Walking the Walk

Imayam School students at assembly

Near the southernmost point of India we visited three schools: a college where women are preparing to be teachers, a well-equipped school for girls with over 3000 students from what we might term middle class families, and a smaller school of 170 students for boys and girls from small villages that surround the city of Tuticorin. Called the Imayam School, this school was started ten years ago in an area that was completely rural. The school site itself was barren. Now it is a kind of oasis, with hundreds of trees planted on the school grounds (three more were planted during our visit to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the school). The students gathered on the grounds near the entrance to the school for the big celebration. Every single student participated in the program that was offered: boys and girls danced, a group of girls presented a very funny play in English, another group recited ancient Tamil poetry, and boys offered acrobatics. It was a wonderful event—with very few words from the staff!

Tree planting with Ms. Saraswathi & Ms Ponrathi

This school is run by two women who are the founders. I asked Ms Saraswathi how the school was founded. She told me how she and her assistant principal Ms Ponrathi had been teachers at the larger, more prosperous school we had visited. They taught there for 25 years, and then took early retirement, gathered all their retirement funds and purchased the property and built the first building and opened the school. Both of them had felt for many years that the education they had received and then had offered at the larger school—that quality of education should be available for poor students who could never dream of attending such a school. So they walked the walk, putting all of their savings into the project and depending on the generous support of some of their ex-students, now adults—many of them prosperous: doctors, lawyers, bankers, community leaders. With the help of the community of peoploe they had taught and worked with all those years they got the school up and running.

The school also receives important support from the Kolam Foundation started by Vi Ganesan Herbert who is a native of Tamil Nadu now living in Hawaii. Vi has been our guide during this visit and one of the purposes of our trip was to introduce us to the school and invite us to support its mission.

I was touched by the story of these two women who had a vision, offered their savings, their energies and skills and who turned to the community in which they had worked and lived for support. They were among the most humble people I have met, deflecting all praise and thanks, giving thanks to others and to their students and to God for what has been created.

Boys acrobatic performance

Some of the students began the day by showing us their science experiments, explaining them to us one by one, then all the students offered their gifts in dance, and drama, and athleticism. Their rapt attention to one another and their enthusisasm were infectious. They were all in their uniforms (if not in their dance attire, especially sewn by their teachers) and, like most people in Tamil Nadu, had no shoes. Their parents mostly work in the farmlands of the area, and earn perhaps 300$ a year. They pay no tuition. The students are highly motivated and grateful for a chance to learn. They walk or ride bikes that the school has provided to get to school, traveling between 2 and 5 kilometers each way. Many of them who finish their tenth grade go on to another school to finish high school, and many of those go on to college. This is a remarkable intervention in the cycle of poverty.

Girls dance performance

The directors of the school also work with the parents of the students, provide educational opportunities in the surrounding villages, and counsel the families about educational and work opportunities for the students. It was a wonderful experience to visit this private school serving the poor. It was humbling to see what two women have been able to accomplish—with help from others in their own community and a bit from abroad. The day began with a prayer, and I left the school with one of thanksgiving.  

Water, water everywhere

Is it safe to drink the water? Number one visitor question. Answer usually given: No, mostly because of our unfamiliarity with Indian micro-organisms. Everywhere we go there are bottles of water—tourists of all kinds imbibing, and even many of the people of the area. Plastic everywhere, and no place to dispose of it. (Bottled water we've been drinking is said by the guide book to likely be heavy in pesticide! Yum!) The amount of non bio-degradable waste accumulated just by our group of ten is staggering to think about. The infrastructure challenges here are great—1.2 billion people who need clean water (compared to our 311 million) and places to dispose of garbage.

Water is precious and in some sense sacred, too, to most people here. At least certain waters—we're far from the Ganges, but here at the tip of India where the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea flow together some folks travel hundreds of miles to see the sun rise and set (along the same horizon), and to bathe in the waters. And a bit north of here in the mountains, the Ghats, where stunning waterfalls flow people not only bathe to get washed, but bathe because that's what the waterfalls invite them to do. Most of the temples we've seen have water, pools of water.

This is a part of India that has some big rivers, a monsoon season, and water coming out of the mountains to keep the fields green—even in this the dry season. We've driven past miles and miles of rice fields, coconut and banana, sugar cane. Green, green, green—everything .. But water here is a contentious subject as well. Kerala and Tamil Nadu argue over dams and water allocations—just like California and its neighboring states. Some of the rivers have crocodiles in them, we've seen a couple of those basking in the sun—and we visited a crocodile sanctuary where efforts are being made to preserve them. They cool themselves off by opening their mouths really wide—impressive. (Makes me wonder if some of our politicians aren't doing the same....)

Temple pool at Suchindram, Tamil Nadu 

Women washing clothes in rivers, and pools (often among the water lilies), and in the pool by the village temple—a central gathering place for the community, and a place to bathe and wash too. Often not kept clean by Western standards, but getting a lot of use nonetheless. Some of these are beautiful, and they carry a spiritual weight too.

We took a short boat trip into a mangrove swamp that helped to preserve a village during the tsunami. Not all areas were so fortunate: the 04 tsunami was devastating to portions of Southern India. One town we visited lost 400 --mostly fishermen and their families who live along the beach in thatched roof houses. This city where I am now (Kunniyakumari) at the southern tip of India suffered 1000 deaths. And, further north, this enormous boulder is where one man told us he spent 8 hours waiting for the waters to die down. The caretaker at a shrine area, he scrambled to the top and sat there giving thanks for his life.

So, water and its centrality to life is something we share with the people in this area. We can't live without it: although at times it is terrifying in its capacity to destroy. It's a source of energy and means of transportation, it is essential to agriculture. Also comforting, healing, cleansing, water reminds us of the One who is like a river: source of life, settling in the depths and moving, always moving.  

Sunset where Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea & Indian Ocean meet

Images and Ponderings from Tamil Nadu, India

These beautiful terracotta horses have a long history in Tamil Nadu, although they seem to be found today in mostly off-the-main road places. We saw a small set of litle horses near an enormous banyan tree that we visited. The tree was at least 400 years old.. A beautiful elderly woman lives near the tree as its caretaker and tends the little shrine there. She performed a ritual there and then blessed each of us. She told us that many birds and animals find refuge in the tree including a sacred cobra (which I did not see).

Later we came upon a collection of horses at the foot of an enormous volcanic rock, where Jain monks once carved their beds out of solid rock near the top, They slept with a stunning view of the surrounding valleys.

The largest collection of horses we visited was at a small village shrine in a part of the woods that is protected. They formed two long lines leading to the shrine. No one is really sure about the origins of these horses, although they are thought to be ready and waiting when the village protector gods need to ride out on their missions. What I love about them is their obviously rollicking sense of humor. Many of them are guffawing. Some of the horses are very old, others are new. Even today when some folks ask the gods for help they may promise to offer a horse at the shrine if their wish is granted.

You can't help but notice that many of the horses are falling apart. Their heads have been knocked off. Of course, they are decomposing due to age, wind and rain. But the real culprits at work are the monkeys who live in the area and play among the horses. They are the ones who knock the heads off. And no effort is made to protect them either. The monkeys live there and probably lived there before humans, so they are left to run free as they wish.

This seems to go against our American sense of order and need to control. I was reminded, though, of how the pueblo people of New Mexico let their adobe homes decompose naturally. At least this is what they did for most of their history. No big repairs made, what came from the earth returned to it. Part of the rhythm of life. Maybe you built a new home if you needed one and the old one had collapsed.

In stark contrast to these ways of living is the damage we have viewed at so many of the temples in Tamil Nadu: where invaders—be they Muslims, Christians, Europeans, whoever... attempted to destroy the images carved into rock by the ancient peoples of this area. Faces knocked off, arms broken, bodies dug out—in one case the entire temple complex was razed by Muslim invaders in the 1300s. This is destruction of a different kind—or at least it seems so to me: the attempt to control and to assert one's own way as THE only way. And, perhaps in the case of the temple art, there was a fear of the beauty and sensuality, and the “otherness” of the images and the gods they represented. This reminded me of the attempt in New Mexico by the French-born church authorities to destroy all of the devotional art that had been carved and painted by the people of the area. The idea was to bring in “true” art from France. Hispanos in New Mexico had to hide their devotional objects—what they didn't hide was destroyed—by those who knew “better.”

Portion of one of the Great Chola Temples, 11th century

Tamil Nadu has been invaded and governed by foreigners many many times over its long history, and there has been much suffering and loss over those years. All cultures experience loss and there aren't many that have escaped the influence of others, but there seems to me a difference between the loss of the horses' heads, the demise of the adobe dwellings versus the destruction of the temple art of Tamil Nadu and the devotional folk art in New Mexico.  

Christmas: A bit of reflection and a poem, one old, one new

“We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.”
- Meister Eckhart, 1260-1328, German Dominican monk

Read by Teri Hobart, Christmas Eve, 2011, The Chapel of St. George

And, a poem:

Christmas

This year
I let Christmas in.

And it occurs to me that
every year
the spirit of Christmas goes wandering
looking for room at the inn
of my heart

turned aside
by the hurry of business
the demands of desires
the walls of grudge, bitterness

but when at last
a door of willingness opens
there comes inside
each year
a newborn spirit

of hope
joy of this life
the courage of kindness
the warm embrace of forgiveness

so powerful,
it draws shepherds,
wise ones, some who hold sway in this world,
even humble animals respond,
look up to the silent chorus
of shimmering angels
among the stars, bending
low, to welcome again this
simple

overwhelming
grace.

    - Scott O'Brien   With thanks to Larry Robinson for passing this along.

It was Rita Dove who said about poetry, that it "is language at its most distilled and most powerful."

May the power and grace of Christmas be yours now and in the coming year.

In a Minor Key

The Santa Rosa symphony’s December offering this year was dark: two pieces by Brahms, the Tragic Overture and the German Requiem, were rounded off with the powerful singing of two American spirituals by Jubilant Sykes, baritone--"Motherless Child" and "Were you there?" A community honor choir sang the Requiem, which admittedly is one of the more “positive” of requiems: the third movement sung by the soprano and choir was lyrically sweet. But there was no escaping the minor key of the evening.

Stark contrast to the cheery “jingle bell hop” greeting me in the grocery store, not to mention “Here Comes Santy Claus” and all the rest that have been playing since before Thanksgiving in some of our local establishments. And, lest you think I’m entering my Bah! Humbug! phase what really set me thinking was how powerfully the juxtaposition between the symphony’s offerings and the musical background in the stores speaks to the contrast between the Christmas story as told in the gospels and the “holidays” proclaimed in our culture.

A friend remarked on the strangeness of the dark offerings at the concert in this holiday time of year, and I told her that from a Christian perspective the minor key was the right key for the season. The birth of Christ has been viewed as connected to his death since the early years of the church. The story of his birth has been understood to foreshadow the cross. The vulnerability at his birth and as he walks toward his death, the powers that be and their violence, the no place at the inn theme echoing from birth to crucifixion.

The other night I watched the video The Nativity, and was struck again by how dark a tale it really is. Oh, the star is bright and illuminates the birth, but the sense of impending trouble, the rejection in Bethlehem, the threat of Herod and his minions, the need for the wise men to go home by another route, the killing of the holy innocents and the escape to Egypt: it's a very dark tale. Birth in the midst of brokenness, threat and death. The fragility of new life.

And, really would anything less be as precious? I think of the music in the mall, the decorations, the enforced cheeriness of it all---and I can't help but be thankful that that is so far removed from the promise of Christmas. I go about this season knowing so many who are hurting, aware of the turbulence of our world, the tenuousness of our economy, the countless folks who are homeless and on the move around the globe, the machinations of the powers that be, the longing of so many for meaning in their lives. Same old, same old. No amount of glitter or jingle can speak to that.

Instead we Advent-keepers are invited to a real world gift of grace and new life to be found in the midst of all the darkness--the possibility of new beginnings offered again and again in the context of fragility. Opening ourselves to that offering is the calling of the season. Our minor key Advent hymns are all about that.

A friend told me the other day that she didn't have any problem saying with Mary, "Here I am Lord." but her question is: "Where are you?" What a great confession. One I could make most days. It's a minor key longing at we have deep in our hearts. What we long for I believe is found in the little story of the birth. It's a tiny little story, and a hard-to-notice birth. The darkness that surrounds it seems to engulf us--and makes it hard for us to attend. Hard to give yourself over to something so seemingly insignificant. At least that's how it is for me. All of it: minor key. Beautiful, strangely beautiful, and true.