:It has been almost a week now since that terrible news came in and all eyes were turned toward that small island of Haiti, already suffering from poverty (the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere) and corruption. We have all watched in horror the pictures that have rolled in from Port-au-Prince and have felt helpless in the face of those images of arms reaching through crushed buildings, seeking a way out, bodies in the street, utter destruction of buildings that lie crumpled as if they were pawns in a game of pick up sticks played by the giants, as if they were little plaster casts stomped on by an angry artist, pulverized. As if they were twigs and branches that needed sweeping away before the garden can be planted. Except for those people, those bodies, that anguish.
I am not into competitive suffering; our personal anguish and the anguish of a nation are the same.
We are filled with grief, not matter the public or private level of the event that causes that suffering. But this one does touch home, so that we see face to face what grieving over the loss of city looks like, what anguish, grief, sadness, despair and hope can look like when they are registered on the face almost all at once, or at least like a shifting kaleidescope, so quickly do the emotions shift.
Jean-Hilaire has been in this country for just 2 months. He came here to marry Mary Kate--and it's quite a process to get Haitian citizens into this country--a process that took him 9 months, weeks of which were humiliating; we are so suspicious of people wanting to enter the US that we must expose every element of their personal like to make sure what they say is true--all love letters, no matter how steamy--emails, texts. Financial support? crucial. And then, of course, appointments get canceledwithout notification, so a long journey into Port-au-Prince is for naught since "the computers have been down" or something.
But he did get here. He arrived to so much joy and celebration. The wedding was one of the largest we've ever had, and there were dancing and eating and drinking.
"I've been married only two months," the new bride says to me.
We know this: Jean-Hilaire's immediate family is alive; he has IM'd with a sister who says, "We need help." we do not know how many friends and relatives he has lost in Port-au-Prince. Ironically, of course, since he has been in this country only 2 months, he's not allowed to leave this country. we know, of course, that he could get an emergency visa, but what can he do once there? What can they do? Right now, unless we are medical people, we are clearly not wanted there, where there are enough mouths to feed already.
What can we do? We can lament and we can pray. When Jean-Hilaire spoke yesterday, thanking everyone at church for their support and care, apologizing for his English, struggling with emotions, I began to weep and continued through the Eucharist. My weeping, thankfully, consists of tears streaming down my cheeks, which I can wipe away from time to time.
We can lament for Haiti.
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