Travels

Last week while switching planes during my travels from New Orleans to Philadelphia, I became aware of how in recent years travel has become somewhat routine and recalled a time in my life when it was quite novel.  At the age of seven, I boarded a plane for the very first time with my parents and  two sisters, wearing our dresses from the previous Easter; we flew Pan-Am Airlines from Boston to Shannon.  Three weeks were spent in Ireland, meeting our relations, touring, playing with cousins and neighborhood children.  It was wonderful!  When it was time to leave, I remember thinking at that time, that when I grow up I will live in Ireland.  Somehow, my seven-year-old self never fathomed that I would live in Haiti instead.

While in Philadelphia last week I assisted three mornings at a vacation bible school that the Sisters of the Holy Redeemer and their lay associates organized for 40 children.  One of the lively songs that frequently was sung during the program said something like, "I will follow Jesus wherever he will lead me."  I thought, the children singing this song really have no idea where God or life will lead them; just like, at the age of seven I never imagined living in Haiti.   Do they really know what they are saying?   Simply making any attempt at going where one thinks God's Spirit seems to lead can take us to the places and circumstances we never fathom.

I know that I am grateful for the places that I have been and the many people I have  met.  It has been a gift to be able to connect with people who I know from different chapters of my life during the past few weeks.  As I travel around I find that I have a deepening appreciation for those who seem to stay in one place and live so well their commitment to the people they serve.

Last weekend I traveled again, driving from Philadelphia to Ohio, where I spoke about the orphanage and my mission experience at two parishes during weekend liturgies.  Sometimes I find it hard to know what to say.  How can I accurately describe my experience?  How do I convey both the challenges and the privilege of serving in Haiti?  the great beauty  and the harsh poverty?  The frustrations and the joys?  The great gifts of the culture and the realities of the lack of adequate infrastructure?  How do you do this well and ask for money (something I hate doing) and say it all during that brief time after communion before the final blessing? Well, I tried and I met a lot of very nice people in the process. That is one thing about traveling, there are good, interesting, generous people everywhere I go and I am grateful for those encounters.

Now my travels have brought me home to Rhode Island, for a few weeks.  It is good to be here!    

I hope you are doing well, wherever you may be.  Many blessings!    

Pataje

During the three years that I lived in New Orleans after my first experience in Haiti and before I returned, I would sometimes attend the Haitian Creole liturgy.  There is a relatively small but growing community of Haitian individuals and families who attend.  They are very welcoming and kind.  At first, my goal was to attend once a month, a strategy to help me to not forget the language I had worked so hard to learn.  I found the liturgy energizing, and a way of maintaining at least in some small way a connection to the culture I had grown to love.  Gradually during those three years, I started attending more frequently, probably to the point that maybe only one Sunday a month on average would I not attend the Haitian mass.  Now when I am in New Orleans, it is the Sunday liturgy I most often attend, yes even when I am here on vacation.  Actually, a higher percentage of the typical mass is in Haitian Creole than many of the liturgies I typically attend in Cap-Haitian (liturgies at the orphanage and those planned by the sisters tend to be mostly in French.) There are songs that I learned while attending the Creole mass in New Orleans.  When we sing those same songs in Haiti the faces of individuals who attend the liturgy in New Orleans come to my mind, bring a smile to my face and I pray for the Haitian community of the greater New Orleans area. 

Last Sunday at the Haitian liturgy here, we sang a song that I had learned in Haiti; one we have sung frequently during mass at the orphanage.  That particular song is French, but I understand the chorus and get the general gist of some of the verses.  It is a song about sharing (share is patarger in French which is  pataje in Creole.)  While we sang that particular song on Sunday evening I thought of the children at the orphanage their faces coming into my mind, bringing a smile to my face and so I prayed for them.  I especially smiled recalling more than one incident when during play therapy I said something about sharing, encouraging the children to "pataje" and they broke into song, filling the play therapy room with that hymn.  As we sang that song on Sunday, I realized how much I miss the children.  I hope that they are doing well and enjoying their time with their families.