Our Own Poverty
Since my second week here there has been an almost constant
stream of volunteers coming down. I have had the wonderful opportunity to meet
so many people. There have been some really great people that have come down
here, people who I have connected with and hope to keep in touch with when I am
home this summer. Some of the people I met were absolutely fascinating and some
were just all around good people to have around. Some people I met had been to
Haiti over twenty times while others had never come before. One of the only
consistencies among the groups who came down was that every person, regardless
of age or expertise, seemed to be moved by their time in Haiti. Some were moved
by the Haitian’s spiritual fervency, some were moved by their joyful nature,
some were just indescribably moved. This is a very empowering feeling, and it
can shift a person’s entire outlook on the world. It was certainly a feeling I
left with when I returned home last January, it was the impetus that drove me
to return.
This feeling is different for everyone who visits La Croix. For
some who come down they feel like they can conquer anything; they began the
trip as a student and returned home as a master. They might have worked on a
project or been apart of a team that did something seemingly monumental,
something that really changed another person’s life. Now they feel almost
invincible, “If I could do so much for Haiti in just one week, imagine how much
I can do back home?!”. When the empowered volunteers return to Haiti for their
second, third, or fifteenth trip, this spark is relit. I can almost see it when
some people get down here. They come off the van and they light up, almost
blasting off into their project. They’ve overcome the learning curve and
they’re ready to lead Haiti forward.
However powerful this feeling, it can also be deceitful, it
can lead to some very problematic outcomes. No matter how well planned any
project is, the chaos of Haiti always manages to throw in something unexpected.
This happened to me last September and I’ve seen the unfortunate process
replicate with so many volunteers who have come down over the past three
months. I was fortunate because my errors were caught early on and have been
corrected, but that’s not always the case. Not every volunteer looks for
mistakes or has someone looking over them like I did. Whatever plan they are
executing, everything seems to be going along just fine, working out just as
planned, and then all of a sudden they’re stuck. The switch is turned on but
nothing happens. The seemingly perfect plan missed some innocuous detail that went
unaddressed and has now stalled the project. Even worse, sometimes the plan is
executed flawlessly, but the intended benefits of the project are lost on the
intended population. Many times these projects end up doing more damage than
good.
Though the setting is quite different, this is very similar
to the Last Super. When Jesus said that his disciples would betray him and they
were stunned, they felt like they were on top of the world, and now their
leader was telling them that he was leaving and they would betray him? Peter,
one of Jesus’s closest companions and the leader of the first church, was told
that he would deny Jesus three times. He was to be the leader of the first
church, how could he ever betray his lord like that? My friend Cassandra said
that she is always glad to go to Good Friday and Maundy Thursday services
because it reminds her that we are all active participants in the service. We
have all fallen, just like Peter. Whether we are betraying Jesus or thinking we
have the perfect plan, we are committing the same sin, pride. We put ourselves
on the pedestal of perfection, blind to our own broken nature. We move forward
assuming our own piety will guide us to glory until we are face to face with our
deleterious results.
This story, however difficult it is to face, is not over.
Jesus died on Good Friday but he rose again on Easter Sunday. No matter how far
we fall, how hard we fail, when we recognize our own inner poverty, when we
embrace our flawed nature, we can find the humility to rise again, we can
always rise again. Finding redemption is hard, it means repentance for our
failures and embracing that inner poverty. But that action, that humility we
gain, empowers us to really make true difference. Many of the volunteers who
have come down with plans that seem just perfect inevitably fail. Yet once they
fail and their mistakes are right before them, they embrace their own
weaknesses, fix their mistakes, and rebuild to make something truly great. As
human beings, no matter what our situation, we are too proud well too often,
and it pride blinds us from our own inner poverty. Fortunately there is
redemption from that inner poverty, we just need to understand the human part
of humility.
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