This In-Between Month, Day 10: Lion Tamer

Outside it is cold and gray and wet and inside it is only slightly less so. Haiti's warmth is a far away and I am missing her sunshine. (And her children, and her rice and beans, and her sea, oh and her starlight.) But there is coffee! And internet and the familiar faces of strangers. In my mind I make up tall tales about them. File them away for some story. The slumped red head there, with the oversized flannel filling out a job application. I imagine she is having a moral crisis, and finally she lies, claims she was a lion tamer, from the summer of 06 through the fall of 07. How she thinks this will sway the managers at Starbucks to give a job nod in her favor, I do not know. But it makes perfect sense to her. That's the best part.Then there is Dave, stranger than fiction. He is a volume of books, all of them start with what he's had or having for his last or next meal. If he takes his pills he is ok. If he takes too many he is far away. And if maybe, one pill is a little too small, well the real Dave bleeds through and he will show you his painted webbed toes and tell you of his current if not somewhat morbid fascination with squirrels.

But how I see them, real or imagined, matters not. George MacDonald said:

"I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking." 

The most important thoughts I will ever have of me or you will have of you or they will ever have of they are God's thoughts. He does not make up more believable or less boring personalities for us. He is not able to be deluded by His own romanticism. He is not persuaded by jealousy or bitterness. He doesn't allow His opinion of us to be leveraged by our imperfections or our needs. He speaks only truth, at all times, and what He says is binding, for all eternity's days. 

Mind you all of the thoughts God has for us existed before time began. They are His heart and mind for us. But with our closed ears and hearts and minds we cannot, could not ever hear Him. The new life we are gifted in Jesus means opened ears and enlightened minds and a new heart too! Then we can begin to not just hear what God says about us, but because we have already begun experiencing His transformative power, we can trust that He will finish the job. And we begin to believe, when on our lowest days He doesn't run away, that He must actually see something wonderful in us.

We are new creatures in Christ. Which means we get a re-do! That chance to start over (and over, and over). "So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away--look, what is new has come." (2 Corinthians 5:17)!

We are children of God, heirs of heaven, with full divine rights. "But to all who have received him--those who believe in his name--he has given the right to become God's children." (John 1:12) "And if children, then heirs (namely, heirs of God and also fellow heirs with Christ)--if indeed we suffer with him so we may also be glorified with him." (Romans 8:17).

We are friends of Jesus. "But I call you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father" (John 15:15). And He proved it! Scripture says no greater love has a man than this than that he lay down his life for his friends. And Jesus did just that. Died in our place. I know that's elementary, sunday school 101...but it should shock us everyday.

Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Wow. Consider that, the intimacy that entails, that God would want to make himself at home in us. Geez. "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you." (1 Corinthians 6:19)?

This one sounds sacrosanct and too high for me, that we are the righteousness of God in Christ. But what I understand it to mean is simply this. Christ took the blame for everything we ever did, are doing, and will do and gave us instead His perpetual and immutable innocence to all those crimes. Talk about diplomatic immunity! The perks of being related (by blood) to a King. "God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21).

We are accepted. "Receive one another, then, just as Christ also received you, to God's glory." (Romans 15:7). We are not alone, nor are we isolated or ostracized by our differences. We are part of Him now, along with all the others. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female--for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). We are free! "For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be subject again to the chains of bondage." (Galatians 5:1). We are chosen, holy, and blameless before God. "For he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we may be holy and unblemished in his sight in love." (Ephesians 1:4).

This is who we are?? Really?? How? Why?? Because God is love and He loves us!

But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you are saved. (Ephesians 2:4-5) "Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience … (Colossians 3:12). We know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you … (1 Thessalonians 1:4).

Now when you look in the mirror you may want to remind yourselves of these things. Don't use your sassy voice, and I promise not to use mine. This new us in Christ is a gift, we didn't earn it and therefore shouldn't flaunt it. For example. If you get pulled over by a cop you might not want to say something along the lines of, "My dad is God so send the ticket to Him, He can take it out of my heavenly inheritance." And please don't use your place of preeminence with Christ to cause you to step to the front of the Starbucks line in front of the rest of us. I may kill you. 

And though knowing how God sees us will help navigate the toughest days at work, and the lowest lows of loneliness, the most important reason for us to see ourselves as He sees us, is so that we will have the confidence to go to Him. "...In whom we have boldness and confident access to God because of Christ's faithfulness." (Ephesians 3:12).

So for all the Daves and all the red-headed lion tamers...you are unconditionally loved, and you are magnificently from the mind of God.

This In-Between Month, Day 1

I have always been fascinated by the in-betweens. Dawn and dusk and their strange grays, horizons, borders and shorelines- that no-man's land. There is a tension in the in-betweens, a solitary confinement too. And what is art without those visceral forces, that isolation?

Yesterday morning, after the chaos of an airport run, the smells of burning trash and dirty diesel exhaust, and all the craziness of a normal Haitian Monday, I sat alone in the terminal at Port-au-Prince's Toussaint Louverture International Airport. I scrolled through photos of the day before, an impromptu beach outing. These two precious baby sisters, reclining in a wheel barrow. The Haiti that I was leaving behind for a month. 

It is hard to separate the feelings I get, the leaving a country I love and the going to a country where my son is. These in-betweens, they get more and more intense, more and more convoluted with each border passing. I feel like part of me stays, sojourns in that no-man's land, a little lost, never settling. My mind was on these thoughts and always the stark contrast of the poverty I was leaving, the luxury I would soon be in. I stared at my little cup of espresso, the last taste of Haiti for a month.

Later, as I sat waiting for my flight to New Orleans. A gentlemen, an entomologist by profession, sat across from me tearing pages from a magazine. Finally, bettered by my curiosity, I asked him what he was doing. He said simply, "It's too heavy." He was ripping out all the adds, another magazine's worth, and setting them on the seat beside him, making the very large magazine less unwieldy for his flight to South America. I jokingly asked him if he had paid for the magazine. He said, "yes, dearly." I laughed and remarked how the publishers were double dipping grossly, selling so many ads, and still taking their pound of flesh from their readership. He chuckled. I wondered aloud maybe most people buy it for the ads. Maybe they want to be told what to wear, and what to watch, and what to smell like. With the tone of a man who prefers the studies of bugs and not people he humored me, "Maybe." He continued to make his magazine lighter, the stack beside him grew to the height of another normal magazine, and I sat quietly. Finally I said, "Maybe people should do that with their lives? Rip out all the ads, all the pinned pages, all the critical analysis of the consumer at large. Maybe all those voices telling them who to be should be silenced as such." He looked at me, as if I were a rare species of cockroach, and as he stood he said. "You're way too young to be talking that way." And then he handed me the pile of pages and walked away. 

I found a sunny spot, near the sky train, and spread the pages on the floor. A drunk British tourist, worried about my sanity, said, "Hey Jesus, don't let them tell you how to be, don't let them get to you." Indeed. To which his sober country mate said, "Leave him alone, it's probably just art or something that he's doing." Only when he said "art", it was like a curse word. I made the little mosaic below in honor of those concerned Londoners while bored and waiting to board.

The flight to New Orleans was easy and uneventful. Sleep tugged at me but the flying mostly west at that hour always means flying into the sunset. The strangest of in-betweens, you literally watch the sun setting in slow motion, and oh the oranges, the yellows, the reds glowing the clouds. And then on descent, between the layers of clouds, like the sun exploded and irradiated everything with color. By the time I got to the hotel in New Orleans I was too tired to write, too tired to make sense of what it all meant if anything. I took a miraculous hot shower, I laid down in a bed too soft, too fresh for words. I thought of Haiti, my little wood shack by the sea. I thought for a few moments I'd never sleep here, not without the rolling waves...but then I was gone. Into the in-between of dreams.

The word for 2013 was "selfie". The most watched youtube video, with over 600 million views in the 2013 calender year is a song called "Gentleman" which depicts a man being anything but that, instead it is a crude celebration of the heights of selfishness even if it's meant to be somewhat ironic. (Please, spare yourself the agony.) Is this the way we see ourselves, and others? The way we want to be seen? I am no pile of ads and neither are you I suspect. A photo taken of ourselves is mostly harmless, and a crappy song doesn't necessarily become ones life governing philosophy. But who are we to be? 

Tomorrow I see my son for the first time in three months. I am always painfully aware that I am to set an example for him. And so the word that's been in my spirit, the one the ads can't sell you, the way they won't tell you to be, the one that flies in the face of all culture, the one that I am really bad at, is "selfless".

For me I want that word to mark my new year. To be the legacy for my son. And I find it impossible. And only with Jesus, only with His example and the sacrifice and power of the cross can I start to even begin to be selfless, which by any other name would be "Christ-likeness". Even as I type that word I know what it means and my soul shudders a bit and shrinks back from it. But I must. When I look at the state of my heart, my mind. When I take stock of my desires. When I look at the great needs in this weary world... Well it's time for change. 

So will you join with me and swear off selfies for a year? Haha. Just kidding. (But that is a thought..) Let us make 2014 a year where we are selfless. Where we change our spending habits, our consumption levels. (And besides, it's "too heavy" to carry all that weight around.) Use less and purchase slave-free. Give more to those doing the urgent things. May the way people describe us become the word selfless. Hard as it will be, with Christ all things are possible.

Gonna try and journal this in-between month. Love it if you stop by once and a while. 

Gory Bits Gone Wrong

I was on my lunch break, lying skyward on a bench, reading an excerpt from John Hull's memoir about going blind called "Touching The Rock" when...

Something had happened. Something was wrong.

At that moment, her little world was only as big as the belly of that stuffed animal turned wrong way out, wires like blown arteries, sheared from a heart in the shape of a battery-less box. 

Something had to be done. Right then.

I walked to my shop, found a tiny screwdriver, some electrical tape and pliers to strip the sheathing from the wires. Her worry receded a bit, the implements in my lap meant -

Something was going to be done. Right then.

She was a steady nurse. Kept the little screws safe in the folds of her pillowcase dress. Scolded the boys for wrapping electrical tape around their appendages. But her eyes never wavered, never left our patient. 

Something was about to be done. Right then!

Her body language willed my fingers on as I twisted wire into wire, first the black and then the red. I turned my palm up and she placed the electrical tape into my hand. Slowly I wrapped the once severed wires, first the black and then the red. Her eyes had questions that her mouth never asked. 

Not now. Something was being done! 

I pushed new batteries into place.  Switched the little switch to on. And she held her breath, held it in, held back elation, held back joy. Not yet.... 

Is it done? Now??!!

Her eyes did not need a mouth to ask. I handed her our patient, quickly she pressed it's paws together and from somewhere inside it's belly, little electric currents carried a signal to a tiny speaker hidden behind fake fur flecked with dirt. 

NOW!!

When all my guts, all my gory bits have gone wrong. When my insides feel like they are on my outsides and I don't feel like it will ever be better. I hope I remember today. Remember this child. Patient and trusting and willing and hopeful. I hope I am like her when my Divine Physician must work on me, when He strips back the sheared places, and slowly twists my heart back together.

Market Day!

I think if you want to take the pulse of a people you walk through their markets. And if the heart of Haitian cities are the markets, then that pulse, that lifeblood is the women. In a sprawling maze of rusted tin and muddy ruts covered in low-hung and haggard tarps Haiti's woman sell their fruits and vegetables and other humble wares. 

These photos are all stolen, awkward and clandestine, as most Haitians (unless they are your friends!) are very wary of being photographed. The women of the market work so hard, such long hot days, to provide for their families. They are beautiful beyond words. These few pictures don't do justice to the chaos of smells and sounds and colors that are Leogane Market, you'll just have to visit yourself.

Fish!

L'Acul, Haiti the last day of 2013 from about 7:30am to 8am. The fish are Bonita, or Bonit (boh-nee) in Kreyol. I hope it's a sign of good things to come for these villagers, for all of bel Ayiti. So beautiful how everyone worked together. And this is one of the largest single hauls in many months in our little inlet. The waters are so over-fished anywhere in range of a paddled boat, and since fisherman don't have motors, the good fishing is usually unreachable.

Sometimes I'm Just Lost

Sometimes I switch it up a bit. Take the wrong way to the right place, the long way round to a close one. And sometimes, sometimes I'm just lost and have to find my way back. Saw this church sign the other day on one such very long way wrong way round.

Geez. Of all the obnoxious, smarmy, stupid and banal ways to paint the need for Christ in our life to obtain wholeness of mind. Sometimes when I read these I want to go inside and scream why the particular message is catastrophically misrepresenting the Gospel and God's tenderness that draws the lost to His heart. But alas, business hours were 9-5 daily. I sat there, numb and dumb and full of a greater sense that we are failing in our dialogue with the world. 

My thoughts were all one way or the other after that. You know how you get, the pendulum of emotion. Your heart and will rally behind a noble thought, some great cause, and the next minute your mind waves the white flag of cynicism and surrender. 

Cotton clouds over cotton fields distracted me for a moment.

As far as I could see in every direction, cotton, fields white and ready for harvest. I pulled over to take this picture then closed my eyes, other pictures, creased and faded and colorless, workers harvesting the cash crop 150 years ago. Slaves, fingers raw from the prickly plant, picking next to their precious children. Lives stolen for what? Greed, ease of life for those that won a light skin lottery? 

I am reading Avengers Of The New World. It is the story of the Haitian Revolution, but the author Laurent Dubois does so much more than recount the details of the first successful slave revolt, he chronicles all the historical nuance, all of the minutia of the moment, the pulse of the people who were the prime movers in the French provincial slave trade. He recounts how laws were passed to keep anyone with so much a percentage of African blood from holding office or having other full citizen rights. He details how many of the descendants of Africa were much lighter skinned than some persons of European descent. And that the whole process was as convoluted and circumspect as one can infer by its idiocy. Businessmen and women, professors, even politicians having to prove their pedigree to the ridiculous godless blood-hounds bent on finding out light skinned impostors. Peoples of African descent whose dark poisonous blood would apparently be societies death, an acid bath of blood that would somehow corrode away and crumble the very foundations of white entitlement.

Geez....

So much of history is mired in the subjective. The viewpoint of one country or culture vs. another. So that the truth is hard to really know. But not this, never this. Slavery is evil, will always be evil. And anyone who didn't, doesn't fight against it, they are and always will be complicit. The garment industry has more slavery than any other industry. From forced labor in cotton fields to forced labor in factories. There are millions of children enslaved for the making of the garments that we all wear. Please buy fair trade, direct trade, slave free certified clothing (you can see which companies are doing there part here). And please read this book, it is so very very important as a historical narrative and more, a commentary on the perpetual state of fallen mankind.

I drove away thinking of the church sign, the cotton fields, the guilt of so many so called Christians in the enslavement and abuse, the murder and rape, of countless Africans. I thought, if someone can look at a darker skinned person and not see the image of God, well then they have never seen God. If someone can be so full of hate, well scripture is clear isn't it? They do not know God, who is love.

I drove and drove and then a grey rain came and stayed for hours but also a rainbow...

My thoughts are grey again today, grasping at God in the aftermath of the typhoon in the Philippines. There are 10 thousand feared dead. 10 million displaced, 4 million of them children now greatly susceptible to kidnapping and exploitation. The needs are so great as those island communities search frantic for water and food. Please if you can, donate to our friends My Refuge House in Cebu, Philippines. They will use the money in country to buy food and supplies and get it to families much quicker that way.

I leave for Haiti Monday. Soon I will be near again her sea. I will be back close to the country I love dearly, one that has suffered so long, so needlessly, that others might profit. It is a country still repressed by the lasting affects of political embargoes and aid policies that deconstructed a resilient indigenous Haitian economy while simultaneously creating dependence. It is heartbreaking and was to my way of thinking completely avoidable. I pray the next decade will be one of renewal for the indefatigable people of Haiti and for her unfathomably wonderful children. I'd like you to meet a few...

And meet my godson, Marc Finley!! Who shares my name and has stolen my heart. Oh and the loving lovely Madame Emmanuel, who spoils me so, with home cooked meals and warmth of home and heart.

And the proudest dad you've ever met! Fedeme, my dear friend who works harder everyday with such decency and determination. Can't wait to see him and his beautiful family.

Sometimes I do take the wrong way, the long way round. Sometimes, on days like today, I just feel lost. Sometimes I lose my grip. But Christ leads me round right again, He is The Way, in Him I am found. His is the grip that never slips. And sometimes when I spend my days on a diet of destruction and sexual exploitation and all the other bad news, when I start to wonder if it's a little too late in the history of things to do any good, well I try and remember mine is not to hold the whole world right side up, to keep it spinning on its axis. No mine is to realize the sorry state I am in and let the One who is in control do what only He can do. I guess I just needed to write today, to bleed off a little. Clear some cobwebs, some shelf space, make room for another days ramblings and rants, poetry and pretense. Thanks. Hope you enjoyed the pictures of the kids. Hope you're keeping it between the ditches. Hope beyond all hope you're holding on to Jesus, and if you're too weak for that, that you know He's holding onto you. xoxox

Little Nothing.

This is Anel.

He's my closest friend in Haiti. He is my translator, my teacher, my cultural liaison, even my conscience at times. He works side by side with me in the Haitian heat and has never once complained about anything. He is ever thankful for his job, his family and his friends. When I need someone to be a diplomat with an orphanage owner who is exploiting kids Anel softens my words and keeps peace. 

On weekends I travel to Titanyen where Anel lives and often we spend our Saturdays as makeshift tour guides for medical volunteers that come to work at the clinic in Cite Soleil. A few weekends ago there were two ladies, Kelly and Rachel and we took them along with the clinic's medical coordinator Jill to the mass grave a few miles up the road.

In 2010 Haiti suffered a catastrophic earthquake. Nearly 200,000 men, women and children lost their lives. Images of thousands of corpses lining Haiti's streets inundated first world televisions. The government decided to bury the unclaimed bodies en masse. And little Titanyen became a Necropolis whose dead far outnumbered her living.

The picture above and the one directly below were taken by Kelly when she was in Haiti in 2011. This is how the mass graves looked then, thousands of black crosses planted by mourners. 

But now, a year later only a few of those crosses remain. There is a permanent monument at the edge of the graves and a large wooden cross at the hill's peak but mostly there is a lot of rough underbrush and the scraps of remembrances past. A fake flower, a piece of purple fabric, spray paint epitaphs on pieces of plywood. I left the girls at the bottom of the hill and walked up to read the plaque on the cross. Anel followed me slowly but then turned and lost himself in thought.

Atop the small hill two large crosses serve as a slightly more permanent memorial to the 40,000 thousand that are buried here.

As I approached the cross a falcon was sitting, watching our wandering. I wondered how much he'd seen. Had he been there, circling in the sky, watching the tens of thousands of corpses pushed ignominiously into that gaping mouth of earth. Had he heard the wails of the living, screaming out sorrows for the dead. 

The girls had gathered at the truck and Anel was looking my way so I snapped a couple more pictures and hurried down. At the bottom of the hill joyful Anel was quiet and reserved. I unlocked the truck for the girls and then pulled him aside. "What's wrong?" I asked.

Instead of an answer he asked me a question. Did I know what he had done before he came to work for SP? I didn't. He went on, told me how he took pictures of people with a digital camera, then would print out the shots at a photo copy center and sell the pictures to his patrons for a little over a buck. On the day of the earthquake he had been going about his regular business and was inside the photo copy store printing out the days crop. He left the store and then 20 minutes later the building collapsed killing all 30 people inside.

Geez.....

Underneath our feet, some, maybe all, of those unlucky thirty slowly turned back to dirt. 

Come to find out, little Titanyen has always been a dumping ground for bodies. Thugs and gangsters, criminals and government hit-men alike have over the years disposed of their victims here. In fact all over Haiti that is what Titanyen is known for, that and a common perception that it is a desolate wasteland of a town. Titanyen literally means little nothing. 

But I love this little town. I miss it so. Some of the kindest, gentlest, most genuine people I have ever met live in Titanyen. And I miss Anel the most this cold, wet, gunpowder grey Mississippi morning. His enthusiasm is infectious. His dedication and determination tireless. Scripture says the last will be first, the lowly will be lifted, and that God calls those things that are not as though they are. I know Titanyen has not been forgotten by God. I saw Him there so often, on the faces of the children, heard Him in their laughter, tasted Him in the boundless generosity of home cooked meals. But mostly, in a town so acquainted with death I have seen God's eternal life in the indefatigable hope in the hearts of her people.

Larger Inside Than Out: Do Right to Me Baby.

Don't wanna judge nobody, don't wanna be judged

Don't wanna touch nobody, don't wanna be touched

Don't wanna hurt nobody, don't wanna be hurt

Don't wanna treat nobody like they was dirt

But if you do right to me, baby

I'll do right to you too

Got to do unto others like you'd have them

Like you'd have them, do unto you.....

Dylan's folk rock rendering of the Golden rule, lyrics from his song Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others). 

Bobby D circa 1979.

This is the first post in a series Larger Inside Than Out on the simple things of the gospel that seem to get so screwed. This post in particular has been a long time coming. I am about to reduce the gospel to one word. One. Simple. Word. 

Empathy.

Not what you expected? To be honest, I never really saw it either, not really until 6 months back. It was the matter of the dirty dishes I think. Yeah, it was Easter, and the beautiful ladies that cook and clean the kitchen had the weekend off. So we all merrily cooked for ourselves and ate and ate and ate....and the dishes piled up. And they sat. They sat from good Friday on. Perhaps, in the spirit of the season, some had hoped for a sort of miracle on the third day...but alas, none such luck. So at around midnight I made my way into the kitchen for a glass of water and the smell and shadow of such a gigantic pile of dishes as to stagger the soul. I was incredulous. Well, mostly I was pissed that there weren't any clean glasses. So after ducking my head under the water cooler I stood staring at the mound of unwashed dishes. And I thought, I wonder what the ladies will think when they come in tomorrow. What this pile of dishes communicates to them, about how we feel about them. I thought, if I were them.....well you get my point.

It took me til 2 a.m to finish those damn dishes. I was so steaming mad by the time I was through. But then, my soul was crushed by the reality of it all. How selfish we all are, how rarely we put ourselves in the other person's position, how very rare the commodity of empathy really is. I can attest to the veracity of this statement. I have been a selfish bastard my whole life.

At the very heart of the heart of the gospel is this beautiful reality, that Jesus understands exactly how we feel. Wow. And then, in the most universally simple way, He spells it out for us...."Do unto others, as you'd have done unto you." Wow.

Scripture tells us that Jesus was tempted in all ways, that he bore all our suffering and shame. He alone can say to each one of us...I know how you feel. As Christians, the body of Christ, the hands, the feet, the heart of Jesus in this world, we are to express the same through our actions. Empathizing with the pain of others, the frustration, the loneliness, the poverty....And then we are to act.

So then, a guy on the street asks you for money. Instead of judging his motives, instead of scrutinizing his appearance, or offering a snide remark about getting a job. Do for him what you'd want done for you.

When you see the special needs child being picked on, passed over, imagine it was your child.

When you consider the 2 million women enslaved in the sex trade, ask yourself. "What lengths would I go to if this was my daughter, or wife, or mother or sister?" "What lengths would I want someone to go to to rescue me?"

Empathy.

When you think of the hungry as they succumb to starvation, as 14 thousand do everyday....

The 163 million orphans...

Empathy.

When you give a treatise on religion to the waitress and then leave a buck and a half tip for a 50 dollar meal...

Empathy.

When you tell the divorcee they should have tried harder.

When you tell the sick they should have prayed harder.

Empathy.

I have been in Haiti for almost 8 months. I have seen how most Haitians live. I have also heard the statements of outsiders as they fly in, take a snapshot, and then proceed to spell out all that is broken in Haitian society, and why, and what would fix it. And yet they are ferried about in air conditioned vehicles, they sleep in dry and temperature controlled rooms. They bathe with running water and enjoy the luxury of a toilet, and a hand sink, and they live a life so separate, so unlike that of the Haitians they are "ministering" to...

We must put ourselves in the other's shoes. If our day started with a 2 mile trek down the side of a mountain, then a 2 hour ride in the back of a pick up, having bathed from a bucket, having hand washed our clothes, having not eaten so as to pay the tap tap, having slept poorly on cardboard, under a tarp roof. Having done the same thing for our whole lives....well I guarantee you we wouldn't show up for work with a heart full of joy radiating all over our faces just to make a dollar and hour so we can feed our kids and maybe, just maybe send the oldest to school. I wouldn't. But that is just what my Haitian brothers and sisters do everyday. Week in and week out. Never complaining. Never.

"This is all they've ever known" one might say  So true, and yet in a the first world, where our every whim is a reality, where we are only limited by our imaginations, we are among the most clinically depressed nations on the planet. 

The gospel does not suggest we empathize, it is the central tenant of the gospel, because if we are following Christ's example, which is the definition of being a Christian, following Christ, and since the Cross is the greatest act of empathy every conceived we are to do the same. The New Testament is crowded with stories of Christ moved with compassion. Empathy is the key that unlocks compassion.

Brennan Manning recounts a story of two drunk Irishmen sitting in a pub in rural Ireland. The one slurs to the other, "Seamus, do you love me?" "Of course I do" his sloshed friend replies. "Then tell me what hurts me?"

"What hurts me?"

Christ knows.

And it is in this fragile state that He accepts us. We must find a way to do the same. To listen before we judge, to walk that mile in the other's shoes before we tell them they are on the wrong road. 

Do right to me baby.

The anniversary of the moment in time when Christ's empathy began, at least in a physical respect, approaches. We celebrate His birth, a day of incarnation, a day of anticipation of when He will come again. And while we spend billions to buy the affections of our loved ones, to placate their restlessness, to anesthetize their sorrow....27  million are enslaved. 200 million are homeless. 

Imagine you are homeless, the reasons, the decisions, good or bad, the tragedies that got you to that point aside, how do you feel about the Christmas celebrations inside the warm houses? Does the celebration, to which you have no part communicate the gospel to you? What would you want the shoppers, the revelers, your fellow man to do? It's complicated you might think. Think harder. You are alone. You are wearing seven layers of discarded clothing. Your stench, your rashes, your finger-less gloves, your frostbit fingers. The rumble in your belly, a dumpster-dive dinner. Sheets of cardboard, rats for bed-mates, one more eternally cold night punctuated by car horns and thick exhaust. Now. What would you want someone to do for you? What if it was your child? What would you do?

Imagine you make bricks 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Your family at your side, your pregnant wife, your four year old daughter, your 8 year old son. It is 110 degrees, double that at the face of the kiln. You eat if you make your quota of 1400 bricks. It takes every one of you, all 18 hours to make that quota. Your little girl, palms calloused, fingerprints gone. Your son, another year without school. Your beautiful wife, bonded with you for a few dollars debt. Your master beats you when the bricks aren't up to his standard, a standard that is an ever moving target. He beats you when you ask to see your debt ledger, when he finally does your debt grows. You are trapped. What would you want someone to do?

The gospel of empathy is radical in every respect, except for the way we are living it. To continue to live the way we want when so many barely are able to survive is more than just an affront to the gospel...it is the opposite of the gospel and the sinister essence of the worst possible hypocrisy. I would know. I've lived this way for most of my life. To claim we are Christians and continue to ignore the great social injustices of our day, to continue to enjoy cheap goods at the expense of slave labor, to live in extravagance when so many have nothing....It proves we have never felt what God feels for His creation. The empathy that radiates from the cross, that disintegrates all isolation, that incinerates all despair, helps to heal all hurts and recklessly lives to break every bondage. 

I could post a hundred images of starving or exploited children. Charts and statistics until the numbers blur and no longer bleed or sweat or cry...but we're big people, with consciences, and intellects, similar hopes and fears. We know how this is supposed to work. And if we call ourselves Christians, well then we know what we have to do. What we should want to do, what sacrificial, joy-filled love compels us to do.

Do right to me baby.

P.S. Since that fateful Easter weekend, and including the  very long, wet, shut-in, cabin fevered weekend of TS Sandy, my beautiful co-workers have washed tons of dishes!

Grace and a Sheet of Glass.

The paper, folded, sweat bleached and poorly printed read:

Funerailles de Mr. Andre Eliphate

Ne le mai 1961

Decede le 22 Septembre 2012 a l'age de 51 ans

At least that's what it appeared to read, the legacy of a man already fading for want of ink. And then underneath there was a picture, in decorated uniform, blurred beyond recognition, and an epitaph:

"Tout vit, tout naitre, tout perisse"

"Everything lives, everything born, all perish." But what have we learned. Only what we already know. The order of service on the back does not tell us how to live life, or better yet avoid death, to be unborn. It proffers the names of choral groups and the arrangements they will sing. Pays honor to the speakers, speaking to honor the deceased, who will themselves die one day. The snake with its tail in its mouth. Oh, this pitiful little piece of ephemera, maybe it will survive, longer than the man. Pressed between pages in an album celebrating his life only to be shelved and shrouded in dust.  

But this is not the man, this paper. Anymore than the script on it's back is the funeral. He lived and loved and raised 7 children. He protected his community from violence until gang members shot him for stopping their thieving in broad daylight of a woman selling mangoes in the market. He was the father of my friend Alfedo, who speaks 7 languages and works tirelessly without complaining at every task put before him. He will be missed like all good men by his family and friends. Such is the nature of these things. 

But my God the funeral. 

A thousand mourners packed and then overflowing out of a flesh coloured concrete church with one small humble cement cross at its peak. I stood at the door, straining to see Alfedo, straining to comprehend the Creole songs and eulogy. But nothing said or sung was of any importance. Grief was the only language spoken today, and of a sort I have never heard nor seen. As I stood there concussed by the screams all my words for what I was hearing failed me. A banshee's wail, an ambulance siren. I would welcome either in the casket black night over what I heard today. Tortured anguish, hopeless desperation, convulsive sorrow....words cannot touch what I saw. Women in white dresses flailing, flung down to the dirt floor by grief. Rolled and shook and throttled by grief. Seizurred and spun and batted about by so great a grief that those who tried to restrain them could barely do so. Woman after woman carried out of the little church, white dresses ripped and stained and faces soaked with sweat and tears, their screams unabated their arms and legs lurching in every direction, bent at impossible angles.

The bible talks about groanings words cannot utter. I have heard these things today. And even the occasional comprehendable "Why! Why!" was so strangled by grief as to be beyond language. Nothing ever spoken could touch the despair and gravity of those groanings. I wanted to cover the ears of the children, to cover the ears of those women. No one should ever make these noises, have to hear these noises. 

I stood outside in the Haitian sun. Reeling, trying to make sense of such sorrow. The women who had been carried out now whimpered in the courtyard of the church. They sat sprawled on the ground, shivering with exhaustion. Across the street a bar was opening. Patrons laughing, drinking beer and rum not 50 feet from the mourners. One group drinking away their own grief and the other having drunk to the dregs of sorrow's sourest cup. Next door to the bar a little shop called "Le Sange de Jezi Cosmetiques". The Blood of Jesus Cosmetics. Only in Haiti. The irony as the recession of the corpse commences. A white casket cradled in uniformed arms. Inside a Father, a friend, a brother and son, a fellow officer- the mortician's art, the embalming perfume, the make-up. And the blood of Jesus, the covering of the Christian, a soul snow white forever. Le Sange de Jezi Cosmetiques.

Alfedo approaches. Vacant-eyed and asleep on his feet. I embrace him, pray for him as tears soak our shirts. And then he too recedes. Into the throng of mourners. I catch my reflection in a glass surface; hair sun bleached and wind-whipped, face gaunt with sadness, eyes red and weary and wasted looking. And I realize I am seeing my reflection in the window of the hearse. Grace and a sheet of glass....

The national radio programs called for manifestations around Port-au-Prince today. Nothing new. This time it's Aristide holdovers protesting President Martelly. These things rarely go well. Lots of stuff gets set on fire and people get busted up real bad. There was no sign of any of it though, just a few spray can scrawls on crumbling walls that proclaimed Aristide president for life. They would have seemed silly today, small and insignificant against the backdrop of such intense suffering and pain. We drove back to Titenyan in silence. Everyone of us, alone with our thoughts, thinking of loved ones lost and those we would be crushed to lose. I hope everyone of the guys went home and hugged their kids, their wives. Called up their closest friends. I am thinking of my son and also of my beautiful muse. They both seem a million miles away. Oh what I would give for their hugs right now.