on the yielding nature of The Way, but I have been neglectful of nonyielding as a component part of living. Life is paradox and so cannot have a simple polarity. The integration of action and contemplation, assertion and compassion—these seem to be the recurring themes for my trip. Walking upwards and downwards on the staircase as it bridges the edge of the horizon.

In an earlier writing, our now-familiar Taoist has written on returning, this profound possibility out of exceptions: “This back and forth movement between the source and the activity of life is the movement of all things.” It is the horizon’s riddle and answer.

As my trip begins to turn towards the past like the day-after-solstice sun, I will soon return back to Lexington. But perhaps I can begin to reconcile the arena of Port-au-Prince’s aggressive streets with patience, impoverished urchins with withholding money.
Some days I will let them pass. Some days I will give out money. As we now see two sides, we can see the whole coin. We can flip it into the air as God would see fit for us and take the riddle wherever it lands, on the street or in la mer. And the horizon will gleam.

EDH: 10PM-6:30 AM, 7:30-7:40AM

The Divine Current, Of a Sort, Part 2

Yesterday’s dip in the ocean was the first bath I had taken in over a month; the shower afterwards, the first shower.

Now, before you judge the disgusting nature of not bathing for a week, consider this: as soon as I stopped bathing, even the mosquitoes wouldn’t come near me. As Helene and Ted drained whole bottles of “Off,” pouring toxic chemicals onto their bodies, I have only been bitten five or six times in two or three days. Plus, now I can say that I went a whole week without a shower. Though, still, having done so, I am not really falling prey to their annoying assaults. If truth be told, I have been using daily no-water hair rinse that they use in hospitals, and, strangely, in space shuttles. Needless to say, I was not walking around with matted hair smelling like a street bum. The smell of Port-au-Prince, the mixture of burning trash and hot air mixed with diesel fumes, is still a bit more overpowering than would be possible for a human being to conquer.

Ted left today. It is sad to see him go. We had a great talk last night about what we had learned and what lessons we will be taking back with us. His departure also leaves a renewed blockage in the language barrier, so I will have to become more proficient at Kreyol.

In honor of his departure and the memories of our time together, I have begun the new series:

Things You Can Only See in Haiti

An anti-AIDS commercial during World Cup games which pits team “La Vi” (Life) vs. “SIDA” (“AIDS” in Kreyol). Winning members of team “Life” are “Abstinans”, “La Fidelite” (a two person combo) and “Kapot”. I will leave “Kapot” up to your imagination or your Kreyol dictionaries—Catholics do not speak of such things.
In rush hour, people pulling around concrete barriers to pass sitting traffic—by driving headfirst into the oncoming lane, often with police watching. (Seen it, not done it…yet…)
Speeding around a police car that has stopped, veering into oncoming traffic and playing chicken with a United Nations vehicle coming towards you. (I was not driving, but I was there.)
A supermarket brand of bread named “Hard Bread,” which is exactly quite soft and tasty.
A tap-tap, the Haitian bus equivalent, somehow straddling a concrete barrier in the middle of the road, blocking a lane of traffic in both directions, midair. At night.
A shortage of the national beer, Prestige, because the factory exported all of it to Germany for the World Cup.
5 traffic lights in a city of over two million people that occasionally work.
Neon yellow butter that does not have to be refrigerated. Neon.
A gas-station named “The Station of the Immaculate Conception”.
Street merchants selling Ziploc-sized bags of water.
Sweet potato pie, or “pan potat,” as made by Ted’s aunt, so excellent in taste and texture that one member of the house attached the following message to it: “This is like the afterglow of sex: gentle, warm, and radiant—and it leaves you wanting just a little more. Oh, and it took only two minutes to feel that way.” Since we are all Catholics here and therefore do not know of such indiscretions to describe them in such detail, I will not name names. Or as the Haitians say, “Chat konnen, rat konnen, et mourik mais rete la.”
An Internet café that is also a brothel. Or a brothel at which you can access the Internet. Didn’t go, but two guys staying here did. For the Internet.

Today I also realized we should have instituted a running count of electricity hours, sort of a running meter of when the power is actually on. It is such a big deal for us. Whole minutes have been wasted wondering, out loud, when exactly the electricity will come on. We have considered placing bets and running numbers. It is normal for someone to cry “Ay Day Ash” (or “EDH,” the Electrical Department of Haiti, in Kreyol) when it comes on, or to ask, “Kote ou ye, EDH?” (“Where are you, EDH?”). Spontaneous songs have even been created about this mysterious force, the EDH. So, in the spirit of pointless lists, I have instituted the EDH Meter.

Behold, the mighty Meter of EDH:

EDH: 11PM-6AM

It comes on during the night, so all numbers represent the previous day’s cross-over to the current day; it may also include any random day-light appearances of this Electric Phantom from the previous day. We have considered building a shrine so that we may appease it and harness its energy for the air conditioners while sleeping. Like a Golden Idol of Electric Pole, or The Totem of AC Outlets. So far no shrine has been erected, but its power over us (literally) has proven it to be a Haitian lwa, or vodoun spirit, at the least. Hence, its own daily record.

La Mer: Carrefour (Day 19)

The stressful half-hour drive through heavy tap-tap traffic was worth the plunge in the ocean just outside of Carrefour. It was the warmest water I have been in, lined with cold currents that felt about twenty degrees cooler, and so salty that our eyes burned simply looking at it.

I was able to commune with the sea once again, even taking a boat ride worthy of Brendan himself—handmade with wood and tar, a skinny, gnarly man at the helm with the flimsy oars, six of us on the waves together, with Brendan’s presence, seven. Just viewing the horizon, nature’s greatest Rothko painting, gave me time to meditate on oneness again.

The horizon, deep azure water meeting turquoise air, rests on the sharp line. Are the two blues different entities? Is the dividing line a third? Or can they all be melded into one whole picture, three spaces equaling one plane? There is so much in Taoist writings about how the One divides into two, then the two add up with the original to make three, and then to ten thousand. This is very similar to our idea of Logos that was separated from the Divine source to bring creation into being; the Divine reencounters the Logos to bring forth a third, the Spirit. With these Three, all things are possible.

During my daily communion readings, I have been taken through the story of Elijah in 1 Kings. I have become even more familiar with it because, coincidentally, the passages in my year-long Bible for this week have been the same story. I am drawn to the powerful, esoteric myth of Elijah’s night on the mountain, the coming of the windstorm and the earthquake. I do not mean to say that it did not happen, but it is written in a parable style. It does not have to be literal, but more archetypal; in such a way, it can reveal more truth than facticity, and therefore more powerful.

Elijah is fleeing his enemy, King Ahab, and so he runs to a cave. The cave, according to Joseph Campbell and Jung, is the unconscious. Here Elijah flees into himself in order to find God. The Lord speaks to him, a simple question, “Why are you here?” Elijah answers. Then he undergoes the spiritual tests on the mountain, the trial of spirit (the windstorm in the heavens) and of self-power (the earthquake in the land). These about were external things, in a sense, experiential moments. But God was not in the outer things, or there reflection in Elijah's mind, no more than the Pharisees’ struggle: the outer rituals of Judaism without inner conversion never yielded spiritual results. Perhaps Elijah, too, struggled with the religiosity of spirit and law.

Suddenly God sends the fire, “the demolition of religious facades....’Whoever draws near to me, draws near to fire’ runs one of Christ’s apocryphal sayings, and each of his words, his actions, and his miracles is fire—a fire all the more consuming because it is not the fire of justice [external action], but of love.” (Michael Hollings, “Therese of Lisieux”) This realization of already-being-loved by this mighty fire, of already being-on-the-way, helped Elijah be-open to what was there all along: the still small voice of God inside of himself. Only then did he return to the opening of the cave, to the outside world, to be asked the same question; he gives the exact same answer (remember the Zen method: find the simplest answer, leave it, study and meditate on it until you arrive at the same conclusion as before, but in a new way). Then Lord drags him back through the wilderness in order to anoint Elisha as his successor. Soon after he confronts Ahab again. “So, my enemy has found me!” taunts the King. But Elijah has found his true power and speaks of Ahab’s fate-to-come. He has come to himself and the true nature of God’s love for him, Elijah, beyond experience and religion.

This reminds me of something I read last week regarding St. Therese: “’Yes, I believe I have always searched for truth. Yes, I have always understood how to keep my heart quiet.’ Such is humility, which holds her on the narrow ledge between the abyss of truth on one side and that of lying on the other. Such humility is no virtue, but the sign that one possesses no virtue, since, ‘it all flows from him.’ …She does not produce light, she reflects it….’My soul also appears to be radiant and golden because it is exposed to the rays of love.’” (Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “Therese of Lisieux”)

As I was reading Richard Rohr today, I came upon a corollary message, this time of Mary, Mother of God: “Upon receiving the sacred word [of Jesus’ birth], Mary does not contemplate, she acts immediately....There is no mention of planning, companionship, means of travel or encountered difficulties…The events themselves will be her guide and teacher. The plan will be given by God through life’s encounters. Reality is her teacher…Decisive action beyond our own fears gives us a sense of our own power and the power of God within us. Mary offers no refusal or false humility….She can hold her power comfortably because she knows it is from Beyond. She does not need to protect or deny it. It is hers to hold and offer….” (“The Wild Man’s Journey”)

Today, God was in the still, small voice; in the boatman, the puppy frolicking in the sand, the coconut falling from the tree, the speck of salt floating in the sea. And in me. He is the sum of the balance between dark blue and blue with the dividing line in between: heaven making earth more heavy, earth making heaven more light. He is found in experience balanced with meditation and meditation seeking experience. We make ourselves free from ourselves in our own releasing of true self-esteem and power; in that moment we can yield to His being-coming. He sits in the space that comes to us when we are open to Him. And these moments, as for Elijah, help us to be-open. Both/and, sky and sea, openness and experience, action and contemplation. Each reveals the other to be what it is. Religion is put into true perspective only in this love, as a way to be open to it, to bind body, mind, and spirit holistically as one. Today’s Gospel reading for me was: “Be perfected as your Father is perfect.” This can also be translated, more appropriately, “Be whole (holy) as your Father is (whole) holy.”

Jesus brings this wholeness through the realization of God’s great love, unearned, transpersonal for all people. He does not abolish religion, but makes it reflect its true purpose: the way of love. The way of love, then, like meditation, opens up a more perfect understanding of the law. He fulfills it, like a key fulfills a lock’s purpose as the lock gives the key purpose. They are two sides of the same coin. They are two portions of the same horizon.

Spirit and law yield to be one entity: love. Two reduce back down to one and point forward towards three.

This, as Kierkegaard postulates, is the hardest thing for us to grasp: that neither spirit nor law can move us towards God or towards ourselves--only the love of God is capable. Accepting this love, nearly impossible.

The Holy Pilgrimage (Day 18)

I once read an article about taping concerts which gave me a new perspective on live music. A member of a band was talking about how flattering it was that people wanted to tape and trade their shows, but how, when they did so, they were really missing out on the experience itself, distracted with power cords and stereo connections instead of listening to the concert. I quietly ceased my concert-taping days in order to be more present to the unfolding melodies and beats.

I thought of this message during the Resurrection Dance Theatre performance. Amused, I watched a high school student fidgeting with his digital camera in order to tape as much as possible. He consequently missed the performance due to battery problems, end of memory card issues, rain. I wanted to say, “Hey, kid, don’t worry about it and watch the show!”

I should have been speaking to myself.

I thought of another passage where a nun was trying to live Paul’s exhortation to “pray at all times without ceasing.” She became so obsessed with the idea that she could never do any of her other work, constantly breathing her sinfulness and begging for mercy. Finally a priest, concerned with her zeal, told her that she was praying well but living poorly. She became instantly happier when she stopped.

As the wind flowed through my hair at 40 miles an hour on the byways of Jacmel, I thought about how I had missed some of my delay routine here, meditation and prayer, reading, etc. Our hours are always different with groups, so sleep patterns change regularly. I simply do not receive the time I need to be in quiet space, with God and with my breath. I have lamented this frequently, but yesterday the realization was given to me that this silent time is often just like taping a performance. It is a time for rest, rejuvenation, for sure, but also for analyzing the day, considering ideas and experiences, or trying to forget about these things in favor of a still mind. However, when the Jacmel breeze hits your face, you should not worry about the hour that you should have been meditating. You open yourself to the breeze that goes where it blows. You feel the salt in the air. You watch the blue rocking of the waves.

Today when I went to the History Museum of Haiti, I tried to listen to the words of the guide, but instead of attempting to remember too many details of the story, I tried to feel the shadowy presence of the ghosts on the walls. Touissant Louverture. Dessaline. Mars Plaisir. Boukman. I tried to feel the horror of the indigenous people who were tortured and terrorized by Columbus and his crew. I tried to feel the weight of the shackles of the slaves who were sent in floating caskets. I tried to imagine the silent drums resting unplayed in the shade of plantation oppression. Not by my efforts, because it was impossible for me to really embody these things so far removed from my life, but by the murmuring of the dead did the monument open itself as sacred, a lotus surrounded by words, words locked in time, sadness meted out in the bloom.

The timing is peculiar for this unfolding. When I came to Haiti, I was prepared for all sorts of experiences, wanting to do all sorts of things while I was here. I slowly succumbed to the fact that not everything I would like to do is a good idea. I also became more passive because I was trying to make experience happen without success. Or I became too practical. Or, on occasion, fearful. Now I am obligated to be open to what comes. I was made to fail in order to appreciate more what was already in front of me.

I had already anticipated that I would be happy here just like home. I do not miss my life “back there,” nor music, which might be surprising to some. I have made many attempts in frequent travel to be at home anywhere, happy with anything or nothing, present here and now. This seems to be just another petal on the blossom of presence.

To be sure, I will still take as much time for my daily practice as I can—it brings moments of peacemaking around me and in me—but it must be balanced with the outward extravagances of living, the full and rooted occurrence of happenstance. It is in the unfolding of these outward moments that I have the most difficult time living, favoring the inner acceptance of thought, judgment, analysis. But they must become a see-saw, tottering between two poles. At some point they will be level with each other. When they do they become a smooth and poignant place like the horizon: ready for anything that intrudes itself into the yielding openness.

Having written this, I came upon my nightly reading by Deng Ming-Dao:
“When people visit a holy place, some say that the spirits of the place speak to them. Others remember the exotic pageantry. When it comes to sacred sites, it’s better to be a pilgrim than a tourist. Go with a humble attitude, and let your heart be moved by what you experience. Then you will receive the true treasure of the shrine.

Ultimately, it is not the place that is important; it is what you feel that is lasting. To visit a place is minor; to change within yourself is greater.”

La Mer: Jacmel (Day 17)

I felt it before I saw it.

The sea.

Crystalline blue and azure with a mosquito sized breeze constantly whispering over your head, battling the noonday heat and making daylight just a little more bearable. And beautiful.

The sea. With all of its depth and flatness, emptiness, and salty boredom, mountains rise up at any moment. A ship’s emergence from the fog startles. How wonderful to sleep in the sun, hammock enfolding, or weather the winter darkness. It eases the feeling of home around me, a tired blanket in the sun, with Brendan calling from the painterly torch-lit waves.

Walking by the sea I feel peace and apprehension, the undulating waves mimic and mock my breath, in and out, in and out, impressions, oppressions, trying to take control. The salt air enlivens the skin but stifles with its weighty energy.

I could try and continue my struggle with the sea and its power, but, being flat, it is what each person makes of it. The horizon: the end of the world; God’s footstool; the meeting of man and sky.

I must move to the sea, be it Blue Rocks, Iona, Inishmor, or Jacmel.

Jacmel, unlike the other three, is not an island, at least by definition. City by the sea, province of colonial edifice, Jacmel stands a remnant of time over the Caribbean. The church on top of the hill faces the famous iron market. Two story buildings from another century rust, lose color, and collapse into themselves, a small Havana waiting for repair. Coves dotted with volcanic rock are eaten away slowly over time as palm trees droop and lose footing to the constant erosion of the waves, teetering, unsure. Brightly colored cafes house art work, Haiti’s Bohemia, while the elite build magnificent concrete houses that dominate estates full of palm and mango trees. Hotels stand quiet, awaiting the guests.

The best way to view this city, I have learned, is standing in the cab of a pickup truck facing the oncoming wind that blows like an overbearing motor and blinds you with dust,
sensing the landlocked island calmly waiting to be untethered and let to sea, unfettered to drift away from its native port. It stands in stillness, wishing to carry its green and fertile oasis away from the dust in order to rest under-sea like Brigadoon, waiting to rise again from the slowly decaying dock.

Is Haiti dying? Does it, like a man who is about to be killed, sense its life flashing before its eyes, repeatedly, playing itself out in a charade of repetitive history, of coups and governments rising and falling, of despair and suffering, of resistance and reminiscing?
Or is it simply breathing?

The sea. Always reborn while dying small and constant deaths. In it we have hope to understand the horizon of potential things-to-come while facing the oncoming winds.

In and out. In and out.
Feeling it before we see it.

Bondye voye bay-m moun (Day 16)

Since our car wasn’t working yesterday, we took a tap-tap to carry pizza back to the group. Carrying two steaming pizza in downtown Port-au-Prince seemed laughably a worse idea than handing out money on the street, but it went fine. Only a few street children latched themselves, literally, on to us. We spoke Kreyol to them and they just seemed more encouraged to hang on. On the way up the hill the driver demanded ten American dollars from each of us until our friend Beth, who is fluent in Kreyol, started arguing back. “Why in the world would we have ten American dollars on us in downtown Port-au-Prince?” I was laughing at what I could understand. Suddenly the whole tap-tap, which can be as cold and unfriendly as a London subway, lit up with conversation: the Haitians were arguing for us, saying things like, “These white people speak Kreyol, they are almost Haitian, leave them alone!” The driver, defeated, took our five gourdes coins and went back to the front seat. The Haitians were laughing. “You understand Kreyol?” one asked me. “Sometimes,” I replied. The whole tap-tap became this little bonded unit, soon to be separated by the flow of the city and separate ways.

The car we drove yesterday to the orphanage wouldn’t work upon leaving. We had to walk home. I am not having luck with cars, nor with clutch-starting the car, though I do it all the time with the Eurovan. I went back with Domonde and the battery charger/jumper box and he got it up and running again, though I am not sure how. He drove us around in the city with it.

Last night we went to a dance performance by the Resurrection Dance Theatre of Haiti.
It is located in St. Joseph’s House, an amazing edifice near Petionville, four stories of fine construction. Basically, the nicest place I have ever seen in Haiti. Even more impressive is the fact that this is an orphanage of sorts, a Boys Club Haiti where “abandoned, physically and mentally challenged, and homeless children of Port-au-Prince” go to live. There they are given schooling not only in scholastic subjects, but also in traditional Haitian dance, music, and art. The men in this school have become finely expressive hands, instruments, and bodies of prayer. The dance performance was indeed a prayer of movement, of hopeful expression. I could write about the rainstorm that threatened to spoil the evening, the willingness of the crowd to endure and be flexible, the professional behavior of the dancers, but I will hold these memories for myself and hope that you can one day see this troupe, a company that has performed all over the world and even for Pope John Paul II. Their CD of English and Kreyol folk songs is one of the best Haitian a capella CD’s I have heard. All of their art is honed, professional, with craftsmanship. With the community living, the Kreyol speaking, the nice house with its own chapel, the program for the arts, I have already begun to wonder if I could ever work there….

God always puts people around in your life to drive you crazy. Not because they are bad people or because they have issues—they are very normal; so normal, in fact, that they are very much like you. Then they drive you crazy because you project onto them or see in them what drives you crazy about yourself. There are some women staying with us right now here who drive me crazy. Unfortunately for them, they have the unfortunate luck of having very similar characteristics to someone at home with whom I also have a difficult time.

It is dangerous to identify a spiritual problem: you are forced to work it through, mostly on your own. God seems to say, “I will withdraw the graces with which I have let you make do, but now you must work.” I suddenly feel like I have no patience, no compassion for them.

I am trying to withhold judgment, both on myself and on them, but somehow both of these women rub me the wrong way. I keep trying to bring myself back to myself and leave the scorn I feel aside. I have not felt like this in a long time—it is almost a foreign sensation to me. This is going to be a bigger spiritual challenge than car problems or lack of water and electricity; I would almost favor those to this because of how this makes me feel about myself and about them. I thought that normally I have limitless tolerance; I am apparently wrong.

Sometimes I feel like they are listening, but only with a mind of how to correct whatever it is someone else is saying. This is all too familiar to my own inner struggles. They are intellectually prideful, naïve, and extremely liberal; they would be the non-art school equivalent of the sensational art school girl who does things for shock value, but whose art remains inherently empty, though, to their credit, these women are doing real good in the country here. Perhaps it is a control issue for me that they reject my advice on a regular basis, which is a cause for humility. They seem to take their freedom to do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it, petulant in the guise of care-free attitudes. Of all these things, I have been sensitive of myself lacking in this way, even in the last few days. They are also idolatrous of the poor, though I would admire what they will accomplish if they do not become burnt out or disillusioned first; perhaps I do not feel that I am doing enough compared to them—a beautifully dangerous and ensnaring mentality, propelling action but inducing guilt. They are not still, always favoring experience. Though I have been writing about the importance of this I feel resistant nonetheless. Fear on my part to yield? There seems to be a dangerous mixture of naivety and freedom. Or, perhaps they are confident when I am not, fearless when I am fearful.
Both/and, probably.

All this being said, they challenge me in the way I need to be challenged, in a way that perhaps I am not normally challenged.

Today God also sent someone to me in a reinforcing way. A group of people showed up unexpectedly at our gate; they were from Charlottesville. I had met two of them before at diocesan meetings, and another, Rhonda, a Catholic Worker, multiple times. The person responsible for picking them up at the small airport never came by, or too late. It seemed so random for them to show-up at our door, but we gave them shelter for an hour until Dawn, the representative from St. Joseph’s Hospice, appeared apologetically. As she told everyone her cellphone number for future emergencies, I felt that I should plug it into our phone for safe keeping. As she was leaving, I asked her a few quick personal questions about Hospice and specific types of non-alternative palliative care; I felt that she would be open to such questions. She seemed shocked that I knew about such care and Hospice and hugged me. “Call me!” she exclaimed, “We have a lot to talk about.” She returns from a trip to Cuba next Sunday. That will give me just enough time before I leave to meet with her and discuss. I said, “That is why God brought these people here!” and she laughed and agreed, not just with her words but with her whole visage.

The Gift of Death

We went to Mother Theresa’s orphanage again today. Some of the children have been moved around in the rooms, which reflect their better or worse health. However, one tiny baby that I had spent time with last Friday was not there. The child was hooked up on a respirator and was having a very difficult time simply breathing. He was probably no older than 18 months, pale, skinny, working hard at living. I touched his head and prayed for him, his fraught chest no bigger than half of my hand, his eyes darting around the room, his body belabored. I do not know why, but at the time I felt like the only way that he was going to be free from such suffering was not to receive new lungs or breathe more easily, but to pass over completely to God. He is longer with the world: he died sometime in the week. I would like to think it was soon after I had left, because I had told him my heart that he should not be afraid and that if he had to, he should let himself go. I know this sounds crazy. But that is what happens. It seems much unlearned to think that death is a good thing: the Cross is foolishness to the world. People struggle all the time to figure out why God would let such things happen, why babies are abandoned and get sick and die. However, in the child’s little eyes, he knew it was time. He knew with the simplicity of an old soul experiencing a new pain. He knew that very often sickness and disease are the very release from suffering most needed, that death is the final medicine. Then it is time to move other into God’s territory, the place of light. I won’t call it heaven, because I don’t know what that word means to us anymore--and I have never been there to, my recollection. But, somehow, we both knew; we shared an unspoken understanding. It was right there, just behind his eyes, a mixture of fear and pain. That being said, I was still not expecting him to have died. But the bed was empty, the oxygen tanks quiet. I feel very peaceful, as I did when I was with him, and I hope you do to, reading this. We should never be afraid of death. The young woman who told me the news was almost smiling, partially because she was nervous, partially because she was amused at my trying to speak Kreyol. I’d like to think, though, that it is really because she shared in the blessing: the ending of suffering for one special child.

Bon Anniversaire

Today is my birthday. It has not quite gone as expected in every way possible.

Last night the power came back on at 9:00PM and lasted until 6:45 this morning.
I slept with the air conditioner on until I was cold. It was a glorious and seemingly auspicious start to my 28th year of existence.

After the group left this morning we attempted to go to the Orphanage to help out. I had this voice in the back of my head telling me that Thursday was the day that it was mostly closed to visitors. I turned out to be right; it is some sort of celebration day or religious holiday today throughout the city, though I am not clear why, but they have normal Mass for the kids on Thursdays anyway.

So, followed through on the secondary plan of going to the Hotel Montana, high above Port-au-Prince where you can stand on the terrace and see the view. We were driving in tight traffic up just below Petionville, the upper class area of the city, when we had to pull to a sudden stop. It was close for us, but the young woman who had been driving behind us, erratically and with her cellphone on her ear, ran smack into the back of us.

It’s funny how fluent you become in an argument.

The conversation went something like this:
Tifi: “Garde machin-m! Li te kom ca avant!” (Fidgeting with the now loose headlight).
Josh (very quickly, but calmly): “Mein ou te swi nou-menm two proche!”

En anglais:
Young Woman: “Look at my car! It wasn’t like this before!”
Josh: “But you were following us too closely!”

I was about to add “En plis, ou t’ap parle en cellulaire en memn temps!” (or, “Plus, you were talking on your cell at the same time!”), but I think she was equally stunned by the fact that mwen-menm, Mesiye Blan (I, Mister White-Guy) had shot out a complete and rapid fire string of Kreyol words to her, coupled with the fact that there was no way that it was our fault; she was tailgating us halfway up the road anyway and she knew it. So she left, obviously defeated. I feel bad for her now, because she could not have been any where over 18 years of age. I had a whole generation of car accidents behind me.

Triumphant, as no apparent damage to our car was seen, I got back into the car. It wouldn’t start. We waited about three minutes, not really panicking, but definitely concerned. It started finally, so we went on our way and stopped into a gas station to fill up a low tire. That was a mistake. The car stopped again and wouldn’t turn over. The next half an hour was a combination of battery replacements and pushing the car for clutch-starting. It finally worked and we made it home okay. Of course, the car would not restart once we got there.

Ted very quickly pointed out that after a), an accident, and b), a stalled car, that maybe we should not be going up to the Hotel Montana. Helene dismissed us as superstitious, which may be, but I still would like to think that we were stopped from going that way for a reason. What they may be, we may or may not know. Sadly, with the car in despair, we couldn’t stop at the market for Egg Nog, the one thing I wanted to drink on my birthday today. In the U.S., the stores only carry this delicious libation during the winter holiday season, but here it sits on the store shelves year round. I have drooled over the cans every time I go shopping. We also could not stop for tomatoes for the gigantes dish I was going to make since it is my favorite. Not quite what I was planning.

I tried to take a nap, but was interrupted three times for one reason or another: laundry was ready to be taken out, a key for this car needed here or there. So, no nap. The car was not fixed today, though the mechanic was already here when we arrived working on other vehicles. As suspected, there was something wrong with the starter.

We were supposed to go to some museum with Ted’s aunt, but something happened so we didn’t go anywhere in the afternoon. Not as expected.

We prepared late lunch at 3, so I did get some gigantes made, though without the can of butterbeans I had bought—the single remaining can of its type in the store—because the cook used them for rice and beans several days ago. The garbanzos and chickpeas were good, but not the same. We got in some major discussions about feminism and slavery and other assorted topics where I failed miserably in listening. I had been warned before my trip to speak little and to say much, but I have suddenly reached this point of not holding back. Modesty of speech on my birthday: absent. Not what I would have wanted.

Ted’s cousin Joel took us to Epidor, a French-style patisserie, for food. Having just eaten, all I really wanted was a crepe for my birthday. Joel thought that Ted and I had said “crème,” which is Kreyol for ice cream. Rather than make a big deal, I gladly ate it, but I still really wanted a crepe. I may go back. She really wanted to buy me a cake of some sort, but I am still mostly off sugar, though my diet here has turned most of nutrition efforts to dust. We insisted she not get one. She has paid for everything and I know she has no job here in Haiti. This is true sacrifice for your family and friends. My own daily selfishness, no matter how big or small, is made transparent by her hospitality.

So, I still really shouldn’t be disappointed with my birthday. Before it seems like the day has turned to ashes in my hand, I can point out so many amazing blessings: I am alive, I am in Haiti, my friends and family back home are checking on me, my friends and Ted’s family here are taking care of me, the fender bender could have been worse than it was.
I also rode in my first tap-tap taxi experience and it was really fun. Again, something I didn’t think I would ever do, but it was easy and fun enough to go again if we don’t have a car running. That was a new experience, and, like all new experiences, a time for growth. Most importantly, so many amazing things have happened in the last year. One year is a long time. So many experiences to go, si Bondye vle (God willing).

Divine Current

Last night we went to the Cinema to see a Haitian movie. It was made in the U.S. by the Diaspora in Kreyol. The production values were not the highest and the story was simple, but it was moving nonetheless, perhaps especially because I know that Ted’s cousin was trying to show us Haitian culture and a Haitian movie. It was difficult to watch, or hear, rather, because it was part in French, part in Kreyol, and part in English—and mostly a mixture of the three. Sometimes an English word is thrown into the middle of a string of Kreyol words. I didn’t understand a lot of it, but the story was shot plainly enough to understand the archetypes and the through lines, though it did force me to really listen.
It was called “Profond Regrets”, which is translated as it appears to English readers. We then did two things I thought I would never do: be out at night and drive at night. The movie started at 6:30, so it was dark when we left the theater. It was not easy driving, mostly because it is hard to see those gigantic potholes in the road. Fortunately, the route is by now very familiar and so we had no problems.

Yesterday, Thay announced that we had no more water (which was obvious to us and, regrettably, to our guests). He cleaned out the now-empty cistern and promised a truck would come with water to fill it up for us. I was waiting to see when that would happen, as we still had no electricity from the city. Food is still spoiling in the fridge, though we plug it in for a few hours a day. It is a waste and a shame.

Ted’s relatives continue to send us food everyday. It seems there is no stopping their expressions of kindness, nor should we try. We have all of our food taken care of here at the house, so I feel sort of bad receiving extraneous food, but I would feel bad not eating it as well. They express their high regard for Ted by coming everyday with bowls of meat, beans and rice, vegetarian legumes (spinach and tomatoes made especially for my dietary needs), spicy cole slaw, and various sugary juices. And I think they also want to share in the World Cup matches with him. His family is trying to help us fit in and experience life here as smoothly as possible; it is a beautiful thing. Ted’s uncle drove us around the city to see the National Palace and other minor sites the other night, just because we showed interest in the park near to his home. I know that all of our families back home would do the same, but I also know that at home all of our families live richly in comparison to the people here. There is something about Haitian hospitality that knows no equal. It reminds me of the reading for this morning, about Elijah and the old widow: “Go ahead and make food for me, your guest, and you will not run out of food for the whole year.” I am not sure where how they manage it, but they treat guests better than themselves. This is a charism of the people here, this hospitality.

The Brazil match was an important event in the neighborhood yesterday. Groans and shouts of joy at their goals were heard everywhere, one big wave of cheering that sounded like a stadium in surround sound. Most Haitians favor Brazil for the Cup. There is a strange simpatico between the two countries, especially since the U.N. security forces are from Brazil. Brazil came to play Haiti’s national team in an exhibition match last year or so, which was a very popular event.

I read some more wonderful words last night about St. Therese de Lisieux that relate to what I have been thinking about in my writings here. Hans Urs von Balthasar, in his biography of the saint, had this to say: “’Yes, I believe I have always searched for truth. Yes, I have always understood how to keep my heart quiet,’ [wrote Therese]. Such is humility, which holds her on the narrow ledge between the abyss of truth on one side and that of lying on the other. Such humility is no virtue, but the sign that one possesses no virtue, since it ‘all flows from him.’….She does not produce the light, she reflects it….’ My soul also appears to be radiant and golden because it is exposed to the rays of love.’”

This reflection reminds me of the concept of yielding that I have been exploring the last few days: the light comes in from the divine (the divine glance which looks at us, and constantly) and is brought through those who empty themselves for its passing. This requires the cessation of judgment in one’s mind, the practices of emptying oneself in all its aesthetic and ascetic forms, and quietude, even unto being virtueless. One receives all virtuousness not simply by practicing it, but by practicing it until it becomes effortless—until we have be-come it, or until we have truly real-ized or in-carnated, em-bodied, it, whether through arduous ascent or Zen-quick, augenblick, en-light-enment.

It is active passivity, or passive activity. To hold the current of light we must become the wire able to connect to it; the state of the solid wire is that it can indeed transfer such electricity and has made a connection to the source of all things, the God-Being, and, to take the analogy one step forward, the very ground of Being itself: it is the wellspring and the ocean, and every point in between, Alpha and Omega. The current must be channeled through something solid, incarnated, in each person, as connected to the source and grounded in it as well. Beginning and end. Source, flow, and ground.

The Psalm I read last night, 131, which strangely I was reading for the first time and which I have dubbed the “Meditator’s Psalm,” says this most simply:

“Lord, my heart is no proud;
My eyes are not haughty.
I don’t concern myself with matters too great or awesome for me.
But I have stilled and quieted myself,
just as a small child is quiet with its mother.
Yes, like a small child is my soul within me.

O, Israel, put your hope in the LORD—now and always.”

Today our electricity was reconnected, though it only was on for a half hour.
The water truck came on time as well.
Two little blessings from God.

Psalm of the Weary Traveler (Day 12)

Psalm of the Weary Traveler

O LORD of heaven and earth,
Why hast though removed thy favor from thy servants?
We are weary in a strange land. We try to find favor in your sight in the service of your workers, they who are guests in our house. We greet them, Lord, and we feed them.
You are the source of all bounty and goodness.
Shine Your countenance upon each of them, and on Your servants here.

But You have found us lacking, O LORD.
You brought us into abundance when we expected drought.
You sent sustenance when we expected nothing.
Now You have removed Your hand, O LORD, in our wastefulness.
We have squandered Your days on soccer and books.
We have eaten our fill and let spoil the copious mangoes and plantain.
You have turned Your face from blessing when we became too proud of it.

Where is the water in the cistern, collected from your mighty rain clouds?
Why hast Thou removed thy current of electricity?
Why dost Thy Internet fail, which once flowed as the great river?
Where is the ice for our drinks, the signal for our cellphone?

Halt those damned mosquitoes from eating us in our sleep.
We toss in turn in our beds, wracked with itching hands.
Why didst Thou make those wretched creatures anyway? Surely they serve no purpose but to annoy us. And what’s up with the way people drive around here? They are rude 90% of the time. It’s worse than New Jersey. Couldn’t we have scored at least one goal in the World Cup? Next time? It’s really frickin’ embarrassing.

LORD, help us to know how we may best make use of sweat and toil,
for we perspire constantly in the sun and moist air.
Show us your mercy and grace, O LORD.
Ease our frustrations and bring us ever closer to You.

Thou are patient where we are not.
Your consolations are as sweet as honey, Your truth as simple as the sky.
O LORD, make haste to save us. Have pity on your servants.
Bring us not into Paradise only to turn it into a desert.

Yielding

Another lazy day. Reading and daily routines. Watched the US get trashed by the Czechs in the World Cup match. We have watched a lot of soccer in the past several days. We drag the TV out to the front porch and watch with whatever workers or security staff are there that day. I enjoy it much more than most other sports on television, but not enough to not take a siesta in the middle of the game.

Ted’s uncle appeared with more food cooked by his aunt. Delivery. This is kindness and generosity beyond reason. Surely other people could be eating this meal. It is very touching to see them caring for him in this way. The drive from their house is at least 20 minutes. This doubles our supper as Theremise has prepared dinner for the small group who has returned from Gros Mourne. I am not sure where we are going to put all the leftovers, but we may need to plug the fridge back in overnight. I cannot believe that we have more food than we can eat. In Haiti.

Having a lot of trouble listening today. Perhaps, having identified the challenge, I am confronted with my inability to listen more forcefully. Had a hard time not asserting myself in conversations with Helene. Needed to listen. More. However, I had a great conversation en Kreyol with my friend Mendelsohn who came to visit me from Mirebelais. He is the electrician for Fond-Pierre, so I have spent time with him on many occasions. I feel like I heard most of what he was trying to tell me about life, though I was also distracted by having to set up for tonight’s group’s dinner. I feel like I am so close to where I would like to be in this matter, but, like Paul, I struggle in doing the very thing I do not want to do! Like everyone, I suppose, who is aware of the spiritual journey.

Today’s gospel reading:”Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see the reign of God.”

Gary Wills made much of this translation, “reign” instead of “kingdom.” I was surprised that this was the Lectionary’s choice.

This reign is progressive, current, active. It is not just some transcendent place that we were before we were born or to where we go after we die (it may be that, too: eternal). It is something we participate in, but, more important for last night’s “Postscript”, it is something that can be acted out upon us, that we can yield to if we make our hearts of one thought and if we search for wholeness/holiness.

If we reach a place of poorness of spirit, of true understanding of the confusing nature of suffering in the world, in the paradox of living and the relativism of the truths of existence, we can be open to relearning the primordial truth of Being itself. Holiness will be meted out as favor from the King, from Being, from Tao, because this Being is itself holiness and love, or, as Richard Rohr puts it, “The universe is radical grace.” It is so transpersonal it can seem as impersonal (to the Taoists) or as the most personal (the Father, as Jesus taught us to say). It is both: the closest thing to us, and therefore the farthest away and most misunderstood, even impossible to understand. It is the way in which we walk and the way in front of which we move in constantly hindering ourselves by the mystery of its concealing and un-concealing nature. It is simply, God. And God’s very nature is yielding: Jesus, the example of using ultimate power to make oneself powerless, lives this for us because God is Himself meting out and holding back infinitude constantly for our sake. If we can make ourselves into this disposition of yielding, we can align ourselves with this lowliness.

In yielding, we always have something that intrudes itself and something that withdraws itself. Think of a car coming off of an exit ramp towards you on the interstate. You move out of the way so that it can enter. There is one car that enters, one that yields. This is the same for God and free will; it is the way of nature. God is always intruding and withdrawing and so all of Being reflects this movement, not as a system or a superstructure, but as reality. If we can align our selves with this yielding we can begin to walk in concert with the way of God, His will, both in disposition and in timing.

Other thoughts I encountered today along these lines:
“We must become the path before we can walk on it” (paraphrase of Rohr paraphrasing the Zen masters)

and

“Some people never know where they are in life, and that is one of the biggest reasons that they are unhappy.” (Deng Ming-Dao, reading for today)

Dimanche: A Post-Script

I've expressed how many of my readings have dovetailed together with what I have been observing. I have posted many of these for others to read.

Today I came across some quotes in my book by Richard Rohr that deal with the nature of money as an illusion. I will not belabor the point here but, suffice it to say, it dealt a lot with the conversations that Ted and I, and now Helene as well, are having about liberation theology.
I have already posted how some of the Taoist points have fit together with my experience, as well as the novel I completed today.

None of these specific quotes are important in and of themselves, but I have been wondering, having noticed such synchronicity, how I am to go about becoming these spiritual lessons I have been observing, not just noticing and believing. I would hate to come from Haiti having grown little and eaten too much, both physically and spiritually.

I brought to mind one other point which John of the Cross had made in my daily readings a few nights ago. Basically, St. John wrote that we become enlightened (and of course the choice of such Buddhistic terminology is fascinating to me) only when someone looks at us. I have been struggling with what this means, exactly. It is a poetic notion he is describing, so I have not quite unlocked it for myself yet. Of course, the ultimate gaze for him is the gaze of God, the gaze that shines light on each person as an individual.

As I sat here, worrying about how I was going to internalize these lessons, make them real and bear fruit, listen to them and embody them--again, become them, I suddenly thought I should stop worrying at let this process work itself out. Becoming is exactly that: being-coming. And to whom is it coming but each of us? It is hard to say what this being-that-is-coming is, but we will begin to know only when we realize that the mystery of existence remains such so that we have to keep ourselves open to it, beyond dogma and doctrine, beyond human understandings (and human understanding of infinite and divine revelations). We cannot truly know this being-coming because we are part of it, and it of us (we rest in the Father, and He in us), so we merely leave our eyes open.

From where does this being-coming alight? It alights from the very divine gaze about which St. John speaks. It comes to us--it is the gaze of God which is Grace itself; it is Grace that is the gaze of God Himself.

And this, as I am open to it now, is enlightenment: the alighting gaze of God, the being which is coming to us at every moment, to give light to our spiritual pathway when we open our eyes to its arriving.

Dimanche: Day of Listening (Day 10)

Sunday was certainly a day of rest (like yesterday). We picked up Helene right on time because Mass went overtime. She will be staying until July 10 working at the house. I finished the book I was reading and then we went to another of Ted's relatives, another aunt and uncle's, for another World Cup game and another fantastic meal. "Nou te mange two isit!" (We have eaten too much here!) It is so wonderful to see his family here dote on him and take care of him--and how they graciously extend this to me and Helene without thinking--this is inspirational. They treat everyone like Jesus himself were at their door. I hope I can carry this mentality to the guests who come through Matthew 25 in the next three weeks.

This morning we went to the Mass at nearby St. Louis de Gonzague. The service demonstrated the multi-cultural approach of language, being mostly in French, but also with songs and parts of the homily in Kreyol. It took a lot of concentration to try and get anything out of it, though I was reminded of many parts of the liturgy in French that I already knew from travelling in Canada and in Paris. We were towards the back so it was physically difficult to hear a lot of the time, so I feigned concentration some and phased out a bit.

Upon returning home, it struck me how difficult it was for me to understand people speaking to me in French or Kreyol. I have long known that I have the same problem with music--I cannot always "play by ear" the way I would like. It opened up a new spiritual problem, one that melds in with the discipline of presence for other people. Perhaps it is that I am just not proficient enough at listening in general, spiritually. I have begun to listen to my inner voice again, little by little, so I hope I can reflect this struggle outwardly. Perhaps it will cast a light on these other listenings: music, language, people. Only then will I be able to greet all as Christ greeted his friends, pure presence, joy, and understanding.

Samedi

I helped to take the large group to the little airport at 6:15 this morning; the other group left by 8 or so. I let Ted sleep in, so I covered all the beds with plastic and locked the doors—the groups are coming back through before any others arrive, so we do not need to change the sheets.

Nothing really happened today at the house besides reading and my other daily disciplines. We ate lunch and watched the World Cup match having dragged the TV to the front porch where it was cool.

Ted’s aunt arrived and took us to her house up in the hills north of Port-au-Prince. It was beautiful and will be quite expansive some day. I talked with his uncle in French, Kreyol, and English, which was confusing at best. He speaks all three plus Spanish. I still haven’t mastered English yet, so…..We watched more World Cup and were stuffed with salad, plantain, and Couronne, the famous Haitian soft drink. The drive back was equally amazing—the plains around the city are so green right now—I had never seen such a sight here. I also saw my first traffic light, but, of course, it was not working.

Ted and I had an interesting discussion on the way down the hill about class structure and liberation theology. It is so often that those for the poor advocate stealing from the rich, put down the middle class, and elevate themselves to a special place. I myself was trained to see things in this very way during my first trip to Haiti, but I began to suspect this was not honest. Liberation theology has a point: injustice is usually wrought from the top down and we must be mindful of this historical point. But it is equally dangerous to take this to the extreme, which is what humanity always does. Being a mouthpiece for the poor does not mean trashing the rich. Simply put, rich people have their problems, poor people have their problems. We are human, so we have issues.

I read a quote in the book I am consuming, "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which says a lot more about this if one considers it thoroughly: "The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich."

Men de BonDye (Day 8)

Four amazing adventures in the car:
To the market to buy groceries.
To the airport to take Father Alan.
To the pizza parlor across from the market with Ted and his relatives.
To the airport again to pick up a group of eleven; they had so much baggage (all mission supplies) that the pile in the back of the pickup had to be tied down with string and then towered over the road some five or six feet. It was impressive craftsman, the arrangement and tying down of the bags. Then the eleven people crammed themselves into two vehicles—even more impressive.

Father Alan left today. It was very sad because I think he would have liked to have stayed longer. His counsel would have been welcomed, plus I have been accustomed to daily Mass with him. When he left we joked about starting our own religious order, which I will call The Traveling Monks of St. Brendan, a group who travels all over the world and does mission work—especially in Haiti—focusing on contemplation, peaceful work and prayer. I am not sure either of us was joking completely, but I do not see something like that happening yet, if at all (so please don’t start any rumors back home). He also advised me to take communion daily during my prayer time. This was a very important blessing to me, because it shows to me God’s hand moving in looking after me.

I had very much wanted to do three things when I arrived: put the chapel back in order, have the house blessed, and ask how I may take communion daily after he had left.

When I called him at home during the week before our departure, I suggested to him that what I felt about the first two tasks. He called me back and said he had been carrying the same intentions. This was great affirmation in preparing for my trip.

We, as you may have read, did indeed clean the chapel and it is now properly functioning again as such. Today, on his last day, Father Alan blessed the house and sang hymns as he did so, Ted and I following alongside, and Theremise, our cook, as well, though with a look of bemused confusion and devotion. In this too I felt it proper for him to use salt, as Elijah did, as called for in a simple rite of exorcism (this has nothing to do with the expelling of demons seen in movies, but more to do with protecting the house and those in it). When I expressed this to him over dinner last night, he mentioned he had been thinking along those lines—another affirmation which then led to an interesting, long discussion about spiritual activities, vodoun, Santeria, speaking in tongues, and other spiritual oddities.

I had been thinking about the communion issue for awhile, but forgot about it until he walked in to my room today just before departing: “You should take communion in the chapel everyday,” he proclaimed, then suggested the daily readings, some prayer time, some meditation, and then reception. It felt strangely like coming home, or connecting with Tao (or whatever you would like to call the divine wind which blows), not just because I was in the right place at the right time, because it wasn’t an affirmation of synchronicity, but because my intentions and desires were being granted because I was in line with God’s plan—not the other way around, I hasten to add—otherwise the whole matter would have been forgotten in intention and memory left behind. That was simply what I was to do: take communion, and God let me know it through Father Alan. It felt so plain and even ordinary, as most of God’s wisdom is (and by plain and ordinary, I mean a paradox so profound that it obfuscates human wisdom and brings our minds to their resting place of misunderstanding and therefore receptivity to Truth which makes us become plain and ordinary; or maybe it’s just simple). It was a moment when God’s will, meaning His disposition or desire itself, became very apparent—the seed had been planted in my heart and then He brought it to fruition. It seems to me that He does this everyday for everyone, regardless of what we believe, but we have not trained ourselves to hear the wind as it blows, coming and going on its own path. Nor have I trained myself, but I am at least aware of the possibility, and now, the fruit borne.

I share with those who wish to hear.

Tonight we entertain 18 people from two different groups. We barely fit everyone into beds and rooms, but thankfully we had enough space—and we have even more gratitude that there will not be another group until Wednesday!

The Mothering Instinct (Day 7)

I announced today that I realized exactly what sort of TV show they can make about our trip:

The Real World, Haiti

Stripping beds and preparing rooms for a huge group of 16 tomorrow (we will almost be overflowing our capacity), I thought to myself, “Man, this is so bizarre. It’s like we’re running this hotel….Well, wait, actually we are, like, running this hotel, which is a job none of us has ever done, but it is sorta fun. Plus living in a strange city. In a strange house. With virtual strangers coming in and out. Yep, just like ‘The Real World.’”
Ted and I even set up a Express database to keep track of our earnings and expenditures for the month. So far so good.

The presence of the guests from Indiana who stayed with us was last night was an excellent time for me to realize one simple truth: I love entertaining. This may seem like an obvious statement with my constant piano playing, but what I mean is, I really like throwing dinner parties. Perhaps it satiates some OCD or project need, or some control issue, but I’d like to think this love of preparing for and taking care of guests has its foot in some altruistic need to serve. I hope this is so. Maybe it is some sort of mothering instinct left hidden.

We drove to the Child Care Center for Orphans run by the Sisters of Charity, the group founded by Mother Theresa. It was not as shocking as on my first trip three and a half years ago, but only because I knew what to expect. It is not because it is some dank, dark, somber place full of sick children. It is more because the nuns and their helpers have such a difficult time taking care of so many babies, toddlers, children, and teenagers that your presence provides a very simple and basic human need: touch. The children are craving to be held. My Hospice training always told me that it is better to simply be with the person than to try and serve them in some way. This universal fact has been unfolding for me time and time again recently, so it is best that I take notice.

“You didn’t tell me it would be so hard,” Ted expressed to me after his first run-in with a crying baby. Anytime you pick up a small child and hold them—that’s easy; it’s when you put them down and they start crying because they need comfort and affection so much that it seems actually painful, like you have torn off their wounded outer covering, the emotional scab of want and need, reminded them what it is like to be loved, then put them back down into their bed exposed and re-injured—that is “so hard.” This is the true real world situation for so many children. I have hope, though, that God has some sort of healing hand in every person that comes and simply sits with a child in their arms.

Perhaps we all need to practice our mothering instincts a little more.

On the PAP Beat (Day 6)

Today I drove my first Haitian adventures using the Pathfinder. This is akin to driving in New York City, except that there aren’t any traffic laws being enforced (if such laws even exist here), and there are no stoplights or stop signs to speak of; nor street signs, if you are in to that whole labeling thing. But before I get ahead of myself…..

This morning we held Mass, concelebrated by Fathers Alan and Malherbe. We ate a leisurely breakfast and then spent some time with Father Voltaire, a young priest who came by to see if we could connect him with Theresa at the Parish Twinning Program.

It was like a little priest party.

Both of the Haitian priests left around the same time, but it was definitely sad for me to have spent such little time with Father Malherbe. He is a great advocate of us learning Kreyol, so we always sit around and talk as he patiently repeats himself, and generally talking very slowly and distinctly. He has done such amazing work for Fond Pierre and has motivated both his parish and our parish of St. Patrick’s to commit to service in a real way. I am still in awe at his accomplishments with the rectory and the parish house. He has vision and a good understanding of serving his people as pastor, helping to feed and clothe his flock both physically and spiritually. He is a true servant of his people and of God.

At noon, Father Alan, Thay, and I went to the airport to pick up Ted Archer, who sang in the University Choir and who just graduated from Washington and Lee. Ted’s parents are “Ayitien natifnatal”, Haiti-born, and he has only visited a limited number of times and then not for some time. I was very humbled to be a part of God’s bringing him here. He and the rest of the Haitian students at W&L did so much to make me feel included in their Haitian spirit, so, when Theresa called me, one of the first people I thought of was Ted. Through the generosity of Burr Datz, no stranger himself to Haiti, Ted received a scholarship to come down from the University. Itfelt “right” from the beginning, so it was validation for me to trust my intuitive feelings a little more—and it still feels “right” now for him to be here. I was so proud and happy for him to have “come home” in this way. He has already been a great help—he jumped right in with the light cleaning we did to prepare for our guests and has helped with dishes and all without being asked. Not that this is surprising in the least. Still more validation to trust my friends and my inner vibe more.

Ted finally got in contact with his relatives—he has cousins and aunts and uncles all over Port-au-Prince. There is going to be some sort of Homecoming, which will be awesome.

So, driving to the airport was, well, like crazy fun. What can I say? When all is chaos, most people don’t seem to have it together. However, I had a great time, but it took a great deal of patience and concentration—it is, after all, someone else’s car.

The trip to the airport went so well that we ventured to the supermarket.

A crazy trip of wrong turns and side streets
streets with no names (cheers, Bono)
crowded intersections
and tap-taps (the Haitian truck-taxi) pulling of and on the curb
and gasoline and carbon monoxide fury stomping at the heat wave lung-pulling air
moving black faces peddling wares
and finding supermarket parking lots crowded with street bread and cold water
filtering through tiny shopping aisles of canned Arabic produce
and home-packaged spices
and spending goudes, goudes, goudes for goods
and making U-turns into oncoming traffic
(because everyone does it)
LOOK OUT FOR THE TRUCK!

…..and returning home safely nonetheless

The evening was spent cooling off, reading, napping, and rechecking the rooms last minute for the guests to arrive. Theremise, our cook, prepared a meal of real Haitian-style rice and beans, two types of fried goat, macaroni and potato salad in a Creole sauce, fried plantains, avocado and onion salad, lettuce and fresh tomato salad. Our guests--and we-- ate very well by American standards; like little white kings in Haiti.

So, basically, I am hot, sweaty, bloated, tired, and little bit guilty.

Not a bad way to feel.

"Bondye se bon!" (God is good!)