It’s been six months since the devastating January 12^th earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  I’ll never forget that Tuesday afternoon and the shock and grief I felt with the news that poured in about the tremendous destruction and the 300,000 people who lost their lives.  While I exhaled with relief and a feeling of tremendous gratitude when the news came in that the What If? Foundation’s Haitian partners and those we serve in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood had survived, I felt such deep sorrow for the extraordinary suffering being experienced throughout Haiti’s capital.

Since that time, I wish I could tell you that things are getting better for the majority of people in Port-au-Prince, but that is not the case.  Lavarice Gaudin, our program liaison, has been in Haiti since the earthquake and tells us that signs of clearing the rubble and rebuilding are difficult to find. The National Palace is still slumped on its side, and almost all the buildings that were reduced to piles of concrete and twisted metal by the earthquake remain untouched.  Little has changed since my visit to Haiti in April (click here to see photos from this trip).

There are now more than 1,000 camps in the city, where an estimated 1.5 million displaced Haitians live without electricity, without adequate sanitation, without any reliable sources of food and water.  There is pressure to relocate the camps, since most of them are on private property.  But there is no place for the people who live in them to go.  The hurricane season has started, the rains are coming, and children and their parents and grandparents are living in the mud, under leaky tarps and tents.  Mothers delivering babies, amputees without rehab… The conditions are horrendous, as you can imagine.

It’s overwhelming.  Frustrating.  Infuriating to think that after six months, so little help has reached the people.  The programs I’m involved in support just a fraction of those in need ­– 3,000 meals each weekday are served in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of Port-au-Prince to children and adults.  Some walk for miles.  But this is where I focus – on the little bit we can do, not on what we can’t do.

I’ve been thinking about Fr. Gerry a lot lately.  Father Gerry and I worked together for a little over nine years.  His vision of a food program for the hungry children in his community is what inspired me to create the What If? Foundation.  Fr. Gerry was a close friend and mentor and is the most courageous person I’ve ever known.  He lived his faith every day, put “word into deed,” and taught me endless lessons in patience, compassion, love, and hope.  He died over a year ago.  Oh, how I miss him and wish he were here to help lead us through this challenging period.  I know his spirit is felt in Haiti and I feel it here too, encouraging me from the other side and helping guide the food and education programs we worked on together.  I can hear him reminding me to keep believing in the power of small steps.  “Piti piti na rive.”

When I start to wonder where God is in the midst of the earthquake aftermath, I remember a conversation Father Gerry and I had years ago in Port-au-Prince.  I was overwhelmed by the suffering I saw all around me and asked him, “How is it, Father Gerry, that Haitian people have such a deep faith in God?  When there’s so little food and few jobs and no doctors or running water, I’d think that after a while, a person might reject the idea of God, or at least a loving and just God.”  He smiled.  I could tell he liked this question.

“God is the first and the last resource here.  We feel God’s presence more and more, because there is nobody else some days who can sustain us to allow us to survive.  It’s only God sometimes… In the midst of trouble, the presence of God is felt more and more.”

The Haitians have a proverb “Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe.”   Translated literally it means “God gives but doesn’t share.”  I really like this proverb.  For me, it means that God has given us everything we need on this earth to thrive.  There is enough food, enough water, enough natural resources, enough of everything that’s needed for every human being to live a healthy life.  But, it’s up to us to divide it up, to share – on a micro and macro level.  This is one of our responsibilities as human beings and as a whole, we’re failing miserably.  The gap between rich and poor widens daily.  The reality in Port-au-Prince is a vivid example of this.

I believe God works through people to create social change on earth. Participation, some sort of action, is required.  But we have free will.  We can choose to reach out – or not.  To open the shade – or pull it down.  To allow love to flow – or to block it.   To wait for someone else to do something – or to jump in ourselves.  To believe what we do doesn’t matter – or to believe that it does.

I remember my high school physics teacher saying in class one day that when a fly lands on a steel beam, the beam bends.  Even something as light as a fly has an impact on the beam.

Wherever our hearts take us, wherever they cry out for a response, may we take action, participate, and allow our unique contributions to impact the beam of social change, the beam of life.