"HAITI ISN'T READY FOR DEMOCRACY"

That's what the Haitian lady said on the bus, the one who is from Cap Haitien but who has lived in Atlanta for 25 years. She grew up in Haiti under the Duvalier reign and reported that it was wonderful. What we hear in the US are the reports and rumors of the reign of terror of Papa Doc and Baby Doc, how they would simply kill those they thought were any sort of threat, how the voice of the people was squelched and silenced. But what she experienced was a life of peace and security, where "I could walk on any street, at any time of day, and feel safe, where we didn't lock our doors and had plenty to eat." Her view is that Haiti still needs someone to tell the people what to do, someone strong and bossy, like a dictator.

It brings up the puzzling question of who knows what is right for another, whether that Other is a child, a nation, or any group of people. We Americans believe with fervor in the superiority of democratic government, in a nation run by and for the people. It seems perfectly obvious that such a form of government is better than any sort led by a king or a tsar or a dictator. Whenever too much power rests in the hands of just one person, or a small group of people, there is the very real danger of corruption. And "enemies" often die.

But what if our Haitian friend is right? What if you have to grow into democracy, reach a certain level of self-confidence and maturity as a people before you can trust yourselves to govern your own nation? We don't give two-year-olds the same governing rights as eighteen-year-olds. Maybe nations are not much different than children.

The real question then becomes,"Who, then, should govern the nation? Who has the right to impose their own brand of "good government" on a developing country?" I am the furthest thing from a political analyst, but I can see this playing out all over the globe. I'm a fervent believer in democracy, too, but I understand the anger of some groups of people toward Americans, because we certainly look to be trying to democratize the world, to push our own values without real regard for other systems of thought. Sometimes we use guns and tanks to do it. I'm not suggesting we're wrong to try to bring something better to struggling nations. I'm just saying we can't stand there scratching our heads in perplexity when they don't welcome us with open arms.

But I digress into areas about which I am distinctly unqualified to comment. It's just that her verdict about her own home country of Haiti intriqued me and set me wondering.

What do you think?

HAITI

I know some of you are curious about my recent trip to Haiti. Sue Osborne, my longtime friend and traveling companion is blogging up a storm about it, so rather than be redundant, I'm sending you to her blog here: http://nostalgic-nana.blogspot.com/ to get a good idea of our trip. We shared my camera since Sue forgot her charger, so all the pictures she's posting are "ours".

My trip was all kinds of awesome. A curious observation: there in Haiti, with only sporadic power and water (and never hot running water, my very favorite thing), on a diet of rice and beans, sleeping in bits and fits under a mosquito net -- I was deeply happy every single moment. I don't know if it was the slower pace, the back-to-basics lifestyle, the incredible team of people working so tirelessly and selflessly for the good of others, the lush beauty of the Haitian mountain country, or getting sticky and dirty with soil and varnish and sweat and service every day -- but whatever it was, I experienced it as a gift, precious and unexpected. Misty, a volunteer student midwife from Arizona, summed it up thusly, "This has been a time of healing for me here in Haiti." Though I didn't even know I was so broken, that's exactly how Haiti felt for me.

The guidebook begins, "Haiti will capture your heart" and that, too, proved true. Poor as poor gets, with problems that span centuries, Haiti nonetheless speaks to something real and little acknowledged in our soul, some sense of deep connection -- to the earth and to each other, some inarticulate truth that settles and stays, even here at home, hidden away in our hearts. I know I'm not alone in this experience. I can't even tell how it will show up in my life; it's so foreign to my American mindset. I feel it like a latent disease, and it may in fact manifest as dis-ease, leading to action, or it may simply rest in me forever as a touchstone of truth.

Haiti has my heart, at any rate.

PASSION

I'm reading a book by Tracy Kidder called "Mountains Beyond Mountains" about a doctor named Paul Farmer who is a major player in the fight for equitable health care around the world. His passion is the people of Haiti and the poor everywhere; his tireless work both amazes and inspires me and trips my guilt-o-meter. I remember feeling the same way when I read about Albert Schweitzer when I was a kid.

And I've been watching some TV: the movie "A Beautiful Mind" about schizophrenic John Nash, whose passion for math has impacted much of our modern business; a PBS special about a scientist from Papua New Guinea who passionately pursues (in the field) the study of the various species of Birds of Paradise; another PBS show about a guy who at 15 years old, decided to make his life work the saving of the kahou bird in Bermuda, thought to be extinct for 300 years.

I love people of passion. I could name many more examples, and so could you. Now, here's my problem. I consider myself (accurately, I believe) a passionate person. But I can't figure out how people can concentrate for a whole lifetime on just one thing, how that one thing can fuel their passion so. Or so it seems.

I've always had this problem. Which is why, in college, I was elated to discover that Humanities was a major, that I could study language and music and art and philosophy and culture all under one banner. And now, decades later, I can get all fired up to save the birds or the children or the local library or the gifted program or the homebound elderly or the mamas and babies of Haiti or anything else that captures my attention in the moment. But I can't seem to maintain a focused energy long enough to do the kind of work that so many are doing in the world, running small (or large) charities and foundations, serving long missions, giving their lives to serving the truly needy.

I'm not trying to denigrate the small good I do in my own life; it just seems so paltry when I learn of some of the things other passionate people are doing in the world. I'm headed to Haiti for a week, to volunteer in a birth clinic. I'm excited and happy to serve. But I'm carrying some guilt, too, that at the end of the week, I can leave. Most of the people of Haiti, those stuck in grinding, life-sapping poverty, have no such option. The injustice and inequity of it pricks my soul. And there are those who come to help and who stay, sometimes for years, like Paul Farmer or the good folks on the post-earthquake ground of Haiti, who have more time and freedom than I, because I've chosen to focus my service in my home.

But do they also have more passion? I fear I am lacking a larger vision for my life. I wonder why I am always so moved by stories of do-gooders, why I have always felt called to such a life, why I'm not living that life more fully. It's a constant personal conflict, this acknowledgement that what I do and how I live is, in fact, one manifestation of a life of passion and love, contrasted with this pull to larger circles of service. I worry that I've grown lazy, that I wouldn't be able to answer a call to larger service, despite my theoretical passion, that I've buried talents to the point of atrophy. I worry that my passion for such things is really a mask for ego. I worry that I may be ignoring opportunities in my own sphere of influence by focusing beyond the mark. I worry that I'll never figure this all out.

In the meantime, I'm headed to Haiti, with my sincere passion to help, with my worry and my guilt. Prayers are welcome. So are donations. Please check out www.mamababyhaiti.org to find out about the organization I'll be with. They are perfect examples of passionate,compassionate service.

WHY I CHOOSE JESUS

I learn from many of the great teachers of humanity. This year I am studying the Tao te Ching in depth. My yoga practice is deepening me. I love to read wise writers like M. Scott Peck and Shakti Gawain and Wayne Dyer, because they point me to God.

And that's the difference between all these great spiritual leaders and Jesus. Jesus doesn't just point me to God by his teachings and his example. He brings me directly to God. He is the only one able to take me back Home.

I'm an all or nothing sort of girl. If I ask for a glass of water, I want a full glass. If I've any leanings toward personal fulfillment, I want to take it all the way. I'm not interested in half measures.

And that is why I m a disciple of Jesus Christ. He is not a man of half measures. He takes it all the way. He will take me all the way, if I but let him. I am fully aware that I can't perfect myself on my own. I am grateful for fellow travelers who share their light in word and deed, who sometimes give their life for Truth.

Jesus did more than give his life for Truth. Somehow he reconciled our sorry little souls with God. It is in us to become gods. We are the children of God, after all. But I don't need to tell you how far from the goal we all are.

Others give me tips for the journey. Jesus walks with me all the way and waves his magic Jedi hand at every obstacle. I don't profess to understand it. But I trust him completely. So on we go, Jesus and me.

TRUSTING THE RHYTHM

I've been sitting on the couch for a couple of weeks. The sun pours through my big windows directly onto my seeking face. I squint, but I don't move. I read and sit and think and pray and sit and soak in the sun.

On Sunday nights, I make my list for the week, as usual. The next Sunday, it's not much changed, because I don't do anything. I sit on the couch and occasionally worry about it, wondering if I should care. I don't care. I am wrapped in some numbing air that forbids movement, action.

I wonder if this is a new form of depression, this inaction, this ennui. But I am not sad. I am not anything. I am just sitting.

And then I am done. This morning, I cleaned the refrigerator, the stove, two bathrooms, the microwave, the clothes, and even the grills on the stove hood. All before 9 a.m.

Sometimes we just need to sit. We need to be and not do. I feel guilty about the not doing, because I am tainted by a world where productivity is the mark of success and worthiness. Just to be is somehow suspect. And yet, it is all. I AM, He said.

Interestingly, as I reviewed the week Sunday night, I noticed that I had actually accomplished quite a few tasks on my list. Not by trying or planning or even consciously doing. But somehow, they got done. Just by being.

It's 9:45 a.m. now. And I'm going to sit on the couch.

CANCER

My dad has cancer. He told me last July at my sister's wedding in Georgia. We sat sideways on folding chairs, me in my borrowed blue dress, my chin on my hand on the back of the chair, Dad in his father-of-the-bride suit, his boutonniere beginning to droop in the afternoon sun. He has prostate cancer, stage 4. He outlined his treatment plan, which involved trips to Los Angeles to a cancer clinic called Compassionate Oncology. He was full of hope and good humor. So I was, too, that late summer afternoon.

It's half a year later. Dad has completed his chemo series and continues with hormone treatment and a cocktail of drugs. The cancer growths are smaller, his PSA count down to under 1%. This is good news. He has stents in his kidneys because the cancer was interfering with his kidney function. That is why he is in Los Angeles this week, to have the stents replaced (though the doctor had hoped to remove them). It is the reason I have driven 1,100 miles to be here with my dad. My brother, Greg, is here, as well. The three of us spent 13 hours on Tuesday at the hospital and the clinic. We enjoyed a long walk along Venice Beach in the California sun on Wednesday and then went our separate ways.

Cancer changes things. My dad, for one. He looks suddenly older; he's lost his hair and his always-slight frame is even more gaunt. My first thought when I picked him up at the airport was, "He looks like a cancer patient." Even though his progress has been good, it can't be easy to have to shift from a healthy, active lifestyle to having to depend on Depends and wearing those lovely medical support stockings. He bears it all with a tenacious good humor, though. Even when the pad the nurse had given him fell out through his pants leg onto the clinic floor, he didn't notice, much less mind. He reported to me and Greg, patting his wet crotch, "I had a pad, but I don't know where it went." Tuesday was a long but surprisingly entertaining day. Things are always entertaining with Dad around.

But how long will he be around? I see other changes in my Dad, as he comes face to face with his own mortality. I know he's not the first or the last to deal with this, nor am I alone in dealing with a dying parent. We're all dying, I know, but it's only theory until the diagnosis. The reality changes you. I notice that Dad
now has "firm beliefs" about the afterlife; that is new and perhaps inevitable, perhaps harmless. His opinions and judgments about things of this life seem harder, too, as if he needs to sort everything into a clear category, to organize life into a whole that he can understand and manage.

Perhaps none of my observations are valid and that is a caveat that must be clear. I cannot and do not speak for my dad or his experience. I am once removed from the disease, dealing with my own feelings of impending loss, even though I hope and even expect that that is years away. Most of us experience our parents' death while we live. I know I am not alone in this, nor am I even IN the experience yet. But I feel it coming. I am not sad, really, but it changes things, I can tell. As a child, I knew all of my great-grandparents; I have always felt secure in the generational line-up. When I lost three grandparents within a year and a half, things shifted. One generation at a time, I keep getting bumped up the line until there will be no one left between me and death.

I am not afraid of death. I am not worried about what happens next, though I've no clear information about it, just a deep knowledge that I am loved and known. But I can't pretend it doesn't change us, to come face to face with mortality, whether it's our own or that of someone we love. In the midst of life, it's easy to ignore death, even though we all know we'll all die.

Cancer stinks. It's a rotten disease and it touches most all of us. I admire my dad's good humor and optimism as he works to kill the cancer inside him. He's actually enjoying the ride, even as he faces life's toughest questions. I don't know how you could do better than that.

BASKETBALL WARS

There's something about sports I just don't get. So there we are last week at the Blazer/Jazz game in Portland . . . me and Stephen, Grace and Gloria, and two of Gloria's friends, because this was her 10th birthday celebration. Now I'm excited to be there, looking forward to the live game, prepared to whoop it up for the home boys. I like basketball. I like the Blazers. We moved to Portland during the legendary Rick Adelman days, when the Trailblazer dream team was firing up the court, led by Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter and other great players, many of whom were actually our neighbors on Bull Mountain. Those were days of Blazer mania and it was fun to join in; it was fun to win.

Well, we were doing anything but winning last week against the Jazz, who were running slick, beautiful plays, while the Blazers seemed not to know one defensive move. It didn't make for a great game, at least not for an arena full of Blazer fans. But here's the thing that bugged me: as the game went on (badly, admittedly) people got more and more worked up about what seemed such silly things. Referee calls that didn't help our losing cause, for instance. Once the entire Rose Garden booed loudly for five nonstop minutes over a ref's call. Now I know refs make bad calls sometimes, but what's the point of pouring all that negative energy out onto our own home court? I don't get that.

At another point in the game, our whole section, led by one vociferous, obnoxious fan just behind us, repeatedly chanted, "Utah sucks! Utah sucks!" I mean, that's just plain rude. It's a game, for heaven's sake, not a war.

Or maybe it is a war. I've often thought that sports is a substitute for war, especially for a generation that hasn't really experienced a massive military draft, as in World War II or even Vietnam. I guess I don't really get war, either. I recognize that there are certainly times when military action is required to defeat evil or protect freedom, but so often, it just looks to me like power games, fueled by testosterone and greed.

My kids, separated by more than a century from the Civil War, are through-and-through Union supporters. And why not? Who can argue against national unity and anti-slavery? But it always annoys me when they so matter-of-factly assume their position is superior. Because it was my ancestors--and theirs--that fought for the Confederacy, not because we were landed slave-holders trying to protect our monetary interests, but simply because those boys in blue were our own home boys. We all root for the home team.

In the temple and elsewhere, we often pray for those who are serving in our military.
And so we should. But I always whisper a prayer for the "enemy" soldiers, too. I may not agree with their position or their tactics; I may hope they lose, but every one of them has a mother and a father who worries over them, maybe a spouse and kids who pray that they will come home to them, just as we hope and pray for the safe return of our own. I pray that they all return home safely. I pray that they all just stay home and stop fighting.

So while I sit there in the Rose Garden hoping the Blazers will pull it together and beat the Jazz, I also applaud every remarkable play by the enemy team. It's a basketball game. It's supposed to be fun. I just don't get all the rabid rest of it.