By now surely you’ve heard coverage of the devastating 7.0 earthquake that shook Haiti Tuesday, January 12, 2010. Like you I was shocked and saddened and actually broke into tears a bit, as I adore the Caribbean and that nations’ people in particular are some of the most peaceful and genuinely heartfelt I’ve ever met.
But shock for me soon births call to action and the first thing I did was begin to pray…
- for my own sense of calm and clarity and strength and peace of resolve to know how to best help…
- to know that those who are able to declare a state of emergency can and will
- to know that those who are in charge of distributing resources from other areas will have the clarity and wisdom and means to get supplies and help there without distraction or delay.
- to defend the presence of resources available for right now needs for safety and comfort…
- to defend and support anyone that is stuck under rubble or trapped in the mountains or stuck and alone in any way will feel the presence and power of the universal divine Love that is with each and all.
- to defend that anyone who has not yet been found will be located, that anyone stuck in rubble will not suffocate and will be found.
- to defend that there will be a way for supports to arrive as of this writing the airport is closed.
I kept on praying like this for a long long while.
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Throughout the night on into the dawn, the twitter streams for #Haiti flooded in with similar prayers and hopes. It’s so inspiring when you literally watch in real life the flowing support of thousands of people from around the globe…and realize just how many are saying prayers for Haiti’s people.
But this doesn’t resolve the pull of desperate helplessness that comes over us all too often when there’s a human tragedy like this. So I had to keep on praying for myself too because there’s no rationality in feeling guilty that somehow others received a blow and I didn’t. That’s not logical thinking and it’s also not productive in anyway.
So getting past the pulls of ego and back to the how can my thoughts devote themselves to know how to help right now these people, again I defended the presence of calm and order, because the pull would try to convince anyone that there’s going to be nothing but chaos and mayhem for a while.
The thing about defending truths, we can’t always see how they’ll pan out in the immediate. Nor can we always see how they’ll bare fruit in the months to come. But just like there’s a deep need to steer a sailboat when the winds kick up rather than be tossed about, there’s a vital need to steer our thoughts. And that is what meditating and prayer does for me….steadies my thought so that I’m open and listening to next steps of what is mine to do.
And I thought a lot about how any quake..any stirring and sifting can help all of us wake UP..to the needs around us..to deepen our compassion to help whomever and however and wherever. We encounter so many human hearts day in and day out…Let this stirring rouse our compassion to be present, be mentally and emotionally present in any encounter with another. Whether a smile or a hello. Humanity is reaching out for love and we can respond with love.
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So, some practical next steps:
First, for soothing melodic sounds, twitter friend @ambienteer offers his recent compilations for download and requests you please contribute to one of his suggested organizations for aid for Haiti.
For latest tweet coverage, search twitter for #Haiti: Go to http://search.twitter.com and type in #Haiti — the hashtag symbol plus the word Haiti. Any tweet using that phrase will come up and you can see latest tweets and information that way.
You can also search twitter #RedCross, #Unicef, #CARE, #ONE campaign to name just a few of the many organizations already citing ways to help.
Here’s some of those tweets and links:
@Wycle Jean’s plea and blog
White House cites how to text to support the Red Cross
State Department: http://bit.ly/7xooEN
RT @washingtonpost: RT @PostWorldNews Here are a few ways to help relief efforts in #Haiti: http://bit.ly/8IMN4m #earthquake
I’ll offer more links as they come in.
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How bout your perspective on any of this? How you’re steadying your thoughts, keeping calm, thinking through ways that you can help whether praying for the nation of Haiti or other ways ?
Awesome Yok. What a gift that you can help your neighbors feel supported and loved…what a true privilege really. Love that you are so compassionate and full of heart to respond….So interesting about your friend's school. How rewarding…Grateful to hear your perspective 🙂
Hi Stacey…So good to meet you here and over at OwningPink.com…really appreciate your connection…and of course you can post this on your blog….wrote ya back on email. There's such strength from each one of us defending the currents of Love and Truth that are rallying around the world…and lifting thought to see and know and feel ongoing stability….This is my constant prayer right now….that all feel grounded….safe….loved…supported..because they are..even though the human response with supplies seems to take a while….that supply of ongoing Love is infinite and present and at hand now. So good to meet you. 🙂
Though I can't drop tons of clean water, food and medical supplies to help people in Haiti, I can take steps in my life and do what I can.
I have neighbors who are from Haiti, tthe only thing I can offer is prayer and compassionate ears for their distress.
Sometimes we get lost in the scope of it all thinking that the only way we can make a difference in the world is to donate millions, organize thousands of people for a cause, get a million people to protest etc.. I have a friend who started a school in the Domincan Republic, it can only take in 17 or so students at a time but it makes a world of difference for those kids. I was at a lecture about an international organization to help women, some of it involves rescuing women in war torn countries, some was just teaching how to raise chickesns or grow vegetables and selling them at a marketplace.
Hi Tre!
Thanks so much for this lovely post. I found it first at Owning Pink and I would love to post it to my blog, too. (I will send you an email, too, to make sure you get my request.)
And I wrote about what I am doing in response at my blog, too: Holding on to Hope and Love. And sending money to Doctors Without Borders and Heifer International.
Thanks again and take wonderful care! Stacey
Awesome Yok. What a gift that you can help your neighbors feel supported and loved…what a true privilege really. Love that you are so compassionate and full of heart to respond….So interesting about your friend's school. How rewarding…Grateful to hear your perspective 🙂
Hi Stacey…So good to meet you here and over at OwningPink.com…really appreciate your connection…and of course you can post this on your blog….wrote ya back on email. There's such strength from each one of us defending the currents of Love and Truth that are rallying around the world…and lifting thought to see and know and feel ongoing stability….This is my constant prayer right now….that all feel grounded….safe….loved…supported..because they are..even though the human response with supplies seems to take a while….that supply of ongoing Love is infinite and present and at hand now. So good to meet you. 🙂
Though I can't drop tons of clean water, food and medical supplies to help people in Haiti, I can take steps in my life and do what I can.
I have neighbors who are from Haiti, tthe only thing I can offer is prayer and compassionate ears for their distress.
Sometimes we get lost in the scope of it all thinking that the only way we can make a difference in the world is to donate millions, organize thousands of people for a cause, get a million people to protest etc.. I have a friend who started a school in the Domincan Republic, it can only take in 17 or so students at a time but it makes a world of difference for those kids. I was at a lecture about an international organization to help women, some of it involves rescuing women in war torn countries, some was just teaching how to raise chickesns or grow vegetables and selling them at a marketplace.
Hi Tre!
Thanks so much for this lovely post. I found it first at Owning Pink and I would love to post it to my blog, too. (I will send you an email, too, to make sure you get my request.)
And I wrote about what I am doing in response at my blog, too: Holding on to Hope and Love. And sending money to Doctors Without Borders and Heifer International.
Thanks again and take wonderful care! Stacey
I went with Doctors Without Borders. Seemed like a pretty good group to me, but I found this link helpful: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=c…
(Some charities are better than others in terms of administrative costs and whatnot. Not knocking any group trying to do good work at all)