beach blog!

Wow it has been a week since I’ve updated this! My deepest apologies! I have been busy with many things and it’s very difficult for me to want to sit still long enough to write about my experiences! Before diving more into this I want to forewarn any reader of this that I’ve experienced so much this week, and I’m not sure the best way to go about explaining it. If it is scatter-brained or long, once again I apologize for that. I’ll appreciate anybody that bears with me through this blog! Having said that I wish that everybody could experience Haiti, or at least one of the thousands of poor microcosms of it that can be found in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Mexico, the slums of Europe, Chicago, Philly, ANYWHERE. I wish I could also explain my experiences more vividly or devote more time to explaining about my time here. Then I think about how even Shakespeare or Dostoevsky or Hemingway in all their brilliance would sell places like this short. They have to be experienced rather than read.

This has been such a strange week for me I’m still not sure how to process it. I can the week as an out-and-out tourist. We walked down our Maurepas Avenue, through some houses of people doing laundry (I feel so stupid and blatantly American about that still) along some beautiful cliffs of fossilized coral reef, and to a very cheap, but gorgeous beach. The sand was so powdery and white that even though 90 degree Caribbean sun could not make the sand scorch our feet. The water was so predictably translucent and dazzling blue that it felt like it the newest HD/plasma/whatever TV screen would sell this picture miles short. The water predictably was the perfect temperature, and the people working at the beach were predictably over-the-top friendly and complimentary. My white Iowan skin got predictably scorched, and I was (and am) predictably proud of that fact. It was predictably an island paradise that every middle-class American conjures up in their mind. It was predictably a perfect day in Haiti. I, however, predictably found so many things that broke my heart. The whole walk to the beach was predictably strewn with heaps and heaps and trash (as is the landscape of all of Haiti). The shallows were predictably filled with makeshift sale boats desperately trying to make a living. The beach was predictably void of any Haitians allowed to be enjoying the beauty of their own country. It was all predictable. I hate being predictably cynical in all of my blogs. It just makes me so upset that Haiti truly should be a tropical paradise. There are so many glimpses of it in the animals, the plants, the terrain, the people! It is truly evidence of the destruction that greed and selfishness that people can display. Whether it is slavery, dictatorship, or oppressive U.S. economic policies it can all be traced back to greed and lack of empathy. It makes me sick to be able to simultaneously witness the evil and beauty of the island. There is so much potential for all beauty. That is what heaven will look like.

Anybody that knows me knows how fun-loving and even optimistic I am. Seeing these things, and reading about the route causes of these, however, does something to you deep inside. I realize this sounds cheesy and predictable, but it’s true. It does something deep inside you, it’s an emotion I haven’t really put my finger on. I think it’s an emotion that I think the individual has the choice to shape and sculpt. It can turned to bitterness. It can turn to outright cynicism. Or it can turn to true compassion-which forms into love of people. If you are free of apathy you cannot help but experience some degree of zealousness when you over and over again see injustices and suffering. This zealousness so often can turn to violent zealousness, which only perpetuates the cycle of suffering. Or you can strive for a zealousness of love. This fervor can be used as fuel to devote everything you can to the outcast, to the voiceless, to the suffering, to the exhausted, to the defeated.

Please, please, please don’t get the wrong impression. I’ll admit I have felt bitterness, I have felt defeated in a lot of causes, I have felt cynical, but with every relationship I form those sentiments are defeated. Haiti can be transformed. The Kingdom of Heaven can come to Earth. Please pray that I can stay energized; that I am filled with love rather than anger. Please pray this prayer for yourselves as well. I promise you that if everybody first A) exposed themselves to these injustices and B) responded with compassion as Jesus did then we will see beautiful transformations around the world. I know it. In the glimpses of Heaven I have seen in people I know that it can be contagious. Wow, I went from pissed off to excited! I’m not even sure who I am writing this to, but whoever it is please join me! As disciples, as new believers, as Christians, as curious people who have no idea what to think of Christianity, please please find human suffering and share in it, and overcome it together. Amen?

(I just started typing this prayer without even realizing it. I can’t explain it very well, but it was one of the most sincere prayers I’ve ever experienced. Normally I’m not so public about my prayers but yeah I thought I would end this blog with the prayer that I spontaneously started writing in the middle of this essay).

Oh God please give me strength, the energy, the perseverance, the support to do this all of my life. Lord please free me from anger at the oppressors, but rather fill me with your zeal against the systems of oppression. Jesus please give me knowledge how to do this. Please continue to fill my heart for these children, for these villages, for “the least of these”. Please let me know what compassion truly is, and let me feel it and act upon it. Make me a leader please Father so I am not alone with this, but can form communities who love you and love others. Thank you Jesus for giving me the love I already have. I didn’t know I could love this much or this hard, thank you God so much for filling me with this.