Nightmares - Haiti -Terror

January 22nd, 2010  |   

His And Her Nightmare

Is it a parent’s nightmare, or is it a child’s nightmare? Perhaps you can answer that question.

The parent has had a long and stressful day. With no job, and the economy in the trash, she wonders if she will ever find work. With so many rejections, she feels like a reject.

How will she pay the bills, feed her son, and escape sleepless nights? And then, as a gift from some celestial angel, sleep arrives on the scene  –  she drifts off into a sound sleep. But not for long. 

It’s not the alarm clock on the bedside table that blasts her out of bed  –  the alarm clock that used to buzz her into a new day, breakfast with her son, and a trip to deposit her son  at school before heading off to work. It’s the bloodcurdling screams she hears from the room just across the hall.

The child has fallen victim to one of those terrible nightmares that is still very real for him, even though his mother is holding him in her arms, rubbing his back, and trying to comfort him with her presence. Between the sobbing and the tears, he tells his mother that a fire-breathing monster is chasing him. 

Like any good parent, she knows what to do first when nightmares show up to haunt her child. She turns on all the lights in the room. A well-lit room will help her son see that there is no fire-breathing monster anywhere in sight

Along with the light, she offers him what she hopes will be comforting words: It’s okay, mama is here. Nothing’s going to hurt you. You just had a bad dream. Everything’s going to be all right, I promise.”

What else is there to do? If light and promises don’t work, and the child’s fears rage on, perhaps she will climb into bed with him or take him to her bed, which by now has grown   cold.         

This good woman knows what’s needed when nightmares ambush a weary human being, no matter how young or old. She might even wish that there was someone next to her, holding her, comforting her, reassuring her that nothing is going to hurt her, that her life isn’t in fact a bad dream  –  that everything is going to be all right. Someone close who will utter those promises to her so that she can sleep in peace, and get up in the morning to, as a civil rights leader used to say, “keep on keepin’ on.”

But the next day, when she takes time to record her deepest thoughts and feelings in a dog-eared journal filled with daily entries, this good mother scribbles something so honestly confessional that it scares her. It’s as if the words had volcanically erupted onto the page from that place where fire-breathing monsters might live.

Last night I told my hysterical son that the boogie man chasing him wasn’t real. It was only a dream—a bad dream. I told him mama was there with him, and that nothing would hurt him, and everything would be alright. I know he needed to hear those words,  as much as I needed to hear myself say them say them, so that both of us could get back to sleep, and get on with our lives, no matter what.

But there is a lie lurking beneath those words, and if ever there was a need to tell a lie, that was the time for me to tell it. I know the truth, and my son will come to know it later in his life. I only hope he will not blame me for misleading him. He’s too young to face the truth—the truth that there are some things that WILL hurt him—that life is OFTEN a bad dream, that everything ISN’T going to be alright, that mama WON’T always be around with a promised reassurance—that the boogie man is really death- in- disguise and WILL catch up with him sooner-or-later.   

When The Earth Moves Under Our Feet

In times past, I have run from a hurricane closing in on a North Carolina beach, and, on another occasion, taken shelter in a motel basement in Tennessee as a series of monster tornados threatened the city of Nashville.

Miles away from that hurricane in North Carolina, and deep in the basement of that Nashville motel, I felt less vulnerable, more secure from nature’s pursuit of me. Running away from a storm or hiding from a tornado lessens one’s feelings of vulnerability, for sure. 

But that was nothing like the time when I was eating in a hotel restaurant in El Salvador and felt the building shake and saw dishes begin to slide across the table. A waiter told us, at that point, to leave the building and go out into the street. Fortunately, the earthquake registered low on the seismometer so I was able to finish my meal inside. 

But when the earth moves under your feet, you can run but you can’t hide. Wherever you are, the earth may crack open and swallow you. You feel totally out of control and powerless. I may have felt more secure standing in that street in El Salvador but that was only an illusion. Sure, the building wouldn’t bury me, had the numbers gone up on the seismometer, but the shifting fault beneath my feet could just as easily have swallowed the asphalt street and me with it.

An earthquake is a reminder, nature’s alarm clock, a wake-up call to the reality that no matter how many layers of security we have cocooned around ourselves, when the earth claims us it will be on the earth’s terms and not ours. Whatever security we may buy in our lifetime, it has a limited shelf life.

Which brings me to the recent earthquake and aftershocks in Haiti, and to some thoughts I’ve had about the earth beneath our feet and the nightmarish visions of death that chase after us and, thereby, threaten the human desire for security. 

Haiti—A Descent Into Hell

On Tuesday, January 12, the people in Haiti had no idea that the earth would quake and spilt open under their feet, crushing and burying God knows how many people. Since then, watching the news coverage of the devastation and suffering has become a journey into the depths of Hell. Haiti, by anyone’s definition, is Hell. Hell on earth, having been swallowed up by the earth.

The word “unbelievable” is perhaps the most over-used word in modern speech. Everything these days is “unbelievable.” It’s gotten so that when I hear some radio or TV announcer use the word to describe some event, I often say, “That’s not unbelievable at all.”

I suspect I should understand that the word unbelievable has become our way of defining something when we have bumped into the limitations of reason and speech. It’s our way of gaining control over an unexplainable event by dredging up the adjective unbelievable to rescue us from being no more than inarticulate creatures. And if unbelievable won’t work, then perhaps science or God can give us language to deliver us from silence.

Describing the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti becomes one of those places where reason and speech reach their limitations. Whenever I hear voices blaming God for the seismic waves that brought disaster and suffering into the world, or voices like Pat Robertson’s blasphemous words giving credit to God for punishing the Haitians with an earthquake, I know that reason and speech have reached their limits.

I don’t like revisiting my own writings, but in this case I can’t resist myself. All I can hope for is that redundancy has value.

In my last issue, the final one for 2009, I made reference to Rebecca Solnit’s new book, “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.”  She quotes Dorothy Day, a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

“What I remember most plainly about the earthquake was the human warmth and kindliness of everyone afterward. Mother and all our neighbors were busy from morning to night cooking meals. They gave away every extra garment they possessed…While the crisis lasted, people loved each other.”

The situation in Haiti seems not only unbelievable, it seems to be impossible. And watching something which seems impossible has a way of stretching all human definitions of what, indeed, is possible. The human heart cannot bear very much impossibility, with its shadow of despair. Empathy and compassion look for ways to trump the impossible with acts of human charity. The national and international response, in terms of money and relief work, has been heartening. A crisis has a way of touching people’s hearts and charitable instincts. Thanks to a multitude of fundraisers and appeals from business and nonprofits, human generosity has once again been on display.

Christians hold a rather strange belief about Jesus, a belief which defies rational explanation. It’s found in the Bible and is affirmed in the Nicene Creed. It is said that Jesus, after he died, descended to Hell and visited the dead with his presence and a saving word. I translate that in expansive liberal terms. Haitians and foreign relief workers on the ground in Haiti have indeed descended into Hell. By their presence and their life-saving gifts of food and medical care, they are doing a Godly thing among the dead.

Unbelievable? Impossible? Only for those at a loss for words.

Our Military Involvement In Relief Efforts

It is sad but true that we Americans don’t really get to know a country’s history or its people until after we have fought a war with them. The same seems to be true about a crisis. More times than enough, understanding comes on the other side of a crisis, not before it takes place..

With the earth still quaking in Haiti and people still suffering and in need of more help than anyone or any nation can get to them quickly enough, it may not seem appropriate to talk much about who the people are who live on the 10,714 square miles of land called Haiti, nor how they got to be the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Nevertheless, I do believe a couple of preliminary observations are worth sharing, particularly about the military involvement in relief efforts.

Within hours of the earthquake, President Obama mobilized the U.S. military and National Guard units. It was Hurricane Katrina all over again, only this time more swiftly and capably. A steady stream of troops and planes carrying supplies, even a military hospital ship, were hustled off to Haiti. It has been an effort applauded by most Americans, but I have mixed feelings about the military involvement.

I applaud the charitable goodwill being displayed by Americans, but the military involvement in the delivery system concerns me. It’s a public witness to the good will that surfaces when a crisis rears its ugly head. But we need to understand more fully the history of our military involvement with the countries we choose to assist with aide, particularly given our so-called “national interests.”

Haiti has a long history of being occupied by colonial powers –Spain, France, England and the United States. U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 until 1934. We have a blemished history when it comes to Haiti. Only six years ago, U.S. military forces were involved in replacing the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

As I write, our military forces, which may soon number as many as 30,000 (4,000 Marines), are already being criticized for the lack of supplies not reaching the injured and dying. I fear that troops heavily armed may find themselves using those weapons.

Here’s my bottom line on military troops being used to do humanitarian efforts in war-torn places.

To begin with, troops, at the direction of the President, are commissioned to fight and kill people, not do social work.

On top of that, the very fact that we have to send the military to do this work illustrates  quite clearly that we have no U.S government humanitarian “army,” unarmed and with the expressed mission to bring help to people around the world in trouble. Even the National Guard, trained to do humanitarian work, has been compromised by the diversion and expansion of their mission in fighting wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

And finally, it’s confusing to our men and women in the military, trained to shoot and kill, when they are asked to hand out bags of rice rather than fire bullets, drop water bottles from a helicopter to people dying of thirst rather than bombs on people our country has labels as the enemy. I would add also that the bifurcated assignment of warrior and welfare worker is confusing to the people on the other end of our military relief efforts.

The Link Between The Terrorist And Those Who Are Terrorized

The recent episode involving a suicide bomber, with underpants full of explosives, didn’t succeed in blowing a plane out of the air, but it sure blew the cover off our quest for security and revealed people’s terror over terrorism.

A recent New York Times column titled, “The Terrorist Mind: An Update,” attempted to explore what lies hidden behind such attacks. I was struck by this observation: “Paradoxically, anxiety about death plays a significant role in the indoctrination of terrorists and suicide bombers –  unconscious fear of mortality, of leaving no legacy.”

There is another paradox at work here, one that links potential victims of terror to those who choose to play the role of terrorist. You see, both the potential targets of terrorism  –  that’s you and me  –  and the one inflicting the terror, are driven by the underlying power of death. The man with a pant’s full of explosives wants to be in control of his destiny out of his fear of death, while the rest of us search for fool-proof, technologically driven security devices that will protect us from our death.

No matter how hard we work at protecting ourselves and those around us, and we should work at that for sure, we cannot achieve the security that will guarantee us deliverance from the terror that might overtake us. We might outrun it in our nightmares but there is no assurance that it will not catch up with us in the real world in which we live.

On Martin Luther King Day Jr. Day, I delivered an address in a local church. I spoke to the congregation about terror and terrorism. I reminded people that terror is not a new subject, or one defined merely by our present world struggle.

Dr. King, like all African Americans in this country, knew all about terror, long before Osama bin Laden arrived on the scene, or the 9/11 bombers. Ground into the terrors associated with the Black experience was a recollection of the whip, chains, lynching, decapitation, torture, and bombings. To be Black was to know exactly what terrorism was all about.

But even with the terrors associated with the Black experience, Dr. King, like other African Americans, knew about the beauties of the black experience. Even with the terror, Dr. King held on to a spirituality that says: “Knowing all there is to know about terrorism, I also know that all human beings are one.” 

A verse in Palm 91 reads like this: “You shall not be afraid of any terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by the day.”

Translated into a modern idiom, and taking a bit of liberty with the intent of the passage, it might read like this:

Don’t be afraid of whatever terror you are exposed to  –  whether it be a cancerous growth, murder by an intruder, the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, growing old, a terrorist attack, or whatever else might threaten your health or welfare. And if you are fearful, don’t fear your fright. It comes with being a human being. Overcoming your fear is not what’s important. Finding a way through your fear  –  a way to keep on keepin’ on  –  that’s what counts.

Entry Filed under: Fig Tree Notes Archives

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