RSSA Mountain of Mud and Wood
by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton
2/10/2005
He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written,'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" -- Matthew 4:2-3
Food and shelter. Water. Someone to set your broken leg. Something to wear. Medicine. These are what you need right now. You were so shocked you hardly even knew you needed them at first -- you walked on that leg all that first day, looking for your babies, clawing with your hands down, down into the mud and broken pieces of wood that were everywhere and you didn't find them, couldn't find them, and you didn't even notice how much the leg hurt until, at last, you fell down and then couldn't get up and you saw that it was all black and enormous and it hurt so much and you don't remember anything more after that.
Now you have a little tent which sits in a row along with a lot of other little tents, and it is treated with special insect repellent so that the mosquitoes don't give you a disease. And your leg is in a cast and isn't very swollen at all. You have food and water now -- you really don't remember much about those first days, don't remember how thirsty you must certainly have been, don't remember who found you or who took care of your leg and hardly remember moving into this little tent. You only remember how the mud and splinters of wood and metal felt in your hands as you tore through them, looking and looking. If you hadn't fallen down you could have kept on digging. Maybe you could have found them. One of them, at least. Maybe.
Or maybe someone else found them. Maybe somebody reached out and caught them. This is what you're thinking now. You want the people who have come here to help to help you find your children, because you are growing more and more sure they're still alive. You dream of them at night. Doesn't that mean they're still alive?
You have never heard of Episcopal Relief and Development. You have never even heard of mental health. You have never seen a counselor: your family took care of you, and you took care of them, and that was always that. But here in the camp there are people who have come here only to listen as you tell your story, over and over again, and who help you think about what's happening right now. What might happen? About how terribly you miss your babies and, over and over again, how you dug and dug and couldn't find them.
Sometimes you talk about what you had and what you have right now. What you might do now. Sometimes you just don't care. But sometimes you do, and it is so clear that the lady to whom you've been talking cares a great deal what happens to you, and she isn't even in your family.
The counselor returns to her own tent, thinking of the young woman who clawed through the mud. Wouldn't it be something if her children were still alive? She has the basic physical things she needs now, she tells herself, and I have been given the privilege of bringing God's word to her. Just by my listening, God has spoken words to her that will help her live again.
