Brush with Haiti (5 page)

On Tuesday, September 11, I sent the two older ones off to school. Katie was a junior and Danny was in seventh grade. Sam, then 9-years-old, and I engaged in our daily ritual of eating cereal and watching cartoons until it was time for him to leave. I kissed him good-bye, and told him again not to worry. He had always been more sensitive than the others, at least in ways more apparent. I sat down again on my newfound bed with my bowl of cereal, dreading going in to teach later in the day. I stared blankly at the television set.

When I realized I could be watching something other than cartoons, I changed the channel only to see smoke billowing from the first of the World Trade Center towers to be hit. I don't remember much of the rest of that day, except wondering whether I should somehow let my children know that I was aware of what was happening, and that I would be home from work as quickly as possible after they returned from school. I did not fear for their physical safety; rather, I just wanted to tell them again that everything would be all right. But I knew that it wouldn't. Not because of the terrorists, but because of me. I was taking away their innocence and feelings of security, and no one should ever do that to a child.

Visiting Haiti would have to be put aside temporarily, but I knew when the time was right, I would go. That time came a couple years later.

I looked forward
to the preparatory meetings with members of the Heartland Center and others participating in the trip. They were held in a former classroom of a local Catholic school, no longer used due to declining enrollment. Father Gannon - or Tom, as we came to call him - was as interesting as my mother advised he would be.

"You'll like him. He's a Jesuit," she told me. She had heard his sermons while he performed monthly Mass duties in town.

"Why?" I asked her. I wondered what she knew ofJesuits' work. It was not the kind of thing we discussed. She was a dutiful Catholic, but it never occurred to me she differentiated Jesuits from the other religious orders. My grandmother's brother was a Jesuit who taught at the University of Detroit, but we just knew him as Uncle Pete, the priest. Perhaps my mother knew more about theology and the reputation of his order than I realized.

"He knows so much, and he speaks in outline form. Something a professor would like."

She was right. The first time I heard him give a sermon he quickly stood out among the other priests I had heard. If I had not known he was a Jesuit, I might have figured it out.

Perhaps it was his sense of logic and wealth of knowledge, but more likely it was his bold stance on justice. It is not that priests of other orders are not committed to social justice, but there is just something about the Jesuit way.

In preparing for the Haiti trip, he immediately earned my trust. This was not what could be considered a typical mission trip. I did not want to dismiss the work of others nor did he, but this project was not designed as charity or a short-term feel good experience for those who opted to go. To be honest, I would have gone anyway. But this made me more comfortable. We held serious discussions about the differences between charity and justice, how achieving justice was more challenging and perhaps apt to upset the social and economic position of those accustomed to giving a helping hand to those in need. True justice might exist only in a system where the poor were not kept poor and dependent upon the charity of others. He was not as radical in his activism as he might have been, but intellectually he understood the distinctions and conveyed his positions eloquently.

We did not dwell on ideas too much, as we had practical matters to deal with - itineraries, flight arrangements, malaria preventatives, and so on. A representative from Catholic Relief Services helped us with the details. The organization was extraordinarily active on the ground and considered one of the most successful in making things happen in Haiti. She would make arrangements to meet us there.

Our group would include Tom, Fran, who worked in the Heartland Center office, and Bishop Dale Melczek. There would also be Carol, a woman actively engaged in her parish and committed to all kinds of justice issues; Louise, equally active in her parish and fearlessly devoted to such practices as teaching reading to inmates at the local state prison; and Monica, incredibly compassionate and insatiably curious about the world's religions and spiritual teachings. John, a young photographer from the local paper also accompanied us. I felt a like an outsider, as I had strayed quite a bit from the Catholic faith over the years, and in my mind referred to the other women as the "church ladies." But I could not imagine a more interesting and wonderful group of traveling companions.

We would be serving as a delegation from the diocese, there to learn and then report our observations to parishioners back home. Tied to the project were fundraising efforts, primarily the planning of special collections taken during the Mass. We each paid for our own expenses, so any money raised would go directly to the project. Fundraising was not one of my strengths, but the more I learned of the work in Haiti, the easier it became.

The venture resulted from a recent initiative begun by the U.S. Conference ofCatholic Bishops. Its purpose was global solidarity, and through its implementation they hoped to see their dioceses partner with people-driven projects in various parts of the world designed with long-term development in mind. From what I understood, Bishop Melczek had been actively committed to the idea at the national meeting and enthusiastically brought word of it back to Gary. After much deliberation with Tom and others, a partnership was forged in Haiti. The poverty was severe and the country was geographically close, contributing to the sad irony of economic disparity in North America and also facilitating travel there.

While Catholic Relief Services representatives described a variety of undertakings in need of assistance, they decided on one devoted to soil conservation in a remote area in northeast Haiti, near Fort Liberte. It involved the replanting of vegetation to ward off further erosion, a very serious problem in much of the country. In addition, it served to create a micro-economy in which participants could sell some of their produce in the marketplace. The notion of supporting Haitians in their own economic development appealed to me, as did agriculture. Haiti continued to rely on agriculture, and the benefits of producing from the earth while protecting it seemed boundless.

Tom recognized that soil conservation was unlikely to get parishioners' attention to the point of freely opening their wallets, but orphanages would. Orphanage work is tied to long-term development only tangentially, but there certainly was a need for financial assistance. They were non-existent in rural areas where we would spend much of our time, as people in small villages tended to look after one another, particularly children who had no means of support. But in Port-au-Prince orphanages were abundant. The need was great, not only for children whose parents had died, but also for those whose parents could not afford to provide for them. They were not always run well, and to some extent had become one of the few ways to make money from the outside. But we were assured some were very good, and we would visit a few in order to make a wise decision on where to channel some of the money collected back home.

This was one part of the trip that I did not look forward to at all. The thought of visiting orphanages frankly yanked at and twisted my gut. The only experience I had that came close was in junior high. One holiday season my Girl Scout troop visited the nearby Carmelite Home for Boys where we played games and made bell-shaped ornaments out of paper cups, pipe cleaners, glitter, and pictures cut from old Christmas cards. Such experiences can bring joy, I suppose, but this one brought me nothing but sadness. It shined a very bright light on how sheltered I had been, which perhaps was the intention of our troop leader. I did not understand how a day of game-playing and craft-making was of any help to the boys. After that I never looked at my own parents, or my situation as a loved and cared for daughter, the same as before.

Now that I was a parent myself, a visit to an orphanage seemed more heart-wrenching than I could imagine. My mothering instincts had kicked in, and at the same time I could not judge anyone who might have to turn over their children to someone else. Whatever the situation was, it could only be somehow attached to pain. I prayed the orphanage visits would take up only a small portion or our trip, and I kept my eyes on the soil project, the planet, and the potential for economic growth.

In retrospect my aversion for anything emotional was probably due to the fact that my own heart was so vulnerable at the time. In the two years since I first heard of the Haiti project, I spent much time ruminating about my failed marriage, yearned desperately to recreate a sense of security for my children, and had fallen in love with a man who moved across the country. The liaison was brief, confusing, and lacked any sense of closure. We had met as he was considering jobs far from Chicago, and I did not yet trust my judgment about men. It did not make sense to me that I felt such a deep connection with someone I barely knew, and I cared so much about him that I let him go without telling him how I felt. Neither the pain nor wonder went away. I just kept busy with other things.

Once I realized
the Haiti trip was affiliated with the diocesan mission of peace and social justice, my fading connection with Catholicism seemed to strengthen. My relationship with the Church had been complicated. Many academics are detached from religion, but I never really was. Not totally. And any disconnection that did exist began long before.

During my teen years I had dreaded getting up early on Sunday to attend Mass with my family. I was the oldest of five; the youngest was my baby sister eleven years behind me. Mass-going was a ritual for my parents and they never missed. So we never missed. There was nothing in the teachings of the Church that I had any particular problems with at that time. In fact, much of it was meaningful to me. But I thought that some of the priests were out of touch, or just plain boring. There was some pretty good stuff in the Bible, even if I did not take it literally. But having a priest synthesize, analyze, and sermonize it for me seemed unnecessary when I wanted to think for myself. It was rare that they could provide any additional insight, at least for my teen mind.

One serious problem I had with going to Mass at that age stemmed from my expanding capacity for detecting hypocrisy. Coming of age in a Catholic setting was great for honing my "right-from-wrong" detectors. So when I saw people at weekly Mass who I had deemed as unscrupulous, I questioned why I should have to go. Looking back, I don't even remember who it was that I thought had done something unchurchly, or what gave me the idea I had anything to say about it.

"I don't know why I should have to go to Mass every Sunday," I told my mother. "There are hypocrites there."

"That's no excuse," my mother replied. "It doesn't matter what other people do with their lives. Anyway, that is not for you to decide. Just go to church." My mother was the least judgmental person I had ever known. And she was unwavering about Mass attendance.

I later got married outside the Church, by a judge, to a Jewish man. My parents loved him and even offered their backyard for the wedding. They were that non-judgmental. And they said nothing about my lack of Mass attendance after the wedding or about not raising my kids Catholic. But I began to miss the ritual and the sermons, the singing and the sacraments. I had left them behind only to avoid offending my husband and his family. I wished it weren't so, but often participating in anything Christian is construed as anti-Semitic. Rather than argue, I stayed away.

When my marriage ended, one of the first things I did was go to Sunday Mass at St. Thomas More, my childhood church. I felt afraid and lonely, and sought the security it had brought when I was young. I sat a few pews behind where my family used to sit. My mother and father arrived just after I did, reached their row, genuflected, and knelt down for a pre-Mass prayer. From that moment until the end of mass, I wept.

I understood that receiving Communion was out of the question. In grade school we were taught that people could not receive Communion with sin on their souls, removable only by the sacrament of Confession. Missing Mass was one of those sins, and I had missed for nearly two decades, except for an occasional holiday, wedding, or funeral. Considering my marriage to a Jew, I must have been judged guilty of fornication and a whole slew of other things. At the end of Mass, my parents saw me as they turned around to leave. I thought my mother would faint. She just looked to the floor and grinned. And that was that.

It was the social justice aspect ofCatholicism that struck a chord in me. I had a big dose ofit growing up in the 1960s. My studies in Latin American history put much of the Vatican II transformation into perspective, and I became enamored with Latin American Catholicism, particularly the grassroots kind. Speaking with leaders of the Haiti project, I was encouraged to become actively involved in the Commission for Peace and Social Justice at St. Thomas More and made plans to be present at the next meeting. During my long absence I had learned much about Thomas More, the man, and his teachings on social justice, bringing an added dimension to my new participation. This fresh relationship with the Church made things meaningful again and my newfound passion must have been apparent to the others at that first meeting.

It was early evening and getting dark as I entered the church office. The doorway to the meeting room was just a short way down the hall, and light poured onto shelves of books and a portrait of the Reverend Robert B. Weis. Father Weis founded the parish, and served as pastor for all the years I was growing up. I felt like I had come home again and if the Holy Spirit had ever been alive within me, it was then. I entered the room in the center of which was a long, heavy, wooden conference table, and introduced myself to the women who were there. I told them I would be reporting on the Heartland Center's project in Haiti. It was one of those moments when one realizes that so many things experienced earlier in life had led to this point. I thanked God for being patient through my winding journey.