Fire and Ashes and Tried Faith

A Father Rick coda

Father Rick Frechette blesses the dead at the Port-au-Prince morgue. Photo credit: Andre Lucat

As a journalism professional, I have no compunction about beating dead horses, in keeping with the low standards of my trade. Though I usually like to wait a few weeks or months before returning to a subject.  With the short attention spans of readers these days, many won’t remember the first go-around anyway.  (Not you - the other readers!)

But I’m breaking my own rule. Just a few days ago, I related the tale of my travels in Haiti with Father Rick Frechette, a genuine American badass priest (I say this as a Prot), who cares enough to make a difference in an often cruel and indifferent world. He does things like taking water to one of the world’s worst slums, rescuing kidnapping victims, and cleaning bodies out of the morgue in Port-au-Prince each week (where I went along with him, and which resembles the tenth concentric circle of Hell), burying the unclaimed dead in cardboard coffins made by his staff, to give them a modicum of dignity in death that they often weren’t afforded in life. If you haven’t read about him, you should. I put the piece behind a paywall last week for my favorite subscribers (the ones who help keep a roof over my head), but have taken that down so even shameless freeloaders can have a crack.  (I will likely rerun the original 11,000-word profile I did on Frechette after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti at a later date during a week when I’m away.)

I don’t mean for this to become some holy roller site, mind you. I’ll get back to my regular irreverent and trivial bleatings soon enough. Or not. As my favorite theologian, Jim Harrison, once said, “I like grit. I like love and death. I’m tired of irony.”  But since Frechette’s story and words touched many of you, I’d like to share an email he sent after I forwarded him last week’s column.

He didn’t mention whether he liked the column by the way. Which is just fine by me, considering he had more pressing concerns. Again, as I related last week, he writes letters in E.E. Cummings-fashion, with poetic line breaks, no caps, and infrequent punctuation. It’s his epistolary quirk. But I’m letting it stand, because it works for him.  This is what he wrote:

hello matt

you know ash wednesday has big meaning for us catholics

last week, the night before ash wednesday (typically the tuesday of mardi gras excesses)

as we offered evening prayers there was a ton of gunfire, right close to us

hoping stupidly (more to avoid reality) that they were mardi gras firecrakers

even though we long ago got good at telling the difference

it was a bandit attack on our neighborhood

we were in anguish for our children down the road, but could not approach without being killed

police finally came shooting in all directions and broke it up-

we finally learned everyone was ok

wednesday morning, ashes at 7am mass

a good blotch of ashes on our foreheads

to remind us we are dust and our days numbered-

they really are-

and to use time well

during the mass someone came to tell me

that as far as the shooting last night

it was not quite true that everyone is alright

there was a charred car, and a dead man in it burned to ashes

off we went

priestly alb and stole

loaded with very tried faith, and a handful of psalms

we made our raid on the unspeakable

on the street

with all the gawkers including school children

ashes on our heads looking at a burned skull swimming in the ashes of what was once a body

we dared to think

when everything is lost

you still have everything-

the soul

we made our prayers for nephesh

the living soul of our brother

for the safe journey to God

to quote Rumi

"when the undertaker has well tied my jaw

you will still hear my music

coming from my dead silence"

the unspeakable was spoken

as i was leaving

i realized i was standing on bullet shells

i thought

"thank GOD he was shot before he was burned"

really?

has life become a hierarchy of horrors?

it is becoming only what we make it

Father Rick burying the dead in mass graves in cardboard coffins

When I told Frechette I wanted to run this email, he assented, though asked if I thought it was too dark. No, I told him. Those of us who publish things often tend to want to wrap life up with a tidy bow, when it is anything but tidy. From Ukraine to Haiti to people you probably know, or might even be yourself, suffering surrounds us. Such is life – it ain’t a Hallmark movie. And so I told him I wanted to run it as is. Besides, as my other favorite theologian, Tom Waits, says: “The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”

Bonus mission: If you want to alleviate some of that suffering, you can check out the site for Father’s Rick’s mission, the St. Luke Foundation for Haiti. I’ve known Rick for well over a decade now, and he’s a modest person. When I asked him what was the best site to go to if my readers wanted to donate, he just insisted on giving me the general address, and readers could find where to do so if so inclined. He’s not shoving it at you. But I am. In honoring his wishes, here’s the general site. But you can find the donate button on the upper right hand corner. There are a lot of worthy causes in this world. This one is among the worthiest – I’ve checked it out myself on the ground.

Bonus track: Here’s a pristine piece of music, an underappreciated Bob Dylan song from the late nineties, “Not Dark Yet,” with a little Franz Schubert mixed in. It’s performed here by the angel-voiced Aoife O’Donovan, who is accompanied by The Jacobsens on cello and violin. Do stick around for their strings interlude at the 3:10 mark. You won’t be sorry.