Road Trippin' with River, Days 6, 7 and 8: Heard, Half-Heard in the Stillness.

Friday River and I enjoyed the beauty of creation. From streams canopied in spring greens and impossible lushness to the top of the highest peak in Tennessee, swathed in clouds and crisp air. The leaves filter the light like fingers on a fretboard. Touching it here and there to release its song. So skillfully, such grand music. There are moments when you get lost in it, the beauty that is. Moments when you are almost quiet. Moments when words will never be enough, when your heartbeat slowing is praise enough for God. 

It's been a lazy Sunday afternoon. Much coffee. River is reading Sir Author Conan Doyle's The Empty House and missing his home and his cat, Mr. Hopkins, who is named for Gerard Manly Hopkins. (River just reminded me that I named him, that is apparently I gave River two choices. Huxley or Hopkins. The priest poet won out.) And truth is I am missing Haiti. Longing to be back doing something. But we need this time, River and I. To ground each other, sand the rough edges off, laugh without inhibition and such. Tuesday morning we will head back early a.m. and 2 weeks from yesterday I will fly back into Port-au-Prince. 


The rest of this weekend has been quasi-quiet contemplation (and coffee, always the coffee) here in the mountains. Trying to be still in His presence and yet still being so....well, un-still. I am thinking about what that communicates to my Savior, the lover of my soul. That I should be more content to fixate on that which I cannot control than with the tenderness of His presence. When you're in love, there is that point when you trust that other person enough to just be still with them, to linger in each moment, your souls communicating without words that this is where you'd rather be than anywhere else. And how much more infinitely so with Him who is sovereign.


And is it not in the stillness when we can hear him most clearly, when he pours into us most purely, and from where we can best go out into the chaos of life and love a broken world back from pieces?


Here is a lovely poem by T. S. Eliot called Little Gidding (V). The couplet in bold somehow exactly captures how I am feeling right. about. now... 

We shall not cease from exploration 

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for 

But heard, half heard, in the stillness

Between the two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always--

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of things shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

The Voice of the hidden waterfall. The Source of the longest river. The single Note that rises above the cacophony and chaos of life, that which we can tune our souls to. The lovesong of His stillness.

Road Trippin' with River, Days 4 & 5: Speak Upon The Ashes.

Yesterday we left Rome, GA for Chattanooga, TN. First stop, Lookout Caverns and Ruby Falls. The tour was guided which kept River and I from any real mischief. Boring. But River enjoyed the sights very, very much in spite of the guard rails and the ever-watchful eyes.

I was distracted a bit, still am today, by thoughts of Haiti and her people. Especially her women. The number of victims of gender-based violence there makes my heart ache. And where yesterday the sky was bright and blue and yes and possible, today it sulked and brooded and dampened everything (even threw a little tantrum with hail). I adore the rain, but today...???? Back at the hotel I've been looking through the pictures I took in Haiti. I want you to meet some of the beautiful kids from the Lamb Center where I will be working the next 3 months. The children there are so amazing. So full of tenderness and joy. I am so excited to get to spend more time with them. To see them safe in their new home.

Today I have been reading the biography of Sojourner Truth the fiery abolitionist, preacher and woman's rights activist. She was born Isabella Baumfree and into slavery in 1797 and was sold at least three times. She had 5 children from a forced marriage and fled to freedom a year before New York emancipated all slaves when her last master reneged on a promise to free her early. 


She once beautifully and powerfully ranted: 


"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne five children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"


I am thinking that this women who announced that she wasn't ever going to die instead was "going home like a shooting star", would be such a powerful voice in Haiti and anywhere else women find themselves enslaved and oppressed. 

Sojourner Truth

Her faith made her fearless. She proclaimed "I feel safe in the midst of my enemies, for the truth is all powerful and will prevail." She trusted God implicitly. His sovereignty, His power. She once rebuked Fredrick Douglas for suggesting that slaves use violence to acquire their freedom. Sojourner chided, "Be careful Fredrick, is God Dead?"


She was no respecter of persons and her tongue was as sharp as her wit and ever able to puncture the most pretentious men of her day. She once castigated a "minister" for his sexism which he tried to justify with scripture.



"Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him."


"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, these women together ought to be able to turn it right again." 



One day, while preparing for a speech she was told of a threat that the building would be burned down if she spoke there.  Sojourner spoke quietly in humble defiance, "Then I will speak upon the ashes."


Wow. My kinda woman.


Almost 10:30 here and River is nestling into a comforter cocoon. Sci-fi on his laptop and the Battle Hymn of the Republic drifts sleepily from his whistling lips. He has not stopped whistling it or singing it for 4 days now. Oh my.


But I am not ready for sleep. My mind is reeling, my heart so very heavy thinking about a report out of Egypt where new laws would give men the right to violate their wives after they are deceased. State sanctioned necrophilia. I am desperately hoping and praying that those men in Egypt's parliament, those who hold this legislation's fate in their hands, will consider the prospect of a man having sex with their daughters after they are dead and send this law back to the pit of hell where it came from.  


Please pray for the women of Egypt tonight. For the daughters. Please remember the millions of women enslaved tonight. Pray for freedom, for justice, for hope that they might hold on a little longer. Until God can raise up rescuers. 


Til tomorrow then...

Road Trippin' With River, Day 3: Something To Smile About.

Day 3 of my road trip with River began with coffee (you already knew that) and a slow sleepy drive to Auburn Ave and the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. The house is quaint, even idyllic despite its somewhat urban setting. It is every bit as humble as I'd expected and secretly hoped.

It was a lot to take in. I guess the childhood home of a hero places them more on a common plane with us. But I did not feel closer to him. At least not there, not until the graveside. I had tears in my eyes before I even got to the granite monolith. 

River explored the tidal pool and the eternal flame while I thought about the man. He had the ear of the nation and he did not back down from the responsibility. Nor was he any less bold. He proclaimed the gospel and was brave enough, believed it enough to actually live it. 

We walked the 500 feet from the grave to Ebenezer Baptist, the church where MLK co-pastored with his dad and where his mother was shot and killed as she played the organ. 

River sat and I paced in the sanctuary of the church as we listened to one of the most powerful sermons MLK ever gave. I touched the podium he preached from, rested my hands where he must have rested his. It was very special to me, to be there, with River, listening to one of my heroes call the church to action, call me and River to action from the book of Isaiah. Here are the high-points of the sermon. You can read it in its entirety here.

"This morning I would like to submit to you that we who are followers of Jesus Christ, and we who must keep his church going and keep it alive, also have certain basic guidelines to follow. Somewhere behind the dim mist of eternity, God set forth his guidelines. And through his prophets, and above all through his son Jesus Christ, he said that, "There are some things that my church must do. There are some guidelines that my church must follow." The guidelines are clearly set forth for us in some words uttered by our Lord and Master as he went in the temple one day, and he went back to Isaiah and quoted from him. And he said, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 


"[T]he church is not a social club, although some people think it is. They get caught up in their exclusivism, and they feel that it’s a kind of social club with a thin veneer of religiosity, but the church is not a social club. The church is not an entertainment center, although some people think it is. You can tell in many churches how they act in church, which demonstrates that they think it’s an entertainment center. The church is not an entertainment center. Monkeys are to entertain, not preachers."


"Now I wish time permitted me to go into every aspect of this text, but I want to just mention a few. Let us first think of the fact that if the church is following its guidelines, it seeks to heal the broken-hearted. Now there is probably no human condition more tantalizing than a broken heart. You see, broken-heartedness is not a physical condition; it’s a condition of spiritual exhaustion. And who here this morning has not experienced a broken heart? I would say broken-heartedness comes basically from the trying experience of disappointment. And I don't believe there are many people here this morning under the sound of my voice who have not been disappointed about something." 

MLK at home with Coretta. I love this shot.

"[W]hen the church is true to its guidelines, it sets out to preach deliverance to them that are captive. This is the role of the church: to free people. This merely means to free those who are slaves. Now if you notice some churches, they never read this part. Some churches aren't concerned about freeing anybody."


"The word of God is upon me like fire shut up in my bones, and when God’s word gets upon me, I've got to say it, I’ve got to tell it all over everywhere. [shouting] And God has called me to deliver those that are in captivity!" 


"It seems that I can hear the God of the universe smiling and speaking to this church, saying, "You are a great church because I was hungry and ye fed me. You are a great church because I was naked and ye clothed me. You are a great church because I was sick and ye visited me. You are a great church because I was in prison and ye gave me consolation by visiting me." And this is the church that’s going to save this world. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to heal the broken-hearted, to set at liberty them that are captive, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.""

Wow. Such passion, such power, such authority. Visiting MLK's humble little church, hearing that sermon about Christian responsibility for the poor, the broken, the enslaved it was gasoline on my faith's fire. And yet I stood there thinking about Atlanta's other churches, the megalithic modern ones in the Metro area. And I don't think the God of the universe is smiling. Not one bit.

I thought about quotes I'd heard from two of the largest mega-church leaders in Atlanta who are both purveyors of the prosperity gospel. I'll leave them anonymous because I am not attacking them, not exactly. It is enough to know that their influence is that large and their gospel that gilded and vacuous.

One is a pastor of a 30,000 strong church who claims the money he spends is his own, but admits the church did give him a Rolls Royce, which he mainly uses for special occasions. He says. “Without a doubt, my life is not average. But I’d like to say, just because it is excessive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong.”

The 200 thousand dollar mega church pastor's Rolls Royce. Not exactly the donkey that Christ rode into Jerusalem on. 

"Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy." (Ezekiel 16:49-50) He also said: “My lifestyle does not come out of the church’s bank account." 


No sir, it comes out of the mouths of the starving. Geez.

According to another leader, a "bishop" at another 25,000 member church, "Jesus wasn't broke, and leaders of churches shouldn’t be either." The "bishop", heeding his own advice with religious fervor has earned millions in salary from his ministry. He owns a million dollar home on a 20-acre lot, and also has use of a $350,000 Bentley.

18,000 sqft House of a pastor. 

Mr. Bishop. Your theology is skewed by your lust for things of this earth. Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." He did not even have the money to pay taxes, being a carpenter in a city under foreign occupation, he told Peter to "go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours."

Was it not Jesus who said it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven? Who said "But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry."


It is long since past time to divest ourselves from the things of this temporary life. To re-invest our passion, our abilities, our time, love and yes our money, into this world we are called to serve, for the world to come.

And if we did, I mean really did, hearts all in, pockets empty, the world would see the gospel, the world would desire it, there would be real church growth. Not to mention such a profound decrease in broken hearts and suffering and modern slavery and the sexual exploitation of children, the end of starvation, and nakedness, and little feet, disease ridden for lack of shoes. 


It's time to give God something to smile about.


River and I left the church around noon and had Indian food in Downtown Atlanta. Then we walked around a bit as I processed the morning's events before heading north to Rome to have dinner and coffee with my friend Rachel. I met Rachel in Haiti where she volunteered as a nurse at the clinic in Cite Soleil. She is a bundle of joy wrapped in Georgia clay. Our conversation tonight was deeply Christ-centered, as it always is with her, in the most authentic and refreshing way. I feel re-charged. Thirst-quenched. What a perfect end to such an emotional day. I'm still smiling. 


We're back at the hotel now. River is falling asleep to a sci-fi lullaby. I am thinking of the year and a half I was on radio. At the end of every show I would play U2's MLK. A tribute to the man who had a dream, the man who gave his life to that dream. A dream of equality. A dream of freedom. A man who surely made God smile.





It's midnight so I'll go. Til tomorrow then when we head up to Chattanooga and Ruby Falls. Hope you'll come along....

Road Trippin' With River, Days 1 & 2: We are a Crazy Breed.

Tonight the moon over Atlanta is a silver sliver, a Cheshire cat grin. A winking luminous celestial portal cradling its dead dark mass. 

The temperature tonight is half of what it was when I left Haiti Saturday afternoon. My body is out of tune. I have been gone for two months, the longest I have ever been away from my son. I flew in from Port Au-Prince late Saturday and picked River up early yesterday. Starbucks for coffee and we headed North East on an 8 day road trip. First stop Birmingham, AL. 


Being back in the states after a month and a half in India and 2 months in Haiti with only a week in between has left me a bit disoriented. I am not as anxious as I normally would be as I will return to Haiti by the 2nd week in May, but I feel so disconnected. Although I am so very thankful for espresso on every corner and smooth roads. 


Birmingham is very familiar to me. In the 5 years I had my vintage clothing and record/book store I came here once a month on buying trips. I'd hit all the big thrift stores and most of the small ones. This morning River and I went to a few. Our best finds today were 25 cent paperbacks. Harriet Jacobs Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl for me and Asimov's The Robots of Dawn for River.

Fitting I suppose that I should be looking so far back and my son so far ahead. Who sees farther I wonder as we pull out of the thrift store parking lot. Will men be slaves to machines before we stop making slaves of each other. Only God knows. We leave Birmingham a little after ten and head to Atlanta to hike Stone Mountain.

Being on the road with my son is amazing. Conversation is sheer wonder. He spontaneously quotes Tom Stoppard as the Georgia state line slips by unobserved. He monologues from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see."


He then goes into a heartfelt and affected rant about a store we had went into called Earthbound Traders. They had paraphernalia and other mystical and pagan implements. He says "Dad, that place really bothered me. Even the name. It was like.." 


"Self-fulfilling prophecy?", I say.


"Exactly" he says and then with a sigh repeats, "earthbound." He turns to look out the truck window and thoughtfully quotes part of Isaiah 51:6 "[T]he heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment..."


We are listening to the soundtrack from the movie Into The Wild. Eddie Vedder at his intimate best. The song "Society" resonates with me in a way very few songs ever have. I have listened to it 5 times today already. I sing it like a prayer.

Oh, it's a mystery to me

We have a greed with which we have agreed

And you think you have to want more than you need

Until you have it all you won't be free

Society, you're a crazy breed

Hope you're not lonely without me

When you want more than you have

You think you need

And when you think more than you want

Your thoughts begin to bleed

I think I need to find a bigger place

Because when you have more than you think

You need more space

Society, you're a crazy breed

Hope you're not lonely without me

Society, crazy indeed

Hope you're not lonely without me......

(Pretty please watch the video below and listen to this song!!!)

We get to Stone Mountain around 3 and it is gorgeous weather that touches upon Grace itself. If I had a dollar for every time River said "wow" this afternoon I'd be a rich man. But I am richer still being paid instead with the candid, spontaneous exclamations of my son's worshipful awe.

River stands silent and wonder-filled atop Stone Mountain.

Half way back down the mountain a sight so out of sorts stops us in our tracks. We are both so disgusted by the human stain. This particular monument to human laziness and disrespect seems a perfect summation of that.

On the power poles that feed the Skylift atop Stone Mountain hikers have stuck gum from the ground up to as high as they can reach. There are three poles that are covered. We walk on in silent disgust. I am thinking of all the things that come out of people's mouths that soil so much. The lasting stains of ill spoken words, the denigration and character assassination of lies. We are a crazy breed.

Back at the hotel we are making plans for tomorrow. That is I am making plans and River is playing samples from otherworldly instruments, both archaic and futuristic. Some stand alone as art without even sounding their utterly fantastic music. Do yourself a favor and spend an hour looking and listening to Bart Hopkin's amazing creations. 

Tomorrow we are visiting the birthplace, the grave-site, and the church of Martin Luther King Jr. before heading North to Chattanooga. MLK is one of my heroes and I am so eager to make these connections with him, and to share them with my son. Hope you'll come along.

It's almost eleven here now. River is settling in. His nightly ritual of sci-fi has begun with an old episode of Stargate SG-1. The couple in the hotel room next to us are hurling epithets and accusations at each other. Unscrupulous observations of each other's maternal pedigrees. We truly are a crazy breed. But I am far away. I am thinking of Haiti, her sea, and her soul-mending sunsets. Thanks Bob and Darin for the picture of tonight's sunset in L'acul.

Til tomorrow then...

What Jesus Didn't Say.

It is at this time every year when the thoughts of Christians are most on the crucifixion and Resurrection. It is the darkest day of eternity and then three days later the brightest. God crucified. God risen. And this is our hope. That Jesus died our death so that we may live eternally His life. 

Antonio Ciseri's depiction of Christ before Pilate.

Much has been made of Christ's last words, and rightly so. But what has always amazed me, what has humbled me and broken my heart, is what He didn't say. He stood silent before His accusers scripture says, He who was guiltless did not defend himself and all the while the guilty, in hellish accord, screamed crucify him. And what is more He did it for them, bore their sickness, their shame, and their iniquity. Still they mocked Him and they cursed Him, but he never said a word.


He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? - Isaiah 53:7-8

He could have pointed His finger at anyone in the room and exposed their darkest guilt, every loathsome deed they'd ever done. But He was silent. And not just silent but willing to take the blame. And of course mine too. And that crushes my soul with sorrow.


Here is one of my very favorite bands The Welcome Wagon performing their rendition of an old spiritual. The video clip is Jesus before Pilate from the movie Passion Of The Christ.




May we who call ourselves followers of Christ take His defenseless posture. May we turn our cheeks, may we be makers peace, may we love those who have made us their enemies and may we bear their burdens that they may see Him and His love in us. 

Husband and wife Vito and Monique Aiuto are The Welcome Wagon. All the proceeds from their e.p. Purity Of Heart go to an organization called Freeset, a fair-trade business in India that helps to liberate and empower women escaping the sex trade in the largest red-light district in Kolkata (Calcutta), India.

Like Shining From Shook Foil.

Tonight the moon is a feather floating over the Haitian sea. The chatter round the dinner table has long since ceased, only a conversation in Creole from the shadows of the courtyard remains. And of course the waves, the ever rolling, soul soothing tidal wash. I am nursing a cup of Haitian coffee, dark and black and strong. I am letting each sip linger a little longer than the last. My thoughts are far away, in my childhood. A country whose borders I seldom cross. But instead of going home I feel like a museum patron, wandering halls and scrutinizing strange objects that seem to me should seem familiar. 

For no reason at all I do remember clearly that when I was fourteen I got glasses. It was like someone opened a window. A wind worn, rain weary, dirt blurred window. I could see! The colors, the lines, the sharpness and the contrast. It felt as though my mind had been re-booted or at the very least re-tuned. Smells were more pungent, tastes more distinct. My other senses rose to the occasion. Or so it seemed to me, at fourteen. Around that time I started writing too, perhaps in part a result of my newly resurrected faculties. It was this escape into that incredible possible world of the imagination that was the perfect antidote to the droll and drivel of Jr. high. I would lay awake at night and write entire novels in my mind. The bookshelves of which were filled with lifetimes of adventures, no deed was too chivalrous, heroes after all are as self-sacrificing as they are fearless. And the wayward world was never short of damsels in distress.


Then there was music!


Several friends got guitars and my passion became lyrics. I would write every night, sometimes all night. And when I wasn't writing I was reading every CD sleeve for lyrics to inspire me (still do). My weeks went this way: Thursday nights were always an all-nighter because Friday was kinda a throw away day at school and the adrenalin from the excitement of the coming weekend would get me through. I would write about every sort of thing that a fourteen year old had never experienced. Love lost or at least love unrequited, those were my default setting (and I suppose still are). High school came and all my dreams were rock and roll and notebooks full of restless railings and angst-infused phrases begging to be sung, or screamed as it were. Then one Christmas break, far from my rock and roll friends, cloistered away for a week at my grandparents in small-town Alabama, surrounded by farmland and open sky I wrote a poem. Oh the wonder of it! The autonomy mingled with ecstasy. I felt a discharge of my soul that gave me such a buzz, one I still crave daily. 


That first poem was about Father Jeremiah, a wizard bearded Greek Orthodox priest and his moon-eyed dog. A clunky poem I later cannibalized and re-incarnated into an earlier post. My second poem was a rather unflattering depiction of a certain high school English teacher with an obsessive and clinical infatuation with grammar...

Her neck ejaculated her face into conversation

All nouns and no verbs

Her eyes are things a cat can do to a fence

Prepositionally speaking of course

Her ears, parenthesis, close parenthesis

Around an independent thought of a nose interjected

Her mouth, list; thirty-two teeth, two lips, one tongue, 

And a voice arbitrary as grammar ever was

And dangling twice as participle boring comma

Oh dear. But I was hooked! My senior year my textbooks never left my locker, instead, everyday, all day, I carried around one rather voluptuous volume of poetry, the complete works of e.e. cummings, terminally and perpetually truant from the Hattiesburg public library. 

I read and re-read every poem in that collection a hundred times. His masterful precision mixed with a sacrosanct anarchy. Love poems that took love so seriously and yet remained playful and unapologetically romantic. And an anti-establishment undercurrent that gave every institution from science to government a good tongue lashing while all the while elevating those rebukes to high art. Lines that tied my stomachs in knots with beauty, lines to fall in love to, lines like:

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

and...

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

and one of my very favorite poems from him...

i am a beggar always

who begs in your mind

(slightly smiling, patient, unspeaking

with a sign on his

chest

BLIND)yes i

am this person of whom somehow

you are never wholly rid(and who

does not ask for more than

just enough dreams to

live on)

after all, kid

you might as well

toss him a few thoughts

a little love preferably,

anything which you can't

pass off on other people: for

instance a

plugged promise-

the he will maybe (hearing something

fall into his hat)go wandering

after it with fingers;till having

found

what was thrown away

himself

taptaptaps out of your brain, hopes, life

to(carefully turning a

corner)never bother you any more

I never got over my love for Mr. cummings. I probably fashioned most of my romantic notions about relationships while contemplating his poetry instead of say, Algebra II. But something else happened to me when I was fourteen. While I was fumbling toward first kisses and tripping rather than falling in love, the eyes of my soul were opened too. I had always believed the good news of Jesus, always loved God the best I could, even in my youngest years tried to do what my conscience told me was right. But then came fourteen and struggling with fitting in or whether to fit in at all. Then came fourteen and dabbling into the little rebellions that dirty the heart and hands. Then came fourteen and feeling out of sorts, at odds with both heaven and earth, it was then that God proved to me that He loved me. And so I had a new lens, those brand new eyes to see myself and to see the world through. And once again all my other spiritual senses were enlivened too, rescued from the futility of self doubt and empowered by His unconditional, unfaltering, unbelievable! completely undeserved love for me!! 


As I got older I have at times, as much as I desired to, struggled somewhat with writing "sacred" poetry. My lyrics and subsequently my poems failing miserably to express my faith, and in particular the greatness of God. It seemed to me anyway, that at least in part, any art (or loose approximation there of) should, for the Christian be sacred, be worship or praise. That is our art should at times be about Him, the lover of our soul, the Perfect priceless One. But how to use human words, finite sentiments to describe the eternal, boundless, mind-blowing God? Like describing the ocean as wet, so my words for God are artlessly obvious, deconstructed and restrained by the reality that even language gets all of its significance from the maker of tongues, the giver of breath, the progenitor of reason.


But tonight, staring at the moon, listening to the lullaby of the Caribbean and drinking in the salty sweet cocktail of sea spray I realized that all beauty points to the One who created it. The moon, the sea just being the moon and the sea, are graced with the brushstrokes of God. And that for us the act of creating alone may be one of the best most sacred homages we can offer the Creator. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then just as He poured the light of the Word into the formless void, into this often cruel, callous, and ugly world we should pour beauty through our words. Or try our very darndest to do so. 


Art is sacred then, not because it captures the infinite (for to capture it is to cage it and to cage it is to try and tame it), but because when finite creatures bend toward infinity, when they mimic their God, they too point to Who made them. It follows then I think, that a heart immersed in His love, stammering out its bravest poetry, its sincerest prose is one of the closest things we may ever get on this side of eternity's veil to a wholly sacred proclamation. So then, until death rends that veil forever, let's keep scribbling down our biggest most beautiful thoughts. About the moon, or the ocean, of love lost and especially love longed for. 


One more poem before I go. My very favorite of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who himself struggled to describe God and wrote mostly about the glory of His fingerprint in Nature. 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;        

  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

  And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;        

And though the last lights off the black West went

  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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.