#210 – Dick Bernard: A Farm Freezer, Haiti, the Oil Spill and US

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Monday, July 12, was the six month anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and area in Haiti.
That same day, I spent a few hours helping my Uncle and Aunt, out at their now-empty North Dakota farm. (They’ve lived in a nearby town for several years – an option they don’t like, but the only reasonable option they have. They are at an age, and their medical conditions are such, that they could no longer survive independently on this place where they lived as brother and sister for over 80 years. My uncle is 85, his sister, my aunt, turns 90 a week from today. Their house remains much as they left it, but they don’t live there, only frequent visits.)
One of Monday’s tasks was to empty their freezer which included frozen produce from their garden, some of it ten years old. They knew it had to be done: my uncle, in fact, brought up the idea. That produce in that freezer would never be used by anyone, including themselves. But the notion of wasting this food was reprehensible to him. He was nine years old during the worst year of the Great Depression in ND, 1934, and he knows what it is like to have nothing.
We unloaded the freezer, and put its contents on the back of his old pickup truck, and drove down to the family garden – a one acre plot, used by the family for many years. The garden is still used by the couple, but only a tiny portion of it is planted. They don’t have the energy to garden more, and even if they did, the produce would go to waste: for them, it is unusable.
During the Depression and other bygone years, there were eight people or more who depended on that garden, but the prospects of even a small crop to harvest and process for the winter were not always good. Once experienced, one tends not to forget such experiences.
Those bygone years, the normal process was to pressure cook and can the food, in sealed glass jars. There was no electricity and thus no freezer; there were no plastic bags – a product of the petroleum industry. Kids now-a-days would be hard-pressed to even imagine the planting/growing/harvesting/preserving process which people of my generation grew up with. Forced to live that way again, most of us would not survive, literally.
Down at the garden we emptied the plastic bags which had held the frozen produce of the farm: spinach, corn, beans, peas, broccoli, onions, apples, and on and on and on. Considering it was ten years worth, it really wasn’t a lot of, as my uncle would say, “wasted food”.
While he was sitting on the tail gate of the truck, opening and emptying the bags, he was lamenting the waste, here, while so many people were starving elsewhere. No, he didn’t think that frozen bag of kernel corn should be sent to Haiti; more so, the notion of waste was on his mind. He wants to help, but how? People his age get endless appeals for funds from all manner of agencies. My advice to him: throw them away unless you know the group is good. So many are simply scams.
I doubt that he – or I, for that matter – thought about the amount of electricity that had to be consumed to keep that food frozen….
Haiti, and that waste at the farm unexpectedly came together for me a little later in the day. Back at my temporary home in the local motel, I flipped on the television, and happened across a CSPAN program recorded earlier that day: a panel discussing Haiti six months after the earthquake. The program is well worth watching. It had not occurred to me till that moment that July 12 was indeed the six months anniversary of that humanitarian disaster.
Back home in the Twin Cities the next day, there were several e-mails with varying perspectives six months after the quake in Haiti. Mostly, though, Haiti is out of sight, out of mind, even for people like myself who have a great interest in Haiti.
More on our minds, currently, is the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico: hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil befouling the Gulf: oil which was to be used for the fuel that got me out to that North Dakota farm, and back; and which was used for to manufacture those plastic bags we had just emptied.
Mostly, for most of us, life goes on. “Don’t worry, be happy”. We’ll always have it all.
Don’t count on it.

From the garden, back to the garden


The farm garden, before an acre, presently only a small plot.

#209 – Richard Bigelow: Thoughts on Attitudes towards Immigration and Immigrants

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Mr. Bigelow lives in border country Texas and grew up in rural Colorado. He responds, here, to one of those ubiquitous basically anti-immigrant – if you’re not “white like me” rants that whiz around the internet – anonymous hate speech.
“Yes, I have some different thoughts on immigration than those in the letter you sent. My thinking is in process and I don’t purport to have very many answers to the many difficult issues involved but I am happy to share some of my thoughts.
As you know, I am a middle class, white, mostly Anglo-Saxon, protestant, male, born in the United States of America. That makes me part of the most powerful group of people to ever walk the planet. I love my country and believe we have done and continue to do more good in the world than any other nation. Our laws and system of justice while not perfect are the best the world has to offer. I am a proud citizen of the USA. That said, I believe that there are some major problems at home and in the world that we as a great and powerful nation have a human, moral and Christian obligation to address. Poverty and racism are two of those problems that are core in the immigration debate.
One doesn’t have to go back too far in history to realize we are all immigrants maybe including even the “Native American” population. Being part of the English immigrant group that became the dominant group way before I was born it is easy to understand some of the ethnocentric feeling articulated in [the internet] letter. However, as a teen I became aware of the melting pot myth. As you know there were not many minority families in [my Colorado home town]. My first Black and Hispanic friends were from [a nearby larger city] and not only did they not want to melt but would not have been allowed had they wanted. They were considered by much of the dominant culture as inferior and were treated differently. In my first minorities class in college we talked about the tossed salad analogy as opposed to the melting pot. This allows for a wonderful multi cultural society where we live together with many common issues but maintain and even celebrate the differences. This idea continues to guide me in my life journey. I can and sometimes do celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco De Mayo, Kwanzaa, Passover, even tried to fast during Ramadan one year (that sucked). I love to dance the Chicken Dance in Fredericksburg, visit China Town in S.F, little Italy in New York and Boston. Anyway you get the idea.
In spite of my pride in the USA I believe we have a lot to answer for. We have allowed those immigrants who look and sound kind of like us to assimilate while exploiting the Black, Brown, and Yellow “immigrates”. I don’t think I need to rehash civil rights stuff here or the history of how we provoked a war with Mexico so we could lay claim to land from Colorado to California. Nor should I have to review the immoral treatment of Japanese and German Americans during WWII. I also hope that most people are aware of how many of us have in the past and continue to encourage and even help bring workers here illegally so we can build our own wealth and that of our great nation by paying meager wages and limited benefits.
I have chosen to live in an area close to the border where I am a minority. When I go to a store and no one speaks English and those ethnocentric thoughts begin to kick in, I only have to remember that many of these families have been right here since before the Pilgrims made it to New England. You would be hard pressed to find a more patriotic group of people ready to serve this great nation than among the Mexican/American community here.
I think you know that [my wife] is from here but I am not sure you know she is a descendant of the Solis family, part of a big Spanish land grant from the 1500’s that was on both sides of the river. Her grandparents only spoke Spanish and she only spoke Spanish when she started 1st grade. Her well meaning Anglo teachers punished her when she spoke Spanish even at recess and when asking to go to the bathroom. She learned her lessons well, lived in Houston for 10 years and is much more urbane than me. With my last name and her light complexion people think she is Anglo. My red neck friends in Abilene would try telling her Mexican jokes. I cut them off if I saw it coming but didn’t always see it coming. She only smiled but in her heart she is really not sure that she is not some how inferior and she still feels guilty speaking Spanish even though she uses it everyday in her work with veterans. It breaks my heart.
While it is hard to generalize about such a large group of people, I believe that most of the documented and undocumented immigrants are here because they already have family here and or they are unable to support themselves adequately in their home country. I think that the reason we don’t have a big problem on the Canadian border is that their economy is good, they look and sound more like the dominant culture and I am told it is not too hard to get a work visa especially if one has a needed skill. I understand it is very difficult and time consuming to get a work visa in the US if one is from Mexico or Central America and especially if one doesn’t have a professional credential. Again my ethnocentric self thinks “good, we have enough problems with out importing a bunch more poor unskilled laborers that will further stress ‘our’ economy“. However, there is data that suggests that if the undocumented were able to earn a fair wage and pay taxes it might actually help the economy. Also my Human and Christian ethics kick in and I am reminded that God put the river there but we made it a border. If I couldn’t feed my family on the other side I would try to cross anyway I could. I do not want to tear down the Statue of Liberty or besmirch the Ellis Island folks [a suggestion in the letter to which he responds]. But there are other stories equally compelling.
There are no easy answers to the immigration questions. We have made great progress in the civil rights arena in my lifetime but racism is still alive and well. Ethnocentric pride in ones country can be a close cousin to racism. One need only to read all the anger and hate on the internet as people post regarding anything Obama does or on the new Arizona law. People who think there are easy answers like tougher laws, fences, or militarizing the border are at best naive at worst racist. I would like to see policies developed with love of neighbor as the guiding light, and more money spent on improving the economy in other countries even if we have to sacrifice more. To whom a lot is given a lot is expected. There is something wrong in a nation who spends more on a cup of designer coffee than some workers make in a day, or where we spend more on pet care than the GNP of some nations. I am not sure open borders is the right thing but I am not sure that it is not. I do think we need some kind of amnesty although I am not yet sure what it should look like. I believe in the ideal of one world with equality for all but I’m not naive enough to think we will get there any time soon. However, I never thought I would see a woman or black president. I am now hopeful I will see a woman.
　
On the subject of the Arizona Law I would think every American, liberal or conservative should be worried. I don’t want to live in a society where I or anyone else has to carry papers. Even under current law when we leave our home heading north we have to go through check points about 60 miles from the border. They are multi million dollar facilities with all kinds of electronic equipment and usually dozens of border patrol agents on duty. I must turn off my cell phone, wait in line, usually less than 5 minutes, they sometimes check my undercarriage with a mirror, and frequently have dogs who sniff the outside of my car. They usually only ask “are you a US citizen” and wave me through. [My wife] gets even less hassle because she is so pale and I’m so swarthy. Sometimes they ask “where are you going today”. Now I can either tell them, lie to them or say what I would like to say which is, “none of your xxx business” but then I would be there awhile so I lie to them. The woman agents seem to like to hear “I am headed to Dallas to visit my grand-kids”. Minor hassle for me but I assure you that some of my dark skinned heavy accented brothers and sisters have much more hassle including the dog inside and some times even pat downs. I don’t like it and I damn sure don’t want to empower or require the local or state police to do the same stuff. To those who say “they are only enforcing the law” I would remind them the this great nation was founded by a bunch of law breakers (as in tea party).
Unjust laws need to be challenged.
Everyone must find his or her own ethic and act accordingly. I am not always sure what to do but I pray about it a lot. For now I plan to continue offering food and shelter to those headed north with or with out papers when I can. I would help them get through the check points if I could but I don’t know how without getting arrested. I will pay them the same with or without papers to cut my grass etc. so they can eat. I will support my sister-in-law, with my tax dollars, who takes care of badly damaged babies who were lucky enough to take advantage of the law that lets them become a citizen because the mother crossed for delivery. I will not report the husband of friend who is spending 3 years in prison at tax payers expense who was formerly making a living for his family by day labor and who will be deported when he is released and then be back with his family within a week. I will support and applaud my friend who teaches ESL [English as a Second Language] to the undocumented children of fishermen from Central America and takes them to UIL competitions where they usually excel. I will continue to travel to Rio Bravo (30 miles into Mexico) as part of my church mission to help at a deaf school even though travel is kind of risky right now with the cartel wars.
I know you like to read / I recommend the following:
Manana (don’t know how to make the ~ over the n) by Justo Gonzales the Methodist Clergy, Cuban born, who I think is still on faculty at the International Seminary in Atlanta.
The Great River by Paul Hogan (a History of the Rio Grande but reads like a novel)
Rain of Gold by Victor Villa Senor (again with the ~ on the n another story of immigration not via Ellis Island)
Thanks for letting me share some of my thoughts. Reasonable people should reason together.”
My love to all / Dick

#207: Johan van Parys: Thoughts on Forgiveness

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Dr. Johan van Parys is Director of Liturgy at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, and the lead article in the Sunday June 27 church bulletin was this powerful commentary.
Thoughts on Forgiveness
Paris is one of those magical cities. No matter what time of year one visits, the city has a way of capturing a person’s imagination. I don’t quite remember how many times I have been to Paris. Growing up in neighboring Belgium it made for an easy trip. Surprisingly, there was one monument never visited until my last trip there: the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, the memorial to those deported from France during World War II.
My grandfather and the other men working in my grandmother’s shoe factory were deported to Nazi camps because she refused to make shoes for the Nazi army. The family home was occupied and my grandmother and great-grandmother were made to work for Nazi officers. When my grandmother died, I inherited her papers including the moving letters my grandfather sent from the camp as well as letters from one of the officers who had occupied my grandmother’s house. The latter include descriptions of the devastation of his village; about the death of his two sons; and about the horrors of the war. Most striking was his plea for forgiveness.
Until I read these letters I had been unable to visit any death camps or memorials for those who died in the Second World War. After getting a glimpse of the power of forgiveness that was revealed to me through these letters, I was moved to learning and visiting. Thus I went to the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation. It was an amazing experience.
At the edge of one of the islands in the river Seine a narrow and steep stairway leads down to the memorial courtyard. A low-level fenced-in window is the only place that allows a glimpse of the outside. A severe sculpture representing imprisonment and torture hangs in front of this window. On the opposite side, a narrow door guarded by two oppressive columns barely allows entrance into the memorial itself.
The main installation, on the far end of the foyer, is a long narrow corridor lined with 200,000 quartz crystals, one for each man, woman, child deported from France by during the Second World War. A rod-iron gate prevents entrance. An eternal flame burns at the very end of the corridor.
This extraordinary building captures those who enter it from the very first moment, guiding them down the narrow steps, through the courtyard, into the foyer, to the wall of remembrance and the eternal flame. This journey takes each person through the reality of the suffering of these particular people and all human suffering, to the light of hope for humanity which too often seems untenable and almost absurd.
My walk back to the hotel took me past Notre Dame Cathedral. I could not but enter and light a candle for all those who are suffering at the hand of other people. I stayed for Vespers and prayed “Thy Kingdom Come” with more fervor than ever before.

#194 – Dick Bernard: Thoughts on "illegals", "Mexicans" et al.

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Four of us hit the road from the Twin Cities to Denver early tomorrow morning.
We will look like pretty typical older people, and unless we do something crazy, will probably make the trip out and back without attracting any attention whatsoever, even on Memorial Day when the police are thick as flies in a farmyard.
Not so routine today or other times is the travel of somebody who looks different than me, and I’m guessing that there’s considerable nervousness these days for people with a browner complexion down in Arizona, especially.
A couple of days ago I was in the local post office in our suburb. At a counter were a couple of young brown-skinned guys speaking Spanish, talking about some form or other that one was filling out. They seemed pretty normal to me. Did they have papers?!
A week or so earlier I had been in North Dakota visiting relatives (see the May 28 post). In the Fargo Forum was a front page article about a carload of illegals who had been arrested at a neighboring town. They, in fact, did not have papers. They were reporting to work for some farmer who was planting a very labor intensive crop. He couldn’t find locals who would do the work and he contracted with someone in Oregon to provide workers who were supposed to be legals. Not so, it turned out. Ironically, he was, as one would say legally, “aiding and abetting”, as was the contractor in Oregon, but neither of them were culpable. Only the workers without papers were in trouble. Somehow the farmer had to find some kind of labor to put in his crop. That was his penalty. I wonder if he’s succeeded.
This mornings e-mails brought a commentary which helped to explain the insanity we seem to be living under in this country. It came from a Rhode Island newspaper, reprinted in an Arizona paper, and it is very interesting, about the contrast between Canada (much tougher on immigration, it turns out) and the U.S. (much less effective and less humane in dealing with the problem.)
Succinctly, if I read the column correctly, there were active attempts as far back as the mid-1980s to change U.S. immigration law to deal with some very real problems. A law was passed, but a crucial part was pulled from the bill by someone, probably in the U.S. Senate. The portion pulled apparently was a provision that held employers responsible for making sure their hires were legals. Employer responsibility was a bit too difficult to swallow. Rather they take their chances with occasionally losing cheap labor, than to share responsibility with that same cheap labor for their sins.
I’ve seen lots of “Mexicans” working at various occupations here in the Twin Cities. By and large they do very good work. Since I only see their work, I don’t know if they’re legal or not. They are contributors to this society, rather than drags on us.
They, and others, like the Haitians in the Rhode Island column, for the most part come to our country to make a menial living – but more than in their own country – and send lots of money home to their families. Their crime is only wanting a tiny share of our great wealth, and then share it with their families back home – much like our immigrant ancestors of older days.
We don’t much like to share, except on our own terms.
I’ll end up in Denver on Wednesday.
It was in Denver a number of years ago that I had a conversation with my son, then manager of a local restaurant near a university.
Tom’s crew was by and large Spanish-speaking, with only minimal English. He thought they had the proper papers, but one never knows for sure.
He mentioned that what they sometimes lacked in promptness they more than made up in quality of work, including finding somebody to fill in for them when they were gone. They were, it was clear, his most reliable employees.
Were they “Legals”? I’m not so sure.
Immigration Law plays much better as a political issue than as an object of true reform.
Until politicians cannot play politics with the issue, the issue will remain….

#190 – Dick Bernard: Four Films

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Someone looking for me would not start at movie theaters: movies are an infrequent destination.
Still, in the past seven days I viewed four films in four very different venues. Each of the films had (and have) diverse messages…beyond the films themselves.
Last Sunday, the destination was The Minneapolis Film Festival showing of a documentary, “The Unreturned” by a couple of young filmmakers. Nathan Fisher, one of the two who made the film, was in attendance. The film covers a topic essentially untalked about: the fact that 4.7 million Iraqis, largely of the middle class, and representing perhaps a sixth of Iraq’s population, were displaced by the Iraq War, mostly to neighboring Syria and Jordan. (Iraq, before the war, was roughly the population and geographical size of California.)
The Unreturned views the world through the lens of several of these refugees, who didn’t want to leave Iraq, and would have wanted to go home to Iraq, but cannot for circumstances beyond their control. At the end of the film, one person in the audience noted that 4.7 million refugees was essentially equal to the population of Minnesota (5 million). This is a huge number, with equivalent impact: like the entire population of Minnesota uprooted and ending up in Wisconsin….
I think the 200 or so of us in the theater last Sunday would agree with the later assessment of this film, ranked among the best in the entire festival.
Monday night, a friend and I hosted a meeting at a south Minneapolis church for 30 representatives from 22 twin cities groups which have an active interest/involvement in Haiti. We showed the film “Road to Fondwa“, which can be watched on-line for free. Road to Fondwa was filmed a couple of years ago by university students. Its theme is rural life in Haiti. Since it was filmed before the earthquake of January, 2010, it shows how life was before Fondwa was devastated (Fondwa is near the epicenter of the quake). I was particularly taken by the notion of “konbit”, a Kreyol work meaning gathering, cooperation, working together. We could use a lot more of that!
Friday afternoon I attended a showing of another Minneapolis Film Fest entry, Poto Mitan, yet another young film makers entry. The Director of this film, a young professor at New York University, concentrates on five Haitian peasant women struggling to survive Haiti’s harsh economic realities. Each of the five women tell their own stories in their own language. Filming began in 2006, and the film was released in 2009. Like all of the other films, this one is subtitled. At this showing, the Director, Dr. Mark Schuller, was with us, and led a discussion afterwards. He’s a very impressive young man.
Then there is the fourth film, actually a 12 hour documentary over a period of weeks on the History Channel. It is called “America: the story of us“, and I was really looking forward to it when the first episode played a week ago Sunday night. My anticipation turned rapidly to disappointment (though I intend to watch the whole thing) because it became obvious that the intent of the film was to portray America’s history in the image of some old conservative politicians and big business and entertainers. The politicians have, so far, been regular on-screen “experts”, and the production apparently is underwritten by a major U.S. bank. It is too early to judge the entire production, but my guess is that this America will be portrayed as a heroic place with few warts, won by free enterprise, guns and military prowess. So be it. I’m waiting to see how the Iraq War will be spun, and the Obama era. Google America the Story of us and find lots of reviews of this epic….
The first three films do one thing that the fourth film does not: they allow the real people to do the speaking about the reality. In the last one, so far, it is only the experts that have the say.
If the youth of this country are represented by the first three filmmakers, we stand a chance.

#166 – Dick Bernard: Nobel Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg College, Minneapolis MN March 5-6, 2010

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#167 & #168, published March 8&9, relate to the following post as well. (Here’s a photo album of some pictures I took at the Festival.)
After lunch on Friday, March 5, I was seated on the dais with four others, opening the afternoon program of the 15th annual Nobel Peace Prize Festival.
Seated to my left was high school exchange student Naweed A., an impressive young man from Kabul, Afghanistan, who is spending the year in Minneapolis. Naweed and a number of his colleague students attended the Festival. They are here under the auspices of the World Link program. To my right was my friend, Lynn Elling, now 89 and co-founder of the Peace Prize Festival, founder of World Citizen, and recipient of the 2010 World Citizen Award (presenting this award was my reason for being on stage). To Mr. Elling’s right was Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, Pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, and Dr. Geir Lundestad, Director of the Nobel Institute in Oslo, the organization which grants the Nobel Peace Prize each year. It was inspiring for me to be part of this program, and a privilege to be on stage with them.

Dick Bernard and Naweed A, March 5, 2010


Earlier in the program, 2008 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Martti Ahtisaari, dipomat and former president of Finland, spoke to the several hundred elementary and secondary school students. He also spoke later at the more adult-oriented Nobel Peace Prize Forum, since 1988 an annual collaborative event which rotates among the five midwest Norwegian Lutheran Colleges (in Minnesota: Augsburg (Minneapolis), St. Olaf (Northfield) and Concordia (Moorhead); in Iowa, Luther (Decorah); and in South Dakota, Augustana, (Sioux Falls).
Mr. Ahtisaari is an immensely impressive diplomat, recently invited to become part of the outstanding leaders group known as The Elders. Men and women in Mr. Ahtisaari’s profession of mediating disputes know the rout to “yes” is slow, often torturous, but worth the trip. It was a privilege to meet him.

Martti Ahtisaari and Lynn Elling March 5, 2010


At the Festival (for the past 15 years an annual program at Augsburg), the program which flowed from the adults to the students was basically verbal. From the students to the adults and their fellow students the messages sent were musical and visual, singing, instrumental music, displays and interactive projects celebrating peace and past laureates.
It strikes me each time I see this dichotomy of communication, that if adult words could somehow be replaced with or at least augmented by music, art or dialogue, our conversation amongst peoples might be a bit different than it is. More on this tomorrow.

All the adult speakers were clear that the future is for the children to build.
Mr. Ahtisaari, who was born in Finland in 1937, and became a refugee at two years of age when his part of Finland was taken over by the Soviet Union, would have been the age of Naweed in about 1954. I thought of Naweed in context with the Nobel Laureate.
In not too long, Naweed and his generation will be the ones responsible for the future of their planet. My hope is that they will be better stewards of the earth than we have been. They will have to be better stewards, or there will be no future for them. Particularly in the 20th century, we had the unfortunate luxury in the west to waste and destroy earth’s riches. We also built the means to destroy ourselves. The next generations need to preserve and rebuild.
My hope for them: that they do not repeat, and indeed start to reverse, our abundant mistakes.
To Naweed and his generation all over Planet Earth, my best wishes for a great future.
I invite you to read the post to follow on Words, at this space, March 8, 2010.
And listen to this song on YouTube, forwarded by a friend today.

from left: Geir Lundestad, Lynn Elling, Ahweed Ahmadzai, Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, Dick Bernard


World Link Exchange Students with Martti Ahtisaari at Augsburg Nobel Peace Prize Festival March 5, 2010


Naweed Ahmadzai and Martti Ahtisaari at 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Festival

#161 – Janice Andersen: The Role of Forgiveness

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Janice, Director of Christian Life at my Church, Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, is one of those many heroes and sheroes who inspire me when hope is gone. Her title belies her many roles in Peace and Justice at Basilica. She wrote the following column for our Church bulletin some months ago. I share it with her permission.
I read the book, The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. This is a provocative book that shares the story of holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal. As a prisoner in a concentration camp, Mr. Wiesenthal is randomly chosen to hear the confession of a dying German SS soldier.
This soldier confessed to unspeakable atrocities, having killed defenseless Jewish men, women, and children. As the soldier lay dying in a hospital bed, he was looking for freedom from his guilt and forgiveness from a Jew so he confessed to Wiesenthal. As Wiesentahl shares his experience and response, he asks the reader what they would do in his place.
The book then presents a symposium of responses from theologians, holocaust survivors, and Nazi officials. Over and over one is asked: “What would you do in his place?”
What would I do? It is impossible to place myself in Wiesenthal’s position and pretend to know what I would do. However, I can get a glimpse into my experience of forgiveness when I consider the many ways in which I have been hurt, wronged, or oppressed in my life. How do I respond to them? Do I hold tightly to resentment? Do I seek to punish? Do I require atonement? How do I respond to the need for forgiveness in my life?
One of the responders in this book, Dennis Prager, suggests that there are specific differences between Jewish and Christian understanding of forgiveness – and a difference in their response to evil. The Jewish view of forgiveness requires a person who hurt another to ask forgiveness from his victim, and only the victim can forgive. Even God’s forgiveness is dependent on that person being forgiven by the victim. In this case, murder is an unforgivable sin. Prager contrasts this view with the Christian experience that is rooted in the belief that all people, even an “evil person,” are loved by God and thus are open to receive forgiveness. Distinctions are made between forgiving and forgetting: between forgiving – on an inner level, and reconciliation – on a public level. There is a call for repentance and a change of heart to prevent an experience of “cheap grace” or perpetual victimhood. Martin Marty speaks of the freedom found in forgiveness, transcending the injustice and experiencing creativity in one’s life. Mattieu Ricard suggests that forgiveness can provide an opportunity for inner transformation of both the victim and the perpetrator – changing the evil into good.
Today our society is full of division, inequity, oppression, injustice, and fear. The Sunflower opens up dialogue on an important dimension of our lives together. Personally and collectively, as communities and nations, we are being asked to consider how we respond to evil and to understand the role that forgiveness plays in our relationships. Let us consider how we reconcile with one another and how we can forgive in the face of continual hurt.

#157 – Dick Bernard: Haiti et al, a little arithmetic lesson in caring and sharing

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Thursday of this week we showed a few photos from what, in retrospect, were better times for Haiti kids at SOPUDEP School in Petion-ville in December, 2003. Our audience was about 100 2nd graders at an elementary school in a nearby twin cities suburb. Kids relate to kids everywhere, and this audience of young persons paid close attention to the photos of their peers far away, and they enjoyed participating in a small lesson in Kreyol words I was able to teach them.
SOPUDEP school is no longer useable; many of its students were casualties of the earthquake. It has temporarily died, but will rise again with the help of places like that elementary school in the twin cities which is considering helping SOPUDEP recover with part of their relief efforts. It helps to be able to make a personal connection with a person or a place.
The day we were at the school this past week, they were collecting quarters from whoever wished to participate. It was a small amount, but a very intriguing idea.
The school was devoting a week, I gathered, to participate in some way in relief efforts, and was involved in various efforts to better understand Haiti.
Someone(s) had come up with a neat idea: on Monday, the collection began by collecting pennies; on Tuesday, nickels; Wednesday, dimes; Thursday, our day, quarters; and Friday, dollars. If you do the math, that’s $1.41 – a small sum, granted, but coins put together accumulate to real money quickly.
The teacher noted that the trip to the bank with the coins involved a bit of heavy lifting, so to speak.
The fundraising strategy has stuck with me, and this morning at coffee I did a little paper and pencil arithmetic.
IF a person did the same routine as the kids were doing at the school, and repeated the routine every five days over the course of a year, that $1.41 would grow to over $100 by years end.
Of course, one need not stop at a dollar. How about going to six days, and adding a $5 bill; or seven days, adding a 10; or eight, $20? And doing it repetitively, week after week? A seven day cycle would come out to about $850 a year; an eight day cycle, almost $1500…all this for
one cent +
five cents +
ten cents +
twenty-five cents +
$1 +
$5 +
$10 +
$20.
Let’s say that a single percent of Americans – only 3,000,000 people, 1% of a total of 300,000,000 – adopted the elementary schools five day plan, and followed through every day for an entire year. That would come out to over $300,000,000 dollars – all for $1.41 every five days. That’s serious money that could do a whole lot of good in a place like Haiti where a dollar a day is hard to come by, even for adults.
Give it some thought. And action.

Children at SOPUDEP School, Haiti, December 9, 2003

#155 – Dick Bernard: Haiti, a plea….

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December 8, 2003 – it was my second full day of my first trip to Haiti – we had spent a powerful and draining morning being briefed by ordinary Haitians, women and men, about the atrocities of the 1991-94 coup in Haiti. There were six of us. I had nothing to say. I was there to listen and to learn.
Our group leader had arranged for lunch for the entire group, and before we left we went around the circle of perhaps 20-25, simply to shake hands and thank the group for their hospitality. About two-thirds of the way around I extended my hand to a man, and he refused the handshake.
Experiences like that tend to stick with me. I have no idea why he singled me out (I was the only one of the group of four men and two women so treated). Perhaps I reminded him of someone, some white American, some terrible experience. I’ll never know.
Similarly, I remember a poolside luncheon later the next day at one of those fancy hotels in Petion-ville. We were being briefed by a supporter of then-President Aristide, who later took us around to a school and to a television station to meet other people. At the hotel, I noticed a solitary white man sitting quietly in a deck chair reading a book. I wondered who he was and why he was there. I didn’t ask and I’ll never know. I gather, though, that a white face in Haiti is a suspect face, with good reason.
So it is.
Years have now passed, and I’m far better informed than I was then, and I happen to be at the intersection of lots of electronic communication about what is happening in post-January 12 Haiti. I’m also ice-bound in the middle of the U.S., trying to help as best I can from here.
I know lots of people with lots of points of view, from total ignorance of Haiti (as was true with me seven years ago) to Haitians who are trying to find ways to work together within whatever system exists in the U.S., to others who, like that guy who refused to shake my hand that December day, just want US the hell out*.
I wish there were simple “one-size fits all” solutions. There aren’t.
A short while ago I started one of these blog posts with a sentence that we had raped, looted and pillaged Haiti for its whole 206 year history. Pretty harsh indictment, but not at all unreasonable. Someone I know responded and seemed miffed with my indictment of US (as in U.S, and we Americans): he really didn’t know any of the back story, apparently. I tried to inform him.
On the other side of the equation, I expressed “disappointment” about something sent by a prominent Haitian leader with a large list, and was told that I “insulted” the person (who I respect.) The rage is palpable and we probably deserve the rage. (My work career found me frequently in the position of being yelled at by one side or another, so I’m used to harsh comments. But, do bitter and angry comments help anything, any more than willful ignorance and misplaced trust? I don’t think so.)
The voiceless ones, represented by that guy who wouldn’t shake my hand, have desperate needs, and the needs will be very long-term.
Somehow we need to accept the fact that the U.S. is key to solutions to this catastrophe, and that there will be all manner of well-meaning and malicious attempts to help (or “help”, as in profiteering from the crisis.)
I think “boots on the ground” folks like Dr. Paul Farmer are in an excellent position to do some good, and know the political system very well. To me, Dr. Farmer has earned his credibility.
The guy in the circle that day in 2003 has also earned his credibility with me.
We need to listen to both sides, and to do what we can to make for a better Haiti, one that is founded on Justice, not dependent on Charity (there is a big difference.) My definition, from December 2003 is found at page 17 of my reflections when I returned.
* – there is more than a little logic behind the resentment of Haitians towards the U.S. See my short commentary at page 7&8 on White Rice, Pigs and Chickens, from my 2006 reflections after coming back from Haiti.

#154 – Dick Bernard: Haiti…and Power

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Two weeks ago today, 4:53 p.m. Haiti time, Port-au-Prince (Potoprens in Kreyol) and area were devastated by a massive earthquake. Today, two weeks later, coverage of the disaster is decreasing; finding fault or blame is increasing; and the attention of the world and U.S. body politic is shifting back to more mundane things, like the Super Bowl.
It will take years for Haitians to recover and the international community will be central to their recovery, but how long will people care? It’s an important question.
Long before the latest catastrophe struck Haiti, I’ve been thinking about what I believe is a pertinent and basic “conversation” in, particularly, westernized society…and that is the conversation about Power.
Boiled to its essence, I believe there are two classes of people: those with Power, and those without. Those in Power presume they have the right to control agendas and conversations. They do this in sundry ways: controlling information, money, and on and on and on. You can be born into Power, work to get into Power, or be identified as useful to Power. But it’s a club entered by invitation only.
The official Haiti conversation is almost totally dominated by traditional Power.
Power isn’t a partisan deal, and it isn’t Republican or Democrat either. It can be cliques who through one means or another control access or agendas. It can be seemingly out of Power people who have a following. Power is ubiquitous. One way to stay out of the Power circles is to diss Power…. Power people prefer followers.
In Haiti, most of the people are about as Power-less as any people are anywhere in the world. Most are illiterate (I’d maintain this is far more by design of the Powerful rather than lack of motivation of the Powerless). Educated people can be troublesome. The language of the ordinary Haitian is Kreyol; the official and international language of Haiti is French…. Even language disenfranchises the ordinary Haitian.
Of course, there are decent Power people, and indecent ones. It is a complicated process to identify the difference, so usually everyone in a particular class is typecast in various ways, as “good” or “bad”. Such simplicity is not helpful.
The out of Power people far, far outnumber the people in Power, and the Powerful know this: thus the strategies to disempower those not in the inner circles, by disinformation, or discipline or otherwise. If one’s neighbor ends up in jail for no good reason, one notices.
There’s a way out of Powerlessness and that is by no longer being willing to play by the rules established by Power. If the folks in the neighborhood were challenged to play a National Football League team, using NFL rules and criteria, one knows the result…but if the NFL rules and criteria were thrown out and replaced with the neighborhood rules, the results could be very different. But one first of all has to believe that there are other rules of engagement than those mandated by the Powerful.
I’ve long been enchanted by the mantra I hear at demonstrations: “Ain’t no Power like the Power of the People, like the Power of the People, say WHAT? There ain’t no Power….” The chant is delivered with gusto, but I have come to believe that the chanters really don’t believe their own message. And they leave their power on the street, unrealized.
The ordinary Haitians, the ones who will disappear soon from the media screen, but are there in the neighborhoods, will be the salvation of their country. All one can hope is that the commitment of the Powerful will be a bit more towards Justice than the traditional Charity*.
Stay engaged. If you feel you have no power, try to look at your Power a bit differently.
It’s 4:53 p.m. Haiti time. Time to click on Publish.
* My own very brief interpretation on Charity vs Justice was written on return from Haiti in December, 2003. It is accessible at this link page 17.