L'Union fait la force

We heard this morning that our friends Père Elie Charles, his wife Jamine, daughter Minou, and the rest of their family in Haiti are safe! Père Elie and Jamine, especially, are like family to me, and I am so relieved that they are okay.

I hope that the silver lining to this tragedy will be worldwide attention to Haiti's suffering and a strong will to better the quality of life there. This is an opportunity to start over and not repeat the selfish decisions of past American and Haitian leaders.

Last night, I went to a prayer vigil for Haiti at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. I reunited with several women who I traveled to Haiti with in 2001, so we were able to both express our concern for our friends who we had not heard from and reminisce about our adventures in Haiti. What a mixture of wrenching worry and happy nostalgia.

Here are the words of reflection that the Episcopal Bishop Jelinek gave last night. I found them to be comforting, especially the words against Pat Robertson's awful and heartless comments...

We have come together in shock, grief, dismay, concern and a sense of helplessness in the aftermath of one of the most awful devastations of human life in Haiti the day before yesterday. While many bodies lie undiscovered and others are still lost from their families, we are not yet hearing stories of what we call miracles that warm our hearts and cheer our souls.

We come together in our helplessness, for we know we cannot bear helplessness all alone. There may be something we can do - at least pray; there may be a word of hope to hear; there may be a moment of solace in holding onto one another.

Tragedies like this, where so many lives are lost, when urban landscapes are unrecognizable, when people are still caked in dust, when whole systems of production and order and care-giving and transportation and communication are interrupted or cut off - tragedies like this challenge our whole sense of security and justice and even hope. We like to believe we stand and live on solid ground.

And yet...

We live our whole lives on a fault. Those of us who have lived in parts of the world where the deep tectonic plates of the earth are still moving and shifting know that one of these shifts can happen at any moment, causing an earthquake, or, as we say in French, a "tremblement de terre" - a trembling of the earth.

We would like to believe that life can be predictable, certain, clear, but it is not so. Today we grieve over the devastation and loss of life from an earthquake. Recently we have grieved over the devastation of tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, blizzards-natural disasters of many kinds.

Some believe that the God who created the universe still pulls the strings like a puppeteer or a stage director, finding ways to punish those God does not like or who make God mad. But I do not believe that. If God were so vindictive, so cruel, then how could so many of God's followers be moved to open their hearts to be so generous, so helpful, so willing to pour out care and affection and resources? If humankind has grown at all over the centuries and the millennia, it is in our awareness that God calls us to love and forgive and give beyond our families, beyond our friends, beyond people who look and speak like us.

We can explain how natural disasters happen. We can understand why in terms of geology and climate, but we cannot explain them in terms of God's anger or displeasure. This is not about blame. This is about being able to suffer together, and we either suffer together or we suffer apart. I prefer to suffer with you rather than without you. And I believe that God suffers with us.

It was Jesus who wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. It was Jesus who revealed God's heart in the midst of the most painful dimensions of human life. And how can we imagine that God's heart, like ours, is not broken by the loss of so many lives, cut off in the bud or even in full bloom. It is not that God causes or allows terrible things to happen. We believe that God is with us and between and among us in the midst of the terror and grief.

As for me, I have been home from Hawai`i for about a month, I have finished applying to grad schools, and am now spending time with family and friends while applying for jobs in the Cities. This will most likely be my last post, seeing that my time in Hawai`i has ended and my daily activities are no longer quite as exciting.