Haiti: A Reflection on Friendship

“Bonye kohn bay, men li pa kohn separe”

(God gives, but doesn’t share)

-Haitian Proverb

It is the home of a people clothed in our half-hearted charity; boys wearing the uniforms of boy scout troops they we’re never in or women wearing the left-over youth group t-shirts for churches they will never visit.   Broken down trucks line the streets, along with starving dogs, goats and skinny cows.  Scores of vendors selling water for a few Haitian Gourde, only to hand the money over to another vendor who is selling something that many wouldn’t recognize as food, only to use that money to buy water from another vendor.  We were all moved by the earthquake in 2010, but driving through the streets it’s hard to decide the difference between the damage done by the earthquake and the crumbling infrastructure from centuries of poverty, governmental power struggle and corruption and the decades of meddling by the U.S. government.  This is the Haiti I experienced and it doesn’t seem to be getting much better anytime soon.

Relief Tents

When I was asked to join my fellow St. Paul’s parishioner, Ted Cassidy, and a group from Huntsville, Alabama (Church of the Nativity) on a farming mission to the city of Thomazeau, I have to admit I was pretty cynical about the whole thing.  The question that was swirling around in my head was, “does Haiti need anymore white people trying to ‘save’ it?”  At one point on the trip I caught myself in a bit of a rant and uttered those words in the presence of Father Valmar (a Haitian priest, our host, known affectionately as Père Val), who gave a short chuckle.  

Ted, little Ricardo and the team from Alabama

Père Val and his wife Carmel

On the plane ride down there, I was struck by the amount of white people headed to a country that is almost entirely filled with former French slaves brought over from Africa during the time of European colonialism.  The only people going to and leaving Haiti are young evangelicals (like me), eager to have their Facebook profiles updated with pictures of grinning ethnic children (did I mention being cynical).  This was the narrative I was hoping to avoid.  But, as I sat in the back of our transport vehicle, an altered Land Cruiser set-up to cram ten people inside, and watched the devastating scenery of UN relief tents, piles of garbage, and the hoards of people going nowhere in a hurry, I got frustrated.  I felt like I either had to actually save Haiti or be like the thousands of well-intentioned American Christians who filled the American Airlines jets headed for Port au Prince everyday.  

in the back of the van

I believe experiencing crippling levels of poverty is a lot like the stages of grief, there is no right or wrong way to experience it, but inevitably you find yourself on the journey.  For me, I skipped the stages of shock, denial, and wailing and went straight for the anger stage.  I think it’s because God was showing me so much and I had nothing in my power to fix any of it.  However, by the end of the week my anger turned to passion and in that profound feeling of love and shared suffering, I believe God had the space to begin setting things to right.

There is a Haitian proverb that says, ‘there are mountains beyond mountains.’  That is to say, when you climb one mountain there is another mountain waiting beyond it.  I believe that our Christian charity divorced from relationships is meaningless.  God doesn’t call us to save the world: none of us have the super powers to refreeze the polar ice caps, or the energy to feed every mouth in Africa, or the money to fund all the TB vaccinations in Haiti.  The hope of the Kingdom of God is found in relationships, in the way we serve one another, love one another, and remain faithful to each other.  If you have ever experienced the power of forgiveness, or the peace of a loved one’s sobriety, or the healing being in community can bring, you know that our love for one another and connection to each other matters on profound levels.  

 

Thomazeau: We built spent the week building an irrigation system for this community
(center: schoohouse; right: church)

digging trenches for the water pipes

On Saturday, when I returned home from my travels, I got a call from a bizarre phone number, you know the one that is either a telemarketer or a political survey.  I’m glad I answered it, because I heard the familiar sounds of horns honking, dogs barking, and people shouting.  It was Juste, our group’s translator and my new friend, “You should never have left, we miss you already.”  I can’t save Haiti, and I couldn’t imagine the burden on my ego if I did.  There is no individual, charity, or government (the $4 billion they’ve already received seems to have just made Haiti more dependent on foreign aid) that has the power to save.  However, what we are called to do is to love our neighbor.  Last week my definition of neighbor was expanded and my experience of love has deepened.  My heart now lies (among other things) in a ministry, led by Père Val, that brings education, nutrition, medicine, food, and the Gospel to scores of Haitians (his friends). 

   

I write this to you, my friends, family, and church community, because you know me and I am asking from you a favor for a friend.  I am writing to personally testify to the goodness and beauty that the work my church (St. Paul’s), The Diocese of Birmingham, The Diocese of South Carolina, The Diocese of Haiti and countless others, who are all relationally connected in the name of Jesus, have done for the people of Haiti.  We are currently working to raise $120,000 to finish a nutrition clinic, to be named Lepswa Timoun (Hope for Children, Haitian Creole), we have been working on for the greater part of a decade.  It will be run by Père Val, his wife Carmel, and their people that I came to know and love last week.  It will be a place that wholly belongs to them (the place they are currently has a lease that will run out in October), that they will use to serve the people of Croix de Bouquets (a suburb of Port au Prince).

sunset at Thomazeau

Much of the money has been raised or promised already, but we are urgently in need of the remaining funds (Approximately $35,000) .  Time is of the essence in a place like Haiti.  Driving through the streets of Croix de Bouquets, you see dozens of half finished houses collapsed, some by the earth quake, but the majority simply from the half finished concrete structure being exposed to the months of alternating desert sun and flooding.  This spring we are making a major effort to get this nutrition clinic up and running.

If you would like to contribute to our efforts please send a tax-deductible donation to: 

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

116 N. Academy Street

Murfreesboro, TN  37130

check memo: Hearts for Haiti

I am also planning on taking many more trips in the future (for the purpose of continuing relationships, financial accountability, lending a hand with the labor, leading trips, etc) and will need financial assistance for those trips.  You can send tax-deductible donations to the above address with the memo line: Steve Lefebvre Missions. 

Below are pictures of the Lepswa Timoun site in it's current state: 

From the entrance

the back farm

back view of the unfinished clinic

inside the clinic

a future paradise awaits

Shalom.

fun with machettes

Tornadoes

When I was eleven years old or so, my dad took a job that required him to be away on business quite often.  Every time he left, he would grab my shoulder and say, ‘you are the man of the house now.’  Now to be fair to my dad, it was more a figure of speech, however, being the pubescent child that I was, nuance wasn’t really something I really understood.  I took the job quite seriously and I learned quickly that as an eleven year-old I was inept at running a household.  Due to the stress of misinterpreted responsibilities I developed a severe phobia to tornadoes (I think the popularity of that summer’s hit movie Twister probably didn’t help either).

The phobia was bad: I was afraid to go outside and play if the wind was blowing and if the clouds were looking black I would hide in my room.  Summers in the high desert of Arizona have especially volatile weather patterns, so I spent most nights trembling in terror.  My mom would sit me down with her bible and read from Jesus‘ sermon on the mount, ‘don’t worry about tomorrow, tomorrow has worry of it’s own.‘  But it wasn’t much use.  Eventually we moved out of the country and into the city, my dad changed jobs and the fears went away.

What was at the center of those fears is a lack of control.  My family wasn’t the same without my dad and I wanted him to be home more.  But nothing I could do could make that happen.  In my mind the tornado was the fixation of my fears.  It was something unexpected, dangerous and out of my control.  I dreaded the thought of cowering all night in the cellar and praying.  

I am finding that not much has changed.  I am afraid, I always have been.  Will I ever make it to seminary?  Will I ever pay off my student loans?  Is my car going to break down?  Am I ever going to be a husband or a father?  What happens if someone thinks I’m a fool or doesn’t respect me?  Certainly, my circumstances might change: I might make more money, meet a nice girl, be surrounded by a bunch of admirers, but like my dad coming home and my tornado phobia subsiding, these are just circumstances.

I have spent the past six months embracing solitude.  But after all of the prayer, fasting, and silence, I’m still struggling to take control.  I orchestrate circumstances so I don’t have to look at how vulnerable I actually am.  

I think we all respond differently to that feeling of vulnerability, if your like me it’s fear, for some it might be anger, for others it might be in emotionally checking out, for others it might be in stockpiling, and still for others it might be in self-medicating.  But when the dust settles or our heads poke out from the hole in the ground, that reality, that we can’t control the unpredictable, dangerous and wonderful universe, is still staring us in the face.

Jesus’ invitation into the Kingdom of God requires only that we trust in him.  Perhaps the way we receive this invitation is to not cover up or flee from our vulnerability but to embrace it, befriend it and be transformed by it.  Perhaps being saved requires us to bathe in this sorrow and anxiety no matter how uncomfortable or painful it might be.  I’m not certain what that looks like and if there is actually life on the other side (although that is the promise of the Gospel).  But I can testify that protecting myself from it only makes it go away temporarily, and when it comes back, it wants more of my soul.  

Come and see.

Shalom.    

Bibliography: 

Invitation to Love by Thomas Keating

A conversation with my friend Kyle that went like this:

Me: I just don’t everyone to think I’m a fool!

Kyle: But you are a fool, we all know that, and we still love you!

I need help getting to Haiti

On February 24th, I will be accompanying a fellow St. Paul’s parishioner, Ted Cassidy, along with a group from Huntsville, Alabama on a trip to Haiti.  We will be continuing an effort to bring clean water, and fresh food to a country that has not only been desecrated by an earthquake in 2010 but also has suffered from tremendous poverty, deforestation and the occupation and enslavement by the first world (in other words us). 

Here’s a great article on why Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/01/15/haiti-a-historical-perspective.html

That's Ted planting a tree

Ted has been going to Haiti fairly regularly (a few times a year) over the last few years but do to personal reasons in his family (good things, don’t worry) he will be unable to go for a while.  So he called me (literally) and asked if I would be interested in taking over some of his roles as a trip leader.  This trip will be an educational one, where I will learn the ropes and discern if making more regular trips to Haiti is something I’m called to do.  

I think there’s something in me that is very uncomfortable with the idea of romanticizing  this trip into something theological or spiritual.  Maybe it’s white guilt or maybe it just feels exploitative.  To be perfectly honest with you, I have no idea what I’m getting myself into.  I don’t know what level of austerity and seriousness I need to have going in or even if I’m the right person for the job.  But I am willing and I never have thought it to be a bad thing to try.  

Often times we spend a lot of time theologizing, talking about serving the poor, justice, etc.  Often times we don’t take action, usually not because we are unwilling but because we have oriented our lives in a way (whether it be because we live in a neighborhood far away from actual poverty or we just don’t have time) that the opportunity simply doesn’t reveal itself.  We could probably sit around and feel guilty about it but that would be probably be unhelpful.  My point is this, here is a wonderful opportunity to do something, and I am going to accept it.  And we’ll see how it goes.  There’s this wonderful thing in our Christian ethos called grace, Jesus offers it most freely to those who are humble (1 Peter 5)... so here’s my best shot at humility and I pray this trip humbles me further.

If you would like to support St. Paul’s “Heart for Haiti” campaign (building nutritional facilities, planting gardens and trees, digging wells for clean water), you can send a check to 116 N. Academy St.  Murfreesboro, TN 37130.  All money sent to that fund from now until March 2nd, will go directly to supporting our trip in February.  To be honest I could use some financial help getting down there, so any amount of financial help to pay for my plain ticket, vaccinations, and lodging would be a tremendous gift.  

Peace to you and may grace be our guide

P.S. I'm fasting from social networking this week (for solidarity with a couple students I've challenged to unplug this week) so please leave your comments on this site...

Lost in the Woods

Here’s a parable an orthodox priest told me today (the origin is unknown to me):

A man found himself lost in the woods and he became lost for many years.  As the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months and the months into years, the man became more aware of his lostness but at the same time more at one with the woods.  One day he stumbled upon a group of hikers who were also lost but just for a few hours.  They asked him, ‘we’re lost, can you help us find our way out of here?’  He replied, ‘I cannot, but I can help you be less lost.’

I’m beginning to consider how foreign the way of Jesus might actually be to our world.  As I have only just begun my journey of solitude and contemplation, my awareness of the difference between this world and the one I seek is still blurred.  But what I can see frightens me.  

My thought is that the more self aware I became, the more consistent my prayer life, the more time I spend alone in contemplation and prayer, the less lost I would become.  However, I believe the opposite is true.

You see, the values of our culture are so terribly ingrained in our DNA that we can’t see the forest for the trees.  Following Jesus’ way of self-sacrificial, communal, neighbor oriented love isn’t the same values as our Americana.

We live in a very individualized world.  Our values for the most part are concerned with MY (or even MY family’s) safety and security, MY dreams, MY salvation.

As I watch the circus of this current political season I see politicians promising safety, security and prosperity in exchange for your loyalty.  If all things belong to God, I'm not sure those things are theirs to give.  As I watch commercials on television, their products promise an identity.  Buying one product against another defines you as a consumer.  But isn’t my identity in Jesus?  All of this to say, I wonder if any of my innermost desires, those things I think to myself, ‘if I just had ____, I would be happy/centered/satisfied,‘ are actually for God and what God has promised to give?

Think about it...this is what God has actually promised to God’s people: Eternal life, oneness, healing, joy, peace, and rest.  

This is exactly what I’m afraid of.  I realize, in total honesty with myself, I never really wanted any of those things.  I want people to like me.  God promises people probably won’t.  I want financial stability.  Jesus tells us, ‘blessed are the poor.’  I want a family of my own.  Most of the heroes of our faith, the ones who are venerated as the truest followers (mystics and saints) lived a life of celibacy.

My point in writing this is to encourage you.  If you feel disoriented, if you feel discouraged, if you are afraid of what God might ask of you, you might actually be going in the right direction.  To follow the way of Jesus is like getting lost in the woods.  When we suddenly deny all of those things that we used to rely on for our sense of identity, security and happiness, we will feel alone, naked, and lost.  We become like infants all alone in the wilderness.  The feeling is extremely vulnerable  

To be honest with you, I can’t tell you why I continue to go through with it.  It can be quite miserable, frustrating and lonely, staring at your darkness and allowing God into your broken soul.  I see people who seem that are probably full of dysfunction and bad values, that seem to go on just fine without working ont them.  I'm sure their are plenty of happy people who go their whole life without ever walking down this so-called narrow road.  But I believe at my very core the way of Jesus leads to something utterly whole.    

I can’t promise you that this way is thrilling, fun or even that your going to find what you’re looking for.  But I can promise you that if you choose to get lost in the woods, I won’t be much for helping you find your way out but I can help you get less lost.  

Shalom  

I Believe in Santa Clause

This morning, I delivered presents to children for our church’s Angel Tree ministry.  In case you are unfamiliar with this ministry, it is a program for low-income children (some churches do it for children of prisoners) to receive Christmas presents.  It’s a charitable and sentimental thing to do for the community and they invited me to come, so I thought it would help me get into the Christmas spirit. 

from today at the preschool

Part of the experience for the kids is that someone from the school district dresses up like Santa and the kids get all excited and they get their picture taken with him.  Now I have hang-ups with the whole Santa narrative.  As someone who isn’t a parent I am afforded the luxury of looking down my nose at parents who go to so much trouble to deceive their children into believing a story about a man in a red suit that goes down their chimney and runs a sweatshop of little people in the middle of the Arctic.  It gets even more obnoxious when Santa somehow has omniscient seeing powers and judges the behavior of all the children of the world and rewards them accordingly.  I digress.

But as I sat there this morning watching this larger than life mascot, of the Christmas season, bring smiles to the faces of underprivileged children, it struck me.  I believe it was because for the first time I saw Santa Clause in his natural habitat, outside of the disgusting consumer whoredom that is the mall in December.

When you take Santa out of the mall, when the church takes back the Santa Clause, and tells his story our way; not as an unlimited supplier of consumerism, but rather as a true hero of Christian charity, we have something truly incarnational for our children to love.  Santa Clause isn’t the enemy of Christmas; he’s the icon of Advent.

Tomorrow is the feast day of St. Nicholas, you know the guy who the guy in the red suit is based off of.  He was a 4^th century bishop in Myra, an ancient Greek town in modern day Turkey.  He was famous for putting coins in the shoes of poor children and advocating for the rights of prisoners.  Furthermore, one of his greatest tales was a time when he gave money to three young virgins in order to keep them out of prostitution. 

You see Saint Nick is doing exactly what John the Baptist commanded, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord (John 1:23).”  This is the mantra of Advent, to prepare a way for Jesus. 

But what is that way exactly?  And why do we have to prepare, can’t God just do God stuff?  If we remember the song Mary sang when she found out she was going to birth the God-child (from Luke’s Gospel), we are reminded of God’s way: 

The Magnificat

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Savior

for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed:

the Almighty has done great things for me,

and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him

in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm,

he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,

and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel

for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

the promise he made to our fathers,

to Abraham and his children for ever.

St. Nick being like, 'hey, put
down that sword' 

There are two things to note here.  1) What God’s promise looks like: the hungry are fed, the lowly are lifted up, the oppressors are brought to justice.  2) He has come to the help of his servant Israel.  God isn’t magic, God works with God’s people to bring justice and peace to the broken creation.  Because it is our job to set things to right!  God has our back, God will sustain us and guide us, but we as God’s people are ultimately the ones who’s job it is to make peace in this world.   

Advent is the season to remind us our responsibility.  The baby Jesus was the gift who came and showed us the way, however, we must prepare that way.

I believe Saint Nick is a faithful example.  Remember that the true meaning of this holiday season is Christian charity, because charity, self-sacrifice, for the benefit of those who may not deserve it, is the way of the Lord.  So this Advent as we wait for the Lord, let us follow the way of St. Nicholas.  Rejoice…

…Santa Clause is coming to town…to show us the way to Jesus.

Peace on earth and good will toward people!

Shalom

advent and waiting for superman... continuing thoughts on the tension

A Reading from Romans 8:
^22-25All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Advent is the season of anticipation.  But what are we waiting for?  The Christ Child has already come!  He has already died, resurrected, and ascended, but we still live in a world full of heartache and longing.  We decorate our homes with tinsel and garland, we hustle and bustle through stores, and we drink expensive alcohol and sing carols, but I fear these may only be distractions from the greater reality of this world:  the creation isn’t as it was made to be.  Oceans are polluted, children are exploited, families are separated, and even though the savior of the world has lived among us, our hearts still ache for salvation.

So again I ask: if the Christ child already came over 2,000 years ago, what are we waiting for?  Is Jesus going to come back like a divine Superman and save us all?  Did Jesus ascend and abandon us?  Are we left to fend for ourselves until he comes back?  Of course not, we as followers of Jesus are also bearers of Jesus.  The Christ child never left but rather dispersed and lived in the hearts of his followers.

Therefore, the season of Advent asks us to return.  As we wander through the wilderness of our lives, as our ambition drives us to alien territory, as our suffering drifts us further into the sea of despair, the season of Advent calls us to come back to the beginning.  To allow the Christ that dwells in us, which guides us and empowers us to be healers of this broken creation, to be reborn.  We return to find sanctuary from the pressures and chaos of ordinary life, to listen to the groaning and longing within our soul and to hear the quiet whisper of the Holy Spirit calling us to simply be.     

And so we wait, actively sitting in the tension of who we are and who we wish to become.  This promises to be painful and hard work: In the same way a mother waits for her unborn child, we will be stretched and our deepest fears will come to surface.  However, our struggle will be deeply purposeful.  The Apostle Paul says, “the longer we wait the larger we become.”  Waiting forms us into a people that are big enough to take on and reconcile the real forces of evil in this world.  Waiting gives us space to truly address the truth about ourselves, the places where we aren’t whole, where our insecurities and doubts hurt others.  And the longer we wait, the more strength we have to lift our darkness up to God our healer. 

The irony of this holiday season is that there is very little space for waiting.  But I urge you strongly, to find that space.  Be vigilant.  The Christ child isn’t just growing inside of you, he is growing in every corner of the creation!  I invite you to be present to this season’s most wonderful gift: the Christ child growing all around you…Shalom. 

The Tension

A few years back in the midst of a long standing and exhausting depression, the Bryan Adams song, Summer of ’69, came on the radio.  What struck me about this song, a song about failed love and a band that didn’t make it, was his hook, ‘those were the best days of my life.’  I think it was this song that invited me to not only look at my story more holistically but to respect its profundity.   

Immediately out of college, I declared that time to be a major failure.  A failed relationship, arguments with my father, a mountain of school debt, and a band that didn’t make it, composed the highlight (or rather lowlight) reel.  The problem with telling my story this way is it simply wasn’t true.  That time of great heartache and grief was also interlaced with profound friendship, feelings of love, community, connection and passion.  What my Baptist friends would call blessings.  Those places I sinned and made mistakes, I made doing the best I could with what I had.  The times I loved and lost, I could confidently say I did everything I could to win.  Although people hurt me, those same people shared times of profound intimacy with me.  To throw it out, to call it all a mistake would be to spit on a very sacred ground.  So why did I struggle so hard to see it this way?  Because even though the glass was so obviously half full, the missing water in my cup still hurt. 

That’s the tension.  It’s the thin space where joy and sorrow meet one another.  My desire to cut ties from that time in my life was met with a promise of taking the pain away.  I wanted to write off that time of my life because it was easier than actually grieving it.  It was simply a desire for relief.  But guess what, we don’t get to do that. 

 Read this passage from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 8):

“All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.”

You see what Paul is saying, if we truly want to be whole, we must sit in the tension, because all around us there is that thin space of the broken creation meeting redemption.  Furthermore, the reason we never get relief is because for God’s redemption to happen we have to be the ones to engage it…

If you have ever introduced yourself to the outcast, someone with special needs, a homeless person, that stress you feel as you reach out your hand… the tension

If you have ever sat with someone crying or grieving, when you stayed and resisted your desire to run out of the room… the tension

The church’s current relationship to the homosexual community, loving and accepting a people despite our tradition’s moral codes… the tension

The feeling you have when you visit the third world and you begin to become aware of how much you paid for your shoes… the tension

Being alone, feeling the weight of loneliness, and resisting the temptations of meaningless sexuality, drunkenness, or apathetically watching television… the tension

The irony of this whole thing for me is that, my journey over the last few years has been about searching, rather aggressively, for relief.  All this time in prayer and solitude, writing songs and sharing stories, adopting spiritual disciplines and giving myself over to ministry has been about finding that sweet relief. 

Oh, to have a time when I will no longer have want.  When this anxiety I carry around, that fire that burns deep in my soul that longs for intimacy, pure joy, and love, dissipates into a cool autumn air. 

Rest. 

But I don’t think you get to have that.  Not the kind that has any permanence.  That isn’t met with the tension of a coming wave of conflict and heartache.  This tension never goes away.  But Paul’s promise is the more you stay present to it the more your outbursts will turn into kind words, your bitterness into forgiveness, your fucking into intimacy. 

The Good News is the tension, this kind of suffering, will save us all.  When we choose to sit in the tension healing happens, connection is made, violence ceases to be an option*.  I conclude by saying, learn to love your angst.  It’s not going anywhere. 

*Violence is the ultimate act of breaking the tension.  We have three choices; we can run from the tension, which usually looks like apathy or my story above.  We can fight the tension, impose our will and make the world the way we want it, which is what violence is and for the most part the majority of our problem with the world… the third way is to sit in the tension.  When you sit in the tension you soon realize that no one in fact gets their way, and violence is exposed for the immature child that it is.

Note: The book Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser does a far better job of explaining this concept…you should read it.