Those Hindus

My 21-year-old Muslim friend came up to me and told me that he had two interactions from this morning to tell me about. In his words:

“This morning my brother told me that Hindus are bad people. I asked him, 'Who made Hindus?' God did! We are all children of God, so we cannot say that they are bad.”

“Then an aunti told me today, 'Don't eat the poori from the Hindus because they drink alcohol.' [That day was a Hindu festival and some Hindus were distributing free food.] I told her, 'Many Muslims in our basti drink too! Have you ever eaten in my home?' She said, 'Yes, twice.' So I told her, 'Well, I have drunk alcohol twice!'”

Yeast spreads slowly, and the early steps don't look like much. But eventually it permeates the whole dough.

Incentive

This is a working motorized car, made entirely out of recycled materials.

I have an 11-year-old friend in the basti. He's had some incredibly difficult circumstances in his life, including losing his father among many other trials. Perhaps as a result, he has hardly attended school, and can't read at all. But he can put together pieces of trash he finds here and there and make a car that runs!

Okay, it didn't run all that well. But it really did motor itself down the alleyway in our slum!  I was a really smart kid, and I never would have even thought of doing this. He paid a junk dealer 10 rupees (20 cents) to get a toy motor attached to some wheels from a broken and discarded toy car...and proceeded on his own to collect batteries, wires, a switch, a second set of makeshift wheels, and a styrofoam block and then put in all together in a way that the car actually runs. It took him a few months to finally do it after he first got the little motor, but he did it.

If you have any ideas or resources to help Aftab continue to improve upon his cars, he would love to hear them. I started teaching him to read Hindi a few weeks ago, and he's recently been motivated by the promise that if he learned how to read then he'd be able to learn more about making cars. So any material you come up with would help in more than one way. (Don't worry about it being in English – one way or another I'll figure out how to translate the relevant points into Hindi).

Thoughts on Egypt, Part II

In 2011, I gave my thoughts on the crisis of government in Egypt, and how I felt the Coptic community could best respond. I predicted that there would not be a governmental solution, but that the key to everything for the Christian community lay in our own conduct towards others and our obedience to God's call for our lives, most specifically in the love of our enemies and our solidarity with those who suffer at the hands of others. I laid out a few ways in which I felt God's call to His people applied in this case.

Last year, in the midst of horrifying persecution of Muslim radicals by the military government and horrifying persecution of Coptic Christians by the Muslim radicals, I wrote a hypothetical news story detailing what I felt a Christian response would look like in such a bad situation. My fictional story assumed not only consistent brave and sacrificial Christ-like love in action, but a history of such behavior over the decades. That story became one of the most-read things I ever posted. Unfortunately, the fictional nature of the story was missed by some, and the article was posted on twitter and re-tweeted by a number of people as an actual news story. Sadly, the specific actions of love and solidarity, and especially the language used, was not taken up by the church at large, and to this day Egyptians in general still believe that the church stood behind the military during the transition, rather than standing alongside the victims of violence on both sides.

This year we are back to square one. Once again we have a military (some would say fascist) government in total control of all aspects of power, and looking to cement its authority by imprisoning and/or killing all elements of the opposition by the thousands and tens of thousands. (And, for what it's worth, by trampling on all rights to free speech, free press, free assembly, free elections, and fair trials.) Once again we have a large segment of the Muslim population who is violently angry. And once again we have a Coptic population that is largely viewed as siding with the dictator in charge because they believes that violent power, however unjustly wielded, is the only thing that can protect them. It's just like Mubarak was back again, only more so.

As I say, this cannot end well.

As long as this branch of fundamentalist Muslims believe that the solutions to their problems are found in violence, they will bring more violence upon themselves. They die in suicide bombings and riots. They kill others in these bombings and riots. And they ensure that the government response to their violence will be even greater violence; that members of their own community, including thousands that didn't even participate in violence themselves, will be killed or imprisoned by a government that is willing to use the same violent tactics. No matter their rights to elected office or their appeal to the unjust nature of the government rampage, it must be said that a great deal of blame lies within the violent elements of their own movement.

As long as the military/government believes that violence is the means of control, it will continue to ensure a violent response from the population it governs. This government has run over people with their tanks, shot them with their guns, and threatened execution by the hundreds. It is an open secret that Egyptian prisons are warehouses of torture, and that this torture is condoned at the highest levels of government. Not only Muslim radicals, but foreign journalists, democracy activists, and unfortunate young men just pulled off the street have been imprisoned and tortured by a military bent on bloodshed. If the military says, “We can do whatever we want because we have the most power and we use the greatest violence”, then aren't they encouraging their opposition to do all they can to match that violence? As long as the government says that violence is the appropriate tool, then the government will be to blame for all the violence it sees, both the violence it inflicts and the violence inflicted upon it in response.

As long as the Christians of Egypt believe that their salvation lies in those who inflict violence, then they bear responsibility for the violence and bloodshed alongside those who are inflicting it. We are told not to rely on the might of Pharaoh's army, but in the strength of God's promise. We are told that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. We are told to never seek vengeance, to feed and care for our enemies, to turn the other cheek, and to visit those who are in prison. That is our response to a violent world who does not know the saving love of the One who died rather than respond to violence in kind. We are to stand with Jesus, the one who stood against both the violent Roman government AND the violent tendencies of the population who wanted to rebel against that government. We are to love the least, both theirs and ours; to take care of widows and orphans, both theirs and ours; to speak out for those who are not being spoken for, both theirs and ours. As long as we're failing to do those practical acts of love, as long as we're responding to those who hate us with hate-filled words, and as long as we're supporting the violent enemies of our enemies out of fear of man, then we are to blame for the hate and the violence that comes back to us in turn.

I do not believe that this is easy. It goes against the ways of the world. It involves self-sacrifice, and potentially suffering. I only believe it is possible because of what I've seen Christ do in the hearts of those who follow Him.  But in the long run this narrow path will be easier on our souls, and better for our lives, than responding the way the world responds.

We do not know how long this government will stand. Perhaps General Sisi, like Mubarak, will hold the reigns of power for decades. Perhaps, like Morsi, he will fall in a year. But what we do know is that he will not stand forever. And what happens when he does fall, and in all the time before then, depends partially on us. How can we blame those who do not know our Messiah, when we know him and yet act as we do?

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who persecute you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.

If your enemy hungers, feed him; if he thirsts, give him a drink

Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress,and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Not returning evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing.

When the people of Egypt choose their next government (whether that choice is made at a ballot box or at the point of a gun), will they know the Copts as those who love them? Will they know the Copts as those who stood with them in their time of suffering? Will they know the Coptic Church as the ones who fought for their fair trials in the courts, who supported their women and children when the men were killed or imprisoned or disappeared, who provided sanctuary for them when they were being unjustly hunted down, who loved them even when they were not being loved back? Will they know that we have been blessing them? Will they believe that we have been praying for them?

Will they?

Every day counts.  Worldview perceptions do not change overnight.  We need to plant more seeds, and water them abundantly.

Another day in the life

9am: Right before I take off for the day, the resident 5-year-old walks into our room.

“What are you?”, he asks in Hindi/Urdu.

We don't understand the question.

“Are you Muslim or are you Hindu?”, he clarifies.

Ah. We explain that we are Isai, followers of Jesus Messiah

He doesn't understand our attempts to explain. There's no frame of reference for this.

“What are you?”, I ask in reply.

“Hindu,” he states clearly. He's Muslim. He's also bratty. ;)

9:30am: I go to my language lesson. My language helper is in intense pain – today is a worse day than most for his chronic genetic condition. Life is hard enough for people living in the West with this condition. For a young man in the slum? There is little to be had in the way of relief.

10am: Our lesson is interrupted by a neighborhood argument between half-a-dozen households which nearly dissolves into a fistfight. The focus of the argument is the trash in the alleyway and the little gullies that carry wastewater down away from the homes. The argument spills over into domestic disputes in individual households we care a lot about. Rose comes over to talk to the wife and be an ear to listen to her. I work on the husband a little. The bad blood from this incident will spill over into following days among other families in the neighborhood.

11am: Rose heads home, but on the way sees a teenage girl crying on the side of the alley, clearly having been beaten. Rose doesn't know her, but decides to stop and sit and talk with and comfort her. It turns out that her father had passed away (true of so many families we know here), and her mother had done the beating.

While Rose is talking to the girl, a woman comes by and starts berating Rose, saying that she knows what we foreigners come to “really” do here, which in her mind seems to be to expose the problems in the basti, looking only at the negative and reporting it to the media, in order to make India look bad to the world. She goes off for a while about how she's does social work and does not stand by letting these negative things happen, but fights for abused children's rights, calls in the police, etc. Rose tries to thank her and praise her for the work that she does, but isn't able to get a word in. A young local mullah comes by and tries to calm the woman down and tells her that we're not like that at all. Rose thinks that the woman may be the mullah's mom.

11:15am: I start cooking “kerela”, or “bitter gourd” for lunch based off the recipe of a friend in the basti. I once saw someone get kicked off a cooking show for terribly messing up this veggie. My friend's recipe is fantastic.

11:30am: New neighbors move in! A couple from the village are moving into our home, right into the room next to ours, with their six children. We think that our 8' by 9' room is small, but manageable. Their room is the same size, except that they don't really have a window. This will certainly make our day-to-day lives a little more interesting. (Later we find that the kids have never been to school, and the next day we'll begin tutoring the 2 oldest children in literacy.  The daughter is the fastest learner we've ever seen.)

1:00pm: We go off to tutor more people in the literacy program. Rose has been focusing on women and teenage girls who never got to go to school, while I've been working with kids who are going to low-quality schools but haven't learned to read there. It can be a bit of a struggle – sometimes I'm not sure what makes it harder to learn: the complete lack of an education, or exposure to the extreme rote-memorization learning methods of the Indian school system.

2:30pm: Afterwards I head over to another home where I'm tutoring two children. The tutoring goes well, but afterwards there is a big fight among the children, which isn't dealt with well by the household. It's sad and frustrating.

4:00pm: I get multiple calls from the local NGO that provided us with the literacy program, asking for my feedback. They want to deliver the new version of the study materials to me ASAP.

5:00pm: My friend who is taking medication for psychological issues asks me if I will go to the hospital with him tomorrow. He wants a clear word from the doctor about his long-term prognosis. He feels that since the doctor was educated in English (the language of much higher education here), he can explain it to me better than he explains it to my friend in Hindi. I think the real problem is that this doctor sees 20 patients an hour on his consultation days, and doesn't feel like he has much time to explain anything to anyone. But I agree to go.

5:30pm: We finally get home to rest for a little bit. I work on my language study.

6:30pm: We get a call from our friends across town...who are at the entrance to our basti waiting for us to meet them! We totally forgot that we were supposed to host them for dinner tonight. We don't have enough leftovers, so the husband and I go out to pick up some street food, kababs, the local specialty.

7:15pm: Just as we're settling down, I get another call from the NGO. They have 50 copies of the literacy manuals ready for us, and the driver needs directions to find our place. I go out to meet him on the road and eventually get the materials from him.

9:00pm: We bid our friends farewell, and get ourselves ready for sleep. Yet again, it's been a loooong day.

Scenes from the city in threes

Today I'm just posting some images I like from our city, in thematic sets of three.

For starters, India has the most environmentally friendly schoolbuses in the world.  Dudes have to work really, really hard though.

Not that they're the only ones who have to work hard.  You should have seen the scene seconds before this picture when one of the guys crossed from one vertical beam to the next:

And she's amazing with the bricks:

It's not unusual to see security guards with ancient-looking guns.  But this is the only one I've seen with a bayonet attached!  Trying to imagine him using that against a burglar is pretty gross.

It doesn't really get that cold here, but people worry about their goats.  The ones wearing actual sweaters are the best, but this little guy just get a burlap sack.

Kids posing with a water buffalo that I had just made a little video with.

A peaceful end to a difficult life.

Beautiful sunset on the outskirts of the city.

Morning...somewhere.  I don't remember where I took this picture.

Dawn in our basti.

A Shia mosque.

A Hindu temple in the middle of the river.

Catholic cathedral right before Christmas.

Her enthusiasm with the beating stick is admirable, but her turning and reaction speed leave something to be desired..

When you only have one swing in your playground, you make the most of it.

The kid in the water just did a backflip off that water buffalo.

Finally, just a few of the many amazing wild animals I've seen here.

The Good News

In December, so many bad things were happening that it felt impossible for me to share.

Strangely, now that fewer "bad" things are happening, it seems equally hard to come up with much to share.  World events and social trends, of course, continue to concern me.  But as far as daily life goes, in the stage we're at right now most of life is learning Hindi, visiting people, trying to figure out how to live life to the fullest in a slum one day at a time.  When nothing bad is happening, there's not always a ton to talk about.

So instead, I want to try out a draft of what I see as the "Good News".

I'm not trying to repeat "what I think Jesus was saying in 30 A.D."  Jesus was the Messiah, speaking to the Jewish people, and said a lot of very specific things to a specific group of people at a specific time in history.  But I do believe that when Jesus announced the Good News of the coming of the Kingdom of God, that he made clear it was a Kingdom for everyone.  This is what I believe the Good News is to us:


1) God is our creator, who created us for this world and desires both the good of the world and our own good within it. Our lives are best lived when we're living in sync with God.

2) The primary concerns of society - wealth, power, security in things, revenge against enemies - are the opposite of what our hearts need. These desires will not bring us peace with ourselves, our neighbors, or with God. God's ways, not the ways of society, have the ultimate authority.

3) God has shown us His way subversively, not through domination or force but through Jesus, a Son who in bringing God to Earth chose service and humility rather than power and violence. In Jesus's life, death, and resurrection, he transformed the way to the Father and unveiled God's true character. This unveiling gives us the chance to choose what kind of life we're going to accept, the Way of the Christ-followers or the way of the society-followers. We believe that Christ's Way is open to everyone.

4) The center of this new Way is that we replace our self-seeking fears (which cause us to lust after wealth or power, to chase security or revenge, and then call it "normal" because everyone around us is doing it) with other-focused love. We are to "love God" and "love our neighbors as ourselves". There is a special emphasis on loving those who are most in need of love - the weak, the hated, the marginalized.

5) Being a part of the Kingdom of God, choosing his ways over the ways of the world, trying to embody a new community of love, means going counterculture. That is difficult. But Jesus has done it first. If we take up the cross and follow him, through the difficulty we will find a better way to live for us and the people around us. As we discover this new life, we have both a responsibility and a desire to share with others what we've found.

6) The primary manner in which God's ways and God's love are shared are via community. It is true that we are called to give even to those we don't know, to love and serve even those whom we may meet only once. But the most difficult and most rewarding expression of God's ultimate desire for our lives is expressed in the daily acts of reciprocal love and service that are found in a community of Christ-followers. In the place in which we plant ourselves, we are called to continuously grow in true humility and non-judgement, true simplicity, true service, and true unity. We are to holistically express God's love in every aspect of our lives, keeping nothing in the dark but opening up even our weaknesses and faults and shortcomings in vulnerability so that God can overcome them. And these communities, in their love and service and unity, are to be cities on a hill showing God's love to the rest of the world, and leading them to his Kingdom here in this age.

7) We live in hope of a future age to come, of a world of justice where all wrongs are righted, all pain is relieved, all truth is known, and all love is possible. We believe that Christ will bring this world, his Kingdom in full, and that we will live in it in glory. Every step we take to grow closer to Him and to others and to love more fully in this age lets us know that much more what we have to hope for in the age to come.



Obviously, this is the train of thought that is governing my life, but I just thought about putting it into words this morning.  Let me know what you think and whether there's anything here that might be out of line with what I really believe, or what I really should believe.  

These strange ashes

But these strange ashes, Lord, this nothingness,

This baffling sense of loss?

The last two days have been very difficult.  And again I'm at a loss for what to say.  The more of life I experience here the harder it is to write about any of it. I've thought about various explanations for that, but the most convincing one is the overwhelmingly depressing nature of the events I have to share.  If I had a couple “feel good” stories or at least some situation had turned out surprisingly well, then I'm sure there'd be something I'd want to write. But I'm not getting there. In the broad view almost nothing feels good, and every welcome surprise has only briefly delayed the inevitable heartbreak.

We knew this would be a tough place to live when we came. That's why we're here. But is it too much of a cliché to say that we didn't know it would be this tough? Every month brings more illness, more deaths, more violence, more affairs, more lost jobs and lost homes and sadness.

Did we happen to get a group of friends going through an especially difficult stretch of events? Or if we had a different group of friends, would we just be privy to a different set of heartbreak? I know it can't be this bad for everyone who lives in our slum. But we aren't even close to living with the poorest people in our slum, which is not even close to the poorest slum in the city, which is not even close to the poorest city in the country. And there are a lot of worse-off countries in the world. So while it might not be this bad for everyone, there are hundreds of millions (or billions) of people for who it is exactly this bad.

Which is what keeps me going. Because I know that they'll still be here, whether I'm here or not. And I love them. And out of love, I choose by whatever small degree to live with them and suffer with them, in the hope that we may some day together be able to take some of this suffering away. And I know that even if I lived somewhere else where I didn't have to know them, didn't have to suffer with them, I would still know they were here suffering. And to not be there with them is too much for my heart to take.

A story is told of Jesus and His disciples walking one day along a stony road. Jesus asked each of them to choose a stone to carry for Him. John, it is said, chose a large one while Peter chose the smallest. Jesus led them then to the top of a mountain and commanded that the stones be made bread. Each disciple, by this time tired and hungry, was allowed to eat the bread he held in his hand, but of course Peter's was not sufficient to satisfy his hunger. John gave him some of his.

Some time later Jesus again asked the disciples to pick up a stone to carry. This time Peter chose the largest of all. Taking them to a river, Jesus told them to cast the stones into the water. They did so, but looked at one another in bewilderment.

“For whom,” asked Jesus, “did you carry the stone?”

(quotes from Amy Carmichael and Elizabeth Elliot)

So my mother knows I'm okay...

I want to thank all the people who replied with prayers and concerns to my last blog post.

I want you to know that we're both doing okay. Some days certainly have been very hard, but the very difficult things going on in the lives of our friends aren't affecting us directly at the moment, except to the degree that we are concerned for them.

Please continue to pray for them, and for us as we try to discern the next steps to take forward as we partner together through the messy, messy life here.

Too much pain

There comes a time when you have so much to say that you can't say anything at all.  The last three weeks have included my four or five most difficult-to-deal-with days since I arrived in India.  And it isn't any one thing or any one family, but multiple (6?) long-simmering issues coming to a head involving the lives of every single one of the families we're closest too.  And, because we're their neighbors and we love them, we've become quite involved too.

I can't say more without giving an unfairly incomplete picture, and I can't say everything (or much of anything) without violating the confidence of my friends.  So I just want to ask that you pray for them and for us.  And pray for the ever-"justified" violence, the poverty created by a world enslaved to greed, and each of our own little personal sins that are helping to tear this world apart.  Pray that we can each reach closer to the center of God's Kingdom to release ourselves from power, wealth, and our lusts and learn to love our neighbors as ourselves.

The same fever is not the same fever: Part 2

A few days ago my good friend's relative rushed into the city with a severe case of dengue fever. My friend was already hosting one family who had come with a medical problem, but took this second family into his tiny slum home as well, then worked for several days to get them admittance and treatment at the local government hospital.

Facilities at public hospitals in India are poor, and after two days his condition had worsened. His platelet count fell below 50,000 and his hands and feet were heavily swollen. The doctors said that he needed platelets. But the hospital had no platelets to give.

So my friend rushed back to the slum and found five guys to take to the blood bank. He got them all to the hospital, along with his wife and 7-month-old son, who needed to be admitted for a severe urinary tract infection! Unfortunately, three of the guys who came with him did not have strong enough health to donate blood. The three who were accepted donated their blood, which then had the platelets removed.

Meanwhile, the three guys who couldn't donate took care of the sick man and my friend's wife and son, a necessity in a hospital so overcrowded that each patient will only rarely see a nurse, and won't be fed at all. One of those guys got the donated platelets from the blood bank when they were ready and brought a nurse over to administer them. Unfortunately, the nurse left immediately and a new nurse had to be found to switch out each bag. The whole process went too slowly and the last bag of platelets started going bad in the heat.

Tens of millions of people are infected by dengue fever every year. At least half a million cases are severe enough to require hospitalization, and tens of thousands of people die.  In the four days since my friend's wife brought her baby to the hospital, she's seen three babies in her room die of dengue.

In the movie Elysium, set 150 years in the future, the richest people on Earth have fled the planet and live in a massive satellite called “Elysium”, with huge houses, clean air, and leisurely lives. Advanced medical technology can fix any disease or injury. Citizenship is tightly controlled and a defense system keeps attempted immigrants out, killing many.   Back down on a polluted, overcrowded Earth, the poor of the world live under a robot-enforced police state, working under dangerous conditions to make products that enhance the lives of the rich in their space station. The masses on Earth access health care at overrun hospitals with technology that is decades behind. The rich on Elysium could provide them with better care, but choose not to, instead hoarding the resources for themselves. Many of the Earthlings who risk their lives to sneak onto Elysium are simply trying to get medical care for their children.

Some of the movie reviewers who saw Elysium thought it was an interesting commentary on what Earth might look like 150 years from now, as the rich continue to get richer while land and resources for everyone else continue to run out. Elysium's director had to correct them.

"Everybody wants to ask me lately about my predictions for the future," the director says.  "No, no, no.  This isn't science fiction.  This is today.  This is now."

We are already living on Elysium.