I’m so impressed with the CNN coverage of the Haitian earthquake. The compassion, humanity and humility is breathtaking. Despite the tragic horror that is consuming the people of Haiti, CNN captured this scene of hundreds worshipping in the streets.
Archive for the ‘Social Action’ Category
Haiti Heartbreak
On January - 13 - 2010
It was April, 2008, I had been on many a trip in several countries around the world. But I had never been anywhere that had challenged me so deeply as my two weeks in Haiti. Outside of the capital, Port Au Prince, about a four hour drive over stoney ground, we arrived outside the city of Colera. This small village had nothing going for it but a dusty drive, the smell of feces, cackling chickens and eroded buildings.
The thing is, you forget all of that the moment to look into the beautiful faces of a people so resilient and proud. You get lost in the abundance of loud, extraverted communication, the passionate expression in the language of Creole. This people gripped my heart as it was now a part of my lineage, my family.
My wife is half Haitian, her father a full-blooded Haitian with an embolden persona and driven pride for his people. We were all on this trip together, one that changed all of our lives.
Joe, my father-in-law, left Haiti many years ago during times of civil unrest. He was born of privilege as his grandfather was a well-to-do Belgian. His mother a strong, assertive Aristocratic Haitian. My father-in-law never saw the poverty of a place like Colera, much less would he expect to return to discover this culture that still hasn’t changed in several decades. On this trip, he was moved to tears.
My wife and I would have our own experience. We were overwhelmed by the amount of need. So much so that we couldn’t even fathom on where we’d start. One afternoon, we sat on a hillside with eight little boys exchanging language lessons over on of their textbooks. It was there that my wife and I knew that we’d have a connection to Haiti forever.
With the current devastation of this 7.0 earthquake, our hearts are rocked. I sit here in tears not knowing whether to sell all that I have and move my family to help or to work that much harder to make money to help support the efforts already begun. Either way, I want… I must do something.
I cannot, in good conscience, continue to sit idle while the world is in such need.
Home Runs for Humanity
On October - 30 - 2009
The World Series is on right now, the Phillies and Yankees trying to capture the title. It’s also football season and I’m playing Fantasy Football, 6-1 is my record. In addition to that, I live in Alabama now so I’ve been learning a lot about college football and the SEC. In and amongst all of this, I’m wondering how it is that we spend so much time and money on these mere recreational activities. There are MILLIONS of dollars spent on the sports entertainment empire, NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, tennis, soccer, golf, etc. How much money could we raise if every these activities were suspended for one year and instead, the money was given to help meet the needs of others around the globe?
I know, it’s not going to happen. But here’s another scenario: Every touchdown, home run or goal is worth $X from fans, players or teams. Could we create a website that tracked all of this and then people gave out of celebration and gratitude for this success?
I just wonder if our privilege to enjoy these activities couldn’t be monetized somehow to help a world in need. Hmmm… what do you think?
It's 2009, Do You Know Where Your Soul Is? – Bono
On April - 21 - 2009
Op-Ed New York TimesI AM in Midtown Manhattan, where drivers still play their car horns as if they were musical instruments and shouting in restaurants is sport.
I am a long way from the warm breeze of voices I heard a week ago on Easter Sunday.
“Glorify your name,” the island women sang, as they swayed in a cut sandstone church. I was overwhelmed by a riot of color, an emotional swell that carried me to sea.
Christianity, it turns out, has a rhythm — and it crescendos this time of year. The rumba of Carnival gives way to the slow march of Lent, then to the staccato hymnals of the Easter parade. From revelry to reverie. After 40 days in the desert, sort of …
Carnival — rock stars are good at that.
“Carne” is flesh; “Carne-val,” its goodbye party. I’ve been to many. Brazilians say they’ve done it longest; they certainly do it best. You can’t help but contract the fever. You’ve got no choice but to join the ravers as they swell up the streets bursting like the banks of a river in a flood of fun set to rhythm. This is a Joy that cannot be conjured. This is life force. This is the heart full and spilling over with gratitude. The choice is yours …
It’s Lent I’ve always had issues with. I gave it up … self-denial is where I come a cropper. My idea of discipline is simple — hard work — but of course that’s another indulgence.
Then comes the dying and the living that is Easter.
It’s a transcendent moment for me — a rebirth I always seem to need. Never more so than a few years ago, when my father died. I recall the embarrassment and relief of hot tears as I knelt in a chapel in a village in France and repented my prodigal nature — repented for fighting my father for so many years and wasting so many opportunities to know him better. I remember the feeling of “a peace that passes understanding” as a load lifted. Of all the Christian festivals, it is the Easter parade that demands the most faith — pushing you past reverence for creation, through bewilderment at the idea of a virgin birth, and into the far-fetched and far-reaching idea that death is not the end. The cross as crossroads. Whatever your religious or nonreligious views, the chance to begin again is a compelling idea.
Last Sunday, the choirmaster was jumping out of his skin … stormy then still, playful then tender, on the most upright of pianos and melodies. He sang his invocations in a beautiful oaken tenor with a freckle-faced boy at his side playing conga and tambourine as if it was a full drum kit. The parish sang to the rafters songs of praise to a God that apparently surrendered His voice to ours.
I come to lowly church halls and lofty cathedrals for what purpose? I search the Scriptures to what end? To check my head? My heart? No, my soul. For me these meditations are like a plumb line dropped by a master builder — to see if the walls are straight or crooked. I check my emotional life with music, my intellectual life with writing, but religion is where I soul-search.
The preacher said, “What good does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Hearing this, every one of the pilgrims gathered in the room asked, “Is it me, Lord?” In America, in Europe, people are asking, “Is it us?”
Well, yes. It is us.
Carnival is over. Commerce has been overheating markets and climates … the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust.
Lent is upon us whether we asked for it or not. And with it, we hope, comes a chance at redemption. But redemption is not just a spiritual term, it’s an economic concept. At the turn of the millennium, the debt cancellation campaign, inspired by the Jewish concept of Jubilee, aimed to give the poorest countries a fresh start. Thirty-four million more children in Africa are now in school in large part because their governments used money freed up by debt relief. This redemption was not an end to economic slavery, but it was a more hopeful beginning for many. And to the many, not the lucky few, is surely where any soul-searching must lead us.
A few weeks ago I was in Washington when news arrived of proposed cuts to the president’s aid budget. People said that it was going to be hard to fulfill promises to those who live in dire circumstances such a long way away when there is so much hardship in the United States. And there is.
But I read recently that Americans are taking up public service in greater numbers because they are short on money to give. And, following a successful bipartisan Senate vote, word is that Congress will restore the money that had been cut from the aid budget — a refusal to abandon those who would pay such a high price for a crisis not of their making. In the roughest of times, people show who they are.
Your soul.
So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.
Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.
Not all soul music comes from the church. •••
