Frustration

Since I have been back from Haiti, life has been moving like a freight train, or perhaps a high-speed rail would be a better term. I was sharing with someone a couple days ago how when you go into Haiti the first days there seem to drag by. You enter this time warp where a type of freeze frame rate occurs to your life. As the week moves along the approach of returning home begins to warp your time awareness again, and a blurring effect commences. When you arrive stateside, you experience a kind of congestion as you try to re-acclimate yourself to our cultural rush. It leaves you extremely weary, and there is a kind of delayed re-engagement process. Part of the delay though is a rebellion of your mindset. A realization that technology and materialism have left you bankrupt in some very critical departments of your humanity. In Haiti you are always surrounded by people, someone trying to enter your space, desiring to be with you, especially the children. At times you can actually feel smothered. But the pull, the desire for relationship is fully engaged in that culture. They thrive on it, relish it, and live it. To our detriment, we forsake it for much more trite and trivial pursuits that promise much more than they actually deliver. I am settling back into my groove now, but I must confess a sphere of frustration has lingered longer this time. A sense of revulsion laces my soul, I long for deeper connections, for richer relationships, for fuller engagement. I am thankful for my recurring ventures into Haitian poverty, for there I am finding gold mines of meaning and depth desperately missing or sadly misplaced in my culture. My mining experiences in Haiti are helping me with my 'panning' practices back here at home. There is still "real gold" in this country, and a lot of it, but we have really muddied the waters and made the screening process much more cloudy than intended or what it should be. People are golden, but we get buried beneath the rubble of media, money, and selfish motives. But don't give up, richness lies beneath the surface still; frustrations fire, patiently tended will consume impurities and give birth to the pureness potential that lies within us still. The grace of God is sufficient to restore us to former glory and to genuine ancient love! Think about it! Blessings from memories of St. Marc.