Hope.

Growing frustrated with my infantile Creole, Donell searches for the words in English. Finally, voice cracking he says "I am just f--king tired. Something must change."

We are standing in City Soleil, the largest, densest slum in the western hemisphere and by far the most dangerous. I put my hand on his shoulder. There is nothing to say, not in any language. He pulls a worn New Testament out of his pocket. A picture of his best girl and his baby sister tucked safely into the gospel of John. On the page facing Jesus tells His disciples "don't let your hearts be troubled". I want to tell Donell the same but again language fails. 

We are covered in mud. His tent city has flooded due to early rains and a very clogged drainage canal. It has taken us three days but the water flows freely now and the muddy slum begins to dry out. 

Marciell, Evonne and Donell working so hard. The drainage canal was full to six inches below the rim with  tires, tarps, cables and every sort of garbage and plant mass. 3 days of intense work with our bodies shoulder deep in sludge and the canal is clean! 

On our lunch break Donell takes me to his 'house'. It is no bigger than a closet, it is tarps and dirt and a cinder block platform covered in cardboard that is his bed. The water was six inches above the cardboard which is still wet. He doesn't ask me to take a picture. He is a singer. This place does not define him. He will make it out one day. He has to. 

But Donell is the exception, everyone else it seems wants me to chronicle the flood, their squalor, the disintegrating tarps and canvas. The mud. 150+ tents, 1,500+ people, covered.

The next tent is worse than the last and the deeper into the camp you go the deeper the mud, the frustration. These people are refugees in their own city. The are desperate to be heard but feel like no one listens. The camera listens, if only for a second, and so they each tell their stories into its unblinking eye.

But soon they forget the camera. Soon they begin speaking to me as if I understand. The elderly especially, holding nothing back. Their eyes betray their fear, their hopelessness.

The couple above wave their arms wildly, both simultaneously telling their story. The man motions where the water from the downpour came in through the holes in their tent while his wife tells how the flood waters ruined all they had, went two feet up the tent walls. She seems like she is going to breakdown but then draws from some inner strength, perhaps the sobering responsibility of taking care of her blind husband. 

But where the elderly are wrecked with worry, the children, as children do, remain carefree and defiantly joyful.

The reality is that April starts the rainy season and with it malaria and the dreadful horror of cholera. With no latrines or fresh water, feces mixes with mud and enters open sores especially on bare feet. Enters little mouths by way of sucked thumbs and soiled playthings. Cholera is easily treated if caught immediately but with little education and the incessant reality of diarrhea due to any number of dietary and health factors many times people wait too long for treatment.  

What struck me with the deepest sense of awe, maybe even more than the indefatigable joy of the kids, was the dignity of these amazing people. Their resilience, their grace, their unconquered beauty. In a slum of half a million with rampant gang violence and a suffocating quality that is palpable even to outsiders, they soldier on. They love their children, they work so very hard, and they share with each other. Given the smallest chance I know they would thrive. 

  

There is a Haitian proverb that goes: Deye mon, gen mon. Beyond the mountains, more mountains. It captures the fatalism and tragedy of the Haitian life so perfectly, that even if the Haitian people overcome one struggle there is another struggle waiting to sucker-punch them. And they have come to accept it. Several times this week Haitians have said without a hint of irony or self-pity, "Ain't nothing easy."  But yet they don't give up. They hold on to something. Perhaps like Donell, a dream.

I ask him what kind of music he sings. It would have been quicker to ask him which kinds he doesn't sing. Donell's smile widens as the list goes on. He only smiles when he talks of singing. He reminds me President Martelly was a singer. As if to say, "See? Anything's possible." The Haitian leader smiles down in agreement from a billboard that marks the entrance to City Soleil. 

Donell

Dreams are powerful because they tap into that invisible reservoir of hope. But dreams usually don't come true. Dreams disintegrate, are ground to grit by the daily grind and with them the heart too is crushed. So what then can sustain a desperate soul? What can resurrect a heart killed by sorrow and then heal it forever? From where comes everlasting hope?

I believe it is in Christ alone. That it is in Him we can have "the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before time began." It will not come from money, nor politicians. Neither will stem the tide of suffering and despair. It will not be found in the rote of religion or the prestige of power. Neither will break chains or unlock cages. Peter wrote "For it wasn't with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ....through Him you believe in God, who raised Him from the dead, and so your faith and hope are in God."

This is my prayer tonight for City Soleil, for Donell. That the God of all hope floods them with all joy and all peace as they trust in Jesus, so that they may overflow with that precious hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Oh Lord please let it be so. 

The Night Hides A World, But Reveals A Universe.

I love to read the proverbs of other cultures. I love how it reminds us we are all so much alike. To me there is something very compelling, very salt of the earth about the oral tradition of a phrase that has stood the test of so many generations, that has survived the revisionists and the post modernists and the younger generations chaffing under the disciplines of their elders, throwing off the shackles of tradition. It speaks of course to a proverb's practical wisdom that so many lips for so long have uttered the phrases and felt completely justified if not obligated to do so. Today I have been reading Iranian proverbs and poetry.

The main text of poster is an Iranian proverb means: "Our cow doesn't milk, but pisses plenty", that describing a person who tends to make mess of things, rather than making them right.

These Iranian proverbs range from the practical:

Habits are first cobwebs, then cables.

You can’t push on a rope.

The joy of finding something is often worth more than what is found.

The larger a man's roof the more snow it collects. 

Standard fare really, similar sentiments found in every language, every culture under the sun. A testament to their universal truth. Then the slightly more abstracted, at least if nothing else by the translations:

A drowning man is not troubled by rain.

Every man is the king of his own beard.

He who has been bitten by a snake fears a piece of string.

The lion (and the lioness fellas) is most handsome when looking for food.

But there are also the romantic ones. I like these best:

The loveliest of faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy. 

Only a heart can find the way to another heart.

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. 

A woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea. 

Then there are those that bridge the gap between proverb and poetry, where the best of Persian culture begins to bleed through:

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky... Finally, to take a step without feet.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you..

But it is the Persian poets that I believe really capture the essence of the heart of the Iranian people. Such passion and such reckless abandon to it. Hafiz has always been my favorite. He was a master of love poetry:

...Your love 

Should never be offered to the mouth of a 

Stranger, 

Only to someone 

Who has the valor and daring 

To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife 

Then weave them into a blanket 

To protect you...

and...

...One regret, dear, 

That I am determined not to have 

When I am lying on my deathbed 

Is that 

I did not kiss you enough.... 

and the sensuous and heady..

Lean your sweet neck and mouth 

Out of that dark nest where you hide, 

I will pour effulgence into your mind. 

Artist's rendering of the most famous Persian poet Hafiz.

Hafiz also wrote about our relationship to God with such unapologetic romance and passion. The way that relationship should be. Intoxicated by the Spirit:


I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through.....listen to this music.

I am happy even before I have reason. I am full of light even before the sky can greet the sun or moon. Dear companions, we have been in love with God for so very, very long; what can we now do but forever dance?

This place where you are right now

God circled on a map for you

Wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move 

Against the earth and sky,

The Beloved has bowed there – 

Our Beloved has bowed there knowing 

You were coming

But my all time favorite has always been this one. To me it speaks about the surpassing joy that comes from knowing God, of resting in the finished work of Grace, of letting go and surrendering to the mysterious wonder of His sacrificial, unconditional, never ending love.

What is the difference between your experience of existence and that of a saint? The saint knows that the spiritual path is a sublime chess game with God and that the Beloved has just made such a fantastic move that the saint is now continually tripping over joy and bursting out in laughter and saying, I surrender! Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think you have a thousand serious moves.


I do not agree with some of Hafiz's philosophy, and he has certainly been mistranslated as have all poets. But he consistently touched this truth. That the heart of man and the heart of God have a gravity, a convergent trajectory. That we are made for this collision, and that we should stop resisting the pull. As Hafiz would say..

Just sit there 

Just sit there right now

Don't do a thing

Just rest

For your separation from God 

Is the hardest work in this world

For NKA...

The Fingerprint Of God.

It has been said that if men will not praise God that the stones will cry out. Of course some would say that it is poetry, the hyperbole of the zealous. Perhaps. Or perhaps it merely means that if men were silent that the fingerprint of God would still be evident everywhere. But what if, just perhaps, the stones do have a song...

If men be mute the stones will sing

Will shout, will cry, will moan, will scream

Will bellow out against the hush

Your worth, Your truth, Your faithfulness

If stones be crushed to stop the sound
Be blown to bits, to grit be ground
Then from every atom’s heard
Your love, Your light, Your holy word

Another thought I have often, that if ever there were some great purging, if ever they outlawed god, in every form by every name. If all implements of worship were burned in the buildings that housed them, and all the places where believers gathered were razed to the ground. If every word, thought, feeling, and memory of god were scrubbed from the minds and hearts and souls of man... Would God disappear?

Some would say so. That we are much more sophisticated now, much less superstitious then our ancestors, who concocted god to answer the unanswerable, to comfort the inconsolable. Doorkeeper of heaven, waiting, clothed in clouds, to usher us into eternal bliss.

Hmmmmm.....

Well I believe that the Holy Spirit would once again began to call the souls of the sons and daughters of creation. That once again there would rise questions in mankind that no terrestrial answer will suffice and that the Spirit would be right there to lead into all truth. I take great comfort in this. That heaven is not silent, nor would it ever be. That all along the Father has made Himself known. In every sunset and sea dragon..




...every birth and thunderstorm.




Surely His fingerprint is everywhere, in case we should ever forget.