A Love Song for Haiti

This is a post from Foundry Haiti VIM team member Susan Ozawa:

Listening to music in the car on Valentine’s day, I sang along to the Fugee’s remake of Marley’s No Woman No Cry. I thought about that song and how it reminded me of my time in the Philippines working with women who were trapped in lives of prostitution, during the Asian Economic Crisis. Some of these women had been lied to, drugged, assaulted, trafficked and were able to tell their story, find help, begin to hope. Some found a way out, advocated for themselves and others in courts internationally against the world’s most powerful and monied black market syndicates. Some joined the NGO I worked for, some joined the Board of Directors and were the heart and soul and backbone of the organization. The cover of No Women No Cry had just come out and it played on heavy rotation in activist circles in the Philippines and on my discman. The Fugees adapted it to capture encouragement for their brothers and sisters from Haiti and refugees from all over the world, for those marginalized by poverty and racism, for those who have lost family and loved ones. The song of encouragement was for the woman who carries all these things in her heart and cries tears for all the pain and injustice in the world and for those who have no more tears to cry. It was a song we all needed to hear.
Everything’s gonna be alright, the song sings. Everything’s gonna be alright, the song means, because there are people who love you, because there are people who have also despaired but who are here for you now. The song under the song sings, everything’s gonna be alright because God’s with us all and because we are even closer to God when we need him. Everything’s gonna be alright, because the sun always rises and love and God are stronger than pain and loss. This was the message, and in the secular words we all felt the healing of the sacred blessing of love, compassion and solidarity; the message Rev. Dean would say, was the wheat in the weeds.

As our Foundry VIM team prepares to leave for Haiti, we will carry a song in our heart. We will carry the collective songs of the congregation. We will carry the soprano’s triumphant, It is Well With my Soul. We will carry, Amazing Grace. We are carrying Great is The Faithfulness and we know these songs, that have brought us comfort, that brought generations and generations before them comfort, will resonate with the songs in the hearts of those we meet in Haiti.

May God bring us together to sing a song of praise and thanksgiving to him! May God make beautiful music of our broken hearts. In this modest contribution of our time and energy, and the resources of the congregation, may miracles of God’s blessings rain down on us all.

This is my payer for us, that no matter the melody, the song we sing will always be a song of love.