Ice Cream and Haiti and Shame

Have you ever done anything you didn’t want to do, but did it anyway?

I just did. I had vanilla bean ice cream smothered in chocolate sauce. I didn’t really want to do it, but I did. It was delicious. It had the frou frou of ambrosia and the unctuousness of a melted pearl. Damn it was good.

I point this out because it is so easy for each of us to forget the pain and anguish so far away and so close too. Little comfort things like ice cream or daily tasks take our attention and intention away from what we share as a global community.

Ice Cream did it for me for just a moment and part of me as I let my heart and want wander from the need of life for others.

The images of need coming out of Haiti are powerful. They affect us all.

Along with the buckled roads and crumbled buildings and bodies come the tears of the living.

Survivors' needs sometimes come in sobs, sometimes in wails of disbelief, sometimes in anger. The elders cry for the loss of memories, hoping for the strength to start again. The very young cry not fully understanding the new memory of loss of place and family.

There is worry from all, especially from the children for their security of familiar bed vanished within seconds and adult fear is infectious.  Parents do what they can to comfort the little ones, to reassure, but parental eyes always mirror the heart.

There is really no way in a single news report, or a newscast, that anyone can show you the immensity of the damage or the intensity of the effort to embrace or cling to life, or the effort of strangers to help or the frustration of authorities who can't help everyone immediately.

Right now Haiti is a country that screams, you can feel it as victims search for completeness in the puzzle of rubble and find yesterday's peace is tomorrow's uncertainty.

As we hear the stories of those in need, as we become numbed by the statistics of loss, we cannot feel secure because we have normalcy, because we have shelter or we have food or ice cream or because it didn't happen here.

Real security only comes from giving.  Instantaneous response to need defines true service. The humanity of our world is personified in giving, not only of our abundance, but of our substance, so that the victims know that the collective healing spirit of what we call community has not forgotten them in what we know as compassion and humanity to man.