Haiti

I can't stop thinking about Haiti. I've wanted to sit and write for a few days, but I don't have any eloquent or insightful words about the tragedy. Today, at the checkout in the grocery store, the clerk asked, "Would you like to donate $5 to the relief mission in Haiti? Paper or plastic?." And all could think of was the photo I saw on CNN of a dump truck dumping precious bodies, bodies made in the image of God, in a mass grave...while I buy a loaf of organic bread and ponder tossing an extra charge on my debit card. How bitterly ironic life can feel sometimes. Living in a time of constant news feeds, of global images through Google earth, of instant messages from distant lands, I feel a strange disconnect between the life I'm living in the comfortable city of Portland and of those suffering RIGHT NOW even as I write. Part of me wishes I were already a nurse and could board a plane to go help with real help while another part of me is glad I have plenty of excuses to just turn my head and wonder if I'll make a yoga class this weekend. I'm sure everyone has read stories and individual accounts as they begin to arrive in the news. One that was in our paper was about a 22 year old recent grad of the University of Portland. She was taking a year after graduating and before going to graduate school to work with orphans in Port Au Prince. She kept an active blog at http://www.mollyinhaiti.blogspot.com/ . She is not living anymore. I don't know this girl or her family, but she could have been someone I knew or someone in my family. Somehow this particular story really hit me. These kind of events leave us helpless, scared, frustrated, and wondering why life seems so dangerous and unfair to some. As I pray for the people of Haiti I am glad that this is not where life ends, that this is not all there is, that our hope is higher and greater than this world.