2 hours ago
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Still Missing
You know, I'm trying really hard to keep this in perspective. It's not a human life that's lost. But in spite of all my searching, I still haven't found the binder with all my daily lesson plans in it from the last three years. I don't just use the same lesson plans year after year, but you bet I look back to see how I handled it last year, and what worked and what didn't. I have a self-created form that I fill out for each of my classes each week, and every semester I file away all of those forms in order in a binder. Do you think it comes naturally to me to be this organized? I assure you, it doesn't. I feel like I am going to be starting from scratch, and I am not at all happy about the prospect.
Thoughts over Lunch
After a morning of work, there's nothing like a great lunch. Haitian food is wonderful: spicy, with lots of garlic and oil. Today we had mayi moulen and sos pwa - corn meal and bean sauce. (Corey calls mayi moulen, which she spells the French way, maïs moulin, "Haitian polenta," and here's her recipe for it. She also has a recipe for sos pwa here.) It was delicious. There was a long line of people at the Snack Shop to be fed; right now there is a lot of work being done on campus - painting, fixing, electrical work - and everyone who works, eats.
It's not possible to eat a delicious lunch, though, without thinking of those who aren't eating today. Or those who will eat, but only because they will spend most of the day trying to make that happen. Before the earthquake there were plenty of people in this city whose daily job was to make sure there was food for their family. I've always thought it was interesting that a frequently-used Kreyol expression for eating is jwenn manje, "find food." As in a conversation with a Haitian friend where we were talking about getting toddlers to eat, something mothers in all cultures talk about, I guess; she said it wasn't such a big deal for kids who find food every day, but for children who don't always, the mothers had to be really careful to make sure they ate properly when there was food.
Here are an article and video, called "City of Zombies," that describe a little bit about what it's like to go out each morning in search of food for that day. And it's not as though that is the only problem the people in the story are facing.
Give us each day our daily bread.
It's not possible to eat a delicious lunch, though, without thinking of those who aren't eating today. Or those who will eat, but only because they will spend most of the day trying to make that happen. Before the earthquake there were plenty of people in this city whose daily job was to make sure there was food for their family. I've always thought it was interesting that a frequently-used Kreyol expression for eating is jwenn manje, "find food." As in a conversation with a Haitian friend where we were talking about getting toddlers to eat, something mothers in all cultures talk about, I guess; she said it wasn't such a big deal for kids who find food every day, but for children who don't always, the mothers had to be really careful to make sure they ate properly when there was food.
Here are an article and video, called "City of Zombies," that describe a little bit about what it's like to go out each morning in search of food for that day. And it's not as though that is the only problem the people in the story are facing.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Kingdom Comes
by Sara Groves
When anger fills your heart
When in your pain and hurt
You find the strength to stop
You bless instead of curse
When doubting floods your soul
Though all things feel unjust
You open up your heart
You find a way to trust
That's a little stone that's a little mortar
That's a little seed that's a little water
In the hearts of the sons and the daughters
The kingdom's coming
When fear engulfs your mind
Says you protect your own
You still extend your hand
You open up your home
When sorrow fills your life
When in your grief and pain
You choose again to rise
You choose to bless the name
That's a little stone that's a little mortar
That's a little seed that's a little water
In the hearts of the sons and the daughters
The kingdom's coming
In the mundane tasks of living
In the pouring out and giving
In the waking up and trying
In the laying down and dying
That's a little stone that's a little mortar
That's a little seed that's a little water
In the hearts of the sons and the daughters
The kingdom's coming
When anger fills your heart
When in your pain and hurt
You find the strength to stop
You bless instead of curse
When doubting floods your soul
Though all things feel unjust
You open up your heart
You find a way to trust
That's a little stone that's a little mortar
That's a little seed that's a little water
In the hearts of the sons and the daughters
The kingdom's coming
When fear engulfs your mind
Says you protect your own
You still extend your hand
You open up your home
When sorrow fills your life
When in your grief and pain
You choose again to rise
You choose to bless the name
That's a little stone that's a little mortar
That's a little seed that's a little water
In the hearts of the sons and the daughters
The kingdom's coming
In the mundane tasks of living
In the pouring out and giving
In the waking up and trying
In the laying down and dying
That's a little stone that's a little mortar
That's a little seed that's a little water
In the hearts of the sons and the daughters
The kingdom's coming
Monday, July 26, 2010
Tent Cities
Sunday, July 25, 2010
John Seabrook on Adoption, and Me on Being a TCK
One thing I have discovered upon coming home is the huge pile of magazines to be read - six months is a long time to accumulate magazines, especially The New Yorker, which is weekly. I will never catch up with reading all of these.
There was one article, though, that I really wanted to read, in the May 10th issue, and this morning I finished it. You can read it online here, but for some reason I hadn't. It's an article about a Haitian adoption, expedited by the earthquake.
I had read about this article on adoption blogs, especially this one and this one. At that second link, you can find Seabrook commenting, and getting raked over the coals by adult adoptees.
The more I read about adoption, the more I realize how deeply painful it so often is. It seems that adult adoptees are good people to talk to if you are going to adopt, but there is so much defensiveness on the part of adoptive parents, in many cases. I can understand why. In fact, this is one of those situations where I can see everyone's point of view. Adult adoptees have much wisdom to share about what they went through, and adoptive parents are often invested in seeing their adoption as something which was meant to be, and therefore can't be fraught with pain. Seabrook says about seeing his daughter's picture and hearing her name, "It was fate." (Here are some more thoughts on that.)
But there's another reason that I identify so strongly with these adult adoptees, particularly those who were adopted internationally. As I read their stories, I recognize many elements of what it's like to be a TCK, to feel you fit in nowhere, as though both of your cultures exclude you. Talking about how painful that can sometimes be can be seen as being "angry" among TCKs just as it is among adult adoptees.
For a TCK as well as for an adult adoptee, you can feel pain and even anger about your childhood, while not negating the joy of it. Often adult adoptees fear hurting their adoptive parents if they talk about the loss of their first parents, or if they look for their first parents. Often TCKs have the same kind of fear, that if they talk about boarding school or frequent moves or cultural confusion, and how difficult it all sometimes was, their parents will be hurt.
The older I get, the more I am able to accept that both things are true about me.
Yes, I love being a TCK and wouldn't change it. Yes, I enjoyed boarding school and have many happy memories. Yes, I like being a person with two cultures (and the others I've added since).
But also, boarding school was hard and homesickness is terrible and I missed years with my parents. And also, it is not easy to be between cultures and feel like an outsider in both.
John Seabrook's daughter will have some similar feelings, perhaps. I imagine she will be happy to be part of a wonderful family. But I imagine she will also know pain: the loss of her first family; the departure from Haiti in frightening, traumatic circumstances, whether she fully remembers them or not; having dark skin in a white family. I hope she grows up knowing that it's OK to feel both, to accept that life is made up of the good and the bad, the easy and the difficult.
More reading: Tara has great thoughts on this.
There was one article, though, that I really wanted to read, in the May 10th issue, and this morning I finished it. You can read it online here, but for some reason I hadn't. It's an article about a Haitian adoption, expedited by the earthquake.
I had read about this article on adoption blogs, especially this one and this one. At that second link, you can find Seabrook commenting, and getting raked over the coals by adult adoptees.
The more I read about adoption, the more I realize how deeply painful it so often is. It seems that adult adoptees are good people to talk to if you are going to adopt, but there is so much defensiveness on the part of adoptive parents, in many cases. I can understand why. In fact, this is one of those situations where I can see everyone's point of view. Adult adoptees have much wisdom to share about what they went through, and adoptive parents are often invested in seeing their adoption as something which was meant to be, and therefore can't be fraught with pain. Seabrook says about seeing his daughter's picture and hearing her name, "It was fate." (Here are some more thoughts on that.)
But there's another reason that I identify so strongly with these adult adoptees, particularly those who were adopted internationally. As I read their stories, I recognize many elements of what it's like to be a TCK, to feel you fit in nowhere, as though both of your cultures exclude you. Talking about how painful that can sometimes be can be seen as being "angry" among TCKs just as it is among adult adoptees.
For a TCK as well as for an adult adoptee, you can feel pain and even anger about your childhood, while not negating the joy of it. Often adult adoptees fear hurting their adoptive parents if they talk about the loss of their first parents, or if they look for their first parents. Often TCKs have the same kind of fear, that if they talk about boarding school or frequent moves or cultural confusion, and how difficult it all sometimes was, their parents will be hurt.
The older I get, the more I am able to accept that both things are true about me.
Yes, I love being a TCK and wouldn't change it. Yes, I enjoyed boarding school and have many happy memories. Yes, I like being a person with two cultures (and the others I've added since).
But also, boarding school was hard and homesickness is terrible and I missed years with my parents. And also, it is not easy to be between cultures and feel like an outsider in both.
John Seabrook's daughter will have some similar feelings, perhaps. I imagine she will be happy to be part of a wonderful family. But I imagine she will also know pain: the loss of her first family; the departure from Haiti in frightening, traumatic circumstances, whether she fully remembers them or not; having dark skin in a white family. I hope she grows up knowing that it's OK to feel both, to accept that life is made up of the good and the bad, the easy and the difficult.
More reading: Tara has great thoughts on this.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Reading Update
Book #37 was Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, a book of essays from the New Yorker. Gladwell doesn't accept the conventional wisdom just because others say it's so; he is always looking beneath the surface of things. Do FBI profilers really know what they are talking about? Why do women dye their hair? What really motivates risk-taking entrepreneurs? Why doesn't someone make a better ketchup? What did the dog see? I found this book fascinating reading.
Book #38 was The Lady and the Poet, by Maeve Haran. It's the story of the poet John Donne and his wife Ann. Donne wrote some of the most famous love poetry there is, so I was curious to know about his own romance. The problem with books of this kind is that it's hard to know how much is imagined and how much is accurate, but I was caught up in their story.
Book #39 was a read-aloud to my son, The Pepins and their Problems, by Polly Horvath. The Pepins constantly have problems, mostly caused by their complete cluelessness. The author asks her readers to think of solutions and to send them to her telepathically. My son found this book hilarious and it made for perfect bedtime reading.
Book #40 was Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, by Eugene Peterson. This was an absolutely wonderful book, so full of quotable passages that my copy is stuffed with little scraps of paper that I tore up to mark my favorite parts. Peterson explores how we find Christ in creation, in history, and in community. It's all about how we live, not some kind of ethereal "spirituality," all about how beloved we are and how we should love each other. Highly recommended.
Book #41 was a very different one, Anderson Cooper's Dispatches from the Edge. A friend bought me this book back in January when she took me to lunch. We had talked about Anderson Cooper's coverage of Haiti, almost none of which I had seen. I had heard a lot about him from my Haiti contacts, who loved that he stayed in Haiti when other reporters left, and that he came back. (Admittedly, some of what I heard was about how good he looked in his black T-shirts.) In this book Cooper explores some of what drives him. He goes back and forth between his childhood, the loss of his dad and brother, his early reporting jobs with Channel One, and his time in Sarajevo, Rwanda, Somalia, Baghdad, Sri Lanka after the tsunami, and most of all, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. "The map of the world constantly changes," he writes, "new fault lines split open, new frontlines appear. I want to hurl myself into the storm."
This list contains an unusual amount of non-fiction for me. I think it's time for a good novel next.
This post is linked to the July 24th Saturday Review of Books.
Book #38 was The Lady and the Poet, by Maeve Haran. It's the story of the poet John Donne and his wife Ann. Donne wrote some of the most famous love poetry there is, so I was curious to know about his own romance. The problem with books of this kind is that it's hard to know how much is imagined and how much is accurate, but I was caught up in their story.
Book #39 was a read-aloud to my son, The Pepins and their Problems, by Polly Horvath. The Pepins constantly have problems, mostly caused by their complete cluelessness. The author asks her readers to think of solutions and to send them to her telepathically. My son found this book hilarious and it made for perfect bedtime reading.
Book #40 was Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, by Eugene Peterson. This was an absolutely wonderful book, so full of quotable passages that my copy is stuffed with little scraps of paper that I tore up to mark my favorite parts. Peterson explores how we find Christ in creation, in history, and in community. It's all about how we live, not some kind of ethereal "spirituality," all about how beloved we are and how we should love each other. Highly recommended.
Book #41 was a very different one, Anderson Cooper's Dispatches from the Edge. A friend bought me this book back in January when she took me to lunch. We had talked about Anderson Cooper's coverage of Haiti, almost none of which I had seen. I had heard a lot about him from my Haiti contacts, who loved that he stayed in Haiti when other reporters left, and that he came back. (Admittedly, some of what I heard was about how good he looked in his black T-shirts.) In this book Cooper explores some of what drives him. He goes back and forth between his childhood, the loss of his dad and brother, his early reporting jobs with Channel One, and his time in Sarajevo, Rwanda, Somalia, Baghdad, Sri Lanka after the tsunami, and most of all, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. "The map of the world constantly changes," he writes, "new fault lines split open, new frontlines appear. I want to hurl myself into the storm."
This list contains an unusual amount of non-fiction for me. I think it's time for a good novel next.
This post is linked to the July 24th Saturday Review of Books.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Poetry Friday: Although...
“Although the wind ...”
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
by Izumi Shikibu, tr. Jane Hirschfield and Mariko Aratani
Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
by Izumi Shikibu, tr. Jane Hirschfield and Mariko Aratani
Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Tower of Babel
A few years ago we lived in a house at the end of a quiet street. At the other end of our street it wasn't quiet at all; there was an intersection with the main road. At the corner, there was an enormous building. I don't have a picture of the way it looked, but it always made me think of the Breughel painting of the Tower of Babel.
Nobody seemed to know what the building was going to be. I heard a department store, a grocery store, an apartment building. But for years, nothing has been done on it. Many people were squatting there. It always, always had people in it.
Including when it fell down.
Today I took some pictures of the building that don't at all show how terrible it is.
Nobody seemed to know what the building was going to be. I heard a department store, a grocery store, an apartment building. But for years, nothing has been done on it. Many people were squatting there. It always, always had people in it.
Including when it fell down.
Today I took some pictures of the building that don't at all show how terrible it is.
Crashing
I'm crashing today. That's my friend June's expression, and it seems to fit. Since we got home to Haiti, I have been feeling so hopeful and upbeat, in spite of everything: the state Haiti is in now, the loss of my friend, the general sense that nothing will ever be the way it was before.
Today, though, it all crashed in on me. (And that's a bit of an unfortunate expression, given the circumstances.)
Solomon's story is much more representative of the way things are now than my story. It's the story of a life that was terribly hard before, and now is next to impossible. I have been talking to our employees at school and to acquaintances I meet in the street and other friends, and here are some of the things I've heard:
* We're living on the school property; our house was destroyed. (More than one said this to me.)
* Our house is OK; we're living in it. It has a lot of cracks, though. We haven't fixed them yet.
* Our house is mostly all right but the neighbor's house fell on it, so we don't want to sleep in there. We have a tent in front of it.
* Our house is fine and everyone is OK. Praise God! (Praise God, for sure, that there are stories like this. I don't know what we would do if everyone's story was tragic.)
My husband talked to someone this week whose wife and daughter spent five days under the rubble of the family home, and after they were finally pulled out, his wife died.
Then one of the school employees (the one who is living in a tent in front of her house) came into my classroom to talk to me about P, my friend who died two weeks ago. The employee wanted to make sure I knew about what had happened. She said all the workers from school had gone to the funeral (we weren't back in the country yet so we couldn't go), and that they had all cried and cried. P was helping so many of them, paying for school for their children, giving them clothes. They know they won't ever find anyone else like her.
It's too much to take in.
As I worked in my classroom this morning, I saw the desk calendar which I had just put out at the beginning of 2010. It's one of those big ones, with page for each month and a large square for each day. I tore off January through June and then was overwhelmed with sadness. How could I just throw those pages away? I couldn't, so I folded them and stuck them in the desk.
I put out my students' notebooks, resolving to let them decide what to do with them - those that return. I know that some of the kids will not be back and some of them I may never see again. I found the papers that I had just graded and was going to hand back on the 13th. I found the copies that I had made for the next day. Then I found a plastic tub of femoral angiography drapes. (I don't know what those are and I am pretty sure I won't be using them in my classroom this year.)
My mind is full of questions again. Why did this have to happen? Why are so many people's lives changed forever? Does God even care? I've heard and thought about a lot of answers to these questions over the past six months, and somehow today none of them satisfy.
Several years ago, one of my husband's students went to Spain and brought us back a figurine of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. I think it is made of pewter. It was on a bookcase upstairs in our house when the earthquake happened, and it was one of the few things in our house that got broken. (Jars and bottles in our pantry broke, leaving a big mess on the floor; part of a Japanese tea set broke; but in general, we were very fortunate.) The picture isn't the same as the one we had, but it's similar; the main difference is that ours is one piece, with both friends sharing the same pedestal.
I've tried to take a picture of ours, but I can't get a clear one. Our Sancho Panza is just fine, but our Don Quixote is broken off at the knees. Sancho Panza always did seem like a more sturdy fellow, whereas Don Quixote is more fragile, living as he does in a dream world and tilting at windmills instead of facing real issues. If I had to choose which one is more like me today, I would definitely have to say Don Quixote, broken off at the knees, lying on my face. My daughter said a few weeks after the earthquake, "My life is ruined, but I'm OK with that." I wouldn't say my life is ruined, but I do wonder if it will ever be free of the shadow of the earthquake, or if I'll keep crashing, again and again and again.
Today, though, it all crashed in on me. (And that's a bit of an unfortunate expression, given the circumstances.)
Solomon's story is much more representative of the way things are now than my story. It's the story of a life that was terribly hard before, and now is next to impossible. I have been talking to our employees at school and to acquaintances I meet in the street and other friends, and here are some of the things I've heard:
* We're living on the school property; our house was destroyed. (More than one said this to me.)
* Our house is OK; we're living in it. It has a lot of cracks, though. We haven't fixed them yet.
* Our house is mostly all right but the neighbor's house fell on it, so we don't want to sleep in there. We have a tent in front of it.
* Our house is fine and everyone is OK. Praise God! (Praise God, for sure, that there are stories like this. I don't know what we would do if everyone's story was tragic.)
My husband talked to someone this week whose wife and daughter spent five days under the rubble of the family home, and after they were finally pulled out, his wife died.
Then one of the school employees (the one who is living in a tent in front of her house) came into my classroom to talk to me about P, my friend who died two weeks ago. The employee wanted to make sure I knew about what had happened. She said all the workers from school had gone to the funeral (we weren't back in the country yet so we couldn't go), and that they had all cried and cried. P was helping so many of them, paying for school for their children, giving them clothes. They know they won't ever find anyone else like her.
It's too much to take in.
As I worked in my classroom this morning, I saw the desk calendar which I had just put out at the beginning of 2010. It's one of those big ones, with page for each month and a large square for each day. I tore off January through June and then was overwhelmed with sadness. How could I just throw those pages away? I couldn't, so I folded them and stuck them in the desk.
I put out my students' notebooks, resolving to let them decide what to do with them - those that return. I know that some of the kids will not be back and some of them I may never see again. I found the papers that I had just graded and was going to hand back on the 13th. I found the copies that I had made for the next day. Then I found a plastic tub of femoral angiography drapes. (I don't know what those are and I am pretty sure I won't be using them in my classroom this year.)
My mind is full of questions again. Why did this have to happen? Why are so many people's lives changed forever? Does God even care? I've heard and thought about a lot of answers to these questions over the past six months, and somehow today none of them satisfy.
Several years ago, one of my husband's students went to Spain and brought us back a figurine of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. I think it is made of pewter. It was on a bookcase upstairs in our house when the earthquake happened, and it was one of the few things in our house that got broken. (Jars and bottles in our pantry broke, leaving a big mess on the floor; part of a Japanese tea set broke; but in general, we were very fortunate.) The picture isn't the same as the one we had, but it's similar; the main difference is that ours is one piece, with both friends sharing the same pedestal.
I've tried to take a picture of ours, but I can't get a clear one. Our Sancho Panza is just fine, but our Don Quixote is broken off at the knees. Sancho Panza always did seem like a more sturdy fellow, whereas Don Quixote is more fragile, living as he does in a dream world and tilting at windmills instead of facing real issues. If I had to choose which one is more like me today, I would definitely have to say Don Quixote, broken off at the knees, lying on my face. My daughter said a few weeks after the earthquake, "My life is ruined, but I'm OK with that." I wouldn't say my life is ruined, but I do wonder if it will ever be free of the shadow of the earthquake, or if I'll keep crashing, again and again and again.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Wednesday
After a slow start yesterday, today I made loads of progress in my classroom. I moved furniture, which as every teacher knows is a task fraught with all kinds of implications. You have to think about how the room will be used, while at the same time being sure not to create areas where kids can get into trouble and you can't see them. You need them to have access to what they need, without having access to what they don't. And then, of course, there was the added complication of the bizarre items I kept finding: finger splints, a syringe, a gauze bandage, a set of scrubs (top size 3X, bottom size S), and some other things whose use I could not even guess. When I went prowling around looking for some of my missing belongings (more on that later), I found crutches and prosthetic legs.
After the earthquake, when I was in the States and heard that our secondary building was going to be occupied by soldiers and that the classrooms were being cleaned out, I asked my husband to be sure to rescue some of my belongings. He had someone pack the things up, and then that box was promptly lost/discarded/stolen. I knew about this months ago, and had let it go without too much difficulty. But today, for some reason, these items began to seem extremely important to me. I'm not proud of this. It's just stuff. With all the stories I have heard this week of suffering and loss, how could I worry about my few insignificant possessions? I think I'm past it now - I had my moment. But isn't it interesting how what we don't have any more suddenly seems so precious? What a reminder to cherish people, particularly, when we have them, but also to enjoy the things that God has allowed us to have for now. None of it is permanent.
Speaking of things God has allowed us to have, I was so happy to sort through my books today. My classroom library looks a bit the worse for wear. I'm not sure if it's because of all the tossing about the books have undergone in the last six months or if they just look shabbier to me because I've just been in the Land o' Plenty, where everything is shiny and new-looking. It didn't matter, though; the books are like old friends. I look forward to introducing these books to kids this year.
It is wonderful to see my husband and son together; they have been inseparable since my husband joined us in June. I didn't write much during the last six months about the miseries of parenting by myself, mostly because I was trying to protect my children's privacy. But I'll just say that my son, who is seven, needs his dad. Right now they are playing chess. It's a beautiful thing.
After the earthquake, when I was in the States and heard that our secondary building was going to be occupied by soldiers and that the classrooms were being cleaned out, I asked my husband to be sure to rescue some of my belongings. He had someone pack the things up, and then that box was promptly lost/discarded/stolen. I knew about this months ago, and had let it go without too much difficulty. But today, for some reason, these items began to seem extremely important to me. I'm not proud of this. It's just stuff. With all the stories I have heard this week of suffering and loss, how could I worry about my few insignificant possessions? I think I'm past it now - I had my moment. But isn't it interesting how what we don't have any more suddenly seems so precious? What a reminder to cherish people, particularly, when we have them, but also to enjoy the things that God has allowed us to have for now. None of it is permanent.
Speaking of things God has allowed us to have, I was so happy to sort through my books today. My classroom library looks a bit the worse for wear. I'm not sure if it's because of all the tossing about the books have undergone in the last six months or if they just look shabbier to me because I've just been in the Land o' Plenty, where everything is shiny and new-looking. It didn't matter, though; the books are like old friends. I look forward to introducing these books to kids this year.
It is wonderful to see my husband and son together; they have been inseparable since my husband joined us in June. I didn't write much during the last six months about the miseries of parenting by myself, mostly because I was trying to protect my children's privacy. But I'll just say that my son, who is seven, needs his dad. Right now they are playing chess. It's a beautiful thing.
Letter to Heaven
My Dear P,
I can't believe you're gone. I wish I could have said goodbye to you. When you walked into my classroom in December to wish me a merry Christmas, I wish I had told you how much I loved you. Remember - you were going to a wedding before school started again, and I wouldn't see you until you got back. I never saw you again.
When I came to Haiti seventeen years ago, you were one of the first people I met. You led a group session in Kreyol for the new teachers, and then you started meeting with us individually. I know Kreyol isn't top priority for many of the new teachers; they are so busy, and, after all, they use English most of the time. But for me it was pure pleasure. Since I already spoke French, the vocabulary came quickly. But also, I enjoyed spending time with you. You explained so many things to me about Haiti, and helped me learn to love it quickly. You always told me about the context, about why things were the way they were. You loved your country, even though you found it maddening sometimes. (Do you remember how you used to get embarrassed by the questions my husband would ask in his Kreyol lessons, when he would bring you words he had heard on the basketball court and ask you what they meant? You would tell him they were words he didn't need to know.)
A few years ago (five, maybe?), you and I became prayer partners, and I got to know you even better, and the depth of your commitment to God and to prayer. I think we need at least five people to replace the amount of praying you did for our school and for each of us. You didn't sleep well, so often you would get up in the middle of the night to pray. If those who are dead can intercede for those of us who are living (you and I had different training on that), I know you will do it. You always had scripture to share with me, too, and words of encouragement. You understood so many things that I didn't really talk to anyone else about.
My favorite story you ever told me was the one about the time you had traveled to the States, and while you were gone there was some political unrest, perhaps even as serious as a coup d'état, I can't remember. Your daughter was at your house, with an older relative, and you were very worried about them, but you couldn't get back right away. You had a dream about the house, and it was surrounded by giant hunky bodyguards. In your dream you wondered how on earth you were going to have enough food to feed them all. When you woke up, you realized that those bodyguards were angels, and that they were keeping watch over the people you loved. You stopped worrying, and by telling me that story you have stopped me from worrying in so many situations.
Now you have gone somewhere new. You're the one learning a new place, a beautiful, unimaginable one. But my friend, I don't think you need anyone to teach you the language or explain the culture to you. I am sure that this transition is natural to you, as someone who already spent so much time with God, and found in Him all that you needed. I remember you used to say you were a princess, a child of a King. Whether you were walking to church in the mud, or running home to prepare something for your husband, or lugging your ironing to school on a Saturday because there was electricity there, you always carried yourself like royalty. You said that God took care of you beautifully because you were His daughter.
You had no idea how much you meant to me, because I never told you. (I don't make that mistake any more, since the earthquake - at least, I am doing better than I used to about expressing to people how much I love them, since I'm so much more aware than I used to be that I might not get another chance.) I can't wait to see you again, P. It is so strange being back in Haiti and not seeing you in your regular spot, always with a joke or an encouraging comment. I hope I can be to others a tiny part of what you were to me, helping them adjust to living in Haiti, encouraging them, praying for them.
À la prochaine,
Ruth
I can't believe you're gone. I wish I could have said goodbye to you. When you walked into my classroom in December to wish me a merry Christmas, I wish I had told you how much I loved you. Remember - you were going to a wedding before school started again, and I wouldn't see you until you got back. I never saw you again.
When I came to Haiti seventeen years ago, you were one of the first people I met. You led a group session in Kreyol for the new teachers, and then you started meeting with us individually. I know Kreyol isn't top priority for many of the new teachers; they are so busy, and, after all, they use English most of the time. But for me it was pure pleasure. Since I already spoke French, the vocabulary came quickly. But also, I enjoyed spending time with you. You explained so many things to me about Haiti, and helped me learn to love it quickly. You always told me about the context, about why things were the way they were. You loved your country, even though you found it maddening sometimes. (Do you remember how you used to get embarrassed by the questions my husband would ask in his Kreyol lessons, when he would bring you words he had heard on the basketball court and ask you what they meant? You would tell him they were words he didn't need to know.)
A few years ago (five, maybe?), you and I became prayer partners, and I got to know you even better, and the depth of your commitment to God and to prayer. I think we need at least five people to replace the amount of praying you did for our school and for each of us. You didn't sleep well, so often you would get up in the middle of the night to pray. If those who are dead can intercede for those of us who are living (you and I had different training on that), I know you will do it. You always had scripture to share with me, too, and words of encouragement. You understood so many things that I didn't really talk to anyone else about.
My favorite story you ever told me was the one about the time you had traveled to the States, and while you were gone there was some political unrest, perhaps even as serious as a coup d'état, I can't remember. Your daughter was at your house, with an older relative, and you were very worried about them, but you couldn't get back right away. You had a dream about the house, and it was surrounded by giant hunky bodyguards. In your dream you wondered how on earth you were going to have enough food to feed them all. When you woke up, you realized that those bodyguards were angels, and that they were keeping watch over the people you loved. You stopped worrying, and by telling me that story you have stopped me from worrying in so many situations.
Now you have gone somewhere new. You're the one learning a new place, a beautiful, unimaginable one. But my friend, I don't think you need anyone to teach you the language or explain the culture to you. I am sure that this transition is natural to you, as someone who already spent so much time with God, and found in Him all that you needed. I remember you used to say you were a princess, a child of a King. Whether you were walking to church in the mud, or running home to prepare something for your husband, or lugging your ironing to school on a Saturday because there was electricity there, you always carried yourself like royalty. You said that God took care of you beautifully because you were His daughter.
You had no idea how much you meant to me, because I never told you. (I don't make that mistake any more, since the earthquake - at least, I am doing better than I used to about expressing to people how much I love them, since I'm so much more aware than I used to be that I might not get another chance.) I can't wait to see you again, P. It is so strange being back in Haiti and not seeing you in your regular spot, always with a joke or an encouraging comment. I hope I can be to others a tiny part of what you were to me, helping them adjust to living in Haiti, encouraging them, praying for them.
À la prochaine,
Ruth
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
In My Classroom
Today marked twenty-seven weeks since the earthquake. (I don't keep count in my head any more, and I had to count weeks on my calendar to come to that conclusion.) Twenty-seven weeks from the day that I wrote "January 13th" on the board and left the room with my lesson plans on the desk for the next morning, I went back to my classroom to start getting it ready for students to show up in under four weeks.
I honestly didn't get much done today. I was overwhelmed by how much there is to do, and also by emotion. I got to talk to several friends today and hear their stories. Everyone has a story, and we need to tell them to each other. I also spent an unbelievable amount of time trying to guess the password to the wireless network. Several people gave suggestions, all wrong. (Congratulations to the IT department and their sterling security procedures. Our IT person is out of the country right now, or he would have helped me right away.) Right before going home I was finally able to get on the wireless. So basically, I talked to people, freaked out about how much I have to do and felt paralyzed and couldn't do anything, and tried to hack into the network.
But the main thing I did today was clean out the desk that is now in my classroom. It's not my desk. Yes, I am aware that I do not own the furniture in my classroom, but I get pretty attached to it, and I did look around some for "my" desk. But when I opened the drawers I saw who this one belonged to, and then I had to stop and cry for a little while.
While we were on our way back to Haiti, our high school librarian, Kreyol teacher, and my good friend and prayer partner died. I knew I would face many losses upon returning to Haiti, but I did not expect this dear friend to be one of them. I can't believe she is gone; I can't believe we won't be able to talk about the earthquake and what happened afterwards. She and I met every week for prayer, and I saw her every day, since she worked right next door to my classroom. She was one of the first people I met when I came to Haiti, since she taught me Kreyol. I have many memories of talking with her and hearing her theories about slavery and history and what could be done to cure Haiti's problems. She was a role model for me of a committed Christian woman who trusted God and who prayed constantly. She was also funny and feisty.
When I opened the desk drawer in my classroom this morning, I saw her handwriting on the papers in there. I saw words she had written in English, French, and Kreyol. I saw her notes from devotions, Bible verses she had copied down, notes for the business and professional women's club she belonged to, committee work for the library.
I spent a lot of time sorting through the things in her desk, putting photos and letters aside for her family, organizing the library information for the people who will take over her job. I thought a lot about her and about how beautiful she was and how much she loved her husband, her children, her grandchildren, and how much she loved her colleagues (including me) and her students. She prayed for all of us every day.
One other thing I did was to take "before" photos of my classroom and the surrounding area. I'm not going to share most of them, partly because my kids are in some of them, and partly because it takes so long to upload photos on my internet connection. I'm going to show you two photos I took, and these aren't even from my room but from another one on my hallway.
Just look at that. Scary, huh?
(There's some background information here about why these books are all thrown about.)
But look closer. When I zoomed in on this heap, look what I saw:
God still has surprises for us. The earthquake was a surprise, and not a pleasant one, but so many of God's surprises are joyful ones. I learned that during the last six months. So often in the worst times, God has beautiful gifts to give us.
Upstairs in the secondary building, there is a memory wall posted. Kids were given the opportunity to write their memories from the school year on a huge sheet of paper. One of my eighth graders wrote a lovely paragraph about how people had become closer after the earthquake, comforting one another as they grieved, and how they had discovered riches in one another that they had not known existed.
There is joy ahead in this school year, even as we mourn our losses. I'll go back to my classroom tomorrow (Lord willing; I don't leave those words out of my plans any more) and make more progress. Bit by bit I will get ready to meet my students, and step out into the adventure of the new year.
I honestly didn't get much done today. I was overwhelmed by how much there is to do, and also by emotion. I got to talk to several friends today and hear their stories. Everyone has a story, and we need to tell them to each other. I also spent an unbelievable amount of time trying to guess the password to the wireless network. Several people gave suggestions, all wrong. (Congratulations to the IT department and their sterling security procedures. Our IT person is out of the country right now, or he would have helped me right away.) Right before going home I was finally able to get on the wireless. So basically, I talked to people, freaked out about how much I have to do and felt paralyzed and couldn't do anything, and tried to hack into the network.
But the main thing I did today was clean out the desk that is now in my classroom. It's not my desk. Yes, I am aware that I do not own the furniture in my classroom, but I get pretty attached to it, and I did look around some for "my" desk. But when I opened the drawers I saw who this one belonged to, and then I had to stop and cry for a little while.
While we were on our way back to Haiti, our high school librarian, Kreyol teacher, and my good friend and prayer partner died. I knew I would face many losses upon returning to Haiti, but I did not expect this dear friend to be one of them. I can't believe she is gone; I can't believe we won't be able to talk about the earthquake and what happened afterwards. She and I met every week for prayer, and I saw her every day, since she worked right next door to my classroom. She was one of the first people I met when I came to Haiti, since she taught me Kreyol. I have many memories of talking with her and hearing her theories about slavery and history and what could be done to cure Haiti's problems. She was a role model for me of a committed Christian woman who trusted God and who prayed constantly. She was also funny and feisty.
When I opened the desk drawer in my classroom this morning, I saw her handwriting on the papers in there. I saw words she had written in English, French, and Kreyol. I saw her notes from devotions, Bible verses she had copied down, notes for the business and professional women's club she belonged to, committee work for the library.
I spent a lot of time sorting through the things in her desk, putting photos and letters aside for her family, organizing the library information for the people who will take over her job. I thought a lot about her and about how beautiful she was and how much she loved her husband, her children, her grandchildren, and how much she loved her colleagues (including me) and her students. She prayed for all of us every day.
One other thing I did was to take "before" photos of my classroom and the surrounding area. I'm not going to share most of them, partly because my kids are in some of them, and partly because it takes so long to upload photos on my internet connection. I'm going to show you two photos I took, and these aren't even from my room but from another one on my hallway.
Just look at that. Scary, huh?
(There's some background information here about why these books are all thrown about.)
But look closer. When I zoomed in on this heap, look what I saw:
God still has surprises for us. The earthquake was a surprise, and not a pleasant one, but so many of God's surprises are joyful ones. I learned that during the last six months. So often in the worst times, God has beautiful gifts to give us.
Upstairs in the secondary building, there is a memory wall posted. Kids were given the opportunity to write their memories from the school year on a huge sheet of paper. One of my eighth graders wrote a lovely paragraph about how people had become closer after the earthquake, comforting one another as they grieved, and how they had discovered riches in one another that they had not known existed.
There is joy ahead in this school year, even as we mourn our losses. I'll go back to my classroom tomorrow (Lord willing; I don't leave those words out of my plans any more) and make more progress. Bit by bit I will get ready to meet my students, and step out into the adventure of the new year.
Bird Day
This is a repost from July 20th, 2008.
Almost every day I read the psalms for the day from the Psalter in the Book of Common Prayer. That means that on the 20th of every month I read Psalms 102 through 104 (I usually read the morning and evening Psalms all at once in the evening, since mornings are not a good time for me to concentrate on anything). I have started thinking of the 20th as Bird Day, because look at all the bird references in these Psalms:
Psalm 102:6-7 "I have become like a vulture in the wilderness, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake and groan; I am like a sparrow, lonely on a house-top."
Psalm 103:5 "He satisfies you with good things, and your youth is renewed like an eagle's."
Psalm 104:12 "Beside them the birds of the air make their nests and sing among the branches."
Psalm 104:17-18 "The trees of the LORD are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which he planted, in which the birds build their nests, and in whose tops the stork makes his dwelling."
I don't know that there is any profound meaning in the timing of this monthly bird-fest but it makes me smile every time. I love the range of emotions in these verses and that we can bring all these things to God. And I know that His eye is on the sparrow.
Almost every day I read the psalms for the day from the Psalter in the Book of Common Prayer. That means that on the 20th of every month I read Psalms 102 through 104 (I usually read the morning and evening Psalms all at once in the evening, since mornings are not a good time for me to concentrate on anything). I have started thinking of the 20th as Bird Day, because look at all the bird references in these Psalms:
Psalm 102:6-7 "I have become like a vulture in the wilderness, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake and groan; I am like a sparrow, lonely on a house-top."
Psalm 103:5 "He satisfies you with good things, and your youth is renewed like an eagle's."
Psalm 104:12 "Beside them the birds of the air make their nests and sing among the branches."
Psalm 104:17-18 "The trees of the LORD are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which he planted, in which the birds build their nests, and in whose tops the stork makes his dwelling."
I don't know that there is any profound meaning in the timing of this monthly bird-fest but it makes me smile every time. I love the range of emotions in these verses and that we can bring all these things to God. And I know that His eye is on the sparrow.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Tent City
My friend Tara posted this video this evening.
There are tents everywhere in this city. Every one is full of stories like this one.
Don't forget.
Don't Forget Haiti: Tent City from Ryan Booth on Vimeo.
There are tents everywhere in this city. Every one is full of stories like this one.
Don't forget.
Earthquake Article
I'm still working on cleaning out my inbox, and I found an article that someone sent me in October, 2008, about the possibility of an earthquake in Port-au-Prince. Here it is.
School
Today I went to school, though I decided not to spend the day there because there is still so much to be done at home. (Including, by the way, uploading these three photos, which took an incredibly long time. I forgot about slow internet.)
I had the tour of the campus, with all the changes. There has been so much done, and there is a lot left to do before school starts in a little less than a month. Most of all, I was overwhelmed by the thought of all God has accomplished on that campus in the six months since the earthquake, as it was converted into a relief center that housed and fed hundreds of doctors who went out every day to hospitals and clinics and tent cities around the country.
This photo shows a message left on the board of the fifth grade classroom.
This is my "Beautiful Haiti" bulletin board, which had been up only a week when the earthquake happened. I was surprised to see it was still there, in the hallway. (I know, I know - it's not much of a bulletin board. Putting up calendar pictures is about how creative I get with bulletin boards. That's why I'm not an elementary teacher.)
I think I might leave it there. We all need some reminders of how beautiful our dear Haiti is.
This is a scene in the middle school hallway. The crutches are a reminder of what this space was being used for: medical supplies, a pharmacy, prosthetics production. I'm not sure why the fridge is there, or the aged computers. But this photo gives some idea of how much there is to be done before the kids get back. We're up for the challenge - I think!
I did go in my classroom but I didn't take any photos in there. It is not nearly as bad as it could have been. Several visiting volunteers have worked on getting my books back where they belong. The shelves are covered with plastic so I didn't examine the books themselves, but I am happy not to have to go in search of my classroom library, spread all around the building, as it was a few months ago. As soon as I get things here at home a bit better organized, I will be spending my days in Room 23 again, getting ready to have students in there. That's an overwhelming thought but also an exciting one.
I had the tour of the campus, with all the changes. There has been so much done, and there is a lot left to do before school starts in a little less than a month. Most of all, I was overwhelmed by the thought of all God has accomplished on that campus in the six months since the earthquake, as it was converted into a relief center that housed and fed hundreds of doctors who went out every day to hospitals and clinics and tent cities around the country.
This photo shows a message left on the board of the fifth grade classroom.
This is my "Beautiful Haiti" bulletin board, which had been up only a week when the earthquake happened. I was surprised to see it was still there, in the hallway. (I know, I know - it's not much of a bulletin board. Putting up calendar pictures is about how creative I get with bulletin boards. That's why I'm not an elementary teacher.)
I think I might leave it there. We all need some reminders of how beautiful our dear Haiti is.
This is a scene in the middle school hallway. The crutches are a reminder of what this space was being used for: medical supplies, a pharmacy, prosthetics production. I'm not sure why the fridge is there, or the aged computers. But this photo gives some idea of how much there is to be done before the kids get back. We're up for the challenge - I think!
I did go in my classroom but I didn't take any photos in there. It is not nearly as bad as it could have been. Several visiting volunteers have worked on getting my books back where they belong. The shelves are covered with plastic so I didn't examine the books themselves, but I am happy not to have to go in search of my classroom library, spread all around the building, as it was a few months ago. As soon as I get things here at home a bit better organized, I will be spending my days in Room 23 again, getting ready to have students in there. That's an overwhelming thought but also an exciting one.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Rain
It rained most of the afternoon. I think it must be better for people in the tent cities when it rains in the afternoon than at night, because at least people can find shelter in front of a store or under a tarp. Imagine waking up in a puddle in the middle of the night when it's dark and you have nowhere to go to dry off.
Rain is difficult for many people in Haiti now, and yet the country needs rain to grow food to feed everyone, and to provide water for drinking and cooking and washing. It fills cisterns and cleans away the dust, and yet it causes suffering. It's hard to know how to think about this.
Back in March, Ben wrote this about rain:
Here's the rest of the post.
Rain is difficult for many people in Haiti now, and yet the country needs rain to grow food to feed everyone, and to provide water for drinking and cooking and washing. It fills cisterns and cleans away the dust, and yet it causes suffering. It's hard to know how to think about this.
Back in March, Ben wrote this about rain:
I have a terrible struggle with the rain because I like it. I always have. I like cool rainy days in the fall, I like spring showers, I like thunderstorms in the summer. I like sipping tea and reading when it is raining during the day. I like falling asleep to the percussion of rain drops at night. In Dallas, that is fine. But here it means that I like something that is making another person's life hell.
I loved falling asleep to the rain last night. I listened to the sounds the rain was making on different objects and tried to figure out what it was hitting. There was the familiar flat slap it makes on concrete. The hollow metal sound of the rain on our tin roof and the very bass like tap-tap on the broad leaves of the trees outside. I really had a great night's sleep, but just before I dozed off I realized: while this Drum Suite was lulling me to sleep, it was the sound of a cold muddy night to anyone in a tent city.
It meant that the ground outside their tent would be muddy, which would get tracked into their tent no matter how careful they were. It meant that if their tent wasn't waterproof, they would be wet, and cold. I hate having taken the slightest pleasure in something that could be such a curse to someone else. I wondered this morning- what other things do I really like that are a curse to someone else?
Katie is always telling me about who is a terrible corporate offender, or why certain foods are unfair. I never paid attention because it wasn't tangible. I would roll my eyes, ignore what she said, or even try and argue against it. But this morning as I walked on Delmas 75, I realized that this was something too great to ignore. I believe it is part of God sanctifying me to have awareness and compassion for things I do that bring pain to others.
Before, those ideas did not have a smell, an image, or a sound. I don't know if I can feel the same any more.
Here's the rest of the post.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
The Art of Peace
Mostly I listen to podcasts while I exercise, and I did that today. However, I also find they help me do mundane tasks like cleaning the kitchen. And I did that today, too. I listened to part of several Speaking of Faith episodes. I haven't listened to any of these for a while, even though it's one of my favorite programs.
The most interesting one was called The Art of Peace. It's an interview with Mennonite John Paul Lederach about his life in peacemaking, working in many areas of entrenched conflict. I found all of this fascinating, but the part I liked best was about using poetry and music in peacemaking. Lederach's daughter Angie has worked with child soldiers in Sierra Leone, helping them re-integrate with their communities after they have been brutalized by their experiences.
Here are some excerpts from the transcript:
So often we think of music and poetry and art as nice add-ons to life, rather than essentials. They are the first things to go when we are cutting school budgets. They are seen, in Krista Tippett's words, as "sweet" and "fluffy." And yet these things are at the core of what makes us human, and they are vital in healing. That's certainly my experience, and it's fascinating to me to hear this explanation of how that works on a larger scale. It fits with my exercise podcast from today, too.
Another interesting part of this podcast was Lederach's haiku.
Don't you want to have Lederach over for dinner and listen to him talk for hours? I do.
The most interesting one was called The Art of Peace. It's an interview with Mennonite John Paul Lederach about his life in peacemaking, working in many areas of entrenched conflict. I found all of this fascinating, but the part I liked best was about using poetry and music in peacemaking. Lederach's daughter Angie has worked with child soldiers in Sierra Leone, helping them re-integrate with their communities after they have been brutalized by their experiences.
Here are some excerpts from the transcript:
Ms. Tippett: You and Angie writing together have talked about this phrase we often use about "unspeakable violence.". . .
Mr. Lederach: Yes.
Ms. Tippett: And, in fact, that the ways human beings transcend or give voice to what they need to give voice to sometimes is not through words and process but through poetry and music in that, again, you know, somebody might hear that and say, "Oh, how sweet. How fluffy." Right?
Mr. Lederach: Yeah.
Ms. Tippett: But you see these things as essential to survival in the most excruciating circumstances. So, again, is that something you've discovered across the years?
Mr. Lederach: Yes. I think very much so. And a lot of it by having been very close to people who have suffered not just a single event of violence, which is already horrific in itself, but have lived through repeated cycles of that kind of violence and displacement. And so much of the literature that's written about healing, trauma healing in particular in the field that we work with, and reconciliation is often written from the standpoint of sort of the bigger picture of the things that happen across time. Here are the stages, or here are the phases. And what we were discovering at several levels was that many of the things that were most important to healing and reconciliation are in the realm not only of the unspeakable, but are often in the realm of things that are not linear. That is, that they are circular. They may be repetitious, they may be ritualistic in form, because people have a capacity to experience and feel something for which they cannot give good, clear, or fully explainable words. The words just aren't there to do it. And essentially what we've come up with is that there are some very significant things that happen in healing and reconciliation that cannot be described as a person progressing from point A to B, but that are in fact very important elements of healing. One of those, for example, is the notion that going in circles, we would typically say if you're looking at it from the lens of a program that has funding that over the next year or two is supposed to produce something and it's applied …
Ms. Tippett: And a trajectory. Right.
Mr. Lederach: It's applied to healing or reconciliation, then going in circles is not going anywhere. When in fact, going in circles may be doing something that's very different. It may be about deepening. So, you know, I somewhat facetiously tell my colleagues at Notre Dame where I teach, I said, "Imagine for a moment if the funding agencies were coming here to Notre Dame and were inquiring about your behavior that they're noticing, which is you keep doing mass, some of you every day, most of you at least once a week. Is there something that's not effective about the way you're doing mass? If you did it once, would it not be" — in other words, we don't apply that …
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Lederach: We don't apply that lens to something like mass or music or other things. We understand that the purpose that it has is to create a space that permits you to get back in touch. Now here's where it becomes important. That words often move things to a head level, explaining …
Ms. Tippett: Right. Right.
Mr. Lederach: … but the violation lies at the level of the bone. That's something that you feel in your very core but you may not have words to express.
Mr. Lederach: So her [Angie's] work was with how and what ways communities and particularly women work with the reintegration of child soldiers. And so you have an identity of being a victim, but you also are brought into a fighting force where you become a part of something that requires you to do violence for survival, so you become a perpetrator. You are a motherless child mother.
What she saw rather clearly in the work that she was doing, that in the times when they were interviewing young women who were child mother soldiers about their experience, they found a very sort of flat effect reporting of their life story. A number of them could not read or write, but poetry permitted them to bring forward a voice that was nowhere present in the interviewing format. On the other side of that coin was how, particularly, mothers and communities brought child soldiers back into communities that they — that is, the child soldiers — had actually violated.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Lederach: And among the modalities, especially in West Africa, was that many of these went back to rituals of rebirthing. So you would use a birthing ritual, which would typically be done when a child was born into a family or community.
Ms. Tippett: Oh.
Mr. Lederach: They used formats of those rituals in order to bring back people into a sense of connection to the community again. And those almost invariably at one point or another involved singing.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Lederach: And certainly in some instances drumming. All of which has sort of this vibrational component to it that sits at a much different level than the ones that are more typically explained, especially in the therapeutic understandings of psychological counseling.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Lederach: Which seems to be the least useful things in those contexts.
So often we think of music and poetry and art as nice add-ons to life, rather than essentials. They are the first things to go when we are cutting school budgets. They are seen, in Krista Tippett's words, as "sweet" and "fluffy." And yet these things are at the core of what makes us human, and they are vital in healing. That's certainly my experience, and it's fascinating to me to hear this explanation of how that works on a larger scale. It fits with my exercise podcast from today, too.
Another interesting part of this podcast was Lederach's haiku.
Mr. Lederach: I've gotten very interested in the connection between poetry and peace building over the last years. One of those insights and one of those areas of personal discipline for me was both discovering and working with, but then deepening a kind of a haiku understanding of complexity. Which, as I see it, is an ability not to simplify the complex, but to some degree the haikuist is constantly trying to capture the full complexity of a human experience in the fewest words possible. And that discipline is a very interesting one and it requires haikuists — I'm an especially big fan going back into its origin toward Basho and Kikaku, a variety of these haiku Japanese poets. Their understanding of what they were doing was about a kind of a way of being in a context, particularly nature for many of the haikuists, the link between the human experience and the experience of the richness of nature, in a way you could fully capture the moment, the season, the human experience, but in this very short five syllable-seven syllable-five syllable kind of a format.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, "I would not give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity."
Ms. Tippett: I love that.
Mr. Lederach: And that is what the haikuist is after. So I do a variety of things. One of them is that I've become much more respectful of, I think, the link between appreciating being in and feeling nature and noticing things that we're involved in when we're in settings of violence. For me it's like a recuperation of sorts. But the other is that as I travel in work, I listen for haiku in people's conversation because what I find is that quite often when people say something and we all have a kind of an a-ha moment around what was said, it often is a capturing of the complexity, that simplicity on the other side, and it comes out very close to, if not actually in the form of, a haiku. And I could give you one or two of those if you want.
Ms. Tippett: Yes.
Mr. Lederach: I refer to them as conversational haikus or poetry in conversation. That is, that people don't take notice of their poetic capacity in the midst of their conversation, so I take note of it. So I jot notes of it. I sometimes — I don't often keep all these in sort of my own repertoire. I give them back to people. In fact, I've done whole summaries of meetings sometimes just by capturing a range of these haikus. I think you were in one of those once.
Ms. Tippett: Yes, I was at a meeting and you sent us all the haikus at the end. They were fantastic. Yes.
Mr. Lederach: Yeah. So if you want, let me start …
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Lederach: … with one or two that are of that nature.
Ms. Tippett: OK.
Mr. Lederach: Seven years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, I was sitting in a seminar and people, while still happy that the agreement had held, felt that Northern Ireland has fossilized in its sectoral relations. That is, that things were simply not changing and that it may not get much better. And in a dinner conversation, one of the colleagues from Northern Ireland I was sitting with said this that I placed into a haiku. I actually gave this one a title. I don't always title my haikus, but this one's called "Rainbow's End?" Maybe, he says, this / is as good as it will get / peaceful bigotry.
Ms. Tippett: Hmm.
Mr. Lederach: A few that were, for me, things that I've picked up in places I've been that just give a flavor. I've worked on occasion with a group of people from Burma —inside, from the ethnic minority groups. They call them ethnic minorities even though they're the majority. That means they're not Burmese. And many of them have armed fronts that have been fighting, some of them for decades and decades, against the current regime. I worked primarily with a small group of people who for one reason or another were brought into being shuttle mediators, attempting to open up, discuss, or move some kind of a negotiation on between people in the Burmese government and various of the armed ethnic groups. There were small sets of people who had these experiences from each of the seven or eight ethnic groups. And in 2003, I spent the better part of a week simply listening to their stories. They were, from a mediator's standpoint, some of the hardest stories that I've ever heard.
I can remember one group who lived very close to the Bangladesh border with Burma who needed to carry a message across the border to the commander of an armed movement that was just on the other side, but they could not pass directly through the border to that area. They needed to travel all the way to the capital city of Yangon, get a passport, and every passport has to be turned in after each visit. So it's a one-time passport. Then fly to a third country in order to convey one message. And then all the way back again to bring it forward, many times sitting with local commanders or groups who would arrest them and keep them imprisoned for weeks on end until they sorted through whether they were legitimate.
The perspective that you have in these situations is so unbelievable about the kind of difficulties that they're facing. And the group that I was meeting with used a kind of an informal name. They referred to themselves as "The Mediators Fellowship." And so I wrote a little haiku when I was leaving Yangon, and this is in March of 2003. It was titled "Advice from the Mediators Fellowship."
Don't ask the mountain/ to move, just take a pebble/ each time you visit.
Ms. Tippett: Hmm.
Mr. Lederach: Want one more?
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Mr. Lederach: Tajikistan. This was translated back from Tajikian to English, and the way that it rang in the translation, I played with it a little bit and it came out almost as a perfect haiku. They have very odd borders in Central Asia that were created by Stalin that have separated small portions of each major group so that every country has a minority of every other country's majority. And some of the most significant cultural cities of one group are located in a country where they don't live. So this was the haiku that came out. This one was in April 2003.
Gods and men love maps/ they draw borders with pens that/ split lives like an ax.
Don't you want to have Lederach over for dinner and listen to him talk for hours? I do.
The Story from Haiti, part seventeen
This episode was aired July 12th, the six month anniversary of the earthquake. Only one of the segments is about Haiti, and it's the first one. This isn't an interview done by Dick Gordon; it's from a radio station in Miami called WLRN. We actually heard this segment on the radio while we were driving through Florida. It's about some medical personnel from South Florida who went to Haiti right after the earthquake, and about what happened one evening when someone came into the middle of all the horribly injured people and started playing a guitar.
It made me cry, but I know that means nothing to you if you've read any of my previous posts, because you know everything makes me cry. But it would make even a non-basket-case person cry; even my husband had tears in his eyes. Please go listen to it. This is what I've been telling you about Haitians. They have always been like this, and now others are getting to see.
Here's my index to the stories this program has done about the Haitian earthquake.
It made me cry, but I know that means nothing to you if you've read any of my previous posts, because you know everything makes me cry. But it would make even a non-basket-case person cry; even my husband had tears in his eyes. Please go listen to it. This is what I've been telling you about Haitians. They have always been like this, and now others are getting to see.
Here's my index to the stories this program has done about the Haitian earthquake.
Inbox
I have been cleaning out my email inbox in between bouts of unpacking and putting away, sorting old messages into folders a hundred at a time. You don't even want to know how many emails I have in my inbox, all read and responded to, but still sitting there. I delete most of my email, the non-personal stuff from lists I read or ads from companies I once bought something from or the hundreds of spam emails I get every day, so all of the emails I'm going through now are things I want to keep, or at least that I wanted to keep at some point in the past. You might wonder why I didn't do this sorting during all those months when I had hours of free time, instead of now when I am surrounded by work to be done, and to that I would say, I have no idea. I just suddenly had a strong need to have an empty inbox to start the school year. I'm not there yet, but I'm making progress.
As I go through the old messages, inevitably I'm rereading. Today I've been looking at notes I received in January and February. I saw the one I sent out the first time I got back on the internet after the earthquake, with the subject heading "We are alive," and I saw the dozens of responses from friends asking if there was anything, anything, they could do. I saw messages from people asking for help with donating money and supplies, and from people reminding me that God was still God and that they were praying for us. I saw responses to messages I had sent to friends in Haiti asking if they were all right and messages making arrangements for me to speak to groups once I got to the States. I saw messages from people in the town where I was staying in the US, making arrangements to spend time with me and encouraging me.
Those days seem a long way away now, and yet as I read the emails I feel those emotions again, the panic and fear and the rush of adrenaline, and the gratitude as well.
If you wrote to me during those days (and many of you did), thank you. I think I answered everyone, but I know that you can't understand how much it meant to hear from people who cared and who wanted to help, both while I was still in Haiti and after we had been evacuated. My inbox is full of evidence of people's love and concern, and even though I am putting that evidence into folders, I couldn't possibly delete any of those messages. I won't ever forget the way I was supported by my friends and family when everything around me fell down.
As I go through the old messages, inevitably I'm rereading. Today I've been looking at notes I received in January and February. I saw the one I sent out the first time I got back on the internet after the earthquake, with the subject heading "We are alive," and I saw the dozens of responses from friends asking if there was anything, anything, they could do. I saw messages from people asking for help with donating money and supplies, and from people reminding me that God was still God and that they were praying for us. I saw responses to messages I had sent to friends in Haiti asking if they were all right and messages making arrangements for me to speak to groups once I got to the States. I saw messages from people in the town where I was staying in the US, making arrangements to spend time with me and encouraging me.
Those days seem a long way away now, and yet as I read the emails I feel those emotions again, the panic and fear and the rush of adrenaline, and the gratitude as well.
If you wrote to me during those days (and many of you did), thank you. I think I answered everyone, but I know that you can't understand how much it meant to hear from people who cared and who wanted to help, both while I was still in Haiti and after we had been evacuated. My inbox is full of evidence of people's love and concern, and even though I am putting that evidence into folders, I couldn't possibly delete any of those messages. I won't ever forget the way I was supported by my friends and family when everything around me fell down.
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