As a young girl I carried a twenty litre can of water upon my head every morning and evening. It made my bones strong and taught me to walk like a lady. Men cannot carry water. They use donkeys. But Gran Papa did not have a donkey. He had only me.
Morning is the best time in our little village of Ti Soeur. The voudoun—spirits and demons—have fled the light. The air is still night-cool. It is a noisy time. Roosters crow. Baby goats bawl for milk. The chatter of women around the well reminds me of a tree full of happy birds chirping. I used to think that women and birds speak of the same things. When is the next baby coming? Where is the good food today? Who is sick? What can be done?
One morning a stranger was at the well, a very dark man like a farmer with hair white as coconut flesh. I made myself very small behind someone’s skirt and listened. His voice was deep. His laugh could be heard halfway to the village. He was a missionary from Grand Soeur. He was going to plant a church and maybe even have a school one day.
Suddenly and to my horror, he looked right at me. Worse yet, he spoke to me. No man other than Gran Papa had ever spoken to me before. “Bonjour child. My name is Claude Robert Avenel. But I am called Mistré Ro-Ro. How are you called?”
“Jasmin,” I whispered, not taking my eyes off his shoes. I had never seen shiny shoes with laces before.
“A good name for a little flower,” he laughed. Afterwards, Mistré Ro-Ro always called me Ti Flé which means little flower. Then he said something quite mysterious, “Jezi loves you, Ti Flé.” Jezi is how we call Jesus.
If all this were not strange enough, the missionary then gave me a small slab of something silver and very shiny. “Merci,” said I, very happy to have it. Clearly, it was quite valuable, whatever it was.Back home, Gran Papa peeled off the silvery skin. Inside was a sweet treat. “It is chiklet. Chew, do not swallow,” he said as he handed me the chewing gum. I broke it, half for Gran Papa, half for me. Naturally I kept the chiklet’s shiny peeling. I put it in my treasure box along with my buttons, a copper coin, my hair barrettes and a magazine picture of beautiful lady with golden eyelids whom I thought to be the goddess Erzulie.
The day of chiklet happened in the springtime when many people dance with spirits through the night. I lay in bed listening to voudou drums and horns. The village dogs barked all night. I knew voudoun were cavorting nearby. I hid under my blanket with my treasure box, very afraid. I held the chiklet wrapper to my nose. The minty sweet scent made me remember the words of the man with the big laugh. Why would Jezi love me? And what is Jezi? Surely Jezi is a good voudoun., for everyone says, “Merci Jezi” when good things happen. Maybe Jezi is Erzulie’s husband, or her son. Why should a voudoun love me? And why must you plant a church? Do buildings have roots? Must they have rain to grow? Such were my thoughts listening to the drums alone in the darkness.
In the morning, our yellow she-goat, Blondi, was missing. No doubt a mischievous voudoun had chased her away. “You shall find her in the sugar cane,” Gran Papa said knowingly. So I took the road to the cane field. A headless chicken hung from a post at the place where the market path crosses the cane field path. Blood was sprinkled everywhere--an offering to Papa Legba, the all-powerful voudoun of the crossroad. I was in bad trouble. Legba would certainly snatch me away when he came for the chicken. Such things truly happen: A little girl goes an errand and is never seen again. But I must find Blondi. Milk goats are more valuable than little girls. There are many more little girls than milk goats in the village. So I ran through the crossroads as fast as ever I could. The voudoun must have been taking a nap. I was not harmed.
I found Blondi happily eating sugar cane just as Gran Papa had said. I put the rope on her neck and led her away. This time stayed away from the crossroad. I lead Blondi through the field keeping a good distance between me and the chicken. The voudoun might be awake and hungry. Suddenly, I heard a great voice booming, “Come here, child!” Papa Legba! I tried to run but Blondi was stubborn. I was doomed, another little girl that never came home.
It was not Legba. “Why do you not use the road, Ti Flé?” Mistré Ro-Ro called out laughing. Then he saw the chicken and the blood. He quit laughing. He knew very well why I did not use the road.“Do not be afraid, Ti Flé. Voudoun need not have power over you. Come walk with me. I will tell you a great truth.” Mistré Ro-Ro’s great truth was another mystery.
It was a long time before I understood.Now I am grown. Many people still dance with the spirits in the night, but I am no longer afraid. Gran Papa sleeps beside Mistré Ro-Ro in the mission yard to be awakened on the final day. I still have my treasure box with its chiklet wrapper and buttons and hair barrettes. The picture of Erzulie is gone. From time to time I replace the chiklet skin with a new gum wrapper from to keep the scent fresh. Sometimes, at night, I take chiklet wrapper from my treasure box and inhale its sweet scent. Then I hear again that deep voice saying “Jezi loves you, Ti Flé. ”
I am a teacher at Claude Robert Avenel Elementary School. The children call me Miss Ti Flé. Mistré Ro-Ro’s great truth hangs on the wall above the blackboard in the front of my classroom. It is written in red stitches on fine white cloth with a carved wooden frame. I tell my students to remember it when evil spirits worry them, as they do all people from time to time. It says:
“Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you;
But rather rejoice because
Your names are written in Heaven..”--Luke 10:20.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Mom's asleep in the house.
Dear Mary,
I know what you mean about one little thing setting you off on a crying spree.
The second time I went to Haiti was more than a year after my mom died in 1998. In Haiti there are these little buildings about the size of a typical doghouse. They are made of cement and sometimes are very ornate and brightly painted. Some of them look like little temples or cathedrals. Others just look like old worn out concrete boxes. You see them in the yards of many houses. Often they are in the front yard. I had no idea what they were; I only knew they were something we don’t have in the US.
One night after supper I asked someone about these little boxes and he told me that they are baby and child mausoleums. It made me think about the special relationship between mother and child. Before I knew it I started crying and kept crying for about 2 hours. It was the hardest I cried since the funeral and I haven’t cried like that again.
What made me finally quit was when I went outside and lay on the grass. The Milky Way in Haiti is very bright and right overhead. There are no lights in Haiti at night, and there was no moon that night, but the stars were so bright that the banana tree in the garden had a shadow.
I just looked at the night sky for a long time and really didn’t think about anything. Then I started to remember sleeping out in my backyard in Indiana when I was a kid and Mom asleep in the house. I got the feeling that everything was OK with Mom. She was just sleeping in the house. Well, something like that anyway. Some feelings you can’t put into words.
Love,
Keith
I know what you mean about one little thing setting you off on a crying spree.
The second time I went to Haiti was more than a year after my mom died in 1998. In Haiti there are these little buildings about the size of a typical doghouse. They are made of cement and sometimes are very ornate and brightly painted. Some of them look like little temples or cathedrals. Others just look like old worn out concrete boxes. You see them in the yards of many houses. Often they are in the front yard. I had no idea what they were; I only knew they were something we don’t have in the US.
One night after supper I asked someone about these little boxes and he told me that they are baby and child mausoleums. It made me think about the special relationship between mother and child. Before I knew it I started crying and kept crying for about 2 hours. It was the hardest I cried since the funeral and I haven’t cried like that again.
What made me finally quit was when I went outside and lay on the grass. The Milky Way in Haiti is very bright and right overhead. There are no lights in Haiti at night, and there was no moon that night, but the stars were so bright that the banana tree in the garden had a shadow.
I just looked at the night sky for a long time and really didn’t think about anything. Then I started to remember sleeping out in my backyard in Indiana when I was a kid and Mom asleep in the house. I got the feeling that everything was OK with Mom. She was just sleeping in the house. Well, something like that anyway. Some feelings you can’t put into words.
Love,
Keith
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Dumpster Hobbits
In the summer of ’74 I used to play hurling with the Irish guys at Washington Park in Denver. Hurling is like field hockey, but you can pass the ball by hitting it golf or baseball style, well not exactly baseball style because you hit it while running full out with red-faced Irishmen harassing you with clubs, but I was young and could run in those days, and I could take a hit.
One evening after hurling, I tripped over a gun barrel sticking out of my neighbor’s door. I was carrying my 10-speed and not looking. I chained the bike to wrought iron railing on the balcony at the entrance to my second floor apartment. It was one of those motel-looking apartment buildings, three stories with a flat top and exterior walkways. The front yard was an asphalt parking lot. My bike was a Peugeot UO-38, 22 pounds, Campi components, welded frame and aluminum everything. It was my only transportation. I loved that bike.
Curtis was at the other end of the gun. He had set up a sniper position covering our parking lot where his gold ’69 Challenger stood under the light. What a car; huge wide slicks on the back and the rear end jacked up so high that the glass packs blew right in your face. It was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Tonight Curtis had issues with our local Chicano gang. He had seen them eyeballing his car. He’d be ready when they came for it.
Curtis said I could spot for him if I wanted. The potential for legal hassles caused me to decline. The potential for an interesting occurance caused me to sit in my apartment in the dark a ways back from the big picture.
Next door Curtis lay prone in the shooter’s position with the door barely cracked. A year earlier, he had been a deuce and a half driver delivering supplies to troops in the field in Vietnam. He never went out without his Army 45 on his belt and an AK-47 in his hand. He had traded a 16-track Akai reel-to-reel to a short-timer for the AK. Back in the world now for eight months, he couldn't get used to not carrying a weapon. It was like one of those dreams where you suddenly realize that you forgot to wear clothes. He took to carrying a briefcase with a broke down shotgun inside. It kept him calm. I suspected he had any number of weapons in his apartment, maybe even grenades. I never asked.
As I watched, an elderly couple came pushing a supermarket cart through the alley on the far side of the parking lot. They were small, bent over people with too many clothes on. They were old. I don’t know how old, but old. It took both of them to push the cart. They didn’t speak. They seemed to be a subspecies of human, like hobbits, old nocturnal hobbits.
The old couple went behind the dumpster in the corner of our parking lot. Then the man’s head appeared and he was up over the edge tumbling into the dumpster. I don't how he managed it, being so old and all. It looked like someone was throwing away an old worn-out man. Things started to fly up out of the dumpster, mostly aluminum cans, but other stuff too. The she-hobbit picked it all up and put it in her cart. It seemed to be a good haul. They waddled away pushing the cart. The Chicanos never came.
The dumpster hobbits always came on Wednesday and Sunday night around 11 PM. Sometime in mid-July the man came alone. I never saw the lady again. By August he had quit coming too. Anything could have happened to them.
The Chicanos never bothered the Challenger, but they did steal my 10-speed, at least I think it was them, whatever happened; my bike was gone. Soon after that, I lost my carpet cleaning gig at the ServiceMaster on South Broadway because I couldn’t get to work on time without my 10-speed. By mid August I wasn’t eating every day. I was hungry all the time. My longest spell without a meal was five days or so.
I might have become a dumpster hobbit too. A person has to eat. What saved me was that I was young and could run in those days, and I could take a hit.
One evening after hurling, I tripped over a gun barrel sticking out of my neighbor’s door. I was carrying my 10-speed and not looking. I chained the bike to wrought iron railing on the balcony at the entrance to my second floor apartment. It was one of those motel-looking apartment buildings, three stories with a flat top and exterior walkways. The front yard was an asphalt parking lot. My bike was a Peugeot UO-38, 22 pounds, Campi components, welded frame and aluminum everything. It was my only transportation. I loved that bike.
Curtis was at the other end of the gun. He had set up a sniper position covering our parking lot where his gold ’69 Challenger stood under the light. What a car; huge wide slicks on the back and the rear end jacked up so high that the glass packs blew right in your face. It was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Tonight Curtis had issues with our local Chicano gang. He had seen them eyeballing his car. He’d be ready when they came for it.
Curtis said I could spot for him if I wanted. The potential for legal hassles caused me to decline. The potential for an interesting occurance caused me to sit in my apartment in the dark a ways back from the big picture.
Next door Curtis lay prone in the shooter’s position with the door barely cracked. A year earlier, he had been a deuce and a half driver delivering supplies to troops in the field in Vietnam. He never went out without his Army 45 on his belt and an AK-47 in his hand. He had traded a 16-track Akai reel-to-reel to a short-timer for the AK. Back in the world now for eight months, he couldn't get used to not carrying a weapon. It was like one of those dreams where you suddenly realize that you forgot to wear clothes. He took to carrying a briefcase with a broke down shotgun inside. It kept him calm. I suspected he had any number of weapons in his apartment, maybe even grenades. I never asked.
As I watched, an elderly couple came pushing a supermarket cart through the alley on the far side of the parking lot. They were small, bent over people with too many clothes on. They were old. I don’t know how old, but old. It took both of them to push the cart. They didn’t speak. They seemed to be a subspecies of human, like hobbits, old nocturnal hobbits.
The old couple went behind the dumpster in the corner of our parking lot. Then the man’s head appeared and he was up over the edge tumbling into the dumpster. I don't how he managed it, being so old and all. It looked like someone was throwing away an old worn-out man. Things started to fly up out of the dumpster, mostly aluminum cans, but other stuff too. The she-hobbit picked it all up and put it in her cart. It seemed to be a good haul. They waddled away pushing the cart. The Chicanos never came.
The dumpster hobbits always came on Wednesday and Sunday night around 11 PM. Sometime in mid-July the man came alone. I never saw the lady again. By August he had quit coming too. Anything could have happened to them.
The Chicanos never bothered the Challenger, but they did steal my 10-speed, at least I think it was them, whatever happened; my bike was gone. Soon after that, I lost my carpet cleaning gig at the ServiceMaster on South Broadway because I couldn’t get to work on time without my 10-speed. By mid August I wasn’t eating every day. I was hungry all the time. My longest spell without a meal was five days or so.
I might have become a dumpster hobbit too. A person has to eat. What saved me was that I was young and could run in those days, and I could take a hit.
Monday, March 12, 2007
I think, therefore . . .
What is the greatest of God's creations? How do we know God exists? This blog seeks to answer both of these questions.
The movie ""The Matrix" is based on an ancient philosophical question, "How do we know what is real?" In the movie, humans are just characters in some evil computer program. Nothing is real. Ask yourself, "How do we know that this is not happening to us right now?" Haven't you ever thought that maybe, just maybe we are all characters in someone else's dream?
This is a major philosophical question. The most famous answer to this question was given by Descartes when he wrote that the only thing he was absolutely sure of was that he experienced conscious thought. Maybe nothing outside of his thoughts was real, but certainly his thoughts were his and his only, therefore he must be real. He wrote, "I think, therefore I am".
The bumble bee illustration is occasionally trotted out by preachers who claim that aeronautical engineers say that a bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, it goes against all the laws of physics and engineering--it just shouldn't happen. I don't get this. Are they saying that God is smarter than engineers? That's a given. Or are they saying that bumble bees fly only because God levitates them by miracle? Maybe so, but that creates some other theological dilemmas. The bumble bee preachers vastly underestimate God. Bumble bee flight is mere God's play.
Here are the bumble bee technical design requirements:
Nano machine less than 1 inch long and 2.5 grams, must fly forward, backward, up, down and hover.
Fuel: plant nectar.
Navigation system based on visual and ultraviolet wavelengths.
Must be capable of detecting and analyzing organic airborne particles to 20 parts per million instantly.
Must be able to defend itself while transporting pollen over distances up to 5 miles/day.
Must be non-polluting and able to repair itself following an accident.
Must be able to create several hundred copies of itself using no raw materials other than nectar and oxygen.
Must be biodegradable and useful as a source of nutrition for both plants and animals.
That's some serious engineering. The bumble bee is surely a great creation. But what is the greatest of all? What is the one thing that is so miraculous that it really shouldn't exist at all? Yet does.
How about mud that thinks, perceives, dreams, loves and is aware? I hold that consciousness is the most amazing and hardest to comprehend of all God's creations. We are mud--clay, dust, molecules, protons, croutons, whatever. We are made of the same stuff that dirt is made of. Yet somehow we are mud that is aware of itself, that thinks, that has a consciousness. How can this be? I can barely define consciousness. I cannot understand at all how or from where it arises. Surely it is more than just a product chemical/electrical reactions in cells. It has memory and emotions. How can this be? How can mud be aware?
Because consciousness is so unexpected, so improbable and is an entity in itself, the cognition of the soul, and seat of our being, perhaps even our true selves, I think it must be very strong evidence of the existence of God.
Let us change Descartes' adage to: I think, therefore God is.
The movie ""The Matrix" is based on an ancient philosophical question, "How do we know what is real?" In the movie, humans are just characters in some evil computer program. Nothing is real. Ask yourself, "How do we know that this is not happening to us right now?" Haven't you ever thought that maybe, just maybe we are all characters in someone else's dream?
This is a major philosophical question. The most famous answer to this question was given by Descartes when he wrote that the only thing he was absolutely sure of was that he experienced conscious thought. Maybe nothing outside of his thoughts was real, but certainly his thoughts were his and his only, therefore he must be real. He wrote, "I think, therefore I am".
The bumble bee illustration is occasionally trotted out by preachers who claim that aeronautical engineers say that a bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, it goes against all the laws of physics and engineering--it just shouldn't happen. I don't get this. Are they saying that God is smarter than engineers? That's a given. Or are they saying that bumble bees fly only because God levitates them by miracle? Maybe so, but that creates some other theological dilemmas. The bumble bee preachers vastly underestimate God. Bumble bee flight is mere God's play.
Here are the bumble bee technical design requirements:
Nano machine less than 1 inch long and 2.5 grams, must fly forward, backward, up, down and hover.
Fuel: plant nectar.
Navigation system based on visual and ultraviolet wavelengths.
Must be capable of detecting and analyzing organic airborne particles to 20 parts per million instantly.
Must be able to defend itself while transporting pollen over distances up to 5 miles/day.
Must be non-polluting and able to repair itself following an accident.
Must be able to create several hundred copies of itself using no raw materials other than nectar and oxygen.
Must be biodegradable and useful as a source of nutrition for both plants and animals.
That's some serious engineering. The bumble bee is surely a great creation. But what is the greatest of all? What is the one thing that is so miraculous that it really shouldn't exist at all? Yet does.
How about mud that thinks, perceives, dreams, loves and is aware? I hold that consciousness is the most amazing and hardest to comprehend of all God's creations. We are mud--clay, dust, molecules, protons, croutons, whatever. We are made of the same stuff that dirt is made of. Yet somehow we are mud that is aware of itself, that thinks, that has a consciousness. How can this be? I can barely define consciousness. I cannot understand at all how or from where it arises. Surely it is more than just a product chemical/electrical reactions in cells. It has memory and emotions. How can this be? How can mud be aware?
Because consciousness is so unexpected, so improbable and is an entity in itself, the cognition of the soul, and seat of our being, perhaps even our true selves, I think it must be very strong evidence of the existence of God.
Let us change Descartes' adage to: I think, therefore God is.
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