My first opportunity to find beauty is with the events in Haiti. I don’t wish to simplify or ever diminish what is happening there. It is devastating. There are no words to describe the pain and suffering that they are experiencing right now. It is difficult for me to watch any of it on the news because it is so very painful. Suffering is beyond my comprehension. It is a part of life, but a part I cannot make peace with. Not yet.
Haiti has been a relatively invisible country with a government that has let its people down in many, many ways. The people of Haiti were suffering long before this massive earthquake, long before any of us tuned in and cared, long before the planet shined its spotlight on it. There was a need, a deep need for some compassion, hope, and deliverance from oppression and pain. This earthquake, as devastating as it is, brought world attention to a place that has been quaking under an oppressive government rule for a very long time. The long term suffering of its people has gone relatively unnoticed by the world that is now responding to its cries. How many times do we only pay attention to something after there is an emergency situation that grabs our hearts and demands our attention?
What if there had been a world desire to end the daily human suffering in Haiti before it became a world event? Lights are shone on the places that need attention and that have needed attention for a long time, so we either do it now or do it later and usually the later is when we are answering a call of gigantic proportions.
The beauty I see in this devastating, beyond what is incomprehensible suffering, is that NOW the light is shining on those that have been suffering for much longer than any of us really know. NOW the suffering can stop and lives that have never had a voice and never really known freedom can be seen and heard by the world. Sometimes it takes a BIG shout out to be heard, but it is being heard and now the world in it’s amazingly compassionate way IS responding and sending in the aid this country has needed for so long. Being seen is the gift here. Being responded to is the beauty. And because of this, there is now hope for Haiti.
Please let me know how you have found something meaningful and beautiful in this event. -Rojdnan
Only positive and meaningful comments will be posted.
