On Christmas Eve Achen, Kochamma, Binu (their son), and the six YAVs arrived at the Warangal railway station; we had survived a twenty-four hour train journey (complete with singing pilgrims), and were now in the state of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala’s neighbor to the northeast. Anu, Achen’s sister (x2 – by blood and by faith) was waiting for us at the station; she has lived in Andhra Pradesh since beginning her ministry with the area’s Parkal Mission and now runs a boys’ orphanage called the Home of Love. From the station we still had two hours left in our journey, so we all piled into the bus to drive the remaining distance.
Andhra Pradesh is a completely different environment than Kerala. Driving along its rural roads, we passed palmetto trees scattered among fields of cotton, newly harvested red chilies drying in the sun, and farmers riding atop hay bales, their Brahma cows under yoke. This is the backdrop of India’s agricultural center. However, despite the richness of its resources, Andhra Pradesh suffers under an obstinate feudal system that keeps the people of its agricultural sector impoverished. By the end of December we had spent four months in India, and we had certainly encountered poverty more conspicuous than any I have witnessed in the United States. However, this journey was our first exposure to the harsh conditions under which many Indians live, and it offered new insight into the extreme and humbling realities of economic injustice. The Home of Love is located amidst the cotton fields, in the state’s poorest district. A junction lies near the orphanage that boasts the area’s few shops, the church the boys attend stands across the street, and a ten-minute walk down the highway will take you to the Mission’s medical clinic. The remaining space is sparsely populated, with huts made of sticks and plastic sheets lining the roads and only the fields beyond.
Upon our arrival Anu, the staff, and the twenty-five boys living at the Home of Love welcomed us openly; the atmosphere of warmth and joy they had created was immediately apparent, and we were excited to be a part of it for Christmas. During our four days in Andhra Pradesh, we spent our time playing with the boys, seeing a few of the nearby sites (two temples and a lake), and visiting the Home of Love’s sister orphanage about an hour away. Every night we gathered for evening prayer, a time when we exchanged songs and skits and watched the littlest boys nod off to sleep. These evenings together formed some of my favorite memories from our visit. A return to Vacation Bible School days, the six of us reached into the recesses of our brains to find every song learned in Sunday school, complete with actions (which we pulled off with quite a bit of flare, if I do say so myself). Standards such as ‘This Little Light of Mine,’ ‘Hallelujah/Praise Ye the Lord,’ and ‘Father Abraham’ were received with energy and eagerness, and the movements even deterred the five-year-olds from sleep.
When December 25th arrived, it did not feel much like Christmas morning; I was lacking the day’s usual signifiers of cold weather, the smell of coffee brewing, and my sister waking me up at an ungodly hour. But as the day progressed, I realized I had never before experienced a Christmas where Emmanuel’s coming was met with such evident joy. Here we were, sharing in the celebration with children who had lost their family and whose visit from Father Christmas was purely a product of one community member’s generosity. Many of the people who joined us for worship on Christmas morning started their day in huts that couldn’t keep out the evening chill or the snakes, but they sang and clapped to the music of Christmas carols with more enthusiasm than I’ve ever experienced back home.
After joining the boys for worship at the church across the street, we accompanied Anu to a second service in a village a half hour away. We arrived to find a one-room church, beautifully decorated with streamers and balloons of every color, and empty save for the altar and a couple chairs in a back corner. The floor was covered with mats for sitting, and there were already enough women gathered to fill the left side of the room (the men’s side was significantly emptier). Kochamma, Ariel, Becca, Lindsey and I filed in right against the back wall, and the service began. Before long enough women and children had poured through the door to fill the right side of the church as well, and then enough to fill the aisle, and then the comfort bubble between the last row of men and the first row of women. People sat in positions that allowed them to occupy as little space as possible, perching on laps and putting knees at odd angles; the church was packed to the brim. And when the service ended and we stood to exit, I realized that this was where the men were, standing outside the doors for the duration of the service.
I think, in many ways, we live in a world not unlike the one Jesus knew. It is not the Roman Empire, yet we experience a time of globalization that arguably supports Western imperialism. Though the religious institutions wear a different façade than the ones Jesus criticized, we have formed churches that too often reinforce the status quo. And that which is holy now gets lost among the department store racks, like the temple was lost to the market . . . Two thousand years ago God sought out a humble woman of great faith to bear the Christ child, and that child lived with, ministered to, and advocated for society’s marginalized. In this world I believe God might choose to dwell among the farm laborers of rural Andhra Pradesh, relying on an Indian woman who can barely support her family, but shows great faith in God’s promise. After this Christmas I am certain that she, like Mary two millennia ago, would rejoice the most fully in the arrival of a liberating God made human.
(P.S. – It was certainly difficult to spend my first Christmas away from home. However, the tinge of homesickness began to lift as I realized I was singing ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ with a worshipping community in Andhra Pradesh just as my church family back home was gathering on Christmas Eve to do the same. We are always more connected than with think . . . I hope everyone on both sides of the globe had a joyous Christmas full of peace, love, and hope.)
For pictures visit www.sudieniesen.com
No comments:
Post a Comment