How Haiti Saved America

This is a fabulous article from the Boston Globe about the history of Haiti's interactions with the United States - and why the US owes its very existence in part to Haiti.

One Little Word: LOVED

I was reading my archives today - I know I read my blog way more than anyone else does - and came across a post from the beginning of January. I had forgotten all about this. 2010 was the third year that I encouraged my eighth graders to choose "one little word" to focus on. In 2009 I chose the word "LOOK" (here's what I wrote about it) but I hadn't chosen anything for 2010. I see now, though, that I wrote in my comments section that I was considering the word "LOVED." I wrote: "I am thinking of 'loved' this year - just a constant reminder of how much God loves me, not based on my performance but based on His character."





That feels ironic now. LOVED? Some people would say that God showed His love for me by saving my life and my family during the earthquake. But if that's true, what does that mean about the way He views the 230,000+ who died in those moments? Doesn't He love them? I might feel loved because of the way I have been taken in by the church and community where I am now, the help I have been given. But again, what about the millions who don't have those opportunities? At my worst, I'd have said that a better word for 2010 - for me and for Haiti - would be "ABANDONED" or even "FORSAKEN" (given the title of my blog).





I don't know how it all works, but I do know that in the middle of everything, and even in the depths of grief, I am loved. I am loved by people around me and I am loved by God. "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). And if He loves me like that, He loves everyone like that. That love is there for the people in the tent cities too.





LOVED. I know that I am. I don't always feel it. It's hard to, when I'm away from my support systems - my husband, my friends, my church. And my job. We always say that it matters more who you are than what you do. Of course that's true, but I think we all get a large measure of our self-concept from what we do every day, and when that's ripped away without a chance to say goodbye, we don't feel as useful or significant as before. Or I should say, I don't feel useful or significant. I'm lonely. I'm sad. I'm a little bit pitiful, really. And yet, I'm LOVED. Whether I feel it or not. And for the rest of 2010, I'm going to try to remember it.

It's Going to Be All Right

This morning when I walked I decided to listen to music instead of a podcast. I'm not sure that's such a smart thing to do. I ended up crying almost the whole time, and not even always being aware of what I was crying about. There are so many feelings connected to this whole time in my life that I suppress - because they are silly or trivial or seem wrong, or because I shouldn't feel that way. I have found from the beginning that music bypasses my brain, and things I can't really let myself think about come out in emotions.

Anybody who's reading this blog knows I'm still struggling. Anybody who sees me knows that. At church on Sunday I got overwhelmed in my Sunday School class and couldn't face people and couldn't get hold of myself. I went to find somewhere I could be alone but that's not so easy on a Sunday morning. I finally ended up in the pastor's office, and he handed me a box of tissues and left me after I begged him not to be nice to me, since that would just make me worse. I was able to control myself enough to get through the service mostly dry-eyed.

I feel so foolish writing all that. I feel I should be past this sobbing part of the process, I should be strong. But there are so many aspects to it, so many things I grieve over. I know I will never be completely over this, that for the rest of my life I will suffer over what happened in Haiti and the aftermath of it. But I also know that these feelings will get less intense. At least, that's what everyone tells me.

So this morning as I walked, and as I wrestled with my emotions and cried and generally made a spectacle of myself (but that's OK because unlike in Haiti, the road wasn't filled with others walking, and nobody was looking at me), this Sara Groves song came on. I've taken the liberty of changing "alright" to "all right." My pedantic English teacher ways will not allow anything else, and I choose to look at that as a good sign that the real me is still inside somewhere.



It's Going to Be All Right
By Sara Groves and Gordon Kennedy

It's going to be all right
It's going to be all right

I can tell by your eyes that you're not getting any sleep
And you try to rise above it, but feel you're sinking in too deep
Oh, oh I believe, I believe that

It's going to be all right
It's going to be all right

I believe you'll outlive this pain in your heart
And you'll gain such a strength from what is tearing you apart
Oh, oh I believe I believe that

It's going to be all right
It's going to be all right

When some time has passed us, and the story is retold
It will mirror the strength and the courage in your soul
Oh, oh, I believe I believe,

I believe
I believe

I did not come here to offer you clichés
I will not pretend to know of all your pain
Just when you cannot, then I will hold out faith, for you

It's going to be all right
It's going to be all right


It really is going to be all right. Sara Groves says so. And everyone else says so, so many wonderful people that God has put in my life during this time. It helps that others are holding out faith for me. Because some days I just can't do it for myself.

Afterquake

A dear friend shares her earthquake experiences here.

The Resentment

I thought that Tara and I were going to keep this secret, but she blogged about it today, calling me only "a friend" - way to keep me anonymous, Tara! - so I thought I should blog about it too.

The Resentment.

As Tara puts it,

We've recently (with the help of a friend) coined the phrase "The resentment" - also known simply as "T.R." This is the deep and somewhat (or entirely?) irrational dislike for anyone who gets to be in Haiti right now. "T. R." is amplified if they are with our friends, doing "our" jobs, or sleeping in our bedrooms. Now, you might be saying to yourself - "Come on guys, it is helping the Haitian people that you claim to love so much - how can you be resentful? How old are you, six?" - And in response we would say, "We WERE six once - and yes, you are right - we want good people to do good things for Haitian people -- but also - yes - we are immature and jealous and a bit resentful that it is them and not us." So be it. We're confessing. It seems T.R. waxes and wanes depending on the day and the amount of rest we've gotten the night before. :)

See the smiley? That shows how nice Tara and I really are. But yes, we do have a hard time reading about other people teaching OUR students (oh wait, that's just me). Case in point. "Best English teacher in Haiti." Ouch.

I really do love Katie and I know she is doing a great job teaching my kids, but those are MY kids. MINE. I feel territorial about my classroom and my students. At least she's not in my classroom, since, as I learned from my brother-in-law who just got back from Haiti on Saturday, my classroom is being used to store medications. The middle school science room is a prosthetics workroom. My husband is working in the elementary library instead of his office.

Deal with it. There was an earthquake. You're still alive.

My brother-in-law also told me that he spent some time sorting books, including MY classroom library with the number 23 lovingly written on each book with a Sharpie. (I already blogged here about my grief over my classroom library.) So I have some hope that some day my books will be reunited in one room again.

What can I say? I WAS six once.

"I don’t even want to be right now
I don’t want to think another thought
I don’t want to feel this pain I feel
But right now pain is all I’ve got
It feels like it's all I’ve got
But I know it's not
Oh I know You’re all I’ve got"

Steven Curtis Chapman

Poetry Friday: Spring

Spring appears to be on its way. Just when you think you can't survive one more gloomy day, the sun comes out and there are flowers and the color green reappears. I haven't gone through this in ten years, since I live in a tropical country when I'm not displaced by an earthquake. But I remember now how it feels, the way everything comes back to life.

I have to admit that the whole spring/rebirth/"now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer" metaphor sometimes seems a bit too easy. Part of me identifies with Edna St. Vincent Millay's take on the season.


Spring

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.



Yes, I know what I know. It's not winter in Haiti, but you can have beautiful weather and sunshine and still suffer abject misery. Soon it will be the summer of our discontent, the hurricane season of our discontent.

And yet, spring is still irresistible, even to me, with all my years of loving a seasonless tropical life. Look around! The flowers really are coming up. The dead brown really is turning green. Miracles really do happen. I can't help believing it.

So here's another take on spring, this one by Gerard Manley Hopkins, himself no stranger to grief and depression. Apparently spring was irresistible to him, too.


Spring

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.



"What is all this juice and all this joy?" "I know what I know." I'm holding both thoughts in my mind these days.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Sunshine and the Human Heart

Today was the first day since Monday that both of my children went to school. My son has been home with a cold and I was trapped in the house with him. I did go for a brief walk with my daughter each day when she got home from school, but today when the sick one returned to school, I was able to take a long, vigorous walk, just me and my iPod. I am constantly surprised by how much good that does me. Today I feel much more human and able to cope with what comes up.

On my iPod this morning was a sermon by Rob Bell. (Tell me I'm not the only person that listens to sermons during exercise - I think that might be weird.) It was called "The Human Heart is a Mystery." Boy, is it ever. You can download the sermon here; it's the one from February 28th.

I know some people have theological problems with Rob Bell, but what can I say: I am a sucker for a preacher who uses the word "archetype" and quotes Dostoevsky. And this sermon spoke to me deeply. It's about how life overturns our categories and doesn't work the way it is supposed to, but God can still be trusted. And it includes the line: "Only when you have come face to face with the deadness of things can you truly appreciate life." The context is Lent and springtime, which brings me back to where I started, with the sunshine.

The kids had an early release day from school, and after they got home we went to the park and walked and played. A bike with training wheels was involved. The sun was shining. It looked as though winter was over (not that I am fully convinced of that). The world looked more hopeful than it has for a while.

What's Going On

There have been many developments in Haiti, some of which, of course, I'm not comfortable sharing in such a public place. But now that Haiti is hardly in the news at all, I feel responsible to keep the situation in people's minds as much as I can, so I'm going to try to write a post about some of the articles I've posted on Facebook in the last few weeks.

I don't by any means post everything I read. Now there are many people coming back from short-term visits to Haiti and giving interviews to their local news outlets. I think it's great that they are talking about what they have seen and helping others to understand what is happening, but some of the things they say are hard to read. I have lived in Haiti for over thirteen years, and I try very hard to avoid making sweeping generalizations about Haitians and their culture. Some people have no trouble drawing such conclusions after a couple of weeks. If you don't speak the language, and you're working with an interpreter whose effectiveness you are completely unequipped to gauge, maybe you shouldn't speak out quite so confidently about what you think you observed. Maybe you don't have the whole story.

Similarly, at this distance from Haiti, I don't always know how to interpret everything I read. The New York Times published a scathing indictment of the relief effort so far in the same week as the LA Times said that it had mostly been a success. Which is true? Probably both. Here's what the New York Times had to say, and here's the LA Times' take.

Here's a report on the situation in the tent camps. It's in French, and it's the most complete report I've seen. Here are the headings: Insecurity in the Camps, Sexual Violence, Sorcery, Environment of the Camps, and Distribution of Humanitarian Aid. You probably weren't expecting that third one, Sorcery. Here's an excerpt in French and an English translation follows:

...les mères et pères de famille occupant les camps se plaignent de l'absence du courant électrique, ce qui favorise le phénomène de la sorcellerie. Il est rapporté que le soir, des enfants en bas âge ont du mal à dormir alors que d'autres tombent malades. De plus, des animaux tels que des chiens, des poules, des cochons, des couleuvres, rodant autour des camps, attaquent au cours de la nuit, les nouveau-nés, les femmes enceintes, les enfants en bas âge. Si certaines personnes en âge avancé, persécutées par la population, sont arrêtées pour sorcellerie et conduites dans les commissariats, d'autres sont purement et simplement lynchées par la population. Au moins deux (2) cas de lynchage respectivement à Carrefour et à Delmas ont été rapportés au RNDDH.

My translation:

Parents in the camps complain about the lack of electricity, which encourages the occurrence of sorcery. It's reported that at night, young children have a hard time sleeping while others become sick. In addition, animals like dogs, hens, pigs, and snakes, wandering around the camps, attack newborns, pregnant women, and young children during the night. If certain older people, accused by the people, are arrested for sorcery and taken to the police stations, others are simply lynched by the people. At least two cases of lynchings in Carrefour and Delmas have been reported to the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (National Network for the Defense of Human Rights).

I don't know about you but I find that a haunting passage for many reasons.

Other articles about the tent camps include this one, this one, and this one. This one tells about a wedding in a tent city, and includes this quote:

Their home is a pile of rubble, their church in ruins and their honeymoon suite a tent shared with eight relatives.

But Emmanuel Beauzile and Mary Leon found plenty to celebrate as they exchanged vows under a blue tarp in the ruins of Haiti's capital.

"We're still here," Beauzile said. "No matter what the situation is, we are going to be together."

The couple tied the knot in the shadow of the Notre Dame d'Haiti Cathedral, where they attended Mass and the bride sang in the choir before the earthquake caved in the roof and two sides.

The occasion was not entirely joyful: It was hard not think about those who would have attended had they survived the quake, but the ceremony had already been postponed once and the bride and groom felt it was important to go ahead.

This one, about the future of competitive soccer in Haiti, raises an issue that many people in Haiti are talking about: just how temporary are these tent cities? Now that the main soccer stadium in Port-au-Prince is a refugee camp,

the tent cities that have set up in the stadiums are slowly turning into semi-permanent lodging. People are replacing improvised tents with wooden shelters and they're naming the alleys between them, like city streets.

"How are we going to get them off?" Gilles said. "And where are we going to put them?"

And of course, as wherever Haitian children congregate, there are kites.

I have been interested in articles about the arts in Haiti, and there have been many. This heartbreaking article is about a professional violinist who was injured in the earthquake and lost his pregnant wife. This update on Romel's condition is more hopeful, but still recognizes what a huge job is before him. This one is about a Haitian singer and this one is about a dancer. This one talks about preserving Haiti's cultural heritage.

I have read several articles about efforts to help people with their mental health issues after the trauma. Here's one. There is a lot to mourn when, as this article puts it, many of the best and brightest were lost.

One heartening development has been the engagement of Haitians living around the world. There are many articles on this topic. Here's one about a summit in Miami to discuss rebuilding. Here's another about Haitian Americans going to help and here's another about the Diaspora.

Many people have left Port-au-Prince for the rural areas, but things are not easy there either. This article deals with some of the challenges facing the rest of Haiti.

It's always been hard to be an orphan in Haiti. This story shows how things have become even worse. Injustice is the topic of this blog post, written by an eyewitness to corruption in post-quake Haiti.

These missionaries were badly injured and now are returning to help. I was touched by her comment that as amputees themselves, they will be more able to minister to others who suffer in the same way.

I loved this article because of its personal focus and its tale of life returning to the Haitian streets.

It's hard to connect YA literature (a more common topic on this blog) with the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, but this article manages, telling as it does about aid going into the country on the Harry Potter plane.

In my place here in the US as a refugee, I am doing my best to Haitian up through my own challenges, and to remind others that "Haiti still suffers when cameras are gone."

Poetry Friday: Separation from those we love

A friend sent me the following this week. It is appropriate to all of us earthquake refugees and to many others as well.


Separation from those we love

Nothing can fill the gap when we are away from those we love,
And it would be wrong to try and find anything.
We must simply hold out and win through.
That sounds very hard at first
but at the same time is is a great consolation,
since leaving the gap unfilled preserves the bonds between us.
It is nonsense to say God fills the gap;
he does not fill it, but keeps it empty so that our communion
with another may be kept alive,
even at the cost of pain.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Poetry Friday roundup is here this week.

Nothing Can Separate

A friend sent me an iTunes gift certificate and I was shopping for songs. I downloaded several I'd never heard before. I've been a Carolyn Arends fan for a long time (in fact, the title of my blog comes from one of her songs) so I randomly chose a few from her latest album.

When I listened to this one, I thought, No way. It's about an earthquake? What are the odds of that?

I googled the lyrics and found out that not only is it (partly) about an earthquake, but Carolyn Arends played it in a Haiti benefit. And not only that, but I could have downloaded it for free! But I thought I'd tell you about it just in case you wanted to. Go here for more information.

Here are the lyrics:

NOTHING CAN SEPARATE

Carolyn Arends

Somewhere there's a mother waking up
To news in the night that she cannot bear
And somewhere the whole earth is quaking
Making dust of the city that was standing there
Well who can say if the trouble comes from
Above or below or the hands of fate
I just pray when the trouble does come
You help us to remember the promise you make

I know - neither death nor life
Not the past nor the present nor
Things to come
No foe - neither depth nor height
Can separate us
From the love of Christ

Today there's a church group meeting
Though the government already burned their building down
They say there's no kind of beating
That can take away the peace and the joy they've found

They know - Chorus
Though we go through the valley's shadow
And we live out our lives in these dangerous times
Still we know every step that we go
We don't have to walk alone, You walk by our side

We know - Chorus

Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ

Homesickness

I went out shopping with my parents today, and I was watching the GPS as we drove. There's a part of the trip where the software isn't up to date with the road work that has been done, and the little screen shows the car driving in the middle of a field. Occasionally the GPS voice calmly suggests turning left or right to get back on the road, and sometimes it even recommends, "Turn around as soon as possible."

Often these days I feel like that car, driving across a bumpy field, narrowly missing cows and horses, while calm, rational voices tell me what I should be doing. This is all new to me. I never fled a natural disaster in a private jet before. I never passed overnight from being constantly busy six days a week to having next to nothing to do. I never tried to parent my traumatized kids on my own and with contact with my husband reduced to only the briefest, most unsatisfactory phone conversations.

And yet some things are familiar. Like when my daughter told me she had been daydreaming about her bedroom. And when my son yells every time there's something he doesn't want to do, "I hate it here!"

Homesickness. I'm something of an expert on it. It's an occupational hazard for TCKs like my kids and me because we are from more than one place, so there's always somewhere to miss. (TCK Jean Fritz even called her memoir Homesick: My Own Story.) Besides, I spent seven years in boarding school as a child. I understand how my daughter can conjure up every detail of a beloved place in her mind. I understand how my son can be perfectly fine, and then a setback or difficult moment can plunge him into that reservoir of sadness that is always just below the surface.

What to do about it is another matter. I remember trying to focus on something else, and I've encouraged my kids to do that, too; this evening we talked about the good things about being in the US right now. I remember crying, and that's happened too, to all of us. To a certain extent I toughened up, and I remember sneering (not visibly, I hope) when I went to college and my fellow freshmen lined up, sobbing, in droves to use the one payphone in the hall (yes, my children, this was before cell phones) to call their parents who lived within a few hours of the campus. My parents were three thousand miles away and I was certainly not putting on such a display.

As my husband and I have continued to live an expat lifestyle as adults (he is also a TCK), we haven't spent our time just sitting around bemoaning places we have left, although both of us go through times where our homesickness is strong. We make a home quickly. When we are staying in a motel, we unpack and put our clothes in the drawers. (I have left pyjamas under pillows in hotel rooms around the world.) We try to be fully wherever we are. Where our family is together, we are home.

Right now, though, we aren't together, and home isn't clearly defined. I know it will never be as it was before; everyone keeps using the phrase "new normal," and I believe that will come some day. Meanwhile perhaps the best thing I can do for my homesick children is hug them and say, "I know. I know. It's really hard."

This article from the New York Times tells of other kids who are dealing with being in a new place. I love this line: "Dozens of households are vibrating with relief, worry and claustrophobia as Haitians take refuge with relatives in the United States."

Exercise

One of the things I do regularly at home is ride my exercise bike. I used to walk first thing in the morning, the coolest time of the day and the time when the fewest people are out to observe my odd behavior (it's a bit strange to walk for exercise in a country where most people walk wherever they go out of necessity), but when I got the bike I was able to switch to exercising after school, which is a much better time for me than 5:30 AM. For the first couple of weeks after the earthquake I didn't exercise at all, and I find that I deal much better with stress (even ordinary everyday stress) when I'm active. So I started walking with a friend three times a week, and now I am walking every week day unless it's raining.

The town I'm in has a beautiful walking trail (though it looks very different this time of year from when I use it in the summer, when it's lined with huge baskets of flowers) and it's a pure pleasure to walk here, except for the cold. I bundle myself up in many many layers of clothing before heading out each day. (I wrote a post here about some of the things I really enjoy in the US, and one of the things was exercising here.)

Every time I exercise I think of my friend Tara and her post about the first time she ran after the earthquake. She wrote:

The path we run looks very different now. Where there used to be buildings there are giant piles of cement spilling into the street. Where there used to be an open space to stretch and get away from the intensely populated area of Tabarre, there are now hundreds of people living in their cars, trucks, and along the side of the road. As we ran another missionary drove by and rolled his window down and said, "Doing something normal again, God Bless you!"

We cannot make this go away, we cannot wish Haiti back to her pre January 12 state. We cannot make any of this "normal." We can only keep running the race. By God's grace and provision we've been able to do that so far.

My race has taken me a long way away from Haiti for the moment, but I feel the same as Tara. We have to keep going, one foot in front of the other. Part of doing that is exercising, wearing myself out so that I'll be healthier, sleep better, and deal better with stress. Sometimes I look around me and think, How did this happen? What am I doing here? But I remember what Tara said: "We cannot make any of this 'normal.' We can only keep running the race."

Poetry Friday: Tears

While I'm not crying all the time like I was when I first got to the States from Haiti, I do still have times when I am overwhelmed with grief and start to cry - and then have a lot of trouble stopping. Psalm 56 says that God puts our tears in a bottle, and Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) quotes that in the poem below. The image is one of love and concern, and a God who cares about the things that grieve us.

A friend who was also in the earthquake and suffered much more than I did (she lost her home and all her possessions and was also physically injured) said that she hasn't cried yet. She said I needed to teach her to cry. I am certainly very good at crying; that is, I do a lot of it. If only it were a useful skill. And yet, surely God isn't saving my tears in a bottle for nothing. Anne Bradstreet wrote, "In vain I did not seek or cry." I hope the same is true for me, that my tears are not in vain, and that somehow God will bring good from them.



By Night when Others Soundly Slept

by Anne Bradstreet
1
By night when others soundly slept
And hath at once both ease and Rest,
My waking eyes were open kept
And so to lie I found it best.

2
I sought him whom my Soul did Love,
With tears I sought him earnestly.
He bow’d his ear down from Above.
In vain I did not seek or cry.

3
My hungry Soul he fill’d with Good;
He in his Bottle put my tears,
My smarting wounds washt in his blood,
And banisht thence my Doubts and fears.

4
What to my Saviour shall I give
Who freely hath done this for me?
I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live
And Loue him to Eternity.


Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

That word is popping up everywhere!

This evening I was reading The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White, to my son, and we came across the following passage, which made my son remark, "That word is popping up everywhere!":

"Well, cat is easy too," muttered the teacher. "Cat is easy because it is short. Can anyone think of a word that is longer than cat?"

"Catastrophe," said Charlie Nelson, who sat in the front row.

"Good!" said Mrs. Hammerbotham. "That's a good hard word. But does anyone know what it means? What is a catastrophe?"

"An earthquake," said one of the girls.

"Correct!" replied the teacher. "What else?"

"War is a catastrophe," said Charlie Nelson.

"Correct!" replied Mrs. Hammerbotham. "What else is?"

A very small, redheaded girl named Jennie raised her hand.

"Yes, Jennie? What is a catastrophe?"

In a very small, high voice, Jennie said, "When you get ready to go on a picnic with your father and mother and you make peanut-butter sandwiches and jelly rolls and put them in a thermos box with bananas and an apple and some raisin cookies and paper napkins and some bottles of pop and a few hard-boiled eggs and then you put the thermos box in your car and just as you are starting out it starts to rain and your parents say there is no point in having a picnic in the rain, that's a catastrophe."

"Very good, Jennie," said Mrs. Hammerbotham. "It isn't as bad as an earthquake, and it isn't as bad as war. But when a picnic gets called on account of rain, it is a catastrophe for a child, I guess..."

The Disabled and Some Comparisons with Chile

Today's Lenten prayer focus is the disabled.

Last week I linked to this article, which says there may be 150,000 amputees in Haiti by year's end, or 2% of the entire Haitian population. This article uses the figure of 4,000, which would already be a high number. I think the higher number is more likely, but either way, this is going to be a huge problem in a society where survival is challenging enough for the able-bodied.

I have been on crutches in Port-au-Prince and I know it's not easy to get around that way; there's very little completely level ground and stairs are often uneven. That was pre-earthquake. And getting around is only one of the difficulties. There aren't jobs for people with all their limbs; how will people make a living when they are disabled? No wonder my friend told me on the phone that she and her family are happy to be alive and to have their arms and legs.

The second article above mentions, as do most of the articles, how courageous the Haitian patients are.

Hospital workers say they've rarely seen patients so stoic in the face of horrific loss and adversity. "We've created the phrase, 'Haitian up,'" says Dr. Justine Crowley, meaning "toughen up or buck up."

It's true that Haitians are incredibly strong and put up with more on a good day than most people in the developed world could handle. And yet I don't want anyone to interpret that fact by concluding that the people going through these terrible injuries and losses are somehow not feeling them. They are still suffering - just as much as you would. They have learned that there isn't much point whining about it, though. What's that going to change?

I am following news about the Chilean earthquake as well, of course. Someone at church this morning said that he feared the worldwide focus on the problems in Haiti would deprive Chile of help. I don't worry about that; it's a big world and there's enough aid for both countries. I don't think it's useful to frame it in terms of a contest. But I can't help but compare the situations in the two earthquakes. Here's an article that concludes that poverty is the real killer. The Chilean earthquake was 500 times as strong as the Haitian one, but when people live in buildings that are well-constructed and have access to immediate emergency services, they are much more likely to survive. And here's an NPR story which explains some of the geological factors that made the Haitian earthquake more destructive.

Earthquakes Everywhere

I woke up to the news of the 8.8 earthquake in Chile. I have always paid attention to earthquake stories - part of my policy of being obsessed with the news - and I even had earthquake and tsunami nightmares prior to January 12th. But now my reaction to a story like this has a whole different intensity.

As I talk to people about what happened in Haiti, I am finding that many people have earthquake stories that I never heard before. I have talked to people who were in, or had relatives who were in this one, this one, this one and this one. I remember a huge one when I was in graduate school, and someone responding, "At least it's not here." But it certainly could be - there have been large earthquakes in the American heartland.

Yesterday I discovered this page, which is part of the USGS site: Did You Feel It? Apparently everyone connected with Haiti and connected to the internet has already been watching this, except for me. This is where you can see aftershocks, very shortly after they happen. I am horrified to see how many earthquakes there are, all over the world, every single day. Now I'm watching aftershocks in Chile, and aftershocks off the Ryukyu Islands of Japan.

How did I ever get the idea that the ground was stable under my feet? Obviously terra firma is a complete misnomer.

Poetry Friday: Alive

I read once, years ago, that nothing makes you feel more alive than a good sunburn. I've thought about that many times. It's true that sunburn makes you painfully aware of your body, and when you're in pain, you're not likely to forget that you exist.

I am alive. I survived an earthquake in which over 200,000 people lost their lives. Today I am overwhelmed with gratitude to be alive. I walked down the street this morning in my woolly hat (the kind of thing I would never ever wear at home) and felt dazed, light-headed at the sheer joy of survival. I could have been dead. Much worse, I could have lost part or all of my little family. I am alive, and so are they.

One of my college professors once said that most poetry is about death, because most poetry is about beauty, and when we think about beauty, we know that it will not last forever. The poem I've chosen for Poetry Friday today is about death, but it's also about life. The Book of Common Prayer says: "In the midst of life we are in death." As I live each day, aware of the gift it is, I feel that pain that reminds me both that I am alive, and that so many others are not. While I believe in life after death, I also know that the dead are lost to us, that we do not know, as Wallace Stevens puts it, how they felt at what they saw.


A Postcard from the Volcano

by Wallace Stevens

Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.

The rest of the poem is here.

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Love is Still a Worthy Cause

by Sara Groves

Have you listed all the times you've tried
Do you call on all your alibis
When somebody asks the question why are you hiding

Did you feel the pull, did you hear the call
Did you take a chance and lose it all
Do you fear there's no collateral left for trying

Chorus

Friend I know your heart is raw
But love is still a worthy cause
Picking up and pressing on
Oh love is still a worthy cause
Like the touch that starts the thaw
Oh, love is such a worthy cause
Or the word that breaks the pause
Love

In the midst of passing bravery
In the face of our own injuries
Is the constant generosity of grace

It's the beauty in the tales we tell
It's the pressing on and ending well
It’s the joy that comes when we give ourselves away

I love because He loved me when I had nothing
I love because You loved me when I had nothing
I love because He loved me when I had nothing
I had nothing

When you count the cost and all seems lost
Love is still a worthy cause
When you're pressing on though your strength is gone
Love is still a worthy cause

Oh, love is still a worthy cause
Oh, love is still a worthy cause
Oh, love

Pride and Prejudice

I read another book! Best of all, I can foresee a time when it won't be such an event to read a book. I've started another one, and this one is a murder mystery, so I know there will be some adrenaline-filled moments. I think I can handle it. We'll see.

But the book I just finished? Pride and Prejudice. I chose it because I know exactly what's coming around every corner. And sure enough, Lizzie and Mr. Darcy, Bingley and Miss Bennet, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Collins, Charlotte, Lady Catherine...all were just as expected. Not only that, but the book ended just as it always did before. Ahhhhhh.

I can focus better than I could right after the earthquake, but I still jump up from the book more often than a person really should, whether from an urge to check Facebook one more time to see if anybody posted any recent events in Haiti, or to do some research which comes to mind. For example, I started to wonder if Jane Austen was alive for the earthquake in London in 1750. Turns out she was born in 1775, so that earthquake (actually, there were two, and Charles Wesley wrote some hymns about them) took place twenty-five years before her birth. Which would explain why there aren't any earthquakes in Pride and Prejudice. An important feature in a book if I'm going to choose it these days.

So that was book #4 of this year.

Come Together Now

My friend Tara posted this yesterday. Many of these songs have been done to raise money, and I am grateful for each one. This one, though, seemed special to me as soon as I saw Steven Curtis Chapman singing. His album Beauty Will Rise (do they use the word album any more in the modern world?) has been so helpful to me during this time that he now feels like an old friend.

Come Together Now - Music City Unites For Haiti from Provident Label Group on Vimeo.

Aftershocks

After the earthquake, when the internet connection came back up, I wrote to a friend who is a psychologist and asked him, essentially, how to talk to my kids about it. He sent me two PDF files which you can download at the very bottom of this post. One is labeled "Children Coping with Earthquakes" and the other is "NASP Responding to Natural Disasters."

One of the things I remember reading right away in one of those articles was that an earthquake was different from other natural disasters because of the aftershocks. You couldn't just say, "Now this is over and we can get over it and start rebuilding." You had to keep reliving it again and again because the earth would keep shaking.

When I read that I thought of our first night sleeping on the soccer field at school. The earth never seemed to stop moving that night, and later we found out there were more than thirty aftershocks. I may have slept thirty minutes. I also thought of the following nights, when again and again the noise and the motion would return. Sometimes I felt it when it wasn't happening. The people in the yard said they could tell when it was real because the dogs would bark and the gate would rattle. Another friend told about setting up a pencil, and if it fell, the shock was real; if it didn't, he was imagining it.

I never thought all those weeks ago that the aftershocks would still be continuing, but they are. Information I read from the USGS (www.usgs.gov) said that they can continue for a year. A year!

Yesterday morning my Haiti friends were posting on Facebook about a large aftershock, and this morning, the same thing. My husband said that people he had just recently convinced to go inside are sleeping in our yard again. He slept through the one Monday morning (perhaps because he had taken Nyquil) but the one this morning woke him up.

My husband is always a lot calmer than I am. Since the earthquake I have seen that even more. For me there was no question of sleeping through aftershocks. Every time, the adrenaline hit me again, and I jumped to my feet, and rushed out the door, trying to escape the collapse of the house that I just knew would come next. It was hard to relax enough to sleep. That's why many people whose houses are fine are still sleeping outside in Haiti. Of course, now it's raining at night, so there are some uncomfortable choices to be made. And then for hundreds of thousands, there is no choice: they have nowhere to sleep except outdoors.

The metaphorical aftershocks are also enormous, of course, for everyone. I don't think they will ever go away for any of us, or for Haiti. Not when some estimate that up to 2% of the population will be amputees. Not when this earthquake has been called "the worst disaster in modern history." Not when up to 300,000 people may have lost their lives. And not when I walk down a quiet street of small-town America and imagine it all shaking, shaking.

Deep, Deep Love

Last night at church we sang "Oh, the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus." We had this song at our wedding. It's a bit of an unusual song for a wedding because it's in a minor key. So much of life seems to be in a minor key, though, especially lately. The words, if true, make all of life's trials bearable.

Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me,
Underneath me, all around me,
Is the current of Thy love;
Leading onward, leading homeward
To my glorious rest above.

Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Spread His praise from shore to shore!
How He loveth, ever loveth,
Changeth never, nevermore;
How He watches o'er His loved ones,
Died to call them all His own;
How for them He intercedeth,
Watcheth o'er them from the throne.

Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Love of every love the best;
'Tis an ocean vast of blessing,
'Tis a haven sweet of rest,
Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus,
'Tis a Heav'n of Heav'ns to me;
And it lifts me up to glory,
For it lifts me up to Thee.

S. Trevor Francis, 1834-1925

Here's a link that plays music.

The tune, Ebenezer, is often used for funerals in Haiti, so I'd imagine this has been heard frequently in the last few weeks.

The Center for Church Music, Songs, and Hymns tells the story of this hymn; the author, Francis,

experienced that love in an especially compelling way one cold, winter night. At a point in life when his faith had wavered, Francis found himself walking across London's Hungerford Bridge. Mulling over his sadness and loneliness, he heard a whisper tempting him to end his misery and jump into the churning waters below.

Fortunately, Francis didn't heed the dark voice. Instead, he heard God's reassuring words speaking to him in the night. On that bridge, he reaffirmed his faith in Jesus Christ, and put complete trust in him as his Savior.

I talked to someone today who lost his wife in the earthquake, and while his grief is great, he told me that the love of Jesus has been very real to him. Like the story of Francis, there's no huge event, just an impression, a feeling. It may not seem like much. And yet in the darkness, when you have nothing else to cling to, somehow that love is there. Believe it or don't believe it, but for me there's no substitute for that deep, deep love.

Hungering and Thirsting

Today's Lenten prayer focus in the guide produced by the church I'm attending now is The Poor.

A couple of weeks ago I linked to this article about the collapse of the Montana Hotel. I took the time to read some of the comments, and many of them reminded me of one of the big reasons I remained anonymous, and kept Haiti anonymous, when I first started this blog. Judgment. What, some commenters wondered, were people in Haiti on a mission team doing at a luxury hotel like the Montana? What was Haiti doing even having such a hotel when so many struggled for the basic necessities of life? I cringe at such questions, not because I disagree with them, but because they form a daily part of my thoughts. Living in a third world country as a privileged person (and let's be honest, my American passport and my education and the fact that I can afford to feed and clothe my children and live in a nice house - all these things and so much more make me privileged) forces you to ask these questions constantly. How can I justify anything I own? How can I make a frivolous purchase when someone at my gate hasn't eaten today? How can I go to the beach for a rest when others must work every day?

Throughout my time in Haiti I have gone back and forth on these issues and how to deal with the needs in front of me every single day. When I first got there, I used to stand at my gate and listen to these stories and cry and hand out cash. Later I tried to help people in a more focused way, or through organizations. I started saying no a lot more, honestly out of self-preservation sometimes. I felt I couldn't continue living there if I were so emotionally involved in everyone else's pain all the time. Sometimes I just didn't look; I couldn't. Sometimes I justified luxuries in my life (like eating chocolate, like having an air conditioner in our bedroom which we hardly ever used, and I won't go on because I don't want you to judge me) by saying, But I'm staying. I'm not just camping out for a year or two. This is where I live and I need to find a way to make it work.

Others are struggling with these issues. Ben and Katie just experienced their first time leaving Haiti and going somewhere richer, and also read a book detailing some of the history of Haiti's poverty and explaining how the US and France had a lot to do with it. Tara's been grocery shopping in Texas and taken her kids out for shaved ice and is finding all the choices to be overwhelming. John and Beth are telling wrenching stories, day after day, about people whose already difficult lives have been thrown into worse chaos and suffering after the earthquake.

How to deal with it, the mess and injustice and deep, deep sadness of it all? I don't know.

I have been working through the sermons about the Beatitudes from Mars Hill in Grand Rapids. I listen to them when I'm going to sleep because I've learned that I can't lie awake and think. Last night I listened to the one about hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I don't know that I have ever heard this interpreted the way Bell did but it struck a chord with me. (I can't seem to find a way to link you to it but I got it for free on iTunes.) He said that it doesn't say: blessed are you when you have it all figured out. It says you are blessed when you hunger and thirst for things to be different, when you struggle with it. He used the example of a couple trying to figure out which couch to buy, knowing what they know about how so many in the world don't have clean water to drink. A couch might seem like a silly example but it isn't. That's the kind of thing I struggle with. Why do I have a comfortable couch when I've visited in a home where there were no chairs at all, and someone went to overturn a bucket for me to sit on?

Today, as I focus on praying for the poor, in Haiti and everywhere else (and oh, they are everywhere), I hunger and thirst for things to be different. I long for a world where everyone has enough to eat, and shelter, and, yes, books to read. Don't judge me because I sometimes ate at the Hotel Montana. I do that enough to myself. I think all of us on this planet are under the same obligation to remember the poor. In Haiti we see them everywhere and it's a lot more obvious to us that life isn't fair. But Haiti is our neighbor, even when we're here in the United States. There are people living in fields there, with no more shelter than some sheets or old clothes (and yes, the rainy season has started). And I hunger and thirst for that to change.

Ala peyi byen organize, wi! (What a well-organized country!)

Today my children took buses to their public schools. I paid nothing for this service and only had to request for it to happen. They went to school all day, again for free.

While they were at school I had to get some things done, requiring me to visit three separate government offices. I had to renew my driver's license, pay a tax, and drop off my children's vaccination records so they could be put into the correct format for the schools here. All three of those tasks were accomplished with no frustration and very little cost in less than an hour. (And the computer wasn't working right in the DMV, so that part took longer than usual!)

I also went to the grocery store, and saw dozens of choices for each type of item. There was abundance everywhere I looked. I got a bit mesmerized by a display of stuffed toys for dogs.

I know, the schools aren't really free and neither are the buses. All those things come from taxes like the one I had to pay today. And I know, there are many people out of work in this country and life is not easy for everyone. But I wonder if people who live here in the US all the time realize how amazing, and rich, this country is. The stores are full. The parks are beautiful. The libraries are stocked and accessible. The emergency services are there when you need them. Things work and are efficient.

This is not the way it is everywhere in the world.

Poetry Friday: Identifying with Lucasta

I posted recently about how this earthquake situation feels like a war to me. You can read that post here.

The whole time my husband was visiting, I kept thinking about the poem below, "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars," by Richard Lovelace. Richard Lovelace looked something like this:



My husband doesn't look anything like that. No flowing black locks. (Not much hair at all, actually.) No armor. And, unlike the persona of the poem, not even any sword, horse, or shield. He's altogether more rumpled than Lovelace and doesn't have that same superior look on his face. Yet for the first time in my life, as I watch my husband go back to an earthquake zone (he's not going to fight a war, but he is going to do important work in this earthquake "war"), leaving my children and me behind, I feel that Lovelace's words could be spoken to me.

To Lucasta, going to the Wars

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As thou too shalt adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.


I would paraphrase that last stanza as: "You should love me more for loving honor so much, because if I weren't that kind of person, I wouldn't be as faithful to you as I am." You could also turn that around and say, "You wouldn't love me as much as you do if I were the kind of person to ignore my duty."

And I wouldn't - much as I wish my husband could stay here with us, I know he is going back to Haiti because of honor, and love, and a desire to do what God wants him to do. We have always worked side by side but now I'm left behind, a bit more like Lucasta than I would like.

I used to read this poem with my students (yes, even though it's always a challenge to read something with the word "breast" in it with middle schoolers) and talk about honor, but I never identified with this poem the way I do now.

Here's a song about Haiti that also uses the image of a war, saying, "We won't lose the battle."



Here's a translation of the lyrics of the song. There are a couple of spots where I couldn't hear very well and I'm not sure I've got it right, so Kreyol speakers, please leave a comment and correct me as needed.

In this moment, pain wants to suffocate us
The ground started trembling under our feet
Despair is beating us
We're searching for a place to believe
The history of our country shows us
We've taken some blows, it's true
But let's put our heads together to change our country

Chorus:
We'll get up, we'll stand up
We'll wipe the tears from our eyes
Hand in hand, with faith, we'll get there
Let God guide us,
Love will encourage us
Together, Haiti will rise

Nothing can crush unity
Everyone's eyes are fixed on the future
Tribulation is bringing us opportunity
To give with all our hearts and souls
Now many are suffering
Raise your faith to give to them
And thank God
Because He gave us life

Chorus

Let's put people's hands to work
We won't lose the battle

Chorus

Yes, it's true, we can rise
We'll rise

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Ash Wednesday

Lent is traditionally a time of mourning and grief, and I have never in my life been in a more appropriate frame of mind for the season.

As the pastor put the ashes on my forehead this evening, he said, "Remember that you are from dust, and to dust you shall return."

Immediately I thought of that Tuesday night - the Tuesday which needs no date or month. A parent who had come to school because his son was still on campus described what he had seen when the earthquake happened. He was in his car, and he saw a huge cloud of dust rise from the city. It was the dust of buildings shaken and destroyed, the dust of ruin, and in that moment many human lives returned to dust as well.

Dust. It's all dust.



Joel 2:12-13 "Yet even now," declares the LORD, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments." Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.

Ordinary

A week before the earthquake, on our first day of school after our Christmas break, we gathered in our auditorium, all the secondary students and the teachers, and sang, among other things, the above song.

"We won’t be satisfied with anything ordinary," we sang. "We won’t be satisfied at all."

At the time, I wondered about those words. Is it true that I won't be satisfied with anything ordinary? I am pretty satisfied with the ordinary. I like my life.

I know the song isn't talking about contentment, or about the lack of contentment: not being satisfied with what you have. It's talking instead about not being satisfied with going through the motions with God, about longing for more and more of His presence.

A week after we sang that song, ordinary ended. Ordinary in the sense of normal, day to day, routine life. Ordinary gave way to crisis, abnormal, extraordinary.

Here's some more of the song:

Open up the sky, fall down like rain
We don’t want blessings, We want You
Open up the sky, fall down like fire
We don’t want anything but You

Our beloved Jesus, we just wanna see You
In the glory of Your light.
Earthly things don’t matter,
They just fade and shatter
When we’re touched by love divine.

Is that part true? Do I want God more than I want His blessings? Haitian Christians have certainly shown that it is true of them. They have refused to despair. They have gathered in their thousands to praise God and pray. They have seen that earthly things do not last; they already knew that much better than I did.

We are hearing, too, that many others are coming to Christian faith. Losing the ordinary of their everyday lives has led, for many, to searching for more of God than the ordinary. People are seeking Him now that everything else is stripped away.

So I guess it is wrong for me to wish for ordinary back - my regular life, with my work and my home and my family living together (my husband left today to go back to Haiti). I should be rejoicing because I should know that God matters more than His blessings.

And I do know that.

But I still wish for the ordinary of January 12th. I wish that January 13th had been ordinary. I wish I had taught those lesson plans that were on my desk, and worn that sweater that I left on the back of my chair and given back those papers I had just graded. I wish that I were still going in every day now to see my kids and conference with them about their writing and help them choose books to read and plan bake sales with them.

I'm not saying that God did this, made this earthquake happen so that people would turn to Him. It's well known that times of crisis do push us towards spirituality; look at September 11th, 2001 and the effect it had on people in the US. But do we really need everything to be overturned before we turn to Him? Couldn't we seek God in the midst of ordinary?

Ordinary is so beautiful, the dailiness of meals and chores and schedules, the familiar faces you greet; that's the kind of ordinary I miss. I was satisfied with it. I look forward to knowing it again. At the same time, as I try to trust God through the pain, I wonder what He will bring out of this tragedy, in the lives of Haitians and the rest of us who love Haiti. It definitely won't be ordinary.

Things Can Always Get Worse

The rain we were all dreading finally came.

Nous devons changer

The following quote was written by the mother of several kids who attended our school in Haiti. I had the privilege of teaching some of them. I have always had a lot of respect for this family. Below I include a translation into English.

"Le pays revivra et sera plus beau qu'avant. Nous nous relèverons meilleurs qu'avant. Nous ne referons pas les mêmes bêtises; nous apprendrons à mieux jouer les plus beaux morceaux de notre répertoire musical; nous enlèverons les mots défaitistes de notre vocabulaire; nous réviserons nos discours destructifs; nous changerons nos rymes amères en hymnes de joie; nous désapprendrons pour mieux réapprendre; nous préférerons la joie à la tristesse; nous porterons en nous les germes de la vie. Nos frères et soeurs ont payé de leur sang, de longues heures d'agonies le prix du changement. POUR EUX nous devons changer." Lunise Jules Cerin

"The country will live again and will be more beautiful than before. We will get up better than before. We won't make the same mistakes; we'll learn to play better the most beautiful pieces in our musical repertoire; we will remove the defeatist words from our vocabulary; we will revise our destructive ways of speaking; we will change our bitter rhymes into hymns of joy; we will unlearn so that we can relearn better; we will prefer joy to sadness; we will carry in us the seeds of life. Our brothers and sisters paid with their blood, with long hours of agony, the price of change. FOR THEM we must change." Lunise Jules Cerin

My husband tells me he meets this attitude everywhere. This is an opportunity to rebuild, and to do things better this time.

Four Weeks Later

Today it has been four weeks since the earthquake. Someone (and I can't now remember who, or find where I read this) wrote that Haitians now talk about "Tuesday," without saying the date or the month, and everyone knows exactly which Tuesday they mean. That was the day the world changed.

I see a few signs that I am starting to be more normal. I read a book. (Just one in a month - clearly I'm not all the way there yet!) I can talk about other things for brief periods, and laugh. I'm sleeping pretty well.

I hear that Port-au-Prince is becoming more normal too, if you discount the facts that a million people are homeless and the city is in ruins. People were selling vegetables on the street the day after the earthquake, and now outdoor markets are functional, though prices are much higher than before. People are up and about, sweeping and cleaning up, adjusting to the world as it is now.

Apparently a lot more people are now reading my blog than before. I don't know that for sure because I don't know how to check my stats and don't think I really want to learn how. I have mixed feelings about my larger readership, since while I always wanted people to read what I wrote, I would feel embarrassed when someone I knew told me they had read my blog and spend a lot of time wondering if I had written something that might offend them. But if you are a new reader, I'm glad you are here. I keep writing because I think maybe in some small way I can keep Haiti in people's minds. Maybe there is someone out there who can't really identify with a Haitian family living in a tent city but who can identify with me, an American woman, a teacher, a thoroughly ordinary person now made into a refugee.

The earthquake has definitely changed the way I write. At first I couldn't write properly at all, and the emails I sent the first couple of days after the internet came back up look like they were written by someone else. There is almost no punctuation and the capitalization is iffy. I couldn't sit still or focus long enough to write a decent sentence, and it crossed my mind to wonder if that is what it feels like to have ADD. If so, I am much more sympathetic to my students with it than I was before. No wonder their punctuation needs work!

Now I find that my filters are not what they used to be. I rarely used to write about personal things - I didn't even say where I lived. Now I am spilling my guts regularly, and I wonder if I will regret it. It might be kind of like what happens when you stay up way too late in college with someone you hardly know and share all your secrets, and then the next time you see the person you can hardly make eye contact. I don't know. I can't help it. My emotions are much nearer to the surface than usual. For the first few days after the quake, every time I saw someone I recognized I would burst into tears and fling my arms around the person. (Well, not every time - I mostly managed to restrain myself on the street, though I did tell people how glad I was to see them. But I think some of the school employees were a bit startled by how affectionate I was all of a sudden!)

I have two conflicting emotions all the time. One is grief, sadness, pain; I think constantly of the suffering of people in Haiti. The other is joy to be alive; I always thought I knew that I could die at any moment, and I thought I was living as someone who recognized that. But now I know it in a new way. We survived. It could so easily have been otherwise. It was otherwise for some people we loved.

There's a balance to be found there, between mourning for the people and places and normal life that is lost and reveling in the life we still have. I am still trying to find it and I think Haiti is, too.

The Case for Literature

This article, by Nancie Atwell, one of my favorite education writers, is the kind of thing I used to post on my blog before it became all earthquake, all the time. Sigh. I miss my life.

Heartline Blog

Please read what John and Beth McHoul are posting and donate to Heartline.

War

When we picked my husband up at the airport on Saturday night, there were two soldiers on the plane. One of the families had a sign welcoming back "Daddy, our hero."

I'm not in the habit of using the words "hero" or "honor" or that type of thing - I don't think most people in my generation are, unless they are being ironic. (Or if they are in the military, and I recognize that that is a completely different culture of which I have little knowledge.) And yet I felt an affinity with that family welcoming back their soldier husband and father.

I have felt in these few weeks as I imagine the wife of a deployed soldier would feel. Oh, I know there are many differences. Nobody was pointing guns at my husband, and he wasn't fighting. We were apart for weeks, not years (though we don't know how long the separation will stretch on once he goes back.) Another difference is that most spouses of a deployed soldier haven't lived in Iraq or Afghanistan, while I have lived for years in Haiti. That one works both ways - I care a lot about individuals in Haiti, which makes it difficult to be away, but on the other hand I don't see Haitians as scary or threatening, the way a military spouse probably sees the people that the soldier is dealing with.

But the similarities are there too. We are living very different lives, having different experiences that sometimes make it hard to feel a connection between us. I don't want to bother my husband with things that will distract him or make his job more difficult. I miss him. I'm proud of what he is doing.

I'm still hesitant to use the word "hero." (See how I can't even write it without putting it in quotes?) But I am so very proud of the people I know in Haiti, the way they are dealing with this situation. They are jumping in and doing what needs to be done in so many ways, whether pulling people out of rubble or setting up a clinic in their home or feeding people in their yard or interpreting or teaching in a one-room schoolhouse or drinking the first glass of water from an improvised filtering system so that the people around would know it was safe. Our alumni both in and out of Haiti have been amazing, volunteering in hospitals, donating huge amounts of money and supplies, doing concerts for relief, organizing fund-raising. They are facing the new reality with courage and faith and even humor, even though many of them have faced huge losses. It really is inspiring.

Somehow it helps me to think about this whole disaster as a war. It's way too big for me to think about all at once. It will go on a long time. Like the wars I've read about in history, it has caught people in all different situations - some in, some out, some in action, some on the home front. The only constant is that you have to respond to your circumstances with courage. You have to live one day at a time and do what needs to be done. You have to know there is a future, but you don't know what it is. You have to support the troops. (Of course I know there are real wars being fought right now, too, and back when I used to be a news junkie, I used to follow them pretty closely - but right now I can't.)

Back in 2008 when Haiti was hit by damaging hurricanes, I posted a link to C. S. Lewis' essay "Learning in Wartime." (Or I tried to - I had a hard time getting a link to work but at that post there are some instructions to find it.) This has been circulated again this time. I have it on my desktop and find it comforting to read it. For "the war" in the quote below, read "the earthquake."

The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with "normal life". Life has never been normal.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Lewis' sanity is a huge boost to me in my time of war.

The Earth Still Rings

Tiel Aisha Ansara wrote an earthquake poem.

Friday Night

My husband is in Florida. We talked on the phone this evening and tomorrow he will come to where we are to spend a few days with us before going back to Haiti. He said it feels strange to be there, to see so many people going about their normal lives as though the world had not fallen down. However, his cab driver was from Haiti and thanked him for helping out and a woman in a store, hearing where my husband had come from, teared up and said that a friend of hers was there and still had not been found. Florida is filled with people from Haiti and people with connections to Haiti.

Everyone keeps asking me what I think about those "American missionaries" who are in jail in Haiti tonight on kidnapping charges. Their story was the only thing about Haiti in the local paper today. I am furious at them for taking the focus off of where it should be: the suffering of the Haitian people and their incredible courage in the face of adversity. (No, adversity is too mild a word. Agony.)

Beyond that, I am willing to accept that these people had good motives. They probably really wanted to make life better for some Haitian children. On a good day in Haiti, you see kids you'd like to rescue. But you don't rescue them by luring them from their parents and taking them over the border without papers. You do things within the law.

I know for a fact that these people were advised that what they were doing was wrong. (Here is an article with some more information. And here's another - if you can't read all three pages of it, go to the main newspaper site and click on the link to the article.) So while I can't fault their desire to help kids, I do fault them for not listening to counsel from others. This is not a time for people to go have a madcap adventure - this is serious. We have to be wise. These are human beings and Haiti is a sovereign nation.

Perhaps I am being too vehement about this. I certainly do not wish prison on anyone, and particularly not prison in Haiti after an earthquake. I do not know all the details of what happened and I do not know the hearts of these people. I do know that having the words "missionaries" and "trafficking" in the same headline is not a good thing.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I finally read a book, the first one since the earthquake. I chose one that I knew very well (I first remember reading it as a seven year old in boarding school and have read it many times since), and also one that my daughter and I talked about the night of the earthquake as we tried to sleep on the soccer field: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Chapter Twelve is called "The Dark Island." The Dawn Treader sails towards what at first they think is a dark mountain. Later "they could see that it was not land at all, nor even, in an ordinary sense, a mist. It was a darkness." It turns out that this is the island where dreams come true. At first the sailors are excited by this and begin suggesting things that will happen once they arrive. The haggard, terrified man they have picked up says to them, "'Fools!...That is the sort of talk that brought me here....Do you hear what I say? This is where dreams - dreams, do you understand - come to life, come real. Not daydreams: dreams." The people on board begin to think of various nightmares they have had and turn to sail out of the darkness. There comes a moment when they have been sailing out longer than they sailed in, and they start to wonder if they will ever escape from the darkness, or if they will be trapped there forever.

Lucy leant her head on the edge of the fighting-top and whispered, "Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now." The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little - a very, very little - better. "After all, nothing has really happened to us yet," she thought.

"Look!" cried Rynelf's voice hoarsely from the bows. There was a tiny speck of light ahead, and while they watched, a broad beam of light fell from it upon the ship. It did not alter the surrounded darkness, but the whole ship was lit up as if by searchlight. Caspian blinked, stared round, saw the faces of his companions all with wild, fixed expressions. Everyone was staring in the same direction: behind everyone lay his black, sharply edged shadow.

Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, "Courage, dear heart," and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan's, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.

When I said to my daughter that night, "Courage, dear heart," she knew exactly what I meant and I think she felt a little - a very, very little - better.

So that was Book #3 of 2010.

(Books #1 and #2, which I read in those far-off pre-earthquake days and can hardly remember, were Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin and Nightlight: A Parody by the Harvard Lampoon.)

This post is linked to the February 6th Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon.

Unemployed Teacher

I used to be a teacher, and I hope I will be again, but right now I feel a pain in my stomach every time I get my weekly NCTE Inbox email (NCTE = National Council of Teachers of English) or a message from Scholastic (especially the one headed "Teacher Update: Black History, Presidents, & Haiti Crisis (Grades 6-8)." Thanks, Scholastic, but I'm having my own Haiti Crisis here, and part of it does involve those particular grade levels!

I have spoken to a couple of middle school groups about the earthquake and they make me miss my own students so much. My maddening, funny, boisterous, noisy, bored, excited, crazy kids. I hope they all knew how much I loved them, even when I was moving them to new seats because they wouldn't stop talking or meeting with their parents or giving them homework (always "too much," in their opinion).

Today on my calendar it says "7th grade Bake Sale." I never even got to the stage of emailing the parents about it; the date had been put on the calendar the day before the quake, I think. I am always responsible for 7th grade bake sales because of being 7th grade homeroom teacher, and I always complained about them: the noise, the confusion, the weeks it took to get all the Tupperware and crumbs (and resulting ants) out of my classroom. But oh, how I wish I could have that bake sale today, that all of this would be a horrible nightmare and I could be griping about who didn't bring a cake knife and who spilled soda on the floor.

How to Talk to an Earthquake Refugee

I've been talking to a lot of my friends who are in the same position I am. Sent to the United States while their husbands remain behind in Haiti. Not much of an opportunity to say goodbye. Carrying only a small bag. Very little chance so far to process anything with their husbands about this whole experience.

Obviously the only person I can really speak for is myself, but I'm going to use "we" in this post anyway, because I'm finding more and more that we have many of the same feelings. There may be people who feel totally differently, and to them I say, get your own blog. :-)

One thing we are feeling is guilt. Survivors' guilt because we are alive when so many are not. For some of us, guilt that our losses were so much less than those of our friends and neighbors: our children are uninjured, our houses still standing. (Others spent time in the rubble of collapsed buildings and are recovering from injuries.) We feel guilt that we left Haiti, even though at some level we think we did the right thing for our children. Guilt that we even had the option to leave, and that we are now taking hot showers, eating plenty of food, sleeping indoors.

We want to explain ourselves, to justify the decisions we've made. Someone in Haiti said, for example, that I left because I was afraid. I was afraid but I don't think that was the main reason I left - and yet my voice trails off, because what is the point of making myself feel better when so many are in desperate straits?

We are having trouble focusing and dealing with the details of everyday life. Many of us can't read much, even though we have the time to do that now. We are struggling with the loss of our jobs, which we have poured our energies into over, in some cases, many years.

We are feeling so far away from our homes, our husbands, our friends, our lives. We love Haiti and we feel we abandoned our posts. We want to know all the details, but we fear distracting our husbands from the important work they are doing. And we feel guilty for worrying about our own needs when so many others have needs far beyond ours.

Some of us have been evacuated before, from Haiti or other countries, and some of us have stayed behind when others have been evacuated. All of us deal with the consequences of previous evacuations even if we didn't live through them, because they have affected our community, making people more cautious about friendships, in some cases causing mistrust and bitterness.

We are dealing with our children's reactions to what they have been through, and wondering what is normal kid stuff and what is related to trauma. We are trying to answer their questions honestly but without too much detail. We wonder how this will affect them in the long term.

We are grieving, filled with pain for our friends and neighbors. Some of us don't even know yet what has happened to everyone we care about.

Yes, we're glad we are safe and alive, but we are terribly torn; we wonder what we are doing here. This isn't what we had planned.

In spite of my title, I don't really have any good advice about how to talk to an earthquake refugee. There's nothing you can say that will make it all better. But what has touched and comforted me has been the way people have reached out to me. Many of them say, "I don't know what to say," and yet the fact that they say something is wonderful. You may not have been through a devastating earthquake in a third world country, but you have been through stuff. Tell me how God met you then. Tell me that you care, that you're praying.

So many people have done this for me. I will always be grateful for the love and care I have been shown in this most terrible time. Already I am feeling more hopeful, believing there will be a future, even though I do not know anything about how it will look.