If you got the news, more tragedy rocked India today. Blasts killed close to 100 innocent people in various targeted areas. The Hindustan Times had it all over the front page.
What an appropriate day for the fall semester Day of Fasting and Prayer here at New Theological College.
I have been part of several such days. The first was in Kenya about 10 years ago. When I returned from Scott Theological College that year I hosted a similar day at our church. We had a wonderful time. But, like every prayer effort we attempt as a congregation, it went nowhere.
The rest have been here in India. I admit it is easy to have such a day here where we all live in one campus. Classes are cancelled. What a gift. Here’s how it went down.
After personal devotional time in at home the chapel opens for the day’s events.
I tuck my Bible and a devotional book, published by Upper Room, that I found in Uncle George’s library under my arm and amble along the walkways to this new building that sits on the height of the campus’ acres. The sun warms the earth as it lifts over the rugged hilltops a few miles to the east.
Palm and mango trees host birds that seem to be enjoying the sparkling air. Bougainvillea is in bloom, along with marigolds and many more flowering annuals, as well as those plants with showy leaves.
I am one of the first, not realizing that the service will start about an hour later than a class day chapel service. No mind. Who could help but enjoy pulling a chair to the window, with the sun warming one’s back, and praising God for the mountains to the north, its tiptop houses white in the morning sun? They look like teeth that have been treated to a whitening process.
I have been asking God to show me a text for my Sunday morning sermon, now just two days away. After thumbing here and there, as usual something starts to click and Scriptures lead one to another. It will have something to do with bones, I think. But that’s for another day.
I rise to take a few photos of the breath-taking scene. What a location for a house of worship! We can see in every direction.
Wait! What’s that catching my eye? A 5-inch lizard scoots along the window ledge—a ledge that goes around the whole perimeter of the room, probably 500 feet of it. Zoom the Canon and snap a shot.
I recall the Scripture that speaks of how lizards live in the palaces of kings, doing their share of house-cleaning, I suppose.
I hear something tapping on the windows. It’s a jay-like bird clinging to the frame of these metal windows and tapping gently here and there. Are they sharpening their beaks or just being playful? I hope the shot comes out—they flit about energetically. They may not be sparrows in the taxonomical sense, but they have made a nest for themselves even near the altar, as the Psalmist noted 3000 years ago.
The worship team assembles yards away to get instructions from Professor Matthew, who is leading the first session. Men, women, faculty, and their families are drifting in.
Once again—silence. Beautiful silence. No tapes playing. No whispering let alone talking. Heads are bowed, Bibles open. I sense the presence of God.
Matthew and the translator take their places at the pulpit. Quietly we begin. He previews the day. We’ll be praying the ACTS sequence. We will break up into small bands of 7 or so by turning our chairs at the right time. We’ll spend 15 minutes in pure Adoration of who God is. After a song we’ll focus on Confessing our own and also corporate sins. Then it will be time for Thanksgiving. Supplications will come in the afternoon.
The time flies by.
Then the worship music team leads us in another time of singing—mostly Hindi songs, but a few English—Shout to the Lord, Above All Kingdoms, Blessed Assurance are among those I can do more than hum along with. But humming is fine, too. It lets me watch this community swaying to the music or clapping to the beat, raising the occasional hand. Pretty much like home—so far.
I think how privileged I am to be adopted as a member of this band of believers.
We leave for an hour break. It’s half ten.
Coming back, we are ready for the preaching service. Professor Thomas Cherian, an Old Testament scholar, begins his hour long exposition of Joshua taking the city of Jericho. It’s a slow start, and he is struggling to get into the English mode. (I don’t know how these folk switch, usually with fluency, from Hindi to English. By the time he is twenty minutes along he is getting his rhythm. He is applying the text to our situation, too. And while some of his exegesis is a bit of stretch, he makes four points as the walls come tumbling down—the first walled city Joshua captured with 30 still to go. God can bring down walls that seem too big for us to conquer if we trust and obey.
It’s a standard type of sermon, really. But as we are running toward the one-hour mark, he kicks for the finish line. His voice is elevating and quickening its cadence. Soon he is praying and exhorting us to cast our troubles onto the Almighty and to believe for healing of our fears, our disobedience, our aliments and our sufferings.
Now the congregation begins to pray aloud, crying to the Lord. It’s not chaotic, mind you, or edging toward excess. I feel caught up, but not more than you would expect from a philosopher and congregational Calvinist minister. Up until today I have been perhaps more expressive in chapel than most of these charismatics. Today, however, they pull ahead of me and show their stuff.
Now don’t get me wrong. This is not over-the-top Pentecostalism by any means. Nothing like the questionable shows you see on religious TV. But they are showing their love in an enthusiastic way.
Time for 2-hour break for private prayer and rest. No food has touched lips so far.
I will confess that I had a Wasa bread at the earlier break and a small breakfast at noon that I fixed myself. But then, I’m in a strange land trying to keep well enough to do what I came for without chancing a problem. I prayed about it and got what I took to be a green light. Full disclosure here.
The thing that impressed me most about the morning, however, were the prayers of confession in our group, mostly faculty. Not shy about asking the mercy of God on our many offences and compromises. Why is this so rare back home?
At 2:30 we are back for the communion service, presided over by Professor George Oomen. He is wearing a collar-like shirt and using a prayer book as well as his Bible. He gives a brief homily from the I Corinthians, exhorting us to eat and drink worthily. I find the crafted wording of his comments beautiful to my ear and heart alike.
The attendants come up to help. Four men on one side; four women students on the other. The first holds a plate with bread pieces, the second a tray of cups. We file down the center aisle, beginning with the front rows—men to the left, women and faculty to the right. Take the bread piece. Drink a cup and return it right to the tray. And move away in a circle.
But here is the unusual part. Rev. Oomen has explained that there is a voluntary foot washing to remind us of what Jesus did for his disciples in John’s Gospel chapter 13. We had already left our sandals under our chairs.
In the side sections to right and left of the main auditorium, chairs have been set by twos, facing each other, with a basin in between. A towel is on the arm of one of the chairs.
As I stand waiting, one of the girls motions me to a chair. I see no partner moving with me. But I sit down. The man who appears at this station is Simon Samuel, the principal of NTC. He smiles, kneels down, pouring water from a pitcher over my feet, then drying with the towel. This man is a top scholar and godly man whom I respect greatly. I sense how the disciples might have felt when Jesus himself stooped to this lowly service.
I do the same for him. We rise, embrace with joyous smiles and return to our seats.
As we are coming to the end, it is time to greet one another with a holy kiss—men to men, women to women. (This is India.) So we all mix about, embracing the way you see people in the middle east do when heads of state meet together.
Now its time to go down for tea—this time everyone gets a large semi-sweet bun to break the fast.
As I am walking back to the guesthouse I muse on the beauty of this refreshing day spent with the Lord and his dear ones.
At home we have lost the art and discipline of fasting and praying, even though Jesus commends it. Why is that, I wonder?
I have only a possible answer.
Our brothers and sisters in India, China, Iran, Arab countries, Africa and other like places are under obvious attack by the enemies of Christ. To stay true to the mission to love their enemies they seek a deeper level than most western churches do.
When we get to the place where bombs are killing believers within our borders and mobs are torching churches, then perhaps we’ll become faithful to the Lord in this matter.
For Jesus did say, when asked why his disciples did not fast, that they would fast when “the Bridegroom” was taken from them. Hence the early churches fasted as well as prayed as a matter of course.
What a shame that we are so weak on corporate prayer and totally absent when it comes to corporate fasting.
These brothers and sisters have a lot to teach us.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
What A Friend
Come, walk with me this morning.
I had a good sleep last night. How about you? For a week I have been fighting sleep starting at about 7 PM—like you do when driving late at night and your eyes keep fending off micro-bursts of sleep. Last night I gave in and “went under” at 8 PM When I woke it was still pitch dark. I listened for sounds that would clue me what time it was. I didn’t flash the light at my watch for fear it would show 1 or 2 AM as it had other nights. So I lay there listening for clues. Diwali fire crackers (still the wee hours), the wren in song (close to dawn), or the early traffic out on the Kulhan Road. No sounds at all.
Nothing.
I hate to get up when it’s the middle of the night, don’t you? It re-starts your brain so that it’s hard to get it back into sleep mode. But there was no putting it off. Up. "Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to go I go." Consult the watch. 5:30 AM! I couldn’t believe it. I actually slept nearly 10 hours!
So let’s go! Find shoes. Take key. Sling the stretch cord around my neck. Out the door.
The hills are etched against the sky to the east, north and south. Look—there’s Orion’s famous belt. We must be looking southwest. It’s cool but not cold. Walk faster, we’ll warm up soon enough. I flex the squeezers on the end of my exercise stretch cord. Keep those hand and arm muscles toned. Use it or lose it. At my age if I lose it it’s not coming back!
Night lights on the buildings blink off—must be dawning. Lights in the Women’s Hostel appear. Its 6:00 now—time for their corporate devotions prior to breakfast.
Wash up. Dress up—long sleeve shirt today. Breakfast at 7:15. Grab a Bible. Over the ups and downs of the men’s walkways (girls take a different path and enter the Chapel through a different stairway to sit in the women’s block of seats) and into the new chapel.
Not a sound can be heard even though there are already over 100 present. This chapel is so huge compared to the first chapel, which is now used for music classes. If they roll in more plastic “Walmart” arm chairs over 1500 can be seated, as for a graduation.
Not a sound as we sit in the faculty/staff section and read from the Bible or meditate upon the rising day.
A bell sounds a single tone. The music team files onto the platform to pick up their guitars or to stand at the mics for singing. The speaker and his interpreter take their stations at the pulpit.
This month the seniors are doing the services by turns. A tiny video cam stares at the podium. The ministry professor will do a re-run in preaching class later in the day. But now we are here to worship not critique.
He begins—as they all do—thanking the professors, his sponsors, the founders of the college—but he does not mention his parents. He also thanks his fellow students, since as a freshman he felt lonely and now he has seen how many have befriended him. (This is significant—hang on.)
Our preacher, after we sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” announces his text from John 11, the raising of Lazarus from the dead. His sermon is Jesus as Our Friend.
Do you notice how hard it is to get his meaning? English is his second language and he has a long way to go. But having every sentence paused by the rhythm of the translator gives us time to dig out the words from the sounds we have just heard that pretend to be English. God must be helping us, because we can follow his train of thought.
His simple message reminds me of the one I preached as a candidate for the pulpit at West Congregational Church on October 25, 1959—Christ, Our Redeemer the title. So also our speaker has the three obligatory points early pulpiteers are encouraged to adopt before they get experience enough to be more creative.
Jesus is a friend. Jesus is a good friend. Jesus is a mighty friend—three points.
Jesus loved Lazarus, Martha and Mary. He was always welcome in their home as a haven from his stressful ministry. Martha loved people by action, serving them. She goes out to the edge of town to meet Jesus as he chats at the gate with the elders. Mary, the shy contemplative who loves by listening, has to be sent for. They all meet at the tomb, along with scores of neighbors gathered to help the sisters mourn.
Then the shortest verse in the English Bible—John 11:35. (In confirmation class at the Swedish church back in 1945, I recall how cousin Harry Carlson selected that verse when the pastor told us to come with a verse of our choice memorized next week.) “Jesus wept.” Jesus truly cares. He weeps not out of sorrow like the other mourners, but out of anger that death should despoil life when God created us to live endlessly in fellowship with him. Yes, Jesus is a good friend.
Then he raises Lazarus from the dead and restores him to his sisters and neighbors. Jesus is a mighty friend. So when we go through sorrows and sufferings in life we know he has not abandoned us. “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.” He has us rise for a benediction. We are dismissed.
We have been truly blessed, don’t you agree? Sure, this word was plain, even homely. The speaker is a beginner and stretching to deliver his word in English. But God has spoken to our hearts.
Did you like his bit of humor? Always a good thing in any sermon.
This mullah is arguing with his wife at an ever-increasing decibel level that all the neighbors can hear. He demands she change her ways or he will divorce her. (Muslims can divorce a wife by simply saying three times, I divorce you.) A friend knocks on the door and is invited in. “How is everything going with you? How is the wife?” the visitor asks. “Just fine, thank you—everything is fine.” He tells his wife to prepare a cup of tea for their friend. “You are divorcing me, so get yourself a new wife and have her make your cups of tea!”
As we break up, I notice that the faculty and staff are not signing the attendance register today. The side desk is empty. There has been a bit of sickness going around so maybe the staff woman didn’t make it to chapel with the book. Last night four girls were stricken with stomach bugs—probably from some Diwali festival food brought in from off campus. In a few hours they were OK. We queue at the stairwell. (Can you imagine if there were an emergency how 1500 people would get out using two single-file stairways?)
I see Simon Samuel, the principal, and remark on the sermon. Did you catch what he said about the preacher’s background? This student had been brought as a small child to a Hindu temple and offered to the god. He was raised by the priests and never saw his parents again all during his growing years. He still suffers from the scars of abandonment, for even when he located his parents no relationship was ever established.
So when he preaches on Jesus, Our Friend, the community hears a profound testimony. There were tears in some eyes, Simon says. When he urged us to remember we have a mighty friend in times of sorrow and even death, he is not mouthing a platitude. The friendship of Jesus and of the community has changed his life. He now belongs to a Father who will never abandon him to some god in this world. He now has a beloved community of brothers and sisters who support him.
We descend the stairs in a thoughtful mood.
Once again God has spoken through the lowly ones. The more homely and halting the messenger, the more powerfully the grace and glory of God shine upon the hearers.
God chose Mary, not some princess, when he came into our world. He chose to send to us a Savior via a peasant home in a hamlet, not a grand villa in upscale Jerusalem. He still speaks through halting speech to arrest our attention, not the slick oratory of the teleprompter.
God knew I needed to hear that. What about you?
I had a good sleep last night. How about you? For a week I have been fighting sleep starting at about 7 PM—like you do when driving late at night and your eyes keep fending off micro-bursts of sleep. Last night I gave in and “went under” at 8 PM When I woke it was still pitch dark. I listened for sounds that would clue me what time it was. I didn’t flash the light at my watch for fear it would show 1 or 2 AM as it had other nights. So I lay there listening for clues. Diwali fire crackers (still the wee hours), the wren in song (close to dawn), or the early traffic out on the Kulhan Road. No sounds at all.
Nothing.
I hate to get up when it’s the middle of the night, don’t you? It re-starts your brain so that it’s hard to get it back into sleep mode. But there was no putting it off. Up. "Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to go I go." Consult the watch. 5:30 AM! I couldn’t believe it. I actually slept nearly 10 hours!
So let’s go! Find shoes. Take key. Sling the stretch cord around my neck. Out the door.
The hills are etched against the sky to the east, north and south. Look—there’s Orion’s famous belt. We must be looking southwest. It’s cool but not cold. Walk faster, we’ll warm up soon enough. I flex the squeezers on the end of my exercise stretch cord. Keep those hand and arm muscles toned. Use it or lose it. At my age if I lose it it’s not coming back!
Night lights on the buildings blink off—must be dawning. Lights in the Women’s Hostel appear. Its 6:00 now—time for their corporate devotions prior to breakfast.
Wash up. Dress up—long sleeve shirt today. Breakfast at 7:15. Grab a Bible. Over the ups and downs of the men’s walkways (girls take a different path and enter the Chapel through a different stairway to sit in the women’s block of seats) and into the new chapel.
Not a sound can be heard even though there are already over 100 present. This chapel is so huge compared to the first chapel, which is now used for music classes. If they roll in more plastic “Walmart” arm chairs over 1500 can be seated, as for a graduation.
Not a sound as we sit in the faculty/staff section and read from the Bible or meditate upon the rising day.
A bell sounds a single tone. The music team files onto the platform to pick up their guitars or to stand at the mics for singing. The speaker and his interpreter take their stations at the pulpit.
This month the seniors are doing the services by turns. A tiny video cam stares at the podium. The ministry professor will do a re-run in preaching class later in the day. But now we are here to worship not critique.
He begins—as they all do—thanking the professors, his sponsors, the founders of the college—but he does not mention his parents. He also thanks his fellow students, since as a freshman he felt lonely and now he has seen how many have befriended him. (This is significant—hang on.)
Our preacher, after we sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” announces his text from John 11, the raising of Lazarus from the dead. His sermon is Jesus as Our Friend.
Do you notice how hard it is to get his meaning? English is his second language and he has a long way to go. But having every sentence paused by the rhythm of the translator gives us time to dig out the words from the sounds we have just heard that pretend to be English. God must be helping us, because we can follow his train of thought.
His simple message reminds me of the one I preached as a candidate for the pulpit at West Congregational Church on October 25, 1959—Christ, Our Redeemer the title. So also our speaker has the three obligatory points early pulpiteers are encouraged to adopt before they get experience enough to be more creative.
Jesus is a friend. Jesus is a good friend. Jesus is a mighty friend—three points.
Jesus loved Lazarus, Martha and Mary. He was always welcome in their home as a haven from his stressful ministry. Martha loved people by action, serving them. She goes out to the edge of town to meet Jesus as he chats at the gate with the elders. Mary, the shy contemplative who loves by listening, has to be sent for. They all meet at the tomb, along with scores of neighbors gathered to help the sisters mourn.
Then the shortest verse in the English Bible—John 11:35. (In confirmation class at the Swedish church back in 1945, I recall how cousin Harry Carlson selected that verse when the pastor told us to come with a verse of our choice memorized next week.) “Jesus wept.” Jesus truly cares. He weeps not out of sorrow like the other mourners, but out of anger that death should despoil life when God created us to live endlessly in fellowship with him. Yes, Jesus is a good friend.
Then he raises Lazarus from the dead and restores him to his sisters and neighbors. Jesus is a mighty friend. So when we go through sorrows and sufferings in life we know he has not abandoned us. “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.” He has us rise for a benediction. We are dismissed.
We have been truly blessed, don’t you agree? Sure, this word was plain, even homely. The speaker is a beginner and stretching to deliver his word in English. But God has spoken to our hearts.
Did you like his bit of humor? Always a good thing in any sermon.
This mullah is arguing with his wife at an ever-increasing decibel level that all the neighbors can hear. He demands she change her ways or he will divorce her. (Muslims can divorce a wife by simply saying three times, I divorce you.) A friend knocks on the door and is invited in. “How is everything going with you? How is the wife?” the visitor asks. “Just fine, thank you—everything is fine.” He tells his wife to prepare a cup of tea for their friend. “You are divorcing me, so get yourself a new wife and have her make your cups of tea!”
As we break up, I notice that the faculty and staff are not signing the attendance register today. The side desk is empty. There has been a bit of sickness going around so maybe the staff woman didn’t make it to chapel with the book. Last night four girls were stricken with stomach bugs—probably from some Diwali festival food brought in from off campus. In a few hours they were OK. We queue at the stairwell. (Can you imagine if there were an emergency how 1500 people would get out using two single-file stairways?)
I see Simon Samuel, the principal, and remark on the sermon. Did you catch what he said about the preacher’s background? This student had been brought as a small child to a Hindu temple and offered to the god. He was raised by the priests and never saw his parents again all during his growing years. He still suffers from the scars of abandonment, for even when he located his parents no relationship was ever established.
So when he preaches on Jesus, Our Friend, the community hears a profound testimony. There were tears in some eyes, Simon says. When he urged us to remember we have a mighty friend in times of sorrow and even death, he is not mouthing a platitude. The friendship of Jesus and of the community has changed his life. He now belongs to a Father who will never abandon him to some god in this world. He now has a beloved community of brothers and sisters who support him.
We descend the stairs in a thoughtful mood.
Once again God has spoken through the lowly ones. The more homely and halting the messenger, the more powerfully the grace and glory of God shine upon the hearers.
God chose Mary, not some princess, when he came into our world. He chose to send to us a Savior via a peasant home in a hamlet, not a grand villa in upscale Jerusalem. He still speaks through halting speech to arrest our attention, not the slick oratory of the teleprompter.
God knew I needed to hear that. What about you?
Monday, October 27, 2008
Terrors of the Night
Terrors of the Night.
When you are away from home it’s the nights that get to you. Sleep patterns are askew.
Especially during a Hindu festival week. No noise ordinances here. Not that the night firecrackers were overpowering. They were just relentless—like a toothache that is not that excruciating but it just won’t let up.
On my early morning walk the day previous I noticed the crescent moon coming over the mountains just before dawn. Must be new moon tomorrow, I said to myself. I did not have the wit to know that many cultures center significant events around the new moon. Tonight I figured it out—at 3AM. All day yesterday crackers were banging away, echoing off the hills that circle the college in a green crescent opening to the south.
Stumbling out of bed I fire up my trusty MacBook to call up Wikipedia from the digital deep. Ms. Wiki had this to say about Diwali. (Or Divali – have you noticed Indian speakers of English pronounce all v’s as w’s and vice versa?)
"Festival of Lights," where the lights or lamps signify victory of good over the evil within every human being. Diwali is celebrated on the first day of the lunar Kartika month, which comes in the month of October or November. In many parts of India, it is the homecoming of King Rama of Ayodhya after a 14-year exile in the forest, after he defeated the evil Ravana.[4] The people of Ayodhya (the capital of his kingdom) welcomed Rama by lighting rows (avali) of lamps (deepa), thus its name: Deepavali. This word, in due course, became Diwali in Hindi. There are many different observances of the holiday across India.
Firecracker Concerns
Nowadays there is a significant growth in campaigns on creating awareness over the adverse impacts of noise and air pollution. Some governments drive to keep the festival less noisy and pollution-free. The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has banned production of crackers with noise levels of over 125 decibels.[14] In survey of UP Pollution Control Board, it was revealed that the emission of smoke was found more in the light illuminating fire crackers. Levels of SO2 (Sulphur dioxide) and RSPM (respirable suspended particulate matter) was found marginally higher on Diwali day. Crackers, which use large quantities of sulphur and paper, spew out sulphur dioxide and charcoal into the air, also lead and other metallic substances are suspended in the air causing respiratory problems.[15] Considering these facts, bursting of crackers is prohibited in silent zones i.e. near hospitals, schools and courts.
Notice it does not mention theological colleges nor monasteries. Just over the wall from this house there is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. So we are not in a quiet zone. “Good over Evil—my foot! Robbing a man of his sleep!
OK. No problem. It’s not much different from Fourth of July back home on Liberty Street where the Mahoney’s next door light the sky for an hour or two—except here there are only “bangs” with nothing to see in the night sky. And they go on for hours—in many homes and hovels of the Hindus surrounding us. Background noise all day and into the night. You’d think you were in a Los Angeles gangland.
Then the neighbors all went to bed, I guess. The noise stopped and woke me up. That’s a strange phenomenon—but it happens. At home I hear the refrigerator every time it stops, but not while it’s running. Bizarre.
So what goes through the mind in these night watches?
Let’s start with prayer. OK – but I’m not trained as a monk, so that lasts only a few minutes.
We move on to people. Nice. People back home like you. Family. And then there is my wife, the idol of my life, singing, “Roll a ball a bowl a penny pitch.” You’re too young to remember that silly ole top ten tune from last century. But my brain is idling and things like that pop up from the depths of one’s depravity.
I think how my dear Ellie is facing the stealthy encroachment of winter in New England all alone. Heavy frosts creep into her garden each night to nip another rose bloom. She is stoking fireplace and wood stove, hauling wood from the porch. All my jobs, piled onto her sagging back while “her man” is basking in Indian summer in his shirt sleeves and T’s.
How come I am smiling now? I should be feeling guilty. But I’m not as good as I should be at guilt. More depravity, I guess.
Ah, Ellie. Whatever things are noble and praiseworthy, think on these things the Good Book says. So I think….
Her new novel, already in the womb of the publisher and scheduled for a C-section the first of the year, brings to mind scenes from the life of King David as she so colorfully portrays him—warts and all.
I meanwhile am lying alone in bed. I should be in bed with my mate-with-the-icy-feet. Another opportunity for guilt—but it doesn’t quite break to the surface. I recall her portrayal of David when the old guy was my age, shivering in what would be his death bed. They had to bring in the young Abishag to be the king’s hot water bottle. That sounds good—but my hot water bottle is a continent or two away.
I begin to muse on age—a cheering thought. We all try to deny it. Botox, face lifts, emoluments of all kinds, enriching the entire vanity industry. Go on. Spend your money—it won’t stop the ravages of time.
My mind goes one more step down into the cellar of the soul.
If Ellie were to write a sequel to her David novel (The Stones), I wonder if Abishag would show up? What became of that girl who warmed the dying king? My drowsy mind comes up with a poem Ellie can use to portray the once ravishing Abishag as she suffers (as all protagonists in novels do) rejection and sinks into a tragic last chapter. Her cruel husband looks at her at his side in bed. He’s no king, but he is a guy. And all guys (in this sequel’s view) are the same, right?
Turn to the last page. He is looking at her as dawn breaks after a dark and stormy night.
“What becomes of Abishag/now that she’s a shriveled hag? She no longer warms my bed/Better off if she were—DEAD!”
That’s a true-to-real-life ending if ever there was one. I can’t wait to see how Ellie will build up to this immortal climax in Bible novel II! Maybe she can title it “The Pebbles.” Law of entropy in one hot water bottle’s life and all that….
See what I mean by the terrors of the night?
And you, dear reader, are the beneficiary of this diseased mind, the Phantom of the Guest House. Blame Diwali.
When you are away from home it’s the nights that get to you. Sleep patterns are askew.
Especially during a Hindu festival week. No noise ordinances here. Not that the night firecrackers were overpowering. They were just relentless—like a toothache that is not that excruciating but it just won’t let up.
On my early morning walk the day previous I noticed the crescent moon coming over the mountains just before dawn. Must be new moon tomorrow, I said to myself. I did not have the wit to know that many cultures center significant events around the new moon. Tonight I figured it out—at 3AM. All day yesterday crackers were banging away, echoing off the hills that circle the college in a green crescent opening to the south.
Stumbling out of bed I fire up my trusty MacBook to call up Wikipedia from the digital deep. Ms. Wiki had this to say about Diwali. (Or Divali – have you noticed Indian speakers of English pronounce all v’s as w’s and vice versa?)
"Festival of Lights," where the lights or lamps signify victory of good over the evil within every human being. Diwali is celebrated on the first day of the lunar Kartika month, which comes in the month of October or November. In many parts of India, it is the homecoming of King Rama of Ayodhya after a 14-year exile in the forest, after he defeated the evil Ravana.[4] The people of Ayodhya (the capital of his kingdom) welcomed Rama by lighting rows (avali) of lamps (deepa), thus its name: Deepavali. This word, in due course, became Diwali in Hindi. There are many different observances of the holiday across India.
Firecracker Concerns
Nowadays there is a significant growth in campaigns on creating awareness over the adverse impacts of noise and air pollution. Some governments drive to keep the festival less noisy and pollution-free. The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has banned production of crackers with noise levels of over 125 decibels.[14] In survey of UP Pollution Control Board, it was revealed that the emission of smoke was found more in the light illuminating fire crackers. Levels of SO2 (Sulphur dioxide) and RSPM (respirable suspended particulate matter) was found marginally higher on Diwali day. Crackers, which use large quantities of sulphur and paper, spew out sulphur dioxide and charcoal into the air, also lead and other metallic substances are suspended in the air causing respiratory problems.[15] Considering these facts, bursting of crackers is prohibited in silent zones i.e. near hospitals, schools and courts.
Notice it does not mention theological colleges nor monasteries. Just over the wall from this house there is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. So we are not in a quiet zone. “Good over Evil—my foot! Robbing a man of his sleep!
OK. No problem. It’s not much different from Fourth of July back home on Liberty Street where the Mahoney’s next door light the sky for an hour or two—except here there are only “bangs” with nothing to see in the night sky. And they go on for hours—in many homes and hovels of the Hindus surrounding us. Background noise all day and into the night. You’d think you were in a Los Angeles gangland.
Then the neighbors all went to bed, I guess. The noise stopped and woke me up. That’s a strange phenomenon—but it happens. At home I hear the refrigerator every time it stops, but not while it’s running. Bizarre.
So what goes through the mind in these night watches?
Let’s start with prayer. OK – but I’m not trained as a monk, so that lasts only a few minutes.
We move on to people. Nice. People back home like you. Family. And then there is my wife, the idol of my life, singing, “Roll a ball a bowl a penny pitch.” You’re too young to remember that silly ole top ten tune from last century. But my brain is idling and things like that pop up from the depths of one’s depravity.
I think how my dear Ellie is facing the stealthy encroachment of winter in New England all alone. Heavy frosts creep into her garden each night to nip another rose bloom. She is stoking fireplace and wood stove, hauling wood from the porch. All my jobs, piled onto her sagging back while “her man” is basking in Indian summer in his shirt sleeves and T’s.
How come I am smiling now? I should be feeling guilty. But I’m not as good as I should be at guilt. More depravity, I guess.
Ah, Ellie. Whatever things are noble and praiseworthy, think on these things the Good Book says. So I think….
Her new novel, already in the womb of the publisher and scheduled for a C-section the first of the year, brings to mind scenes from the life of King David as she so colorfully portrays him—warts and all.
I meanwhile am lying alone in bed. I should be in bed with my mate-with-the-icy-feet. Another opportunity for guilt—but it doesn’t quite break to the surface. I recall her portrayal of David when the old guy was my age, shivering in what would be his death bed. They had to bring in the young Abishag to be the king’s hot water bottle. That sounds good—but my hot water bottle is a continent or two away.
I begin to muse on age—a cheering thought. We all try to deny it. Botox, face lifts, emoluments of all kinds, enriching the entire vanity industry. Go on. Spend your money—it won’t stop the ravages of time.
My mind goes one more step down into the cellar of the soul.
If Ellie were to write a sequel to her David novel (The Stones), I wonder if Abishag would show up? What became of that girl who warmed the dying king? My drowsy mind comes up with a poem Ellie can use to portray the once ravishing Abishag as she suffers (as all protagonists in novels do) rejection and sinks into a tragic last chapter. Her cruel husband looks at her at his side in bed. He’s no king, but he is a guy. And all guys (in this sequel’s view) are the same, right?
Turn to the last page. He is looking at her as dawn breaks after a dark and stormy night.
“What becomes of Abishag/now that she’s a shriveled hag? She no longer warms my bed/Better off if she were—DEAD!”
That’s a true-to-real-life ending if ever there was one. I can’t wait to see how Ellie will build up to this immortal climax in Bible novel II! Maybe she can title it “The Pebbles.” Law of entropy in one hot water bottle’s life and all that….
See what I mean by the terrors of the night?
And you, dear reader, are the beneficiary of this diseased mind, the Phantom of the Guest House. Blame Diwali.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Light of His Presence
Why is it one sometimes senses God’s presence more palpably in a special environment?
People do differ on how they relate to God most powerfully. I recall a sermon series by pastor David Midwood on the various pathways to God. For some it is through prayer. For others it’s activity—doing a service for others in God’s name. Or it may be through music and the arts, and so forth.
Being one whose primary orientation to life is through ideas, I find awareness of God difficult. Often I envy those who seem close to God without any apparent effort—they breathe God in as easily as their lungs take in air.
But when I am in a close-knit believing community, as I have been the last few days, God seems to “be there” in an almost palpable way. For me, orientated to reality mostly by intellect, this is refreshing.
As Pascal and others have noted, it is hard to find God by using your head. Proving God exists simply gets you to another idea of God, not to God himself. God is not an idea, even though we humans all have some idea about him.
(Now before you tune me out, give me another few lines, please.)
As you likely know, I have been teaching philosophy for forty years. Philosophy tries to give an intellectual formulation to life—a worldview. A worldview is a set of ideas that makes sense by explaining what is real and what our place is in that reality. A good worldview provides a reasonable, though incomplete, understanding of the human condition enabling us to make sense out of our life experience.
Some can live successfully never thinking about the worldview that lies under their outlook on life, guiding them in their decisions. They just live. They don’t much think about living. That sounds appealing to me when ideas constantly whirl around in my head.
But in philosophy classes we have to bring all this to the surface so we can look at it and make adjustments. Sort of like the surgeon who pulls half your guts out to have a look and do repairs. Only he puts you under so you are not aware of what he is doing. Worldview repair requires you operate on yourself—consciously. Painful!
(Are you still with me? I know I’ve lost most of you by now. Ah well. C’est la vie.)
The biggest question humans ask has to do with God. If God is, that has got to be the ultimate reality that frames everything else. If God is not, then everything is on a different footing. So how do we know?
Many of my online students are skeptical of God’s existence because “no one can prove” God exists. The proof they are referring to usually is some kind of tangible proof, scientific proof. They would believe if they could see God. Absent that, God is just an idea we have imagined for some reason—a crutch in a scary world, a leftover from our ancestors’ superstition—that sort of thing.
(Now be patient. I will pull this all together, I promise. But you have to hang in there with the other 20% who are still pulling on the oars, 80% having clicked off to watch TV.)
To ask to see God is like asking to hear a color. It doesn’t make any sense to come at it that way.
God (if God exists) is not a physical thing (corporeal as philosophers would say). God is an incorporeal spiritual reality. He has no size or weight, for example, any more than the thoughts you are now thinking have size or weight. (Learning lots of new ideas does not make you gain weight, even though we speak of heavy thoughts.) So of course we cannot see God as we see the moon or “see” an atom.
God is known through spiritual awareness. This is tough for many of us who live in a materialist society. (Jings! As I wrote the last sentence the electricity went out here! Scared me, too. I felt for a second like the kid who kicked the light pole in New York City the same instant that the famed blackout of the entire northeast USA occurred back in 1970-something. “What have I done?” Thank God for laptops! And sunlight. Although we haven’t gotten God into our worldview yet.)
Where was I? Oh, yes.
God can only be experienced by spiritual apprehension, not sensory experience.
We know God as we know the mind and heart of another person. We cannot “see” another person, only their skin, so to speak. While the senses may be the medium through which we enter into their presence (words spoken, gestures seen), who they are cannot be a physical “thing.” (Here come the lights back on! Is Someone playing games with me? Cut it out!)
No one can see an idea. Even though ideas must be shared through some physical medium—perhaps bytes or marks on a page, the bytes and marks are not the idea. To ask to see the idea with your eyes as you see the marks of writing on this page is silly. Your eyes see the marks that make up the words but when you “see” what I mean (the ideas) it’s a different kind of seeing. A book has no mental content as such. The story is apprehended by your mind. You cannot see the story by peeking into the book’s pages. You have to grasp the story in a “spiritual” sense. “Romeo and Juliet” exist even though no one ever spoke with them physically.
Here’s what I am driving at.
God has made himself known to me here in north India in a fresh way. He is spirit—a person who exists in himself. And God exists also in those whom he indwells. Not all of God, of course, for God is infinite in his immensity, as theologians phrase it. But God is there in the hearts of those who love him, just as air exists in those who breathe.
(Those blasted lights just went out again. Aaaargh! I can no longer see my notes. But I can still “see” my train of thought.)
So if one wishes to experience God, he opens himself to God by spiritual means. Prayer/meditation is perhaps the standard avenue to God.
For me, however, I find I am in the real presence of God by visiting him in this community of his people. This theological college, hard by the foothills of the Himalayas, has some 300 souls concentrated in a compact five acres of land. All of them love God and are filled with the Holy Spirit of God. I am experiencing God through this high dosage 100-proof distillation of the life of Jesus in the hearts of his people here. The invisible Christ is mediated through the visible Body of Christ in this place. It is not the entire body of Christ, but it is Christ nonetheless, similar to my connection to all earth’s atmosphere through the tiny sample that I breathe.
In any healthy portion of the Christ-community the reality of God is experienced. God dwells in the hearts of his people, just as the ancient prophet observed millennia ago. But I say “healthy” because the body of Christ on earth is a work in progress and suffers spiritual maladies. Some of these are hardly noticeable to us, sort of like when we have the sniffles. Others are moribund, torn by deadly conflict that infects the community in question. In fact, some such congregations are pruned away in the end-amputated, if you will.
I know that this community of Christians at New Theological College, as every other Christian community, is not without impurities. It has members who are in process, who are more in doubt than indwelt. They hopefully are seeking. But they may not be there yet.
Notwithstanding, if my philosophy student wants to “see” God, go to a community like this one, where God’s Spirit is dwelling. Focus not on the imperfections or on those who are mostly still searching for a relationship with God. When you visit a church look at those who have walked a long time in the presence of God. Listen to their conversations one with another.
You will see and hear God’s presence, though not with perfect clarity. There will be static in the transmission. But you will experience God. You will see. You will hear. And through the medium of sight and sound you will become aware of God, who is seeking you out all the while. But you must be sincere, not cynical. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart—they shall see God.”
(The lights just switched on again as I was typing those last thoughts! Hmmm...)
So here I am in an empty house on a quiet Saturday, alone with God in a semi-monastic setting, set apart from the bustling world just a few miles downhill. It is a gender-blender monastery, because the sisters and brothers live in the same community. Many of the older ones are married and have children. All are walking in God.
It's a bit like the concentration of energy in a sports arena. Almost everyone is a fan of the team and the team spirit can be overwhelming. As we say, you can almost cut it with a knife.
It’s refreshing for person like me to “see” God’s presence so manifest here. I close my eyes and can sense the reality of God’s nearness.
Thus we taste and see that the Lord is good. Someday we shall see our Lord and God “face to face.” We shall know him fully even as we are fully known by him.
Meanwhile we treasure days like this when God is not behind the clouds of our often-stormy lives but shining brightly on us.
People do differ on how they relate to God most powerfully. I recall a sermon series by pastor David Midwood on the various pathways to God. For some it is through prayer. For others it’s activity—doing a service for others in God’s name. Or it may be through music and the arts, and so forth.
Being one whose primary orientation to life is through ideas, I find awareness of God difficult. Often I envy those who seem close to God without any apparent effort—they breathe God in as easily as their lungs take in air.
But when I am in a close-knit believing community, as I have been the last few days, God seems to “be there” in an almost palpable way. For me, orientated to reality mostly by intellect, this is refreshing.
As Pascal and others have noted, it is hard to find God by using your head. Proving God exists simply gets you to another idea of God, not to God himself. God is not an idea, even though we humans all have some idea about him.
(Now before you tune me out, give me another few lines, please.)
As you likely know, I have been teaching philosophy for forty years. Philosophy tries to give an intellectual formulation to life—a worldview. A worldview is a set of ideas that makes sense by explaining what is real and what our place is in that reality. A good worldview provides a reasonable, though incomplete, understanding of the human condition enabling us to make sense out of our life experience.
Some can live successfully never thinking about the worldview that lies under their outlook on life, guiding them in their decisions. They just live. They don’t much think about living. That sounds appealing to me when ideas constantly whirl around in my head.
But in philosophy classes we have to bring all this to the surface so we can look at it and make adjustments. Sort of like the surgeon who pulls half your guts out to have a look and do repairs. Only he puts you under so you are not aware of what he is doing. Worldview repair requires you operate on yourself—consciously. Painful!
(Are you still with me? I know I’ve lost most of you by now. Ah well. C’est la vie.)
The biggest question humans ask has to do with God. If God is, that has got to be the ultimate reality that frames everything else. If God is not, then everything is on a different footing. So how do we know?
Many of my online students are skeptical of God’s existence because “no one can prove” God exists. The proof they are referring to usually is some kind of tangible proof, scientific proof. They would believe if they could see God. Absent that, God is just an idea we have imagined for some reason—a crutch in a scary world, a leftover from our ancestors’ superstition—that sort of thing.
(Now be patient. I will pull this all together, I promise. But you have to hang in there with the other 20% who are still pulling on the oars, 80% having clicked off to watch TV.)
To ask to see God is like asking to hear a color. It doesn’t make any sense to come at it that way.
God (if God exists) is not a physical thing (corporeal as philosophers would say). God is an incorporeal spiritual reality. He has no size or weight, for example, any more than the thoughts you are now thinking have size or weight. (Learning lots of new ideas does not make you gain weight, even though we speak of heavy thoughts.) So of course we cannot see God as we see the moon or “see” an atom.
God is known through spiritual awareness. This is tough for many of us who live in a materialist society. (Jings! As I wrote the last sentence the electricity went out here! Scared me, too. I felt for a second like the kid who kicked the light pole in New York City the same instant that the famed blackout of the entire northeast USA occurred back in 1970-something. “What have I done?” Thank God for laptops! And sunlight. Although we haven’t gotten God into our worldview yet.)
Where was I? Oh, yes.
God can only be experienced by spiritual apprehension, not sensory experience.
We know God as we know the mind and heart of another person. We cannot “see” another person, only their skin, so to speak. While the senses may be the medium through which we enter into their presence (words spoken, gestures seen), who they are cannot be a physical “thing.” (Here come the lights back on! Is Someone playing games with me? Cut it out!)
No one can see an idea. Even though ideas must be shared through some physical medium—perhaps bytes or marks on a page, the bytes and marks are not the idea. To ask to see the idea with your eyes as you see the marks of writing on this page is silly. Your eyes see the marks that make up the words but when you “see” what I mean (the ideas) it’s a different kind of seeing. A book has no mental content as such. The story is apprehended by your mind. You cannot see the story by peeking into the book’s pages. You have to grasp the story in a “spiritual” sense. “Romeo and Juliet” exist even though no one ever spoke with them physically.
Here’s what I am driving at.
God has made himself known to me here in north India in a fresh way. He is spirit—a person who exists in himself. And God exists also in those whom he indwells. Not all of God, of course, for God is infinite in his immensity, as theologians phrase it. But God is there in the hearts of those who love him, just as air exists in those who breathe.
(Those blasted lights just went out again. Aaaargh! I can no longer see my notes. But I can still “see” my train of thought.)
So if one wishes to experience God, he opens himself to God by spiritual means. Prayer/meditation is perhaps the standard avenue to God.
For me, however, I find I am in the real presence of God by visiting him in this community of his people. This theological college, hard by the foothills of the Himalayas, has some 300 souls concentrated in a compact five acres of land. All of them love God and are filled with the Holy Spirit of God. I am experiencing God through this high dosage 100-proof distillation of the life of Jesus in the hearts of his people here. The invisible Christ is mediated through the visible Body of Christ in this place. It is not the entire body of Christ, but it is Christ nonetheless, similar to my connection to all earth’s atmosphere through the tiny sample that I breathe.
In any healthy portion of the Christ-community the reality of God is experienced. God dwells in the hearts of his people, just as the ancient prophet observed millennia ago. But I say “healthy” because the body of Christ on earth is a work in progress and suffers spiritual maladies. Some of these are hardly noticeable to us, sort of like when we have the sniffles. Others are moribund, torn by deadly conflict that infects the community in question. In fact, some such congregations are pruned away in the end-amputated, if you will.
I know that this community of Christians at New Theological College, as every other Christian community, is not without impurities. It has members who are in process, who are more in doubt than indwelt. They hopefully are seeking. But they may not be there yet.
Notwithstanding, if my philosophy student wants to “see” God, go to a community like this one, where God’s Spirit is dwelling. Focus not on the imperfections or on those who are mostly still searching for a relationship with God. When you visit a church look at those who have walked a long time in the presence of God. Listen to their conversations one with another.
You will see and hear God’s presence, though not with perfect clarity. There will be static in the transmission. But you will experience God. You will see. You will hear. And through the medium of sight and sound you will become aware of God, who is seeking you out all the while. But you must be sincere, not cynical. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart—they shall see God.”
(The lights just switched on again as I was typing those last thoughts! Hmmm...)
So here I am in an empty house on a quiet Saturday, alone with God in a semi-monastic setting, set apart from the bustling world just a few miles downhill. It is a gender-blender monastery, because the sisters and brothers live in the same community. Many of the older ones are married and have children. All are walking in God.
It's a bit like the concentration of energy in a sports arena. Almost everyone is a fan of the team and the team spirit can be overwhelming. As we say, you can almost cut it with a knife.
It’s refreshing for person like me to “see” God’s presence so manifest here. I close my eyes and can sense the reality of God’s nearness.
Thus we taste and see that the Lord is good. Someday we shall see our Lord and God “face to face.” We shall know him fully even as we are fully known by him.
Meanwhile we treasure days like this when God is not behind the clouds of our often-stormy lives but shining brightly on us.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Orissa bloodshed
I hoped, in coming to India, to get more insight into the well-publicized unrest in the state of Orissa (pronounced o-REES-uh) where rioters have attacked Christians. The Times-Nation of Tuesday, October 21, 2008 had a news report and a commentary on the situation.
“Communal riots battered Orissa government on Monday rejected (an archbishop’s) demand for 300,000 rupees for the reconstruction of damaged and demolished churches…saying giving grants to religious places was against its secular ethos.” Also opposed was a request for paramilitary protection of NGO workers who distributed relief for victims of the violence.
A women police team had also arrested a suspect in the rape of a nun, but the state government refused the demand for a probe into the matter.
Background: In August Swami L. Saraswati had been killed. He had been a vocal campaigner against the “illegal” and allegedly forcible conversion of many in the Pani community to another religion—Christianity, still perceived by the masses as a foreign religion. This sparked a reaction by the Kandhas community against Christians, even though the murder was carried out by Maoists, who more recently killed a dozen people in Chhattisgarh.
The commentary blasts the government for in-action, not only in this recent case, but in 1984 Sikh riots, in 1992 Mumbai riots, and in the Gujarat riots of 2002. In Orissa 107 churches were torched starting on Christmas Day last year, followed by descration of Bibles and statues, and burning houses in “pre-meditated and well-organised attacks” that left at least six dead and thousands homeless. “Victims were mostly tribal or Dalit, poor Christians.” The gangs were local Bajrang Dal activists responding to the Swami’s preaching about “wiping Christians off the face of Orissa.”
Analysis.
Friends here are providing me some insight on this.
The Bajrang Dal is one of several activist wings of the Indian Hindu party, the BHP. BHP is a missionary movement within Hinduism. They have many fronts in the USA funded from India. Many of these fronts are yoga centers that appeal to the desire for stress-reducing techniques among many Americans. Meditation and other eastern methods of spiritual development are often (not always) provided by this Hindu missionary movement.
The Dalits are low caste Hindus—the untouchables. The Hindu caste system requires them to do menial tasks that would pollute higher caste people working their way up the re-incarnational cycles to liberation (moksha) where the soul no longer comes back into this world of suffering but becomes swallowed up into the impersonal ultimate being, Brahman, much like a drop of water losing itself in the ocean.
Two ideologies oppose this class exploitation: Christians and communists. The latter attack it via violent overthrowing of government policies. The former address it by acceptance into the body of Christ. The constitution of India allows for conversion if it comes from “within” the person. Many of these Dalits are now responding to the Gospel of love and convert by their own choice. The irony is that the Maoists murder the Hindu preacher and the Christians take the hit. Why?
As usual, follow the money. Businessmen and landowners find their cheap labor diminishing. This is a threat to their hegemony over the economy. Since religion and life here are inseparable, the Swami blames Christianity for inveigling these hopeless low caste Hindus into apostasy. “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The Gospel is the new Mosaic call—“let my people go.” The Hindu desire to cleanse Orissa of Christians is at bottom a move to maintain their economic and political power against two threats—the classless vision of communism and the Christian vision of a brotherhood of all people. Whether the agents trying to change this millennia-old system be godless or godly, the bottom line is the same—the slaves are seeking their freedom.
This insight fits in well with one of the papers in the theological conference I am presently attending at New Theological College, calling for the church to make an impact on issues of injustice. In India the issues are women’s dignity, extreme poverty, freedom of religion, as well as the curse of caste. The first century Christians cared for the oppressed. There were no poor among them in those days. And they salvaged infants the pagans left to die in the dumps outside Roman cities.
They paid a price for their compassion then. The same is true now. There is still a high price Christians pay in many nations today—hatred, beatings, exclusion, death.
Christians are opposed in many places around the globe for their beliefs and their empowerment of oppressed peoples. We see some of this in Europe and Canada. Will the USA be next?
Some say yes.
It’s hard to argue against that answer, for true Christianity speaks against powerful elements in any society—elements that wish to use political power to suppress speech, control thought, monopolize morality, and eventually to coerce behavior.
I am by nature an optimist. But I have to admit that reality keeps chipping away….
All I can say is “Thank God for God and His promise to sort this all out in the end.” Meanwhile, it is not pretty. But then, we were warned up front that following the Way of Jesus would be persecution and hardships.
“Communal riots battered Orissa government on Monday rejected (an archbishop’s) demand for 300,000 rupees for the reconstruction of damaged and demolished churches…saying giving grants to religious places was against its secular ethos.” Also opposed was a request for paramilitary protection of NGO workers who distributed relief for victims of the violence.
A women police team had also arrested a suspect in the rape of a nun, but the state government refused the demand for a probe into the matter.
Background: In August Swami L. Saraswati had been killed. He had been a vocal campaigner against the “illegal” and allegedly forcible conversion of many in the Pani community to another religion—Christianity, still perceived by the masses as a foreign religion. This sparked a reaction by the Kandhas community against Christians, even though the murder was carried out by Maoists, who more recently killed a dozen people in Chhattisgarh.
The commentary blasts the government for in-action, not only in this recent case, but in 1984 Sikh riots, in 1992 Mumbai riots, and in the Gujarat riots of 2002. In Orissa 107 churches were torched starting on Christmas Day last year, followed by descration of Bibles and statues, and burning houses in “pre-meditated and well-organised attacks” that left at least six dead and thousands homeless. “Victims were mostly tribal or Dalit, poor Christians.” The gangs were local Bajrang Dal activists responding to the Swami’s preaching about “wiping Christians off the face of Orissa.”
Analysis.
Friends here are providing me some insight on this.
The Bajrang Dal is one of several activist wings of the Indian Hindu party, the BHP. BHP is a missionary movement within Hinduism. They have many fronts in the USA funded from India. Many of these fronts are yoga centers that appeal to the desire for stress-reducing techniques among many Americans. Meditation and other eastern methods of spiritual development are often (not always) provided by this Hindu missionary movement.
The Dalits are low caste Hindus—the untouchables. The Hindu caste system requires them to do menial tasks that would pollute higher caste people working their way up the re-incarnational cycles to liberation (moksha) where the soul no longer comes back into this world of suffering but becomes swallowed up into the impersonal ultimate being, Brahman, much like a drop of water losing itself in the ocean.
Two ideologies oppose this class exploitation: Christians and communists. The latter attack it via violent overthrowing of government policies. The former address it by acceptance into the body of Christ. The constitution of India allows for conversion if it comes from “within” the person. Many of these Dalits are now responding to the Gospel of love and convert by their own choice. The irony is that the Maoists murder the Hindu preacher and the Christians take the hit. Why?
As usual, follow the money. Businessmen and landowners find their cheap labor diminishing. This is a threat to their hegemony over the economy. Since religion and life here are inseparable, the Swami blames Christianity for inveigling these hopeless low caste Hindus into apostasy. “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The Gospel is the new Mosaic call—“let my people go.” The Hindu desire to cleanse Orissa of Christians is at bottom a move to maintain their economic and political power against two threats—the classless vision of communism and the Christian vision of a brotherhood of all people. Whether the agents trying to change this millennia-old system be godless or godly, the bottom line is the same—the slaves are seeking their freedom.
This insight fits in well with one of the papers in the theological conference I am presently attending at New Theological College, calling for the church to make an impact on issues of injustice. In India the issues are women’s dignity, extreme poverty, freedom of religion, as well as the curse of caste. The first century Christians cared for the oppressed. There were no poor among them in those days. And they salvaged infants the pagans left to die in the dumps outside Roman cities.
They paid a price for their compassion then. The same is true now. There is still a high price Christians pay in many nations today—hatred, beatings, exclusion, death.
Christians are opposed in many places around the globe for their beliefs and their empowerment of oppressed peoples. We see some of this in Europe and Canada. Will the USA be next?
Some say yes.
It’s hard to argue against that answer, for true Christianity speaks against powerful elements in any society—elements that wish to use political power to suppress speech, control thought, monopolize morality, and eventually to coerce behavior.
I am by nature an optimist. But I have to admit that reality keeps chipping away….
All I can say is “Thank God for God and His promise to sort this all out in the end.” Meanwhile, it is not pretty. But then, we were warned up front that following the Way of Jesus would be persecution and hardships.
From Delhi to Dung Cakes to Dehradun
Ah! Delhi at last! A smooth swift flight, aided by 120-150 mile tail winds.
Indira Ghandi terminal is shiny with newness since my first arrival some years ago. Whisked through customs with all my bags in possession. Yes – quite a contrast with Continental that got my bags to me 3 days after I had been at the college last year, washing underwear every day.
At the end of the ramp where dozens of tour leaders and hotel go-fers hold signs with names of travellers. I know my man—John Varghese.
But he is not there. Probably stuck in traffic, even though it is 11 PM Delhi roads are busy 24/7.
Then the mind begins to embroider on the delay. Did I tell him the right day of my arrival? The correct flight number?
Suddenly I realize what a dunce I am. I am not the ugly American. But I am in the running for the most naïf American. I have no phone number. I have no address of the Delhi office. I have no address of the college 200 miles north. In short, I am informationally naked in a country of a billion souls. I’ll have to sit in this terminal forever, possibly. This is the time when even an atheist begins to pray, think I.
Do you recall how long 20 minutes can be at a time like this? Other parties meet their hosts. The hall is mostly empty. What have I done?
But as I am thus justly berating myself, the big smile of the young Varghese gleams in the distance. “So sorry! Have you been waiting long? We got into traffic.”
John, needing to meet Uncle George (founder of New Theological College) at 1 AM, hands me off to Premji. We disappear into the perpetual haze of Delhi. You can see a mile or so but as through a dry smoggy mist.
Speed bumps are doubled here on some highways. You have to stop and crawl. And some potholes stop us also – which is something when you are driving with the horn, changing lanes (3 cars/lorries abreast on a two lane road), and coming within 6 inches of the rear cheek of the car ahead. It’s like those scary amusement park rides only there are no safety controls under the surface. 35 mph feels like 70.
A new wrinkle since last time as Delhi seeks to improve its safety records. In places tiny yellow lights flash on either edge of the highway. They are randomly timed. So it looks like the lights on little kids sneakers—or perhaps like those tiny blinking light on Christmas trees. But what good is that when trucks and cars and cycles (both motor and pedaled) are honking their way through the hazy maze? One Vespa shoots by—no lights at all. A grey ghost snaking down the highway. Thankfully the guy on the back is wearing a whitish shirt. Sort of grey, actually, like everything else.
Since Uncle is coming I am taken to the Southern Hotel. I understand nothing of the conversation Premji is carrying on at the desk. Soon my bags are picked up and we go into a minivan. Thank God Premji is going too. Off down dingy streets with little pavement, many dogs, and a few sacred cows. We stop at a small lighted sign on a sad-looking building. “Perfect Hotel,” it says. How can these guys lie so brazenly? I sign in, ask for a 5:30 wakeup call, go up a teeny tiny elevator. The man opens the door.
Viola! A small but immaculate tiled floor room and bath. Thanks be to God. With only 4 hours until the wakeup call, I’m off to dreamland and a surprisingly decent sleep, given that my circadian rhythms make it mid-afternoon. The time is 10.5 hours ahead of EST
At 6:15 the boys are back for me. John loans me 1000 rupees against the 1650 charge. I have no clue how much that is in US$. Uncle George is in the van and we are soon on the Shadabti train north. Keep a sharp eye on the luggage on the overhead rack—thieves.
At last I relax, sort of. The sugar fields and dung-cake lots speed by. Every seat is filled, Thankfully I am in a window seat. Hot tea and a biscuit will be followed by a small egg omelet, white bread and jam.
Life is good!
P.S. “Dung-cakes?” You ask. Here’s a lesson for you home-schooling parents. In India cows are sacred. They wander at will, even in huge cities. You best not kill one—even by accident. You would be accused of more than being a party-pooper. You could be fined for such offence against the sacred—if a Hindu mob didn’t kill you first. (This has happened!) Hence lots of raw material for a cottage industry. The end product of their grazing is dumped liberally along rail and roadsides. Low caste people (including women and kids of every age) dig clumps from the steaming piles and shape by hand cakes that look like a thick Aunt Jemimah buckwheat pancake. Left in the sun to dry, the baked goods are then stacked on end against each other to form circles of dung cakes. The piles spiral up as volume increases until you can have bee-hives several feet high or platform squares with several hundreds of this commodity. The market is always brisk for this low-cost fuel that the poor use to cook their rice. With globalization we may yet see these on pallets at Walmart and Home Depot. Whaddya bet?
Indira Ghandi terminal is shiny with newness since my first arrival some years ago. Whisked through customs with all my bags in possession. Yes – quite a contrast with Continental that got my bags to me 3 days after I had been at the college last year, washing underwear every day.
At the end of the ramp where dozens of tour leaders and hotel go-fers hold signs with names of travellers. I know my man—John Varghese.
But he is not there. Probably stuck in traffic, even though it is 11 PM Delhi roads are busy 24/7.
Then the mind begins to embroider on the delay. Did I tell him the right day of my arrival? The correct flight number?
Suddenly I realize what a dunce I am. I am not the ugly American. But I am in the running for the most naïf American. I have no phone number. I have no address of the Delhi office. I have no address of the college 200 miles north. In short, I am informationally naked in a country of a billion souls. I’ll have to sit in this terminal forever, possibly. This is the time when even an atheist begins to pray, think I.
Do you recall how long 20 minutes can be at a time like this? Other parties meet their hosts. The hall is mostly empty. What have I done?
But as I am thus justly berating myself, the big smile of the young Varghese gleams in the distance. “So sorry! Have you been waiting long? We got into traffic.”
John, needing to meet Uncle George (founder of New Theological College) at 1 AM, hands me off to Premji. We disappear into the perpetual haze of Delhi. You can see a mile or so but as through a dry smoggy mist.
Speed bumps are doubled here on some highways. You have to stop and crawl. And some potholes stop us also – which is something when you are driving with the horn, changing lanes (3 cars/lorries abreast on a two lane road), and coming within 6 inches of the rear cheek of the car ahead. It’s like those scary amusement park rides only there are no safety controls under the surface. 35 mph feels like 70.
A new wrinkle since last time as Delhi seeks to improve its safety records. In places tiny yellow lights flash on either edge of the highway. They are randomly timed. So it looks like the lights on little kids sneakers—or perhaps like those tiny blinking light on Christmas trees. But what good is that when trucks and cars and cycles (both motor and pedaled) are honking their way through the hazy maze? One Vespa shoots by—no lights at all. A grey ghost snaking down the highway. Thankfully the guy on the back is wearing a whitish shirt. Sort of grey, actually, like everything else.
Since Uncle is coming I am taken to the Southern Hotel. I understand nothing of the conversation Premji is carrying on at the desk. Soon my bags are picked up and we go into a minivan. Thank God Premji is going too. Off down dingy streets with little pavement, many dogs, and a few sacred cows. We stop at a small lighted sign on a sad-looking building. “Perfect Hotel,” it says. How can these guys lie so brazenly? I sign in, ask for a 5:30 wakeup call, go up a teeny tiny elevator. The man opens the door.
Viola! A small but immaculate tiled floor room and bath. Thanks be to God. With only 4 hours until the wakeup call, I’m off to dreamland and a surprisingly decent sleep, given that my circadian rhythms make it mid-afternoon. The time is 10.5 hours ahead of EST
At 6:15 the boys are back for me. John loans me 1000 rupees against the 1650 charge. I have no clue how much that is in US$. Uncle George is in the van and we are soon on the Shadabti train north. Keep a sharp eye on the luggage on the overhead rack—thieves.
At last I relax, sort of. The sugar fields and dung-cake lots speed by. Every seat is filled, Thankfully I am in a window seat. Hot tea and a biscuit will be followed by a small egg omelet, white bread and jam.
Life is good!
P.S. “Dung-cakes?” You ask. Here’s a lesson for you home-schooling parents. In India cows are sacred. They wander at will, even in huge cities. You best not kill one—even by accident. You would be accused of more than being a party-pooper. You could be fined for such offence against the sacred—if a Hindu mob didn’t kill you first. (This has happened!) Hence lots of raw material for a cottage industry. The end product of their grazing is dumped liberally along rail and roadsides. Low caste people (including women and kids of every age) dig clumps from the steaming piles and shape by hand cakes that look like a thick Aunt Jemimah buckwheat pancake. Left in the sun to dry, the baked goods are then stacked on end against each other to form circles of dung cakes. The piles spiral up as volume increases until you can have bee-hives several feet high or platform squares with several hundreds of this commodity. The market is always brisk for this low-cost fuel that the poor use to cook their rice. With globalization we may yet see these on pallets at Walmart and Home Depot. Whaddya bet?
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Off and Flying!
Sunday, October 19, 2008.
I have not been kidnapped, shot at, nor even harassed—a great trip so far! But now that I have made it safely to Logan airport, I am going to have to leave the good ole USA.
Pete Hurn—that once and future racecar driver—got me to Boston without incident. (Of course, I had to tell him what lane to merge into whenever. He drives real slow for a former racer) Thankfully the busy highway to Boston had about six cars on it. Good thing the Red Sox are playing away on this the last day before the World Series or this place would have been crazy.
I don’t know whether to be glad or sad to be flying to the other side of the globe with the Sox up for their last stand against Haverhill’s Carlos Pena and crew. You see I started following this team long before Red Sox nation was invented. I went first when there was a “Ladies’ Day” and Mom took me to see the Sox play for half price—probably 25 cents. The Red S beat the White S of Chicago something like 19 to 3. I thought all the Red Sox games would be like that, being only about 10 at the time. That was the year Ted Williams was back from World War II, Pitcher Dave “Boo” Ferris went 25 and 6, Johnny Pesky was at short, and they won by a dozen games over the (I hate to even say it) Yankees. We were the greatest team in baseball that year and played the Cardinals in the series. Then it happened—the first time, but not the last time. We were one out away from the championship and managed to blow it!
That scarred me for life. The wounds went deeper in 1967 and on through the whole century as the curse worked its evil magic on our darlings.
Now we’ve had a championship or two. And once again are one game from sudden death. And my old syndrome slices through my psyche like a hot electrode hooked up to my most sensitive nerves. So maybe its good to be 40,000 feet over the Atlantic when the final out is in the books. I’ll read about on the Internet next week, since the stupid British papers will just have football (Soccer) and tennis and all those wimpy European “sports.” What’s wrong with those people? Maybe that’s why the Pilgrims came to New England—to think up some decent sports!
Anyway, Pete got me here safe and sound. I must say I sort of was hoping he’d pull of a couple of 180’s on the highway—you know—since it was so empty of vehicles. But I understand—he’s getting old just like all of us. Only some are getting more old than others. It’s a shame, when you think of it. I hope I’m over the Atlantic when I get old, so I won’t have to watch my final inning on national TV….
Anyway, Pete peeled rubber making his getaway from Logan, while I snaked my way through the labyrinth of airport protocol. I was so proud! I had printed my own boarding pass before leaving home, with my seat picked out and everything. So I expected to whiz through to the gizmo that takes your x-ray once you take your shoes off? Not so fast! There was a shorter line for us advanced techies. But we still had to hoist the baggage onto the scale and have our passports and visas checked out.
But wait! I axshully learned something. I had a small bottle of water in my carryon – four tenths of an ounce or something like that that gets a pass at security in Europe and India. But not here. O no! As luck would have it, I chose a line where the man was leaning back on his stool with no customers. I said, “You look lonely.” He gave me a look and waved me over to his conveyor belt. Soon he’s telling me I have a water bottle. Verboten! But since my line is empty, he reverses the conveyor so I can take it out. What if I drink it and send it empty? YES! So a few swallows (even thought they do not a summer make) gets me at least a bottle I can fill up on the other side. I thought that experience might be useful to one of you should you follow these labyrinths to the wide, wide world. So I have my bottle! And I fooled ‘em, too. There were a number of molecules of H2O still in the poor sad little plastic I now consider a true friend to be treasured forever. I’m looking for a bubbler now to give the little guy a drink. So I’ll sign off for now.
(8 hours later….)
Heathrow airport, near London. We got here early due to a tailwind of up to 150 mph. A bit spooky to be the only one going through another checkpoint, most of my fellow travelers having detoured to Thai Air. Here you do not have to open your computer case as you do in Boston. But you do have to remove your belt. Mine is black. In the terminal all the shops are dark and gated. It’s not quite 5 AM. No signs of life, except a TV showing early news, plus a couple of window washers. So I stretch my cramped legs wandering the long ramps to 25 gates. I am so bored I find myself reading message boards.
Did you know that in 1946 Heathrow was a tiny hamlet with a few lazy “tents?” It had a small airstrip that sent out a few hundred flights per year. Now it covers 3000 acres, has 4 terminals, and services more travelers than any other in the world. It employs about 68,000 workers, serves 2500 sandwiches a day and sells a bottle of whiskey in the duty free an average of every 7 seconds.
Well, that’s a lot more than I need to know. So on to another lounge. At least now there are dishes rattling and sleepy tellers at the exchange counters. All the TV news is about the recession and how it’s going to be rough until 2011. Jings!
But in truth only God knows—and He is not telling. I guess I’ll have a slice of prune bread Ellie sent along. That will keep me going.
I have not been kidnapped, shot at, nor even harassed—a great trip so far! But now that I have made it safely to Logan airport, I am going to have to leave the good ole USA.
Pete Hurn—that once and future racecar driver—got me to Boston without incident. (Of course, I had to tell him what lane to merge into whenever. He drives real slow for a former racer) Thankfully the busy highway to Boston had about six cars on it. Good thing the Red Sox are playing away on this the last day before the World Series or this place would have been crazy.
I don’t know whether to be glad or sad to be flying to the other side of the globe with the Sox up for their last stand against Haverhill’s Carlos Pena and crew. You see I started following this team long before Red Sox nation was invented. I went first when there was a “Ladies’ Day” and Mom took me to see the Sox play for half price—probably 25 cents. The Red S beat the White S of Chicago something like 19 to 3. I thought all the Red Sox games would be like that, being only about 10 at the time. That was the year Ted Williams was back from World War II, Pitcher Dave “Boo” Ferris went 25 and 6, Johnny Pesky was at short, and they won by a dozen games over the (I hate to even say it) Yankees. We were the greatest team in baseball that year and played the Cardinals in the series. Then it happened—the first time, but not the last time. We were one out away from the championship and managed to blow it!
That scarred me for life. The wounds went deeper in 1967 and on through the whole century as the curse worked its evil magic on our darlings.
Now we’ve had a championship or two. And once again are one game from sudden death. And my old syndrome slices through my psyche like a hot electrode hooked up to my most sensitive nerves. So maybe its good to be 40,000 feet over the Atlantic when the final out is in the books. I’ll read about on the Internet next week, since the stupid British papers will just have football (Soccer) and tennis and all those wimpy European “sports.” What’s wrong with those people? Maybe that’s why the Pilgrims came to New England—to think up some decent sports!
Anyway, Pete got me here safe and sound. I must say I sort of was hoping he’d pull of a couple of 180’s on the highway—you know—since it was so empty of vehicles. But I understand—he’s getting old just like all of us. Only some are getting more old than others. It’s a shame, when you think of it. I hope I’m over the Atlantic when I get old, so I won’t have to watch my final inning on national TV….
Anyway, Pete peeled rubber making his getaway from Logan, while I snaked my way through the labyrinth of airport protocol. I was so proud! I had printed my own boarding pass before leaving home, with my seat picked out and everything. So I expected to whiz through to the gizmo that takes your x-ray once you take your shoes off? Not so fast! There was a shorter line for us advanced techies. But we still had to hoist the baggage onto the scale and have our passports and visas checked out.
But wait! I axshully learned something. I had a small bottle of water in my carryon – four tenths of an ounce or something like that that gets a pass at security in Europe and India. But not here. O no! As luck would have it, I chose a line where the man was leaning back on his stool with no customers. I said, “You look lonely.” He gave me a look and waved me over to his conveyor belt. Soon he’s telling me I have a water bottle. Verboten! But since my line is empty, he reverses the conveyor so I can take it out. What if I drink it and send it empty? YES! So a few swallows (even thought they do not a summer make) gets me at least a bottle I can fill up on the other side. I thought that experience might be useful to one of you should you follow these labyrinths to the wide, wide world. So I have my bottle! And I fooled ‘em, too. There were a number of molecules of H2O still in the poor sad little plastic I now consider a true friend to be treasured forever. I’m looking for a bubbler now to give the little guy a drink. So I’ll sign off for now.
(8 hours later….)
Heathrow airport, near London. We got here early due to a tailwind of up to 150 mph. A bit spooky to be the only one going through another checkpoint, most of my fellow travelers having detoured to Thai Air. Here you do not have to open your computer case as you do in Boston. But you do have to remove your belt. Mine is black. In the terminal all the shops are dark and gated. It’s not quite 5 AM. No signs of life, except a TV showing early news, plus a couple of window washers. So I stretch my cramped legs wandering the long ramps to 25 gates. I am so bored I find myself reading message boards.
Did you know that in 1946 Heathrow was a tiny hamlet with a few lazy “tents?” It had a small airstrip that sent out a few hundred flights per year. Now it covers 3000 acres, has 4 terminals, and services more travelers than any other in the world. It employs about 68,000 workers, serves 2500 sandwiches a day and sells a bottle of whiskey in the duty free an average of every 7 seconds.
Well, that’s a lot more than I need to know. So on to another lounge. At least now there are dishes rattling and sleepy tellers at the exchange counters. All the TV news is about the recession and how it’s going to be rough until 2011. Jings!
But in truth only God knows—and He is not telling. I guess I’ll have a slice of prune bread Ellie sent along. That will keep me going.
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