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.

A Litany for Haiti

Posted by Sarah at Sister Sarah's Excellent Adventure

God of infinite mercy, who calls forth order out of chaos, peace out of turmoil, calm out of fear, we come before you aching and tender, crying out for Haiti and her people, saying, We lift our prayers to you, O God: You are the hope of all Creation.

We pray for Haiti, land of mountains and sea, where the very earth has shifted. May her tremors cease. May her tumult end. We pray for her people, shattered yet courageous, frightened yet bold, destitute and longing for relief. May their voice be heard. May their need be met. We lift our prayers to you, O God.

You are the hope of all Creation.


We pray for the injured, broken and lost: thirsting for clean water, hungry for food, stripped of shelter, desperate for medical care; they look to the world for hope. May their dry mouths find drink, their empty bellies find food, their families find cover, and their bodies find health. We lift our prayers to you, O God.

You are the hope of all Creation.


We pray for rescuers, those who do the work of recovery, laboring in the midst of agony; for healers, doctors, nurses, and all who tend those wounded in body, mind, or spirit. May their hands be steady, may their resolve be sure. May their work be filled with grace. We lift our prayers to you, O God.

You are the hope of all Creation.


We pray for the dying and those who have died, whose frail bodies now line the city streets. May mercy be abundant. May death have dignity. May they never be forgotten. We lift our prayers to you, O God.

You are the hope of all Creation.


We pray for the global community, grieving and responding in love. May our action be swift. May our purpose be certain. May our devotion endure. We lift our prayers to you, O God.

You are the hope of all Creation.


We pray for the days to come, the future, and the promise of what lies ahead. May new roads be paved; new industry be born; new fortunes rise; and new friendships sustained. We lift our prayers to you, O God.

You are the hope of all Creation.
- - - - -
God of compassion, now let us answer your call and respond to our sister Haiti through steadfast commitment, diligence in prayer, charity in action, and constancy in hope. Her needs are deep and ours is a land of plenty. With open hand and open heart may our prayers be known in the eager generosity of our giving. In your holy name we pray. Amen.

Abiding God, your light is ever present with us, piercing through the darkness of tragedy. We give you thanks for the bright beacon of hope found when your people join together for the welfare of all. And now, when all seems dark, illuminate for the world your vision of hope, dignity, and life abundant set forth for Haiti from the beginning of creation. In your light all shall be revealed and all shall be made whole. Amen.

Litany by Wendy Tobias, Carol Wade and Alexandra Zepeda, from Strength Through Unity: A Service of Prayer for Haiti on Jan. 17 at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C

Running the Race

Haiti was a difficult place before the earthquake. In November I wrote a post about emergencies, trying to encourage people to give to the Heartline Runners, who were doing a marathon to raise money to buy an ambulance for the birthing center at Heartline Ministries. Not all of the Haiti runners had even returned home by the time the earthquake happened.

Everything I said then about emergencies, about how your regular ways of figuring things out fall apart in a time of crisis, is a million times more true now. Heartline Ministries is now an earthquake relief clinic. (At that link you will find links to many of the people updating on the situation.) I have been sending many of my La Leche League contacts to Heartline when they are looking for an organization to donate to, since Heartline has been doing so much great work with pregnant women and new moms for a long time.

Tara, one of the Heartline Runners and a friend of mine, gave an interview to EndurancePlanet.com about running and living in Haiti and life since the earthquake. It is well worth listening to. She talks in it about going running for the first time after the world fell apart and here you can read what she wrote about that. (Tara is the real deal. She has been blogging for a long time, being very open and vulnerable about the struggles of living in Haiti. She loves Haiti and you can hear it in her voice as she talks in the interview.)

The interview makes a comparison between what Tara and Haiti are living through right now and a race; in a race you have to focus on the next step and not think about what comes after that. I think those of us who live in Haiti thought we were living like that all along, but it turns out that we had dreams and plans for the future, and now all of that is uncertain. All we can do is the next thing in front of us.

For me, today, that is American laundry. Things fall apart, but people still need to wear clean clothes if possible.

Haiti: A Survivor's Story

Article here.

Places I Loved

It's hard to be in two places at once, your body in one and your heart in the other. I know something about this already because I'm a TCK. For TCKs, there's always somewhere to miss. But now I feel this with a new intensity. I need to be where I am, for my children, but I want so much to be there, in Haiti, for my husband and my students and my friends.

It is impossible not to wonder about places and what has happened to them. Today I started to do some Googling and found out some things I didn't really want to know. Of course places are not as important as people, and we grieve most for the human lives lost and changed forever. But there are also some places I loved that I wanted to know about.

Apparently some people think that Port-au-Prince wasn't much to start with, but it had many beautiful buildings in it and one of those was the Episcopal Cathedral, Sainte Trinité. What I loved most about it were the murals on the walls, scenes from the Bible set in a Haitian context. Jesus' Triumphal Entry into - not Jerusalem, but Port-au-Prince. The Wedding at Cana with women in the background hanging up laundry and pigs running around. Here is a photo of the crucifixion mural. This blog post contains some before and after photos of the cathedral.

Here's an article about the main art museum in Port-au-Prince, and here's a report from the ICOM (International Council of Museums on the state of other museums.

Shortly after the quake I got an email about damage to libraries throughout the city, including priceless collections from the early years of Haiti, some dating back to the 16th century. An organization called Bibliothèques sans Frontières is trying to offer aid to help with this. I haven't ever been to most of the libraries listed in the email, but the loss of documents and history and books makes me sad.

I found this post about what happened to the Cyvadier Hotel in Jacmel, where we spent many happy days.

None of these places, I repeat, is as important as the loss of human life, but to put it in perspective, imagine the National Cathedral in Washington DC leveled, the Smithsonian gone, the Library of Congress destroyed. Think of the place you last had a vacation, half fallen.

And then imagine being a thousand miles away, wondering and looking for photos, hoping you'll see that everything is all right, and then finding out that it's really not.

Too Many Stories

Three weeks today since the earthquake, the day my whole world changed.

Last night I spoke to a middle school youth group. The kids were completely silent, focused on what I was saying. Believe me, it's not my great skill with kids - I know much better than that. I just have an interesting story to tell. And I don't mean that in a good way.

You have to understand that I already had a lot of interesting stories. I have already been through difficult times over and over again in Haiti. Here's what I sent out as our Christmas letter in 2007 (edited to leave out names because I'm still fooling myself on this whole anonymity thing):

We were going to a party. We were supposed to be celebrating Christmas, singing Christmas carols around the piano, eating soup and bread and delicious desserts. We had a parcel of warm bread in the back seat between the children. At the end of a week of work, we were ready to be festive.

Instead, though, of the idyllic scene we'd pictured at the beginning of our journey, we were sitting by the side of the road with steam pouring out from under our hood. Cars and trucks barreled past in both directions, oblivious to our problem. It was already dark.

We'd just have to sit there and let the radiator cool down. We didn't have any water to speed up the process. So we sat.

After a while a man walked by on our right and I greeted him. He inquired about the state of our health. I asked if he had any water. He asked if we were willing to buy some and we said we were. He came back in a few minutes with much less than half a bucket and we paid him about a dollar. My husband poured it into the radiator but it didn't make enough of a difference to set us on our way.

We sat some more.

The children were a little upset; S said that he was sad we were never going to make it to the party. I tried to be cheerful and called it an adventure. We recently read The Silver Chair together, so we talked for a few minutes about Puddleglum's views on the subject - "We'll all end up knifing one another, I shouldn't wonder - that's what happens on adventures." We looked at the sky, completely clear and filled with an infinity of stars, visible in the gaps between the roaring vehicles passing.

"Well, Z," I said, "Every missionary kid has to have some breakdown stories."

She could see that, but remarked that she already had enough of those. We reminisced a little about breakdowns we had known. Some of them had been in this very car. She was right - we had enough of those stories already.

After a while a woman pulled up. She said she saw we had children in the car, and she saw we weren't in our own country. Could she help us? She went and brought us a decent amount of water, and then the two guys with her helped push the car backwards to start it. She refused to accept any payment, even for the water. No, no, no, she had been happy to do it.

We drove away, feeling cheered, and made it to our party without further adventure and without anyone getting knifed.

Everyone needs some stories, but don't we all have enough already? And aren't we tired, as another Christmas comes, of dealing with the same breakdowns we've already gone through again and again? "Everything happens for a reason," people say, and no doubt they're right, but there are days when we just want to know the reason already. Lord, if there's something I'm supposed to be learning here, could we just get it over with so we can go to the party?

I don't know why things are so hard sometimes, but as we sat there on that mountain road and looked at the stars, and as we added yet another breakdown story to our and our children's repertoire, and experienced once again the grace of a Haitian person full of unexpected kindness, I thought about Christmas. It comes every year in the middle of our work and worry, into our unpredictable and often unwanted adventures. It reminds us of how Christ entered our world, entered the mess and repetitiveness of our existence, entered our lives. It reminds us of how He makes our stories have meaning, of how He sends us help in our breakdowns, of whatever variety. He is the Reason for the Season, we say, but more than that, He's the reason for all of it, the reason we keep getting up in the morning and going back to that classroom or that computer or that sick child or whatever we have to face that day.

This year is ending, with its stories, and another one is coming. Many of the stories this year have been sad, but many have been happy, as well. No doubt the same will be true for 2008. We wish you a wonderful new year with plenty of festivity and with the strength you need to meet each day. And all the new stories.

"Things are so hard" sounds like a joke now, and every challenge we have ever faced seems trivial, but I am trying to hold on to what I said here - how Jesus gives our stories meaning. Maybe some day I will see some meaning in all of this.

Questions, by Steven Curtis Chapman

Who are You God
For You are turning out to be
So much different than I imagined

And where are You God
Cause I am finding life to be
So much harder than I had planned

You know that I'm afraid
To ask these questions
But You know they are there

And if You know my heart
The way that I believe You do
You know that I believe in You
Still I have these questions

Like how could You God
How could You be so good and strong
And make a world that can be so painful

And where were You God
I know You had to be right there
I know You never turn Your head

You know that I’m confused
By all this mystery
You know I get afraid
But if You know my heart
As completely as I trust You do
Oh You know that I trust in You

Is it true
that for every tear I cry
You cry a thousand more
Cause You weep for those that weep

And are You just holding yourself back
From crushing all the pain and evil in this world
For reasons we just can't understand for now
But isn’t there a day of redemption coming
Redemption is coming

Quickly Lord, come quickly
Lord, come quickly

So who am I God
That You would raise me from the dust
To breathe Your life and Your love in me
You know that I believe

"Questions," by Steven Curtis Chapman

Edwidge Danticat on the Earthquake

Here.

Bruise

My son has a big bruise on his knee. The first time I noticed it was when he was taking a bath when we got to the States - his first bath since the earthquake. I asked him what it was from and he said he got it when he fell, when the earth shook.

He was playing tetherball with his friend when the earthquake happened. He fell to the ground and suddenly a crack opened up next to him. He thought it was going to keep opening up and perhaps swallow him, so he jumped up and ran away.

He has a bruise on his knee. Every time I see it I think, I could have lost him. So many mothers have lost their children, and yet mine are alive and healthy. Just a bruise to show for what they experienced.

We all have bruises on our hearts. You can't see them but they are there. Those will take longer to heal. They will never go away completely.

Poetry Friday: Hotel Montana

Back in February 2006, those of us in Haiti thought things were scary. Little did we know what scary even meant. One of the events that month involved a crowd marching up to the Hotel Montana and storming it to protest election results. Here's a news story with some details about what happened that day.

This poem, which I wrote at the time, is not at all intended to be a political statement; I just started to imagine what it must have been like for someone from Cité Soleil to see the beautiful place that was the Hotel Montana. The poem does have some political overtones but I hope they won't bring back any bad memories of those times. The last thing I want to do is cause pain to anyone in Haiti, so please read this poem as simply a tribute to Hotel Montana and to how beautiful it was.

I have many other memories of the Hotel Montana. I never stayed there, but a friend spent her wedding night there. I've eaten there many times. I swam in that famous pool. And just a few weeks ago I went to the beautiful new plaza they were building. Journalists used to stay there and do their reports from the roof, with its wonderful view of the city and the bay.

Today it is smashed, crushed, gone. And the Hotel Montana is only one place that was destroyed, one of so many. So many people are gone too. And for those who are left, lives that were already hard are infinitely harder.





Hotel Montana, February 13th, 2006

by Ruth, of thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

After we had marched all day
Shouting about voting and chanting the name written on our T-shirts
We came to Heaven.
It was just as I had always imagined it -
The big gates that we had to push on,
Fighting to get into the celestial city
(We who come from the city of the sun).
And when we got in
You would hardly believe how beautiful it was.
There was a pool
Like the ocean but clean,
Blue like a huge Culligan bottle
How many buckets were carried on how many heads to fill that pool?
Maybe the angels did it.

And then I jumped in
And the water frothed with joy as we splashed it on each other
And some people reclined on heavenly deck chairs
And some explored the many mansions.
After a while they threw us out, so
I guess it wasn't really Heaven.

They always used to say that democracy was a flood
But the flood washes everything down the mountain
(Down to us in the city of the sun),
All the debris from other lives in better places.
If I had my choice, I'd pick a democracy like that pool,
Where everyone could jump in
To cool off from the heat of the sun
And you wouldn't have to shove your way in
And no one would shriek and rush to drain the pool
And you could play in the water instead of carrying it all the time.



Here's an article about the collapse of the Montana, including some photos of what it used to be like.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is here.

Today

Right after I got here, I went to see a friend, and we mostly talked about Haiti but then we talked for about ten minutes about books. It felt so good to talk about something normal, but then I immediately felt guilty. How could I stop thinking about Haiti for ten minutes?

I'm learning that it's OK to have those brief minutes of normal and, in fact, that I should even enjoy them. It doesn't mean I've forgotten. The grief is still there, and it comes at me in waves, and it's huge and bottomless. Sometimes getting that little tiny break from it, maybe even laughing at something or thinking that something is beautiful, is OK. It just has to be.

So I had a pretty good day today. I had lunch with a friend. She and I talked a lot about Haiti, but we also talked about a couple of other things. She made me smile. We went to a bookstore. I still can't read books, but just going to a bookstore is progress. I got some packages. One of the ladies from North Carolina who was with us after the earthquake sent a bunch of clothes and fun stuff for my son, and she also put in a photo she had taken of my husband and had framed. That made me smile, too.

I also cried a lot today. That's just a given. I miss Haiti. I miss the Haiti that used to be. I miss my husband. I miss my students and my job and my life. I miss my friends. I grieve for those who are dead, for those who have lost limbs, for all who suffer. I grieve for all that is lost and will never be again, for the hopes that were taken away.

So that was today.

Beauty Will Rise



More on Loss

I keep remembering more things about that last day of normal. After school, my son handed me his papers, and on one of them (a handwriting sheet) he had written: "I am sad."

I asked him more about this, and it turned out that he had lost a tooth. It had fallen on the ground and nobody could find it. He was sad that his tooth was gone and that the Tooth Fairy might not give him what was rightfully his.

At the time, this was a loss that mattered to him, and so it mattered to me.

This morning I have been translating adoption documents, and in my current frame of mind what stands out to me is how much loss these children have suffered. Death certificates of parents, certificates of abandonment...it feels too much to bear in the context of so many children in Haiti who have now lost everything and everyone. These children, named in these documents, are so blessed to be being adopted by some of the finest people I know. What will happen to all the others?

These are losses that matter. Every life lost, every child left without parents, every dream that has died, buried under the rubble of an earthquake.

These losses matter to me. I believe they matter to God. I believe his heart is filled with pain, just as our hearts are, the hearts of all of us who love Haiti.

Night and Day

I thought I should write a post in the morning, when everything looks better. I'm not always in the depths of gloom. There are good things happening in the middle of all the horror.

It helps a lot to have something to do. I am used to being busy. What I wouldn't give for a pile of student papers to complain over! But today I have something useful; some friends started their adoptions in Haiti and now the earthquake has changed everything. The children are in the United States and their parents (one here with them, the other still in Haiti) are scrambling to do the adoption in English instead of French. I started translating some of their documents last night. Something I can do and do well.

My children are well and mostly happy. They are getting to spend time with their grandparents. They love the well-stocked libraries here. They are even getting to see snow (my daughter last saw snow when she was two years old and my son never has seen it). I laughed at my son yesterday as he was putting on gloves for the first time in his life. When he put on the second one, he was having trouble with it, and he sighed deeply and said, "This always happens!" (Always, as in, it happened with the first hand. He now has a lot of experience in the putting on of gloves, having done it once.)

I am seeing and spending time with dear friends who are taking care of me so well. Occasionally I even get to talk to my husband for a few minutes, or get an email from him of a few words. He is keeping busy and in some ways, I think it's actually easier for him and for the others in Haiti doing something about the situation, than it is for me. Yes, they are under huge amounts of stress and conditions are difficult, but at least they are contributing to something.

I am gradually getting to talk to friends from Haiti and hear their stories, either on the phone or online. These are wrenching and yet I know we need to talk about them. I talked to some friends yesterday who are going through their second evacuation, having left Rwanda during the genocide in 1994. Grief upon grief. Their kids are now grown, and we talked about how they handled things with them at that previous evacuation. It's the kind of thing nobody wants to have experience with, but at least their experience may help me now.

I see my students emerging on Facebook - yes, I'm Facebook friends with some of my students, which in happier days would have been a good subject for a post - writing things in Kreyol about how sad they are to leave their home or in English about their new schools, and how much they miss their real school in Haiti. But others are talking to their friends, even joking around a little. Yesterday I saw an exchange of insults among three of my students, and it made me a little happy. I know we are all mourning, but it's good to see some signs of ordinary teenage life from time to time.

I am hearing about how many people want to help. I hope it lasts; this is a long-term project we're dealing with here. Haiti is destroyed and must be rebuilt. The problems could hardly be exaggerated. And that's where my mind often seems to end up, especially at night.

Night is the worst, as it was when I was still at home. At least now I am sleeping better. I go to sleep with earbuds in my ears, listening to Greg Boyd or somebody else talking about God's love and goodness. I mostly sleep through the whole night now. I try not to lie awake thinking, but instead stay up as late as I can so that I am completely exhausted.

The sun always comes up in the morning, though, no matter how long the night is. Life goes on. It has to, for those of us who are left.

Leaving Haiti

I told my friend and employee that we were going to leave, and she cried. That was one of the worst moments. When I say "my friend and employee" it might sound strange. O. has been working in our home since we first moved to Haiti; I feel that we have grown up together. She helped me with my babies; I helped her with hers. We help each other in many ways. Our friendship is one of the things that gives me the most joy in my life in Haiti. But her story is not mine to tell.

We packed our bags. My children don't even own pants that go all the way to their ankles. (Trousers, for the British people I understand are now reading here!) We live in shorts and capri pants. We found the warmest outfits we could. My son wanted to pack his boxed Junie B. Jones set but I talked him out of that. My daughter was sad that she hadn't read all her Christmas books. I thought of photo albums, but realized that this is not permanent; I will be back to my home.

We stopped by the school in the morning and I said a few goodbyes. There was a lot of crying and hugging. My daughter went to her locker and got out a few precious keepsakes.

I worried about our drive to the airport, about what the children would see and whether I should shield their eyes. It turned out that they saw some terrible destruction of buildings, but there were no bodies visible. The bakery up the street from our house was open; that meant that they had worked all night. People were selling fresh bread out of large bags. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere; many people had Vaseline or toothpaste smeared under their noses to help them deal with the smell in the street. There was more activity than I had expected. It was difficult to look at the devastation of so many buildings. Many were flattened. Others seemed to have nothing wrong with them.

We saw some American friends who were still figuring out what they were going to do, and talked about what we had experienced, what stories we had heard. The same thing happened at the airport; as we waited in the damaged building with ceiling tiles and pieces of rebar hanging down, we shared stories. This is what we heard; this is what happened; this is who is all right and who is not. Whenever I saw a familiar face I would burst into tears. The new greeting was: I'm so glad you are alive. How is your family? How is your house?

I don't know how long we waited but eventually we took off. I felt I was escaping, running away, abandoning my friends and people I love. But as soon as I was sitting still in the seat of the airplane, with nothing else to do or think about, I fell asleep. I woke as we landed in the Bahamas; as the landing shook the plane, I thought I was in another earthquake.

It's all a blur: Florida, a rental car to Orlando, flying north on a ticket purchased by strangers. Hours in Atlanta; thankfully the television was showing a football game instead of the usually ubiquitous CNN, but an ad for the Red Cross came on with earthquake footage and I hid the children's eyes. People around were discussing jet lag. The woman across from us commented that I looked exhausted and I told her we had just come from Haiti. Everyone got quiet, as though our story trumped anything they could tell. The woman said that she had just come back from a cruise, and that when they had passed by Haiti, the captain had asked everyone for a moment of silence. Another flight.

And finally we were there; my dad was at the airport and we drove home through the streets of a different world from the one we had left that morning.

God-forsaken?

Coming to the United States from Haiti is always like coming to another planet. I've written about this many times; for example, here. When looking at the way people live, it's always difficult to think about the fact that not only do these two places exist on the same planet, but they aren't actually that far away from one another.

Those feelings are all magnified hundreds of times now. Instead of another planet, I have journeyed to another universe. Whatever progress Haiti was making has been demolished in less than a minute. Our lives have been changed forever. People who were already struggling to have basic necessities are in even more dire need. Haiti has always been challenging, but it has also been beautiful, and quirky, and fun. It has been colorful and never, ever dull. Now it seems simply broken, destroyed. Forsaken.

The title of my blog mocks me now. Is it really true that there's no such thing as a God-forsaken town? Is Port-au-Prince forsaken by God? Was God really there on January 12th when the earth shook? Is He there now as people suffer? I know the right answers to these questions but it is hard to believe them now.

It hurts me to see people post jokes about Haiti on Facebook, offering to donate unwanted politicians to help Haiti have a government, even consigning people they don't like to Haiti, where once they might have sent them somewhere else starting with H. As though the pain of Haiti really is in another world, felt by beings whose suffering matters less.

I must still believe, because I keep praying. Hymns comfort me, bypassing my brain and going straight to my heart. The faith of others buoys me, and I know at a deep level that God is present in the hands of those who do His work of healing and restoration. My counselor says I'm not losing my faith, that all my questioning is a normal part of the grieving I'm going through.

I think of the words of a friend at a retreat I went to in the fall. She was talking of her problems with back pain, a trouble that had sent her to bed for ten weeks. She questioned everything she thought she knew about healing, about God's purposes for her life. She finally came to the end of herself, and let go. She couldn't hold on any more. And she said that when that happened, she found out that she wasn't the only one who had been holding on. When she let go and gave up, God still held on to her.

Oh Lord, please keep holding on to me. Please keep holding on to our dear little Haiti, ti Ayiti cheri. Don't forsake us, I beg you.

Prayer of St. Augustine

Sent to me by my dear friend Janet.


God of our life,
there are days when the burdens we carry
chafe our shoulders and weigh us down;
when the road seems dreary and endless,
the skies gray and threatening;
when our lives have no music in them,
and our hearts are lonely,
and our souls have lost their courage.
Flood the path with light,
run our eyes to where
the skies are full of promise;
tune our hearts to brave music;
give us the sense of comradeship
with heroes and saints of every age;
and so quicken our spirits
that we may be able to encourage
the souls of all who journey with us
on the road of life, to your honor and glory.

Teens' Perspectives on the Earthquake

Article here.

Music Helps Lift Haitians' Spirits

NPR story here.