This post will be a bit chipper than the last one (despite the title), I promise. After a trip to a place like Haiti, certain impressions float to the surface, and weeks later, you still can’t shake the echo of something seen or something heard.
Along the continuum of reality in Haiti, we experienced everything from hell (little or no hope, people using others, etc.) to heaven (miracles, tangible hope, joy in the midst of suffering, among other things…). And along that line, I wrestle to understand my role.
Hell is separation. Not only separation from God, but from the tribe, those who are not just related to us by blood, but by our common origin and name. (I’m convinced hell is not of fire, but simply the absolute void of any human or God connection.)
In Haiti, many places are hell-ish: poverty and corresponding violence threaten separation and mars human relationship. But in such circumstances, heaven is revealed by those who through their words and actions, proclaim and enact solidarity with other humans and God. (A mystery to see heaven realized in such conditions – but heaven is first a spiritual thing. The final act of heaven will transform Port-Au-Prince into the cherished garden it was meant to be!)
And here is where this white guy from Los Angeles comes in. Me and my team showed up. In the middle of the hell known as Cite Soleil, we showed up as brothers and sisters, dads and kids, grandsons and granddaughters.
A moment that keeps rising to the top: Kendra (one of our team members) with nothing else to do while some of us helped with a roof project, simply began singing.
As kids and adults gathered around to listen to her sweet voice, our translator, Jules, began harmonizing with Kendra. The result: heaven.
Hell for several moments was devastated and erased, even among horrible latrines and their stench, and the suffocating walls of concrete and endless alley-ways.
Heaven was revealed in the solidarity of children of God lifting their voices together up out of what can only be circumstance, and into the future hope of full restoration.
Wow, sweet song.
This last Christmas, my brother, sister and I gave our parents a gift, that really, will be more of a gift to us. Each received a leather-bound journal, rugged enough to hopefully travel through many generations of the Jones and Gilbert families. Inside, blank pages await reflections and stories from their lives.