Unpacking Ideas

• “What matters today is not the difference between those who believe and those who do not believe, but the difference between those who care and those who don’t.”  Georges Pire, Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1958.
• “Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.”  Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate, Literature, 1993.¹
• Vulnerable (adj.)  Capable of being wounded.  From the Latin vulnerare or “to wound.” ²

There are days when I am a bit embarrassed to be a Christian.  It’s not that I am ashamed of my personal faith in Christ, but the label “Christian” sometimes carries embarrassing baggage. 

After the breaking news about the so-called Christians from Idaho who were either ignorant or malicious in their treatment of Haiti’s children, we are hearing of other, previous forays into ignorance by groups struggling to do good in Haiti in the name of Jesus or…doing bad under the cover of the name.  There are too many examples in the Church of the oddly fine line between ignorance and malice. 

Today I Agree With Pire, The Better Question Is Whether Or Not We Care. 

I wish it wasn’t so hard to tell the difference between caring and not caring.  When it comes to vulnerable children around the world, I want it to be clear.  This isn’t a debate about some obscure point in theology or history.  This is about vulnerable children. 

We either care or we do not.  Sure, accuse me of simplistic naivete.  The accusation might stick.  But it seems to me that when it comes to the most vulnerable among us we ought to be clearer about what it means to care or not care for them. 

Today, I think Georges Pire was right.  The Church has devoted (wasted?) decades if not centuries debating what it means to believe, or what we should believe, or how we should articulate our beliefs…on and on leading sadly to splits at best and violent confrontations at worst between groups who disagree about the nature of our beliefs.  As Pire seems to suggest, a better debate may be whether or not we care.  More than words.  Action.

What Are We To Do With Haiti’s Children?

So, what are we to do with Haiti’s children?  How do we clearly care about them?  Let’s start by not scorning them.  Let’s start by not hauling them away from their parents or relatives.  Duh.  Let’s feed them.  Let’s clothe them.  Let’s give them water to drink.  A famous member of our Church once said something about caring for the least of these…you know, the most vulnerable among us.  Who said that?  I thought he was fairly clear.

If we are not careful, Haiti’s vulnerable children are capable of being wounded even more.  The famous member of the Church I mentioned above was known to focus persistently on those who are the least, the last, and the lost.  In his religious tradition, a faith community is to give special preference and care for those who are most vulnerable — widows, orphans and strangers, for example.³

So, what do we do?  Start by doing no harm.⁴  Then, carefully, prayerfully, let us support the good work of the relief agencies (religious or secular) engaged in repairing and rebuilding the people of Haiti.  See my January 15 article There Must Be Something I Can Do for ideas.

At the least, let us be clear.  Let’s just feed the children and give them clean water to drink.  Let’s just clothe them, and keep them safe from harm.  If this is not clear, then let us get out of the way so others who are willing to care can help.

© Copyright by Jeffrey Y. Harlow, Ph.D (2010).

1. Both quotes found in David Pratt, Editor (2007).  The Impossible Takes Longer: The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said By Nobel Prize Laureates.  New York: Walker & Company.
2. http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/vulnerable
3. I’ve been a bit narrow in my expression of the “most vulnerable”.  Of course children in poverty, including orphans, deserve our special care.  But our Judeo-Christian tradition also has much to say about caring for strangers (or aliens or sojourners).  There are many among us today — our neighbors and co-workers – who are strangers among us because they are from a different place and have few, if any, of the legal and social protections the rest of us have a citizens.  I believe we are to care for them in the same way we care for other vulnerable groups.  Our nation’s immigrants deserve the Church’s special care.  Look for more from me in the future on this issue.
4. I offer here an apology to the rest of the world for a few stupid Christians who are either ignorant about what it means to care, or sadly seeking to exploit vulnerable children.

My worms are warm.  Warm worms are happy worms.  I feed them fruit and vegetable scraps from our kitchen.  Recently I expanded my worm farm.  Now I have two bins.  More worms eat more trash. 

I’m glad my worms are happy.  When they are happy they do their redemptive work.  The worms eat the bacteria that forms on decaying vegetable matter.  When they eat and digest my trash, the end result (get it?) is nutrient-rich excrement.  Really.

Worm Excrement Is Good

I like worm excrement.  Don’t laugh at me about this.  Its a simple thing.  Worm excrement is good because it is packed full of good things that help plants grow.  So, I like worm excrement especially when it is mixed with the soil in my garden or planting pots.

But there’s more to my fondness for worm excrement.  The worms (and their crap) remind me that something good can come from my trash.  This gives me hope.  Even my kitchen trash can become a nutrient-rich blessing for potting soil.  Sure, I know, this trash-to-blessing journey takes a detour through worm excrement.  But the end result (there I go again!) is good soil!  Something good can come from my trash.

I think worms are a gift from God.  I happen to be one of those sappy optimists who believes God will make good things happen — even when the raw materials are not so good…smelly and decayed.  Like me, for example. 

Worm Excrement Gives Me Hope

This is the up side of worm theology.  The worms remind me that God’s love for me (and you) is so strong and so tenacious that even the smelly, rotting parts of me can be transformed into something good.  This gives me hope.

We need hope.  Lots of people need hope.  I am thinking about the children in Haiti tonight.  They need hope.  Tens of thousands of them are new orphans.  They just lost their moms and dads.  They are alone.  Children.  That’s a lot of trash in their young lives.  That’s a lot of decay.  But I have hope that God’s love for those kids is enough.  I have hope that even though the children have been ripped from the safety of their homes and families — somehow, someday, they will feel safe and loved again.  I learned this from my worms.

© Copyright by Jeffrey Y. Harlow, Ph.D (2010).

[To read more about orphan care and our response, or about vunerable children even in our own country, check out the following articles and resources:   There Must Be Something I Can Do , Who Is My Child? , The Most Vulnerable Among Us , How Are Our Children? ,  An Open Letter To My Young Friends In Ivanovo , Grisha's Story: You didn't forget about us , Yana's Story: Do not pity me! , Kolya's Story: Jesus in disguise . ]

Where there is tragedy, there are orphans, more of them.  War, famine, natural disasters, social decay, all of it tends to rip apart families leaving vulnerable children without the care of a parent.  This is no surprise.  Tragedy makes us all a bit more vulnerable.  For children its worse.

And so its no surprise that the recent earthquakes in Haiti left tens of thousands of additional children newly orphaned.  Before the earthquakes, Haiti was home to over 380,000 orphans, according to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)¹ .  Now there are more, thousands more.

Some Children Will Go, But Most Should Stay

Some of Haiti’s orphans were already in the pipeline to be adopted by families in other coutries, so officials are expediting these adoptions quickly in order to remove as many children from the current crisis as possible.  

There’s a problem, though.  Given the enormous number of orphans already in the country and the thousands more added to the ranks, officials struggle to provide adequate care for the legitimate orphans while doing their best to confirm whether the new children under their care are truly orphaned or simply displaced and separated from their families.  For this reason officials are cautious to implement an airlift style extraction to transport large groups of children to somewhere safe with adequate medical care.  Officials rightly fear that accidentally removing a displaced child from his or her family would only make matters worse in the long run.  For true orphans, its a different matter — if we know whether or not a particular child on the chaotic street is truly orphaned. 

Its hard to know in these circumstances whether or not an abandoned child is a true orphan.  An injured mother might be under medical care somewhere else in the city and unable to look for her child.  A father might have been working across the island when the earthquake struck and is now unable to find transportation to the city to find his child.  

So, the children need to stay, unless and until we are sure they are true orphans.  For now, they need food, clean water, and medicine to treat diahrrea — a common problem — as well as more serious injuries or illnesses.

We need to help relief agencies do what it takes to care for the children in country and not feel pressured for lack of resources to pluck the children from their homeland and away from family members.  

Three agencies working in Haiti have committed to keeping the children in Haiti until true orphan status is confirmed:

• United Nation Children’s Fund or UNICEF (http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=9fLEJSOALpE&b=1023561),
• Save The Children (http://www.savethechildren.org/), and
• Salvation Army (http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf). 

In addition, the United Methodist Committee On Relief (UMCOR) has a permament office in Port-au-Prince and has established a long term presence for relief ministry there (www.umcor.org – Click on ”Haiti Emergency, UMCOR Advance #418325.”)

Give to these organizations (or another organization you trust) and designate that your gift support orphan children in Haiti.

Thanks.

© Copyright by Jeffrey Y. Harlow, Ph.D (2010).

1. Voice Of America, January 22, 2010, http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/Earthquake-Puts-Haitis-Orphans-in-Greater-Peril-82275902.html