In Conclusion...

So it seems proper to draw some conclusions or sum-up what I learned in Kolkata. Its harder than I thought to wrap up the experience neatly. So much of what I enjoyed was just the process of doing life for a couple weeks with new people; sisters, volunteers and patients.

From the sisters I learned that a godly life requires sacrifice and discipline but also yields tremendous joy. I can't yet explain why but joy was evident among the sisters in each place I visited.

From the fellow volunteers I was encouraged to find people from across the world but also from across Canada who are asking questions and are eager to learn answers about what it looks like in each context to follow Jesus. The majority of people I met had read The Irresistible Revolution and were really struggling to figure out how to life their lives in light of the questions Shane Claiborne asks.

From the patients I learnt patience (so to speak). They endured living in sub-optimal conditions with grace and thankfulness. I was blown away by the thanks they gave me on my last day. I get up tight when just a few things don't go as planned but the patients showed me that it is possible to live very simply still have a very rich life.

Theodicy in Kolkata - Hauerwas on Suffering

Next day, as the ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were picking up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair knew that a gray spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died."

-E. B. White, Charlotte's Web

Living with people who are suffering is uncomfortable. One reason I'm in India is to learn from the vast experience of the Missionaries of Charity, how to love these people. It has been interesting to watch how the sisters and long term volunteers deal with suffering patients. I remember on my first day at Prem Dan (the home for mentally and physically handicapped men where I volunteer), an experienced American volunteer just sat with a patient for most of the morning. I was irritated by this because I was busy working and expected him to be sweating too. I was trying to be "useful". I've started to learn though, that there are more important things to be than "useful".

If suffering led me to try to be useful then it also forced questions about why suffering exists in the first place. Why is there suffering in the world? Can a good God really be responsible for all this? If so is he as good or powerful as we are told? Stanley Hauerwas opens his book, God, Medicine and Suffering by stating, "It is one thing to think that 'the problem of evil' can be answered by the 'free will' defense or explained through human sin; it's quite another to confront the illness of a child” (p.1). These are questions of theodicy, how we understand God in relation to evil, and they are plentiful in Kolkata.

Hauerwas proposes that the questions of innocent suffering require a response rather than and answer. He points to the early church and explains, "For the early Christians, suffering and evil...did not have to be 'explained'. Rather what was required was the means to go on even if the evil could not be 'explained.' Indeed it was crucial that such suffering or evil not be 'explained'--that is, it was important not to provide a theoretical account of why such evil needed to be in in order that certain good results occur, since such an explanation would undercut the necessity of the community capable of absorbing the suffering” (p. 49). It is Hauerwas' proposition that, "the creation of the problem of evil is a correlative of the creation of a god, that it was presumed, could be known separate from a community of people at worship” (p. 41). A theoretical god needs a theory to explain suffering while a real and living God only requires a real and living response from his people to the suffering they encounter. But what should this response look like here in Kolkata or back home in Calgary?

The first step should be to respond as the biblical heroes did, turning their laments to God as exemplified in the psalms. Hauerwas quotes from Walter Brueggemann's book The Message of the Psalms which states, "The Psalms of lament do not simply reflect our experience; they are meant to name the silences that or suffering has created. They bring us into communion with God and one another, communion that makes it possible to acknowledge our pain and suffering, to rage that we see no pint to it, and yet our very acknowledgment of that fact makes us a people capable of living faithfully....For creation is not as it ought to be” (pp. 82-83). These psalms give us permission to have frank conversations with our creator about the pain and anguish we experience. When we piously try to "protect" God from our problems we isolate ourselves from both this God and one another.

The second step of our response to suffering should be to understand (and help others understand) suffering as part of our life story. Hauerwas explains, "The appeal to narrative at least has the advantage of reminding us that our lives and our deaths are not occasional bits of unconnected behavior but part of a larger pattern; recognizing this gives purpose to our lives. When such a pattern is thought to be missing, death and illness cannot help but seem pointless and meaningless. As a result illness and death can be seen only as something to deny” (p.112).

Hauerwas goes on to discuss in detail the relationship between the practice of medicine and a patients narrative. He says, "The clinician who seeks the patient's well-being is necessarily constrained by the narrative unity into which he or she has entered” (p. 120). It has been my experience that these physicians are rare partly because it is a difficult job to help a patient see there life in terms of a narrative. The vast majority of patients see there illnesses and deaths as things to be avoided or fixed. Hauerwas states, "The physician may be able to help the patient cope with her pain, but if the patient lacks any substantive narrative, the physician cannot provide a meaning for ineliminable pain. We thus begin to understand why we are condemned to live out only narratives that we believe to be fiction since we are their arbitrary authors--because we lack a shared narrative” (p. 125). If such a shared narrative existed, although it would not make our suffering any less, it would provide a context in which to understand it. Hauerwas believes that such a context does exist, "...we are all, adults and children alike, born into a narrative not of our own making--that is, we are creatures of a gracious God who discover that precisely because we are such we do not have to make up our lives” (p. 126). It is within this narrative that we are to live (and die).

Our third, and probably most important, step as we respond to suffering should be to simply be with those who suffer. We were created to live in community and this should not be forgotten when we encounter suffering. In opposition to the passage from Charlotte's Web at the beginning of this blog, where E. B White describes the heroine Charlotte’s death, Hauerwas says, "It may be that spiders are destined to die alone, but as those who believe that we are destined to enjoy one another and God, we cannot allow ourselves and loved ones so to die. We have no theodicy that can soften the pain of our death and the death of our children, but we believe that we share a common story which makes it possible for us to be with one another especially as we die” (p. 148).

"To be with one another as we die," is the skill that I am leaning from the sisters and volunteers here in Kolkata. We provide the daily necessities of course, but lots of space is left to sit with the patients. Mother Teresa believed that this is more important; "As far as I am concerned, the greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted, unloved. The greatest suffering is also having noo one, forgetting what an intimate, truly human relationship is, not knowing what it means to be loved, not having a family or friends." More than learning how to be useful to dying patients I'm leaning how to be with dying patients. In his book Lament For A Son, Nicholas Wolterstorff offers this concluding advice spoken out of his own grief:

Death is awful, demonic. If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, it's not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief but place yourself off in the distance away from me. Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench.

-Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament For A Son

Three Questions

Three questions I'd like to leave you with: First, is it possible the belief "that our trust in God will guarantee us health and prosperity" comes only because we are a comfortable, wealthy nation, with access to money and medicine which most of the rest of the world does not have?

Second, are we American [and Canadian] Christians more deserving of a comfortable life than our Third World brothers and sisters?

Third, do we want a guarantee of personal protection, good health, and prosperity so badly that we would dare bend our theology to include promises God has never given us?

-Penny Giesbrecht, Where Is God When a Child Suffers? (quoted by Stanley Hauerwas in God, Medicine and Suffering)

Willard's World 9 - School Of Jesus

Teach them to do everything I have told you.
-Jesus (Matthew 28:20)

It must be possible to hear and do what Jesus taught as well as train others to do likewise. In this chapter Willard lays out a detailed "curriculum" for how one might go about this. He warns though that, "consumer Christianity has become the accepted norm, and all out engagement with and in Jesus' kingdom among us is regarded as just one option people may take if it suits them but probably as somewhat 'overdoing it.'" Willard encourages us to sign up for this course because the biblical pattern is, from beginning to end, 'be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.'" The objectives of this course are practical in that Willard wants to bring people, "to the point where they actually do [what Jesus taught] on appropriate occasions." To often we are only taught what we "ought" to do or that "it is good" to do such and such.

In this curriculum what are the objectives? Willard first describes four things that are not primary objectives but are often mistaken as such: 1)"External conformity to the wording of Jesus' teaching." 2)"Profession of perfectly correct doctrine." 3)"Encouraging faithfulness to the activities of a church." 4)"Seeking out special states of mind or ecstatic experiences." All of these objectives are not bad themselves but need to remain secondary to the primary objectives. All four can cause problems if pursued for their own sake.

The two primary objectives by contrast are: 1)"To bring apprentices to the point where they dearly love and constantly delight in that "heavenly Father" made real to earth in Jesus and are quite certain that there is no 'catch,' no limit, to the goodness of his intentions or to his power to carry them out." 2)"To remove our automatic responses against the kingdom of God, to free the apprentices of domination, of enslavement, to their old habitual patterns of thought, feeling, and action." Willard describes each objective in considerable detail so I'll try to outline only the highlights.

Objective 1 - Know A Big God
Willard describes God revealing himself to us in three primary ways. The first way is, "God's invisible nature... clearly presented to their understanding through what has been made (Romans 1:19-20)." Willard quotes Wordsworth who says:

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply inter fused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

-William Wordsworth - Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

As part of this "curriculum of Christ likeness Willard prescribes that we open up all aspects of God the father and not shy away from difficult questions rather address them so that our view of God will both grow grander and be better founded.

The second way God reveals himself is through his love reaching out personally. "From the very beginning of the biblical revelation human beings are blessed by God personally and engaged by God in a face to face relationship revealed by periodic visits." This of course is most evident in the person of Jesus. When we teach Jesus in this curriculum Willard states that we must focus on: 1)His, "beauty, truth and power while he lived among us as one human being among others," 2) "The way he went to execution as a common criminal among other criminals on our behalf," 3)"The reality of Jesus risen, his actual existence now as a person who is present among his people," 4)"The Jesus who is master of the created universe and of human history." Willard says that these four things together describe the fullness of the Jesus found in scripture.

The third way God is revealed is through his interaction with the real events of our lives. "in order for disciples to be brought into a full and joyous love of God, they must see their very own life within the framework of unqualified goodness." We must come to the realization, like Joseph in the Old Testament, that God has meant the events of our lives to achieve good.

Objective 2 - Acquire Habits Of Goodness
Since we have lived in the kingdom of the world for so long w have acquired its habits. These must be broken and replaced with kingdom habits. Willard says, "Our training and experience must bring us to peace with the fact that if we do not follow our habitual desires, do not do what "normal" people would do, it is no major thing.

The changing of these habits cannot be done for us although God most certainly will help us. Just as a coach cannot make me shoot a basketball better, so Jesus cannot cause me to wive with better habits. Its a matter of practice. Willard describes a threefold way of developing habits of the kingdom. The first bit is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, the second is the role of tests that allow us real, practical situations in which to practice, and the third is the role of disciplines to, "enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort."

In the interest of brevity I'll focus on the third. Willard expands on four specific disciplines but emphasizes that these ideas can by extended to all the others. He first talks about the, "Disciplines of abstinence: solitude and silence." "Solitude and silence," he contends, "allow us to escape the patterns of epidermal responses, with their consequences. They provide space to come to terms with these responses and replace them, with God's help, by different immediate responses that are more suitable to the kingdom environment--and, indeed, to the kind of life everyone in saner moments recognizes to be good."

Willard then addresses the, "Disciplines of engagement: study and worship." We study to take the order and nature of a subject into us so that it is automatic to use it in our practical dealing with the world. Willard uses the example of studying the fact that 2+2=4. Once we have studied it we automatically use this fact in our everyday life. The same should be true of the life of Jesus. When we study it we should incorporate it in our daily interactions. This will inevitably lead to worship. Willard describes this beautifully:

In worship we are ascribing to greatness, goodness, and glory to God. It is typical of worship that we put every possible aspect of out being into it; all our sensuous, conceptual, active, and creative capacities.
We embellish, elaborate, and magnify. poetry and songs, color and texture, food and incense, dace and procession are all used to exalt God. and sometimes it is the quiet absorption of thought, the electric passion of encounter, or total surrender of the will. In worship we strive for adequate expression of God's greatness. But only for a moment, if ever, do we achieve what seems like adequacy. We cannot do justice to God or his Son or his kingdom or his goodness to us.

-Dallas Willard - The Divine Conspiracy

So these are the highlights of the curriculum for becoming Christlike. When we apply it to our lives Willard recognizes that it will affect our churches. He says, "We may not soon have bigger crowds around us--and in fact they may for a while even get smaller--but we will soon have bigger Christians for sure. This is what I call 'church growth for those who hate it.' And bigger crowds are sure to follow, for the simple reason that human beings desperately need what we bring to them, the word and the reality of The Kingdom Among Us."

Mother Teresa's Smile

To smile at someone who is sad; to visit, even for a little while, someone who is lonely; to give someone shelter from the rain with our umbrella; to read something for someone who is blind: these and others can be small things, very small things, but they are appropriate to give our love of God concrete expression to the poor.

-Mother Teresa

Everyone who has spent time with people who do not speak the same language realizes that a lot of smiling goes on. I think its pretty funny how much the patients at Prem Dan and I smile at each other. We can't really do much else in terms of communication but the smile seems to mean quite a lot. I hope what Mother Teresa said is true in my life and that my smiles are not just habit or awkwardness but rather an expression of love for God.

The Man With The Broken Leg

It has been a couple frustrating days at Prem Dan. Yesterday a sister brought in a man they she found on the street. He had a rather sad story. Five days previous he had fallen asleep on the sidewalk (which is not uncommon in Kolkata) and his right calf had been run over by a car. He was taken to a hospital where they put some stitches in a cut above his eye and wrapped his very swollen right leg with a tensor bandage and sent him promptly back to the street. The sister found him in severe pain 4 days later.

He arrived in the room where we change dressings and I cleaned off his cut on his eye and proceeded to look at the leg. When I removed the tensor bandage I saw blisters; most of which were torn open and bleeding, covering most of his ankle and calf. It is not uncommon for severe swelling to cause blisters but I had never seen it to this degree. In addition to this it was obvious that at least his tibia and probably his fibula were broken above his ankle.

The man needed to go to a hospital to have x-rays taken and his fracture set. The sisters told me though that this wouldn’t happen because of social and economic barriers in India. (In largely Hindu India it is understood that bad things happen to people because of bad karma and to help fix them will result in bad karma for oneself. This is one reason that India, despite enough wealth to plan to land a man on the moon in the next couple years, struggles to provide basic food and medical care to much of its population.) We will have to make due at least until next Wednesday when a doctor volunteers his time to see patients at Prem Dan and may be able to get him x-rays.

The second best option then would be to construct him a splint from fiberglass or plaster to at least stabilize the fracture. The sisters though, did not think that any plaster was available and advised that we just dress the open blisters for now. It was all a very frustrating experience because the man could be helped by what I would consider fairly basic medical care. With out good care the man may be a cripple for life.

Today thankfully, the sisters found some plaster and I was able to make a splint for the man to try to keep his leg straight and relatively pain free until he can see the doctor next week. Hopefully despite the system the man can get enough care to enable him to heal and go back to his normal life. If you think of it, pray for him that the kingdom will break in and his leg might heal well despite sub-optimal care.

A Physician's Prayer

Dear Lord, the great physician,
I kneel before you since every good and perfect gift must come from you.
I pray give skill to my hands,
clear vision to my mind,
kindness and sympathy to my heart.
Give me singleness of purpose,
strength to lift at least a part of the burden of my suffering fellow me,n
and a true realization of the privilege that is mine.
Take from my heart all guile and worldliness
that with the simple faith of a child I may rely on you.
Amen.

-Marcus Herz (Prayed each morning before changing dressings at Prem Dan)

Later…

Three Things I've Learned From Catholic Tradition

Over the last week I've been able to participate in Catholic mass daily at the Mother House (picture). While there are aspects of the liturgy I don't understand or appreciate I do think that evangelical Christians can learn something from Catholic tradition.

Focus on the Eucharist

The entire event of public gathering for mass is centered on the Eucharist or communion. Catholic theology holds that by the priests blessing of the brad and wine it turns into the actual body and blood of Christ. While I think this would be hard to prove biblically and impossible to prove scientifically, I think I can learn something from it. It reminds me that Christ is with us in a very real sense here on the earth. Even though his blood and body probably aren’t on the alter his real self is beside me in my actions daily. It reminds me that I need to rely on Christ for my physical and spiritual sustenance. The spiritual part isn't new but the idea of relying on Christ for my food is new. I'm leaning that maybe that's what fasting is about in a way. Learning that Christ is enough to keep us going. One of the sisters suggested to me that it is only by partaking of Christ daily that she has the strength to do her work each day.

Focus on Corporate Prayer
Much of the liturgy of mass consists of reciting prayers together corporately. I've always been hesitant incorporate this type of worship into Awaken when I lead because it too often seems like mindless recitation. There are two positive aspects to it though that I've learned here. Firstly it builds community by acknowledging together that we, the church, are in need of God's divine intervention in our corporate life today. At the beginning of mass we all read a public confession stating that we (each in the community) have sinned. Secondly it leads us to private prayer. I'm not very good at praying as a generalization but I have found myself praying the morning prayers myself as I work and the natural outflow is to continue in new prayer.

Focus on Respect for God

Respect for God the Father and Jesus is key in the Catholic tradition. From bowing a knee when entering the room, to bowing low when the Eucharist is being blessed, to standing when the Gospels are read; it is evident we are worshiping a greatly respected God and not a friendly acquaintance or flirtatious boyfriend. Of course we are told by Jesus to call God “Abba” as well so this emphasis is not perfect but it has been good to be reminded of the greatness of God and the respect he is due.

A Day In My (Indian) Life

I've been in Kolkata just over a week now so life is beginning to settle into a comfortable routine. Here is an example of my typical day:

5:00 - Wake up
5:30 - Walk 25 minutes to the Mother House with a couple other volunteers staying at my hotel
6:00 - Attend Mass at Mother House
7:00 - Breakfast of bread, banana, and chai with all volunteers at Mother House
7:35 - Say Prayer Before Leaving the Apostalate and take 15 minute bus from the Mother House to Prem Dan where I volunteer
8:00 - Arrive at Prem Dan and "talk" with patients while we wait for a sister to open the dressing room. (It has become one of my favorite things to just sit with individual patients and try to communicate. A few patients have a little English but most have none. Never-the-less I have grown in the last week to look forward to the unplanned times at Prem Dan when I can just sit on a patients bed for 5 minutes and remind them that people care about them. The long term volunteers and Sisters are wonderful examples in this).
8:15 - Change bandages on patients. (There are 40 or so patients with wounds that require dressing changes daily. These are mostly from blisters or burns or diabetes. As I've written about before. Its hard to walk the line between trying to improve obviously substandard medical care and recognizing that the sisters are hear forever and that the current practices fulfill the need for sustainable use of resources.)
10:30 - "Tea" of chai and cookies on the porch.
10:45 - More time to just be with patients. (In language I would try to use at home, I try to develop friendships with the patients. This is harder than back home because of the language barrier and because of the difficulty of reciprocity in the relationship. At first thought there is not much that the patients can offer me. I am beginning to realize that the patients do teach me patience so to speak and I hope that I will learn other things from them as well).
11:15 - Serve the patients a lunch of rice and curie. (We bring the food to each person and then help feed the one's that arn't able to feed themselves because of mental or physical disability).
11:45 - Do dishes
12:30 - Take an auto-rickshaw back to the hotel. (An auto-rickshaw is hard to describe if you haven't experienced it. It is a 3-wheeled vehicle with 2 stroke motor. 4 people plus the driver pile in and race through the streets which is an adventure that feels like riding a roller coaster).
1:00 - Lunch at the Blue Sky Cafe.
2:00 - Reading, laundry, cricket on TV, internet, etc.
6:00 - Dinner at the Blue Sky Cafe.
7:00 - Bed

Later....

Mother Teresa's "Story"

I'm sure most of this is published elsewhere but I'll put it here as well. On Saturday night a group of us got to listen to a Jesuit monk tell us the story of Mother Teresa's call to found the Missionaries of Charity. Father Abello is a Canadian born PhD physicist who has lived in India since joining the Jesuit order and was a close adviser and confidant to Mother Teresa for the last 10 or 15 years of her life. The group of 7 or 8 of us gathered on the roof of a hotel while geckos roamed the walls and heard this story...

Mother Teresa served in Kolkata with the Loreto Sisters from 1927 through to 1947. In this year she was taking a train from Kolkata to nearby Darjeeling. She had a powerful vision of Christ telling her audibly that he mourned for the poor and destitute on the streets of Kolkata. He asked her to raise up an order of nuns to be his hands and feet amoung the poorest of the poor.

Mother Teresa followed his request and started by approaching a leader of a Hindu temple called Kaligahd. The temple had an annex that because of its location and size was one of the most suitable buildings in which to shelter the most destitute of the city. The Hindu priest gave it to her. His decision was met with resistance from the general Hindu community. How could he let Christians into a temple to care for "untouchables". He replied that if a group of Hindus would come care for these people he would immediately kick the Christians out. Of course the Sisters stayed. Kaligahd (The Home for the Dying) is still caring for the dying and destitute today.

Later when Mother Teresa's order of nuns, the Missionaries of Charity, began to grow they needed a building for a convent. Mother approached a Muslim man who owned a centrally located building and asked him to give it to the Sisters. He replied that he would pray about it and then and hour later gave her the deed. God has continued to provide for the Sisters who do not fundraise but rely entirely on God to provide for both them and those they care for.

Father Abello told us about the reasons Mother had for accepting volunteers to work along with the Sisters. First of all she believed that volunteers were able to be a different example of Christ to the patients. Patients would often ask the volunteers why they came from the "heaven" of the western world to care for them in the "hell" of the slums of India. This gave volunteers opportunities to speak of Christ that the Sisters didn't have. The second reason Mother accepted volunteers was for their own growth. They could take back what they saw and learned to their own contexts and hopefully ask some critical questions about simple living and where poverty is hiding in each country around the world.

Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, sanctify me
Body of Christ, save me
Blood of Christ, inebriate me
Water from Christ's side, wash me
Passion of Christ, strengthen me
O good Jesus, hear me
Within Thy wounds hide me
Suffer me not to be separated from Thee
From the malicious enemy defend me
In the hour of my death call me
And bid me come unto Thee
That I may praise Thee with Thy saints and with Thy angels
Forever and ever
Amen
-14th Century Prayer - Said daily at the conclusion of mass at the Mother House

Prem Dan

I started volunteering yesterday. It was pretty overwhelming at first to be honest. I arrived and was thrown right into the fray so to speak. There were very few people around to tell me what to do so I kinda made it up with lots of help from the patients.

I will be volunteering at a house called Prem Dan. It houses about 100 men and 150 women who are either sick or disabled and would be on the streets otherwise. I will be working in the men's ward. Many of the men are quite sick with TB, diabetes or any variety of mental and physical disabilities. The Sisters with some volunteer help provide 3 meals a day and clean and maintain the ward type room where they live.

On the first day a patient who spoke a little English informed me that I should start wiping down each mattress and putting a new sheet and pillow case on each. I thought I could handle this but it still was quite an adventure with a handful of smirking men trying to teach me the correct "Bengali" way to do it. The job also involved lifting a number of the men who could not stand to other beds while I changed their sheets. I eventually succeeded in completing my section of the room. I spent the rest of the morning with some other volunteers washing dishes and serving lunch.

Today one of the Sisters found out that I had some medical training and asked me to help change the patients dressings. It took me a few patients to get over the lack of any sterile technique. Unfortunately the home has fewer resources than any clinic I've worked in in either Nigeria or Angola. Any bugs in one patient's wound will soon be spread to all the others. A French volunteer who has been working at the home for over a year told me that there is a sterilizer but for unknown reasons they use it only once a week.

So far it has been super challenging and humbling to care for patients who really rely on others for everything. I've had to take men to the bathroom and feed others lunch. Never-the-less I do see joy in the Sisters and volunteers faces.

Prayer Before Leaving the Apostolate

Dear Lord, the Great Healer,
I kneel before You since every perfect gift must come from You.
I pray, give skill to my hands, clear vision to my mind, kindness and meekness to my heart.
Give me singleness of purpose, strength to lift up a part of the burden of my suffering fellow men, and a true realization of the privilege that is mine.
Take from my heart all guile and worldliness that with the simple faith of a child, I may rely on You.
Amen.
-Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel - Prayed by the volunteers before leaving the Mother House (the main convent) for the various other sites each morning.

Later...

Trains and Titagarh

I've arrived in Kolkata and even found a relatively cheap hotel on Sudder Streer (picture on left) with a/c and sans roaches (so far). Thursdays are a day off for volunteers so I was going to have nothing to do. I was fortunate though to get wind of a group of volunteers going to a leper colony run by the Brothers of Charity just out of town. About 25 of us headed out to the Gandhiji Prem Nivas (House of Love) Leprosy Center in Titagarth.

The community is located on a mile long and 50 foot wide stretch of land along the rail line. There is a hospital ward where Brothers of Charity treat patients who come to be treated and recover (the major rail line in West India gives free passage to lepers riding for thjis purpose). There is also a small OR where once a month a surgeon donates his time to perform amputations for patients with gangrenous limbs. These patients all receive fitted prostheses made by other members of the community.

Besides the hospital there are about 200 or so former lepers who stay and work on the colony because of the social stigma that is still associated with the disease. I spoke with one of the brothers who works at the community and he explained that in Indian culture leprosy carries a huge stigma even to those who should know better. He said that the vast majority of physicians in India would refuse to treat a leper although these physicians know that leprosy is very treatable and only minimally contagious. These ex-lepers work in the community and do everything from weave the linen (picture above) for the Sisters' houses in Kolkata and all sarees for the Sisters of Charity world wide. They also raise fish and pork to both eat and sell. One volunteer remarked, "Its such a picture of redemptive living." People who would be otherwise ostracized are able to live together and assist in the advance of the Kingdom.

The train ride back was another adventure. Imagine a crowded Indian train, then add twice as many people. People were literally hanging out the windows. We let the first train go by thinking that the next couldn't be as crowded but it was. We stepped in and hung on. No one fell off but it was an adventurous 30 minute ride.

Later...

Why I'm Going To Kolkata

When I tell people that I'm going to Kolkata, with few exceptions people respond, "Thats great! You'll have a wonderful time!" No doubt it will be an unforgettable time but I'm not convinced it will be "great". Never-the-less I leave tomorrow afternoon from London and here are some reasons why.

To Have an Adventure

This is my last chance for five years to spend more than a week away. Who wouldn't want to take advantage of the time off to see a new side of the world (literally).

The Shane Claiborne Effect

In his book, The Irresistible Revolution, Shane tells of wanting to spend time with people who are actually living as Jesus taught and lived. He lamented the fact that so few of his heros in this regard were still alive. He was fortunate enough to go and spend a number of months in Kolkata while Mother Theresa was still alive and spek with her once. For me, Shane's stories of what he learned was enought to create the desire to go and see what living life in the Kingdom of the Heavens amoung the poorest of the poor looks like.

To Experience Anti-Medicine

By anti-medicine I mean the opposite of the western medicine I've been taught at school. In Canada medicine is entirely concerned with fixing people. It is only recently that the field of paliative care has begun to change this but even so it exsists at the margins of the medical profession. The Sisters of Charity take an oath to love the poorest of the poor. I want to learn waht loving, when there is little if any hope of a physical cure or return to physical health, looks like.

To Put Faces on Ideas About Suffering

In Calgry it is often difficult, though by no means imposible to be confronted by people suffering. (I wonder sometimes if going to India to see suffering is safer than looking for it in the neighbourhoods where I live.) I am just starting to read God, Medicine and Suffering by Stanley Hauerwas. He starts, "It is one thing to think that 'the problem of evil' can be answered by the free will defense or explained through human sin; it is another to confront the illness of a child." We all see and experience suffering. I hope to learn a worldview that belittles neither the reality of it nor the God above it.

To Learn Skills To Be Around Dying People

I don't like being around people who are dying. I have no good explaination but I've choosen in which these interations will be a nearly daily occurence. To spend time with sisters who have commited their lives to doing so seems liek a good place to learn.

I'll try to post here frequently over the next few weeks. Thanks for being interested enough in my adventure to atleast read this. Stay in touch. Leave comments. Ask questions (I'd be happy to pass them on to the sisters I'll meet. Who doesn't have a question for a person who has vowed to live their entire life with the poorest of the poor?)

Later....