Friends,
Unfortunately, I haven’t allowed myself the opportunity to reflect on my week in Milot, Haiti at Hopital Sacre Coeur with Charles a few weeks ago. I had signed up with a few schools to substitute teach before we left, and I was booked for four days each of the past two weeks since we returned!
Have you ever picked up something to read, and that piece either hits home or takes on special meaning in light of your current life’s circumstances? That very thing happened to me during the end of our visit in Haiti.
There’s a common room in the ‘medical dormitory,’ which is where Charles and I were housed this time. That room has a couple of book shelves filled with donated books volunteers leave for future volunteers. An aside: We were lucky they’d saved a room for us in that dorm — some medical/nonmedical volunteers slept on cots in tents pitched in a grassy area nearby. Although I slept on a cot, it was a luxury to have our own room, complete with a sink which usually worked, unless the water was turned off, which happened a few times. And next door to our room were two bathrooms, which now bear witness to the great wear and tear from the frequent post-earthquake scenario of as many as 50 volunteers staying there at one time. The mission house next door, which usually houses visitors such as board members and donors, has two bathrooms as well, and a one or two rooms in both buildings have their own bathrooms. All in all, though, there were few bathrooms to service so many individuals when we were there … the toilets constantly backed up, and we simply got used to it. Luckily, two men had come to volunteer as ‘handymen,’ and they certainly proved to be handy if for nothing else but the toilets!
I had selected a book by Jesuit priest James Martin, SJ, Becoming Who You Are. I do hope that by the time I turn 50 in approximately one year that I know who I’m supposed to be … I’m still trying to figure that out. The book offers insights on the true self, mostly from Thomas Merton and then a few other saints such as Mother Teresa.
What an incredible book for me to finish reading on the plane returning to Ft. Lauderdale, then St. Louis! Martin’s message: “All of us bring something unique to the table, and, through our own gifts, we each manifest a personal way of holiness that enlivens the larger community.” As Mother Teresa said, “You can do something I cannot do. I can do something you cannot do. Together let us do something beautiful for God.”
I cannot begin to relate the beautiful things done in God’s name for the people of Haiti I witnessed that week Charles and I were there. So many loving, compassionate, dedicated medical volunteers caring for injured patients. Non-medical persons offering their own unique talents to assist medical staff in bringing comfort and improved medical attention by sorting through boxes and boxes of donated supplies to find much-needed and hoped for items. Family members of injured Port au Prince patients caring for their own by cooking meals in pots in small encampments, washing their clothes daily, and bathing them daily. Local Milot villagers showing up to cook for, bathe, and launder the clothes of those who had no family with them, especially orphaned children. Orphaned teenagers caring for orphaned pre-schoolers by giving them that same tender care. My heart is overflowing with love for these Haitians, who will treat anyone as well as they would care for their own family members.
Martin writes “The fruits of one’s ministry and one’s life are often astonishing, and the hand of God can be seen as clear as day, even when the results are simple ones.” My simple gift, in addition to helping organize and inventory loads of medical supplies, was to spend time with patients, young and old, by holding their hand, touching their foreheads … especially in the pediatric building. From feeding a bottle/changing the diaper of a baby who’d been born at hopital Sacre Coeur just after the earthquake, to coloring with a few girls who’d had part of a leg amputated, to holding, feeding, and mostly comforting Jamesly, a three-year-old whose TB has penetrated his bone and caused his spine/neck bones to function poorly so that he cannot really hold up his head. I loved every minute I spent with these children and their family members who were staying with them until they healed. Not realizing it, these individuals were my “signposts to God,” as Thomas Merton wrote. He also said, “I wished that all my friends who I love so much could see and feel what I see and feel today. But I know they never will.” This email is my feeble attempt to answer the question many of you have posed to me, “How was it?” In a nutshell, I experienced God, along with the Haitians, in the present moment, without worrying about the future or regretting the past. It was liberating, fulfilling. Along with others, I fed them, dressed them, spoke to them, touched them, held them. There was an unspoken feeling on both sides: It is good to be here together now. They knew when I was leaving, and so many other volunteers had come and gone in the weeks after the earthquake. But we both lived in the moment, allowing them to forget the tragedy of the past and not worry about what tomorrow would bring. Sometimes we’d all sing together. A few times, the children, some on crutches, left the pediatric area to visit the patients in the medical tents, and we’d all sing to them. I assure you, the Divine was definitely present.
Later in the book, Martin quotes Mother Teresa … “Find your own Calcutta.” In other words, bloom where you are planted. Discover sanctity in your own life. Martin says we are meant to experience the presence of God in our lives and in the lives of the people with whom we live and work. “Holiness … is everyone’s duty, yours and mine,” Mother Teresa said. Martin writes sanctity is God’s goal for all of us, our endpoint. He believes “Everyone’s true self is a unique creation of God’s, and the way to sanctity is to become the unique self that God wishes us to be.” Whether it’s through taking care of our families, volunteering in a medical mission, or bringing dinner to a sick neighbor, “our holiness consists of discovering the true self, the person we are before God, accepting that person, and becoming a saint in the process.” As Martin writes, God calls each of us in every situation we encounter to be ourselves: nothing more and, more importantly, nothing less.
I am most grateful for the opportunity to have spent time with the Haitians recooperating at Hopital Sacre Coeur. Since I’ve returned, I’ve enjoyed substitute teaching once again in my life. This summer, I may be volunteering in an underprivleged area in the city once a week for a high school tutoring/enrichment program. It is by working with impoverished people that I find life to be most rewarding.
God bless you as you become the person God intends you to be!
Tina Dubuque
