Perspectives

The Grand Canyon left us speechless. It left the few others tourists about us speechless as well. Everyone whispered. Everyone stood still for moments before lifting cameras to ‘capture’ it. My mother wrote me that my Granddaddy’s word for the Grand Canyon was ‘erosion’.

True enough.

That which we fight against in our own back yards does lead to majesty when given a chance. Erosion and tectonic plates shifting… and shale and iron and sandstone and years.

I had the thought that this place was part of why I wanted to go into ministry: I wanted to make the story bigger than how it had been told to me. I wanted to invite people to delve deep into the canyons of their own story, to invite their shadows out to play, to move about in the light to see what might scamper forth.

I think I wanted to frame majesty in common ground. And I wanted to invite hearts for justice. I thought if I could tell the story of Jesus well enough and true enough, then the world would aright itself. Somehow here, standing between the pine trees an gaping at the expanse, the world all seemed right and full of beauty. I felt re-oriented in some way. In church speak we would call this redeemed. I only had vowels in me: o, oo, ah, wow (granted: w’s are consonants, but they felt like vowels).

There were goats on a ledge. One wonders what a goat might eat in the canyon. The signs that said, “let coyotes feed themselves” came to mind. Perhaps people feed the goats. They also had signs asking people not to throw coins into the canyon since it poisons birds. I hadn’t considered the Canyon a wishing well before yesterday.
This picture I took just for the color of the sky. A quilt should be made of such. and it is to consider the sky and clouds and to compose it all together. We did not have much to say in this place. Just breath. Which, frankly, was at times precious since were at 7,000 feet or more much of the time
I thought about what our Pink Jeep tour guide Josh said about these canyons. He spoke of climate change with great respect and acknowledged that the climates have always been changing. The landscape has always been changing. We are here for such a blink of it all. I chuckle to myself to think how important I felt my ministries have been. They have been meaningful and of some value to those whose paths crossed mine. But these canyons long predate the Church and they will long outlast us.

Then we received word that there had been a devastating earthquake in Haiti. Today we have felt a bit transported there by the news and efforts at news leaking in. Our friends are there at St. Josephs and Wings of Hope and Trinity House. Also our friend Jay Butler is there with his daughter, Kate. They are both doing well.

I have thought long today about what to share of my experience of this news… in part I’d like to present myself in the best light. But the truth is I have felt grumpy about our ‘vortex’ experience of the Grand Canyon being disrupted by this news of human misery and suffering. And yet, this is Haiti and this is life. It seems it is always a balance between beauty and suffering: between awe and tragedy. I confess I don’t want to be drawn into the profound human misery happening in Haiti. Or in Iraq or in Iran.

Working in the prison, I sometimes felt that each inmate was a representation of such profound human misery. It was like Haiti shrinkwrapped. I feel overwhelmed by it and I want to go back to the beauty and awe of the Grand Canyon. I want to return to that which transcends all this suffering.

Allen talked about God’s sovereignty on our drive back from the Canyon. I am thinking more of transcendence and accompaniment. There are those feeling angry about Haiti and taking note in our collective sin that has created such poverty and disastrous suffering. It looks like an apocalypse the way the media is portraying it. I do not want to get angry about Haiti. I want to pay attention where I am.

I am in Arizona and I am hurting for our friends in Haiti. I am outraged by the religious right seeking to blame Haiti for this suffering and put the quake in the righteous hands of God Almighty. I say God is Almighty there in Haiti.

Today I made Prescott my own by getting a hair cut and by making winter oatmeal bread.

The woman who cut my hair had never heard of Presbyterians. She wondered if it was like Catholic. She was recommending a local bar and stopped herself to ask if we ‘drank’. She summed up Christian churches ‘out here’ as “there’s a lot of judgement going around in those places”.

I made her laugh and opened her mind a bit with a few quips and quibbles I made about popular Christianity. I am interested to see how the Church will be relevant in Haiti (and Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Guatemala, and Nicaragua to name a few other places of high human misery quotient tonight).

I am looking forward to school starting. One body. One hour. One solution in my hands.

Hearing the news from the other room reminds me of those watching Hurricane Katrina head for the shoreline. Waiting for body counts. Waiting for news of Bill, who was injured at St. Josephs. Waiting for a way to help, a way to count, a way to be connected. What I am remembering about Haiti tonight are two things: Holding a baby dying of AIDS and feeling the helplessness of it all so deeply, and being inside a van when the Ton Ton Macoute came into the village we were driving through as mothers threw children behind cars to protect them.

The Grand Canyon was formed by an earthquake. I hope Haiti will have an opportunity out of this rubble to make something beautiful, to build better infrastructure, to organize in ways more protective of the most vulnerable. I hope we will find solidarity with the people there. I hope tomorrow I can wake up in Arizona again, and feel connected to our friends and still find my mouth full of vowel prayers… The photo at the top of this post was of the sunset, soon after we got word that there had been an earthquake in Haiti and that our friends were alive. The Resurrection Dance will be danced again.

The sun keeps setting and as they say in Mexico: the sun gets up every morning.