"The Earth stopped shaking over a day ago but my shaking will never stop"  - A Haitian Woman who lost her entire family who was being interviewed on The BBC.







It is hard to say anything that does not sound cliché' on the day after the ground swallowed up at least 100,000 impoverished Haitians.  What can we say that is of any use?  I don't know...as much as I love words and filling up any empty silence with my blather I am finding it impossible to have anything to say....

Maybe this entry is meant more for me than anyone else.  Perhaps this is going to be therapeutic for me....but somehow I doubt it.

Years ago I remember sitting on my coach eating popcorn watching Katrina remind me how fragile our lives are.  I remember very clearly watching people being rescued from their vanishing rooftops like it was some big budget movie.  As I stuffed my chowder-gob with Orville's finest I remember having the gall to think "I wonder if anything else is on TV".  I am not sure if my desire to change channels was because I could no longer handle the graphic imagery, or if it was I wanted to watch some baseball or something.  I really hope my reason was the former of the two...

I am trying my best to not treat this event like some sort of make-em-up.  But I still find myself sitting on the same stupid coach (neglecting some very large written homework assignment) watching Anderson Cooper host a game called "Let's see how much worse it can get for the poorest people on the planet".  In a moment of heart wrenching Deja Vu I grabbed the remote when I saw a photo flash across the screen that was particularly haunting.  The delicious Lime Sherbet in my tummy could not handle this movie any more....

This time I gutted through my own need to feel safe and listened to stories told by the Haitians who survived the hell of January 12th.  I heard them bravely weep through their accounts of having to choose which of their children they would try and save....I watched them wander through the pitch black streets aimlessly....I saw them gather to pray by the thousands because as one very old man put it "Haiti is dying".

Now I know that some people will think that dwelling on things like this do no good.  People die every day.  Earthquakes and other natural disasters happen all over the world.  That instead of sitting on a blog and whining about how I feel I should put my mission where my mouth is and get on a plane to the devastated island.  I can't.  I am a coward.  The only thing I can do is try and find some words that can make any kind of sense of this....

Again...I can't.

The only thing I can say is that I don't think this is fair.  How can a people who already have so little be forced to deal with a situation like this?  I don't think it's fair that the people of Haiti are being asked to go from having nothing to having absolutely nothing.  I don't think it is fair that my biggest worry yesterday was that I was worried about the new bumping sound in my van's engine while those people had to worry about their shack turning into their coffin.  I don't think it is fair that next week when some celebrity sleeps with someone, or if Peyton Manning throws four TD's, or if Joe Biden and Dick Cheney exchange barbs on "Meet The Press" our attention will shift.  We will no longer want to hear about it anymore.  I know that I won't.  I will have felt morally cleansed by my 10 dollar charity text.  I will no longer want to hear about a generation of Haitians that are dead. Once this moves off of the front page of the news I will move on.  

 That sucks for me.  Because there is probably a rich lesson in what is happening that I am missing out on because it is too hard to watch.  There has to be...right?  There has to be something that can be gained by all of this....right?  There is no way something like this happens without some greater good hidden inside it...right?

I don't know.

That is why words are not easy tonight.  

If there was anytime in my life that I was able to pray and be completely selfless then I hope it is tonight.....



Lord hear my prayer......