The Children of Cain…And Other “All Souls” To Be
October 31, 2005
A drop in a bucket doesn’t matter too much if the bucket is full, (although it does lead to overflowing, which is an image of God’s generosity and abundant grace.)
But a drop in an empty bucket is a good start, and is an image of God’s tenacious desire for us to have life, to have it fully, and to have it eternally. God doesn’t give up on us.
Consider this prayer, chanted recently over Benedictine monks, good friends of mine, as they lay face down on the floor during their final profession: “O God, source of Holiness, in your great love you created the human family, intending us to share in your divine nature. This loving design of yours was not extinguished by our sins, nor has all the wickedness of the world the power to alter it.”
What a powerful thought that is! God’s design must be absolutely unshakable, since it holds up against all the wickedness of the word. The world can be pretty wicked place.
The day before yesterday, when we arrived at Wharf Jeremy for our medical clinic, were met with a gruesome shock. A gang from Cite Soleil had come to the wharf, by canoe in the night, to rob a harbored ship. When they were not able to force entry, or force the ships staff to open the door, they set a ship on fire after dousing it with gallons of a crude sugar cane rum called clairin. When we arrived, the charred remains of three very young men, whose twisted postures and frightful grimaces showed the agony in which they had died, lay on the wharf, as the market went on as normal. Some women were crying, and there were many gawking unschooled children (these are getting a very destructive kind of schooling, whereby there are exposed to very bitter realities of life, and then abandoned to their own feelings and conclusions).
We entered into the fray, appalled and retching, placing their bodies in clean white bags, which always remind me of funeral palls. It brought a bit of dignity and privacy to that inferno, but it also brought hoards of the curious. As the growing crowd peered at me, I invited everyone to prayer. We prayed for the dead and for their families, and we sang a hymn. At the end, an old women cried out desperately, “we are only animals. Look how we live, and how we die. We are no better than animals.”
Yes, it would be easy to think so. In fact, all of the world’s wickedness aims to convince us of that. But animals don’t enshroud their dead in clean white garments, or cry for them, or gather together to sing over them. Neither do animals lament the fact that they may be just miserable animals. No, we are not animals. We are people. In wretched situations at times, yes, but we are people- embraced by a huge godly design. But it is also true that in the face of such overwhelming wretchedness, a simple act of kindness to the living or the dead, is just a drop in the bucket.
Two months ago, I found myself in the challenging position of trying to organize for fifteen hundred gallons of water a day to be delivered to the infamous Cite Soleil, home of these canoe gangs, and other roving criminals, and kidnappers. It is also home to many honest and dirt-poor peasants for whom, as die-hard missionaries know, food and water are luxuries. In such a place, fifteen hundred gallons of water is literally only a drop in the bucket. But how many throngs of poor people will line up for this little drop! To make this water reach the poor, I had to meet and talk with the four main gang leaders of the vast slum. These are the people that have of Port au Prince terrorized, and who keep the United Nations multinational forces both busy and employed.
The dialogue opened up a whole other world to me, an underworld that is confusing and frightful, but which strangely enough begins to make sense, in the same way that a psychologist can begin to understand what is behind the behavior of a deeply disturbed person. This is not an attempt to accept or justify this underworld, any more than a psychologist accepts or justifies disturbed behavior. But dialogue opens the way to understanding since it reveals worldviews, and worldviews can be challenged by the light of truth, and only this challenging dialogue can make change a possibility.
Our dialogue was fruitful enough to guarantee that the water truck and its drivers would not be harmed, highjacked or kidnapped. This promise has been respected for these past eight weeks, and continues to be respected. Influence for the good is possible when you can tap into the innate goodness of another person, which may not always be easy or even possible to find.
Even though the deliveries of water have gone well, I was left with a haunting image. When I went to speak to the gangs and found myself in the presence of a bunch of loaded guns, I was disturbed to find that some of the gang members, peering at me from the trigger end of the guns, were children. I wonder if children are among the canoe raiders. I know they are making themselves felt as a force in society. Just a week before, one of my colleagues was held up and robbed by a group of ragged kids who he thought were stopping his car to beg. Surely there is no future for a country whose children are soldiers or gangsters, who burn and rob and kill. Unless…..
Unless what?
Unless, as the prophet Isaiah said, their “swords are beaten into plowshares, and the spears into pruning hooks.” This prophesy is very much needed in our world. The phenomenon of the child soldier, or the child gangster, is ever too real around the globe. I recently saw a bullet that was cut lengthwise and then shaped into a cross. The base of the bullet was the stand that held the cross upright. It was made by a child soldier in Africa, after a priest showed him that this was also a good use for a bullet: fashioning it into an object of religious art. It is probably even the best use of a bullet. This bullet-cross really struck me, as I held it in my hands and examined it. It challenged me to think hard. Why not turn a bullet into education? Why not start a few small schools for these children, the only tuition being a gun? And why not burn the tuition at the door, after dousing it with crude clairin, on the first day of school? Why not? How many schools burn their tuition on the first day of school, to teach everyone a lesson? After all, these are very odd times.
Obviously, there would be no way of pulling this new idea off, without another trip to the gang-leaders, and getting their help. But I would start with just one this time: Belony, who replaced the murdered Dread Wilmen. Dread was killed by one of his own, for thirty pieces of silver (actually for more like $15,000). But this present day Judas also met an end so bad I wouldn’t even describe it to you here. His name was “Tou Mouri”, which means “Also Dead”. He could not have been better named.
The atrocity of the boat burning made me doubt that I could succeed with this idea, of starting a small trade school for the child gangsters to get them out of violence. How could I, in conscience, continue to dialogue with men who would order such an abomination? I was thinking about this for a good while, when the news reached me that the eleven young men who had burned the boat were savagely killed in Cite Soleil. It seems that even hell finds some crimes reprehensible. At least this showed me the crime was not ordered by the gang leaders. This does not make the gang leaders saints. It does mean that, at least for me, dialogue is still possible. Not because of the revenge, but because they were not part of the crime.
In death, I saw once again very dramatically how darkness surges to swallow up those who serve it, both in the case of Ti Mouri, and these eleven young arson-murderers. But I have also seen many times how, as it says in the book of Wisdom, the whole universe lines up behind the ones trying to do right, and aligns its strength to make the good purpose flourish.
Belony explained to me that probably some 250 children in his “dominion” had weapons. Most had machetes, knives, or zam kreol (which are homemade guns). Only some have large guns. He explained that most of the kids who have weapons took them up for a simple reason. They had seen there mothers or fathers killed by violence. Imitation is still the best teacher. Now we need to get these children to imitate something else…..something full of life, full of tomorrow.
Meetings with the other three leaders were also encouraging, and gave a small glimmer of hope that this mission might be possible. Now, to work out the details with them, and Fr. Guiton, who is practically the last priest left in Cite Soleil. Fr. Guiton will collaborate with us and loan us his school building for the purpose. He is young, brave, hardworking and dedicated, and he feels very strongly that this will be a necessary witness to peace, to options other than violence. But he also knows, as do I, that this is just a drop on the bucket.
A drop in a bucket has a name. Its name is mercy.
Fr Richard Frechette CP