Inter-Faith Epistle from Tsunamiland, Sri Lanka, Batticaloa, Butterfly Garden

Here's another report from Tsunamiland, Sri Lanka sent by Poho in an email. - Owlb

The Guilty Heart : A Valentine’s Day Encounter at Butterfly Peace Garden

Rev. Dr. John van Eenwyk received his PhD in religion and psychological studies from the University of Chicago. A clinical psychologist, he maintains a private practice in Jungian Analysis in Olympia, Washington. He is also an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, a clinical instructor at the University of Washinton School of Medicine, and the Clinical Director of the International Trauma Treatment Program. The author of Archetypes and Strange Attractors: the Chaotic World of Symbols, he lectures internationally (Gaza, Costa Rica, the Phillipines, Switzerland, Zimbabwe, South Africa India, Sri Lanka) on Jungian psychology and the treatment of torture survivors.

This is Dr. van Eenwyk’s fifth visit to the Butterfly Garden since 1997. His seminars with the Butterfly Garden animators and staff are translated by Fr.Paul Satkunanayagam SJ and Mr. T. Suresh. The English version below is transcribed by Paul Hogan form journal notes.

Dr.John. I have come to be of service to you in any way I can. May I ask, how may I help? What do you need from me?

Animator 1: In the Garden we are called upon to be happy in the presence of the children but these days many of us are too sad. We are doing our work but it seems fraudulent somehow.

Animator 2: At the time of the tsunami I had hurt my leg in a motorcycle accident. When the water came I hobbled up to the roof of a building near where I lived. I watched people below, both old and young, being tossed about in the water. I was helpless to do anything but watch. I am young and strong. It pains me that I could do nothing to help them.

Animator 3: When it first happened I gathered and prepared clothing to give to those in need. When that was over I felt I needed to be busy doing service for those affected but the Garden was closed and I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I was glad when we came back early from our holidays. Only in the Garden have I been able to satisfy the need I have to be doing something. So many people need help.

Animator 4: I seem ultra-sensitive to this disaster. It had made me feel very raw. And critical. When I hear stories I think,”why didn’t we do something sooner?” The Butterfly Garden did not respond quickly enough. We should have been there for people right away. Where were we? On vacation. But then I found myself also incapacitated. This was so big, this tsunami. I could not find the energy or strength myself to confront it.

Animator 5: I was in class writing an exam when it happened. People were talking excitedly about the water coming but I was too involved with the exam to understand what they were talking about. When the water splashed around my fee I needed no more persuasion. I live with my auntie who raised me. My mother lives by the sea. I did not know which way to turn. I was overcome with confusion at that moment. I chose to go to the sea. I was wading in water up to my neck toward my mother’s house. I realized I could go no further or I would drown. I retreated to high ground and just fell apart. I wept thinking how I
had let both my aunt and my mother down. Miraculously my mother appeared out of the water and stood before me. This is hardly believable but there she was. Both she and my aunt were saved. My family moved to the refugee camp at Manresa. There I found my skills as a musician and animator in the Garden were useful because there were so many children. I helped out however I could, very grateful we were all alive.

Animator 6: The day before the tsunami I had had an argument with my elder sister. That was unresolved when the wave hit my village, completely flattening it. I was able to save some of my family members, though one brother died. When I was re-united with my sister she was still angry with me. Maybe even more angry than before. She blamed me for the miscarriage which occurred as a result of the tsunami in which she suffered the loss of her three-month old child. I was very saddened by this (although we are reconciled now). Other things weighed on my mind. For example, play groups were organized for children in our community almost immediately but the Butterfly Garden did not come to help us even though I am an animator here. We have so many skills here at the Garden. We could have done much to help but we did not. When I come to the Garden now I am a disappointed person. I feel alienated.

Animator 7: My mother has a problem with high blood pressure and my father suffers with asthma. I was at home with them and my sister(s?) when the water came. We four left the house together and ran helping one another to stay ahead of the wave as though we were one body. It was like a black snake was chasing us. We were in a state of utter panic by the time we crossed Kallady bridge. Even to this day the fear has not let go of us. That snake is still chasing us. Especially my parents. I worry about them being home alone when I am work here in the garden. They still feel another tsunami may come. When I hear stories of the children who come into our Garden I feel overwhelmed.

Animator 8: Thousands upon thousands of incidents took place simultaneously during the tsunami. Only know are all the stories beginning to unravel. We are listening to one another and helping each to shoulder the burden of his or her pain. I have an uncle who was disabled. What was his death like? He was utterly helpless. He could only watch himself and those around him die being hurled about in the surf. And another friend I think about was disabled. What was it like for these people? I get angry when I think about it. I find I am easily angered these days.

Animator 9: I am very wary now of the natural world. I distrust it. When I was thirteen I very nearly drowned at sea and in the cyclone of 1978 the wind was so ferocious and brought death and destruction all around me. I cannot bear to hear high wind even to this day. I fear water and air. I do not trust the elements. So what kind of future can there be? At the same time I love this world and would like to live forever. I fear my own death now more than ever.

Animator 10: I was taking care of some business at the police station when this tsunami hit. Afterwards I tried to contact the animators and to make over to Katadi’s house in Kallady. We should have rallied together but people were scattered and the phones didn’t work. This tsunami was more than a physical outrage. It shook us to the core of our being. We were helpless.

Animator 11: I had a beloved auntie who died in the disaster. Now we all worry about the seven-year old son who survived her. He has become demanding and aggressive in a way he never was before. He will only take the food we prepare if it comes from his mother from his mother’s hand. We have to beg him to eat. I am very worried if he continues in this manner. He is also violent at school and with his playmates.

Animator 12: I as in Colombo attending a workshop at the time of the tsunami. When we heard what was happening all around the country we were thrown into a state of shock and disbelief. We called back home for information but it was
impossible to get through in most cases. The lines were jammed. I called the police in Eravur. They were helpful enough to tell me about my own village. When I returned home I found displaced people everywhere. Although my immediate
family was unaffected, I felt useless. I wanted to go to the camps to help but I didn’t because, in searching myself, I felt devastated. I could not find strength anywhere in myself. I did not feel I had anything to offer. I was also afraid another tsunami would come. Added to all this, my own inaction depressed me the most.

Animator 13: many children have come into the Garden from Katankoodi. I went to visit this community and I found some of our children there had died. I am ashamed to say that, to this day, no one from the Garden has visited the families of these children to offer condolence. I ask myself, why is this? We are supposed to be here for the children and their families. One mother asked me to find a photo of the little daughter she lost in the tsunami, a child who was with us in the Garden for some time. I have searched through our photo archive but so far I have not found a picture of her. It would mean so much to
the family. We animators should visit families in which Garden children have been lost.

Animator 2: Now we are busy going to the camps. We had the painting project in the camps and we can see what is happening there. It is clear many people have not worked out their feelings. They are dead to their feelings. Zombies. I can
tell them that they would be better to look into their sorrow now rather than when they leave the camp, but who am I to do that? When they go back home they will find a vacuum. Before the tsunami there may have been an orderly household
in which each member played a role. Now these members are missing. Life is altered forever. So the trauma then, when they return to their former home, will be doubled... One day near the seashore I encountered a grieving mother. She was watching children play under the trees and she told me how disturbed she was that these children lived and her two children died. “My children were hard-working and high-achieving students. These kids are useless idlers. Yet they are still here playing and my children are gone.” …There is a mountain of unresolved anger and sorrow. There is shame and guilt everywhere.

Animator 14: My family was hit hard by the Tsunami. When the first wave came, we went to the front porch. The second wave was higher, so we went inside. We climbed up on a counter, but even that was not high enough as the wave rose above the tops of the doorways. I was holding onto my mother-in-law because she has diabetes and cannot walk very well. I saw my six-year-old son being swept out the door by the water. He cried out to me “Mama, save me!” I didn’t know what to do. If let go of my mother-in-law, she would drown. If I didn’t, my son would drown. Finally, I wrapped part of her sari around my wrist and plunged through the water to my son and I grabbed him as the wave moved on. After the third wave came, we fled to the Butterfly Garden. My mother-in-law put her feet on top of mine as I walked. There was a large crowd there, so we
moved into the convent across the street. We remain there to this day.

Animator 9: It is unbelievable to see what some of our people did to desecrate the memory of those who died. Can you believe they went out looking for corpses and then robbed them of their jewelry? I am so angry about this I would like to shoot and kill these people. I must say it angers me to hear people going around blaming God for the tsunami. God is merciful. The tsunami could have come at night and many thousands more would have died. God is merciful, but these dogs who rob from the dead show no mercy.

Animator 4: There was an ashram-orphanage on the Kallady shore which was home to 26 little boys. I only learned about it after the tsunami. Sadly, I also learned that the swami who lived there and all of the boys died. II felt terrible about this.These were children who should have been coming here to the Garden. They never got their chance. This thought obsessed me. Day after day it returned to haunt me so I decided I to visit Kallady and pay respect to these children in the place where they died. Once there I found myself picking up small mementos of their lives and putting them in by bag: little toys, school exercise books, a slipper, a bracelet. I brought them back with me to the Garden. On the 41st Day after the Tsunami we created a ceremony with the children from the camps. At one point during the ritual, when the sea shells were buried with the kundumuni seeds under the coconut tree near Sampa’s (the pelican) house, I placed the articles I had collected from the ashram in branches of the tree. In that way these children, at last, came to the Garden. The ritual freed me freed from the sadness and depression I had felt about what happened to these kids.

Animator 12: I don’t know what to say to kids who have survived the loss of so many friends and family members, all on the same day at the same time. You know, the other day some kids begged me to let them come into the Garden. They said to me, “When are you going to let us come into the Garden? Are you only going to look after us once we are dead?”

Animator 6: I have seen Newton’s law at work here: every action with an equal and opposite reaction. Take for example anger. It is making the rounds. These days it takes very little to get someone angry. Then they pass it on to someone
of lesser station. The old shout at the young. The big man at the little woman. Mothers lash out at their children.

Animator 3: The children who come into the Garden seem particularly sensitive to abandonment these days. We have to be very careful once we include them in the activities to follow through with them until they have completed everything. One little girl the other day left while I was momentarily attending to someone else. She went off with Jallis. Later she came to me and said she left because I did not care for her or want to be with her. She was very hurt. I tried to reassure her.

Animator 15: We have been going into affected communities and we are doing the work that needs to be done. But let us not overlook the camps. The trauma there is most apparent among adults who are completely preoccupied with their own survival. Kids are getting overlooked, I feel. In particular there is a pressing need to engage with the youth. The camp authorities are not developing any kind of relationships with adolescents between the ages of 16 and 19. We need to look into this.

Dr. John: I feel it is presumptuous of me to come here to speak to you in this Garden but since you have invited me I am here and I shall speak. Something you should know is that you people here at the Butterfly Garden are functioning on the highest level of psychological skill and I sometime think you do not know that.

I have come here five times since 1997. Every time I come I am more impressed by what you do here. Your ability to put together rituals is the best I have seen anywhere in the world. You have been doing it so long and under such complex conditions you do not even know you are doing it.

Now I would like to speak to you not as a psychologist but as a priest. I am a Christian priest in the Episcopal tradition. However, you should know that I do not believe one religion is better than another. Each has its own approach to ultimate reality and they all meet as one in this one reality. I am not here to convert you to anything. The concerns you express today are beyond any psychology I know. They are profoundly religious concerns. Psychologically you are doing fine but you have raised very important religious issues.

I would like to share a story with you from my Christian tradition. It concerns Adam and Eve who, as this story has it, were the original humans and who lived in a paradise where everything was provided for them. They were told they could have whatever they pleased but they were not to eat the fruit of one tree under pain of death. However a snake persuaded them to indulge themselves. “You will not die if you eat that fruit but you will see,” said the snake.

This is an important story because it raises an important question: is it a blessing or a curse to be able to see?

The earth which moved did not see; the tsunami did not see; even the thieves who stole the jewelry from dead people did not see. They all exist at a low level of functioning. The man who steals from the dead does not care about the person he steals from. He sees only jewels and gold. He does not see the person. He steals because he cannot see. People like this are blind. They don’t care about others. They do not feel guilt.

It is good to feel guilty. If you feel guilty it means you care. The problem with guilt though is that it never knows when to stop talking. It keeps up this steady accusatory monologue. We eat the fruit and see. Is it better not to see and feel no guilt, or is it better to see and feel the burden of guilt? Here we are at the Butterfly Garden and we all see and we care. So we are always going to feel guilty.

There are three things that may help you with feelings of guilt. (1) Know your limitations and don’t be afraid to say, “I can’t do it. I’d love to but I cannot.” If we do not respect our limitations, chances are we will find ourselves acting like gods only to discover that we are not. We are only human. Not knowing our limitations we soon burn out if we stretch ourselves beyond
human capacity. (2) There is the issue of control. This tsunami was completely out of control. What it did to communities along the seashore and to the land itself was out of control. What the tsunami did to people’s psychology was also out of control, completely, and it continues to be. Both on the level of the material and the psychological, this tsunami was out of control. It is important to understand this. So that is number (3). Understanding is the third factor you should be aware of in dealing with guilt.

With regard to understanding there are two definitions that should be borne in mind. We can understand something in the sense of “grasping” it and then controlling it. For example, mathematics. We can grasp what numbers are and put them to work for us. But the tsunami must be understood in another way. We can “be present” to it; we can “stand under” it and let its meaning slowly penetrate us and transform us. In being present and bearing witness through seeing with eyes and heart wide open, we gradually integrate and re-constellate meaning in our tsunami-shattered lives.

With regard to psychological trauma we cannot use the first form of understanding. We must go to the second definition of understanding as presence. In working with the children of the Garden we stand by them in what they are experiencing, we accompany them in their daily lives, whether it is the war or the tsunami or just ordinary life as children in Batticaloa. This is
the most powerful form of healing - this presence and constancy - but it is subtle and it takes place over a long period of time.

I make fun of “traumatologists” who are descending on Sri Lanka because their methods imply a quick fix – as if by the use of some easy-to-learn method all the pain and grief of this tsunami will be magically evaporate and life will return to normal. It really makes my blood boil. If any of you dare call me a traumatologist I’m going to go get a gun and shoot you. After all, I am an American. That’s the way we do things.

One further point to remember is that this work in the Garden may seem all fun and games but really it’s very sophisticated and it takes its toll on you. Have you ever noticed the way the kids come into the Garden all agitated and
scattered and go home at peace with themselves, and then how you come into the Garden at peace with yourself and leave in the evening all agitated and at odds with yourself and the world. Well, think about it. Something happens here in
the healing process. Some kind of transference. Some kind of transformation. It goes both ways. You have to be present for this exchange. It is a kind of initiation. You can participate fully in the Garden and reap its harvest only by being aware of it and understanding what’s going on.

One last thought. It’s very important to have a life of your own outside the Garden that is more important to you than the Garden. I remember one of my teachers in the seminary told me, “no one is fully a priest, John, until he can urinate on the altar”.

So the tsunami has released a powerful shock to the collective and individual psyche and its effects will be felt as powerful feelings, one of which is guilt. Some of these feelings will wash quietly about inside you for a long time to come. Others will take you by surprise thrashing you wildly about in their wake, then vanishing. In dealing with the guilt factor, remind yourself
of these three things:

(i) In every way this tsunami was (and is) out of control.
(ii) You are only human and you have limitations.
(iii) Be fully present to the situation you are in.

Through relationship in presence to this situation and to one another you will grow in understanding, wisdom and compassion.


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