Urban Acacia in Haiti

Urban missionary Dan Beirne and 15 other young adults from around the country recently head to Haiti for a one week mission trip.  Read Dan's reflection on the trip below!Urban Acacia in HaitiI remember camping one year I learned that the Aspen groves in the Colorado Rockies were all connected under ground.  When I first learned that, my initial thought was “Neat, that’s one huge tree,” assuming just that one cluster to my right to be what our guide was referring to.  As we continued to hike deeper and deeper into the mountains, however, it occurred to me on our second or third day that we were still surrounded by a thick grove of Aspens.  I asked, with a general point in the direction of the Aspens, if those ones were also connected.  The guide smiled and said, “Yep, same system. One of the largest organisms on the planet.”Something about his word choice, “organism,” altered how I was looking at these trees…The very ground we were standing on, the shade and shelter we enjoyed during our entire excursion, every bit of our surroundings was made up of one living and breathing thing.  The old saying of “can’t see the forest for the trees” was very applicable in that moment.As Urban Acacia enjoyed its first trip to Haiti this past week, I had a similar realization.  Only instead of trees in a forest being one, it was people in a community.I should say that when I mention us all being “one,” I do not mean this in the warm-and-fuzzy-we-are-one-in-God’s-family kind of way.  Though that is certainly true, I am actually referring to a specific moment in which I actually beheld us all living and moving as one… as if for a moment we were the same being…the same organism.There were sixteen of us who traveled to Haiti this past week.  We came from all around the US, from different religions/no-religions, and different jobs and schools. The first time we were all under the same roof was in the bus outside the airport in Haiti.  Then we drove to 3 hours to a small mountain community called Manze Marie, and spent the week under the beautiful rainforest canopy they call home.During our time there we worked in the mornings on finishing a rain-collecting water reservoir, installing the rain collecting gutters on the Church roof, and laid the foundation for a grain mill.  While we are excited that our work will contribute in part to a larger-picture sustainable vision for the community, the most important aspect of our time in Haiti was not the work we did, but the companionship we experienced.Short-term missions, while always well intended, can often be quite destructive.  Any good intention that is not passed through the filter of the local voice is at risk of wasting resources, perpetuating stereotypes, and imposing one cultural model upon another.  What is perhaps the worst consequence of these accidentally destructive gestures is that they usually take the shape of a permanent physical structure in the heart of the community, and thus stand as a monument to all the conversations that failed to take place.  That is why the work we did in Haiti, though meaningful, is a distant second place in importance to the relationships we built and the conversations we had. Whether writing a song together with the youth, or discussing future plans for our partnership with local leaders, each conversation we had protected against the destructive tendencies of blind charity.And then came the drum circle.As if these meaningful conversations weren’t enough, the week’s fellowship and relationship building escalated into the night and the moment I referred to above: the moment I beheld us all living and moving as one.Since each evening had been peppered with little dance breaks and musical sessions, we decided to end the week with a celebration to give thanks to God and the community for our time together.  We began with a few worship songs that we all sang together, Haitians and Americans alike, but each song seemed to get high jacked by a strong driving reggae-ton beat and provoked the entire crowd to begin dancing and bouncing around.  The first few times this happened, Pastor Albar tried to calm it down frantically, like stomping out a fire that he really just wanted to keep as a calm, warming flame.  But, as the evening continued, the fire could not be contained.  Finally, he let it burst forth, the percussion section took over, and we all dove into nearly a half hour dance off.Until that moment, the crowd was organized in a circle which, with only a few exceptions, was a segregated pie chart of 75% black faces, and 25% White faces.  As the music escalated, however, it looked like popcorn.  First one face, and then two, and then five and twelve…each one hopping into the middle laughing and thriving around, drawn into the epicenter where the music and energy was strongest.My perspective was unique, because I was playing ukulele with Pastor Albar.  I was staring intensely at the fret board of his guitar, trying desperately to keep up with the ever-growing intensity and speed, and so I was partly oblivious to the dancing popcorn circle in front of me.Then, I looked up, and that was the moment.No more pie chart.  No more us in chairs, and them standing.  No more us and them.Diverse faces, all smiling as they danced, moved and swayed to a beat they could not resist.  It was a peppered sea of joy and rhythm, drawn together as if we were one organism, the same being. Not a bunch of individuals dancing, but all actually connected somehow under the surface, living and breathing and moving to the same irresistible energy.   I cried as I beheld this beauty, and a few moments later, when the rain called us home, they cried too.We retreated into the Sanctuary behind us, and prayed our gratitude to God.We left the next morning.Though I could not have predicted it before we arrived, this moment is the reason we went to Haiti.Thanks be to God for such a formative experience, and thanks to you for your prayers.

“The largest organism on Earth has been identified in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. It's a huge stand of 47,000 quaking aspen trees and stems, growing from a single root system, that covers 106 acres.  It is genetically uniform and acts as a single organism. When the trees change color in the fall, they do so in unison…”

-New York Times