The Annoying Emotions of a Broken Human: A Post Upon a Return Home

He just keeps asking me to trust him, and this trip was my evidence, my reminder, that He will come through—but, he also asks us to trust without evidence, because, as Voskamp suggests, isn’t Jesus enough evidence of God’s goodness and love for us, and His always-come-through character…

That was the only note I had time to write on my trip home from India but it pretty much sums up my thoughts today.  I am currently sitting on my porch in Bloomington, Indiana, drinking a latte from Bloomingfoods, watching my neighbor mow his lawn.  The sky is blue with fluffy, white clouds. It is 75 degrees (in August!) and the air smells sweet and clean like grass. Birds are chirping. Bunnies pounce from one lawn to another, and a pretty green vine is growing on the brick column of my house. Is this heaven?

It feels like it. Why do I get to experience this? Why is this my reality when on the same planet people’s homes and schools are being bombed, people are living as refugees, and people are dying of terrible illnesses? I know, I know, maybe not the cheerful note that you had wanted, but I am going to use this space to work through some rather difficult thoughts that have been circling in mind since my return. I am using this space more for myself, so don’t feel like you have to read it all, but thank you for whatever you feel drawn to reading.

One day when I went to a school for orphans that a friend works for in Kolkata, the young boys wanted to know about America. They asked me if we had Porsches and robots since they had seen in movies that all Americans have the kind of affluence that allows them such luxuries. I was sort of stunned and self-righteously reported that, no, only very rich people had those kinds of cars and I wasn’t “them” (the boys concluded for me that robots could only be found in Japan).

Then they asked me about one other luxury: trash cans. “Do you have trash cans you put your trash in on the street?”. My heart sank. “Yes. Yes, we have that luxury.” “Wow! Your country must be so clean!”. Yes, trash cans are a luxury, and one that I take for granted.

It is astounding the everyday gifts of my world: clean streets, access to excellent health care, plumbing, transportation, a safe home, police officers that I can trust not to rape me if I report a sexual assault, food on my table and a clean, safe place to prepare it, clean water (that I even bathe in!), grocery stores full of produce and everything I might need, reliable electricity and internet….

I am experiencing a real mix of emotions back home. I’d like to say that utter and complete joy and gratitude is the only emotion I am feeling—it’s all that seems appropriate given the heaven in which I so undeservedly live in. However, I also have feelings of guilt and even fear that because I do not deserve this goodness I will have it taken away—like the life I have is just a dream I have always wanted but certainly is too good to be a reality that I get to have everyday. And if this is my totally undeserved reality, how can I ever return the blessings I have been given when they are more than is even fathomable?

I think part of the reason I am feeling these strong emotions is that Travis and I have really been building up to this trip for, well, basically our entire marriage. I knew at some point I had to leave him and do this research before we could do anything else—before I could graduate, before we could start a family, before any real roots could be planted anywhere. So there was this sense of, “We just have to get this research successfully completed and then…(ß-that’s a big ol’ dot, dot, dot). I put a lot of importance on the trip and although I wanted as much as possible to be fully present for it and especially for the people I worked with, I think there was always this feeling of “You just have to get this done and then (dot, dot, dot).  That’s not the healthiest way to approach anything because it closes off the possibilities of the present, but, that’s how my little brain processed it.  Having completed the trip and having the research so fantastically completed, I am truly overwhelmed by the feeling of relief and gratitude—but, as I said, also a kind of fear and guilt. How could it be that I was fortunate enough to have that challenge completed?

I must admit that underscoring all of this is a continued fear that God is a vengeful divine—tallying all the gifts He has given me against the gifts I have returned and, finding me selfish and unable to courageously return those gifts, creating some kind of sinister plot to teach me a lesson about true gratitude by taking every gift away from me.

I don’t actually think that is how God works. In fact, Jesus makes it quite clear that it is quite the opposite. With God, there is no tallying or vengeance. God (thank God!) doesn’t work like people—like me who does often do that tallying; who loses patience with people who make promises and don’t follow through; who gets angry enough to cut off communication.  Instead, God is all about upside down economies, clean slates, undeserved love and forgiveness. God is the God who washed feet and gave his doubters and deniers an infinite number of chances, and used the most broken and messed up people to make his kingdom.

Ann Voskamp notes in her book that she is thankful that God does not give us what we deserve, because we don’t deserve any of this. Its all an undeserved gift, and God somehow just loves giving those kinds of gifts. Boy am I thankful for that!

But I often forget the Christ character of God, and simply replace God with this kind of angry accountant who has lost his patience. I forget that the more appropriate image of God is my mother or father, who love me despite my flaws. Why I replace the image of God embodied in Christ with this other angry God, I don’t know, but I think its probably because it is so hard to fathom the kind of love, patience and grace I find in God. I certainly can’t embody that. I get impatient with my husband when he doesn’t do the dishes right away. So I guess its partially a matter of trust—trust that although I do not fully know how to do that kind of love, goodness, patience and grace as a broken human, that God extends that love, goodness, patience and grace to the world.

To trust in the goodness and faithfulness of God is the biggest lesson I am learning this summer. Its a lot harder than it sounds, at least for me.  I wish that it wasn’t. It would make sense, given the way God so fully, sometimes even comically responded to my prayers (one time my phone literally rang in the middle of a prayer that I would get said phone call) and the prayers of those lifting up my health and safety in India, that I would be totally convinced of God’s absolute goodness and faithfulness. But there is always this thought in the back of my mind—“When is the shoe gonna fall?…This is just too good to be true, so when do I see who God really is…” This is when, if I was God, I would just be so annoyed. So exhausted. So impatient with my fear and doubt of His goodness. Luckily, my ways are not His ways.

There are countless ways that I saw God each day. That He, out of love, reminded me again and again that I need not fear, that He was there, that I was going to be ok. My research went so perfectly; there were no kinks, no hiccups—that NEVER happens in research, and especially not research in India. I didn’t have to be lonely because I made friends and even family with the women with whom I worked. I spent the last week at Munuphishi’s house eating her wonderful food, and taking naps with her and Hena. When I thought I was going to have to register with the Indian government, I was sent an angel who investigated it form me (by going all the way to the government office for me!) and discovering I didn’t need to. When I ate food covered in Ganga water, I somehow didn’t get sick. When I rode the bus every day, there were always people helping me to ensure I got on and off at the right places. When I needed to talk to family because I was feeling anxious or home sick, I had internet to talk to them the entire time I was there. My research advisor was randomly in Kolkata at the same time I was and our times together were wonderfully encouraging. At any point in time, if I had needed help with something, I had like ten women I could call.  I had a safe and clean place to stay with good clean food and water, and guaranteed electricity and running water.  

At the beginning of the summer, I didn’t think I would have ANY of that. I was worried my research was impossible, that I would get sick, be without internet, live in a dirty, dangerous place, be lonely and friendless, and have trouble finding clean food and water. Actually, I was worried that I wouldn’t even get my research visa to even do the research. I remember laying in bed one morning in April, just crying, out of fear and anxiety, in Travis’ arms. And here I am, safe and sound in Bloomington, none of my fears and anxieties having materialized into anything. Yet, I sit here wondering when that bad thing will happen.

Trust is annoyingly hard for me.

Trust is a daily discipline…or maybe its more like hourly. My trust seems to waiver with the hours rather than the days. I haven’t quite figured out how to do that discipline of working at it, but I do like what Voskamp suggests: gratitude. By counting the everyday gifts of life, we are reminded of God’s faithfulness.  I have been trying this out and even if my anxieties remain something I am working through, gratitude is a reminder of the true, loving character of God

If I am gracious with myself, as Christ reminds us God is, then I recognize that trust is an understandably difficult thing to have, particularly in a culture that so often tells us that we can and should be able to control everything. Lack of control becomes scary and I, for one, believe I have learned throughout the years to not trust but to control. This is, of course, an ultimately frustrating task since we don’t really have control. 

For the past week, I have been waiting for a call from my sister-in-law who is waiting to go into labor. For months, since I learned of my niece’s existence, I have prayed for her delivery to go perfectly and for her life to be long and healthy. But, truly, all I can do is wait and pray.  I am also waiting to hear from my father. His father, who has had dementia for many years now, has forgotten how to swallow and has not eaten for a week. His nurses believe that he will be going home within the next few weeks.  These things—life, death, health, family…they are the very substance of life, and although we can do some things to achieve the outcomes we desire, much of it is simply out of our hands. And that is terrifying when we are so used to controlling things. Its terrifying for me because I want so desperately my outcomes.

But it doesn’t have to be so totally terrifying if I remember the character of God. If God is loving and ultimately wants good for me, for us all, and can turn all things into something good (Romans 8), then can’t I trust that, in the end, its going to be ok? If God answered all of my prayers about India so thoroughly, so perfectly, can’t I trust that this other stuff will be ok too? Can’t I trust that there isn’t some ironically bad thing about to happen?  Yes, of course. But it doesn’t mean that I always do.  It’s a discipline and it takes time, and even as I type these things out, I become anxious.

I can’t end this last post with some grand assurance that everything will go as I plan. And I can’t end it with a simple, perfect realization of total trust in God (actually, now that I think of it, perhaps the two are antithetical). I continue to struggle with trust and anxiety. And I struggle to accept the gifts of my life and existence as realities that, although I did not earn them, can be enjoyed without fear that some angry God will snatch them away. And I struggle to understand how I can have so much, so many prayers so fully answered, when back in India, it is a struggle just to do the everyday.  And I struggle, in that knowledge, to breathe in the unearned goodness and breathe out gratitude because it just doesn’t make sense that I have it.

There is a lot that doesn’t make sense, and there are a lot of things I don’t know. But these are things I am learning to know and believe (yes, both) more fully:

1) When we cry out, God responds, often with abundance beyond imagination. We don’t know where God will lead us, or what exactly will happen, but my time in India illustrated that God responds with such abundance, such patience and such love and goodness, that we can take big leaps of trust. Its not easy, but it can be done. God can be trusted to turn all things into something good—it may take a long time and may not look like what we thought it would, but good is to come. This is the hardest one to believe, and even as I type it, I can’t help but pray a quiet prayer for God’s continued protection as anxieties creep in.

2) Even when we think we are alone, we are not, because God shows up through people. I saw God in all of the men and women who showed up in my life in Kolkata, who sent me emails and messages from the States, and who prayed me through my journey and welcomed me home.  Truly, we are the hands and feet of Christ.

3) Life is an unearned gift to be enjoyed, and I can enjoy it if I stop worrying, calculating and trying to control.

4) Finally, God doesn’t work off of the kinds of economies I am used to. God’s love, goodness, and patience are beyond limit, and certainly beyond my comprehension or ability, and they reach beyond my brokenness. So even though I am broken and I often don’t trust that goodness, and so often spiral into selfish worry, God comes alongside me and continues to love me and care for me through all of that brokenness. His patience and love don’t wear out the way I do.

So those are the lessons I am trying to believe/know, and given the hour, I believe/know them to different degrees.  Perhaps that is the best I can do for now, and its all I can leave you with, but I am so thankful to know that you and God walk with me through it.

Thank you all for your prayers and support throughout my journey. I am so thankful to be back home and surrounded by the splendor of Bloomington. I guess I encourage you to look for God’s faithfulness in your life, and to enjoy the everyday gifts of your life. We only get this one, undeserved life and we ought to live it with as much gratitude and joy as is possible. Perhaps we can try encouraging one another to live like that together.

Finally, I guess I would ask you to pray with me for peace in Iraq, Syria and Gaza, and for the people of West Africa as they seek medical assistance in their terrible emergency. May God’s healing, perfect intervention and goodness show up there!

Hallelujah!

Blessings,

ashlee

The Power of Mothers and the Cultural Expectations of Women

Hello from Kolkata at the end of my third full week! Gah! I miss y'all!

My time has been filled with answered prayers and experiences that have exceeded all my expectations. Thank you for your support and prayers. Even though things are going wonderfully, it is such a comfort to know that you are with me in thought and prayer.

My research is going excellently and I now have around 14 hours of interviews with around 20 women. This past week I have had the added treat of having my dissertation advisor, Dr. Rebecca Manring, staying in Kolkata just two doors down from me.  We have been able to eat meals together here at the Mission and it has afforded us a closeness that I am very thankful for. It has been such a treat to have her here helping me with research and answering logistical questions, and I feel very much taken care of.  She has been yet another angel put in my path while I am here.  On Thursday, I had the added treat of spending the day with her as we tried (unsuccessfully) to procure a manuscript from a nearby ashram, and then spent the afternoon at Hena’s aunt’s home eating insanely delicious vegetarian food. 

As we sat, Hena and Munuphishi (Hena’s aunt--I’ll tell you more about her in a second) discussed my research. They told Rebecca that they thought my research was important because women rarely talk about the rituals they do every day at home, even though it is a very important part of their lives, because it has simply been accepted as expected ‘women’s work’. I can’t tell you what an incredible gift their words were, and still are. I have hoped for my entire graduate career that I could do some kind of research that actually benefited the people that I worked with—research that wasn’t a totally extractive enterprise.  Because the thing is that all research ‘of Others’ has an extractive facet, or at least the possibility of being extractive. I mean, I get to fly over here, with a grant equal to more than many Kolkatans make in a third of the year (according to the Telegraph, the annual median home income in Kolkata in 2008 was roughly $5,000), enter into women’s homes, ask them personal questions, return home, and use what they told me to complete my graduate career, and produce research that leads to my personal professional success. In really black and white terms, that is what is happening when I study folks living here. In the research I produce, I can try as best as possible to clarify their own voices and to give them the power to confirm or deny my research conclusions, but there is always an extractive side to my research. 

What a joy to hear that, for at least these two women, they are glad I am here doing what I am doing.  While I cannot claim to “speak for” these women, as whatever I present will be incomplete and interpreted through my own perspective, and I’m going to get some stuff wrong, still they see value in the work I am doing. I mean, I couldn’t possibly have imagined a more enriching moment--such a gift, and, honestly, a relief.  And I got to share this moment with my advisor!

But, honestly, the best part of my research has been the relationships I have been able to develop with a few of the women, and the way they have taught me to more fully embody hospitality, love and service. I will be wrapping up my interviews in the coming week, and spend the last week sifting through the data for some possible preliminary conclusions. I want to talk just a bit about some of these possible research conclusions because it relates to this post’s primary topic, which I write in honor of my mom’s (ahem) 29^th birthday (on the 29^th): The tireless, loving, unrecognized work of mothers more specifically, and women more generally.  

Now at the beginning, I will admit that this is a gendered and limiting discussion. Of course, men, fathers, can, and do, tirelessly and thanklessly love, work and care for their families (my father and brother and community mate, Will, do this magnificently). And I could write a similar post about parenthood more generally, being the hardest and most thankless and important job that we somehow, by the grace of God, manage to do. And, of course, one does not have to give birth to a child or be the primary caretaker of a child do be a mother/parent.  But because so many of my discussions in Kolkata have been about the work that is assigned to women historically and culturally my post is a little narrow in its focus, so bear with me.

I have interviewed women from a variety of households—widowed, married, unmarried, with children and without—about their families, the daily worship they offer in their home shrines, and daily work that it takes for them to do both.  The home shrine, or thakur, was, historically, a shrine that each household had, often in a separate room, where one could offer worship throughout the day. 

First, a little background and a short lesson about Hindu belief (I can’t help it—I’m a teacher): Hindu belief understands the embodiments of divinity in a shrine (i.e. statues and pictures) to literally embody the divine. This is not to say that they believe that all of divinity is contained in that statue, or that it is the statue’s material itself that is divine. That would, in fact, be idol worship, and that is what the British and early missionaries accused Hindus of doing. But this is a misunderstanding.  Instead, Hindus believe that out of love for humans and a desire to have relationship with humans, the divine makes itself present in those limited forms, consecrated as temporary embodiments. So, a Hindu may be gifted a statue of, say, Krishna, and she or he would have that statue ritually established as an embodiment of the divine and, in doing so, the power and presence of the divine would enter that statue and reside there. But the divine is still present outside of that statue, and many (though not all) Hindus would claim that the divine is ultimately formless, but makes itself available in forms so that humans can connect with the divine and serve the divine like a family member or friend. Now, at public temples, only men of a certain caste are allowed to oversee worship and care of the shrine and the forms of divinity within it. But in homes, it has historically been women who care for the shrine and its divinity. Many women expressed to me that they understand the divinity in their shrine to be like a family member. So worship often involves serving divinity like you might serve a family member: washing, dressing, feeding and showing love.

Although all family members may offer some form of puja (worship)—such as prayer, lighting a candle or incense, or chanting a devotional song, or simply offering a bow, it is the women, in particular the mothers of the home, who literally care for the shrine and its divinity.  Many women expressed that they loved their thakur and their time caring for it for two reasons: 1) it affords them a peaceful break from the labor of the family, and, 2) it offers them peace of mind concerning their family’s welfare when they give up their worries about the health and wellbeing of family members to God in their prayers. While things are certainly changing in Indian households, as in American households, the historical expectation has been that women would stay home, caring for the family, and men would go out and work. Their care for the thakur—essentially the care for the divine family and the continuation of the family’s spiritual traditions—was a part of this home work. Because things are changing, and many women work outside of the home (in fact, most of the women I talked to do work outside the home), they are having to find a way to manage all of these responsibilities on top of working all day (and often spending hours traveling to and from work).  The constant theme with these women when I ask them how they find time to do all of this has been, “You just do. We just find the time”. Hena has said it is a trans-cultural phenomenon—women magically finding time.

This is what has been called the “second shift”, and I have seen so many of the women in my own American context, including my own mom, somehow manage to find time to love on and care for and discipline, and feed, and clean and put to bed and heal their children after they have been at work all day. I have seen my community mate, Colleen, do it and I have watched comfortably from my own bedroom window as she turned off the lights at 8 pm so she could sleep enough before the first  (and second and third) time her daughter woke up to feed, so that she could still have had some sleep so she could go to work the next day.

I have also watched the physical work that mothers’ bodies must go through to give life to their children; and I have seen how that is never forgotten by the body, so that when I am sick or far away, I think my mom’s body literally aches with me and for me. And I have seen this ache in action—I’ve seen the mama bear claws come out in my defense if someone hurt me or if I was in trouble. My mom even rescued me from a travel abroad trip gone awry in Mexico when I was a sophomore in college---yeah, like flew to Mexico, had a throw down with the study-abroad program, and brought me home on a plane. (Again, I know all parents feel this ache regardless of bodily sex or whether you gave birth to your child, and I know my dad would similarly help, but just bear with me for the sake of thematic consistency, ok?).  When many mammals, like bears or whales, give birth to their babies, they will go for months living off their own body fat, feeding their babies nutrient-rich milk and not feeding themselves so they don’t have to leave their babies until they are old enough to leave the safety of their nursery grounds. Sometimes, when I think about everything involved in motherhood—the emotional, physical and psychological labor, and the incredible depth of love—I am totally overwhelmed and awed.  I wonder how anyone does it. I am reminded of what Barak Obama said about parenthood: the moment you become a parent, your heart, totally vulnerable and ready to be hurt, moves outside of yourself to that child you parent.

Hmmm, can you tell that TJ and I have been thinking about parenthood recently? And can you tell that I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot before her (ahem) 29^th birthday? Yeah, there might be some personal catharsis in this post. Sorry.

I also write on this topic because my work here could not have been possible without the women who have “mothered” me—guiding me, calling me on the phone to make sure I got home ok and that my headache is gone, feeding me delicious foods, connecting me with wonderful families. There is Hena, of course, and certainly Rebecca (who two people in the dining hall here have mistaken as my mother). Without them, I couldn’t have gotten my visa, my hotel room, any of my interviews, or basically any of the logistics necessary for my work. And then there is Munuphishi—definitely the source of my motherly comfort here.

Munuphishi is Hena’s aunt, newly widowed in January by her husband of 55 (!) years. She never had children because she wanted to devote her life to the service and care of others, in particular her nieces who lost their family early on in life.  She also helped Hena start the Society for the Visually Handicapped. She is, I think, understandably lonely these days, and so she has given me invitations to her home on many occasions and she has gone with me on many of my interviews. She calls me throughout the week just to make sure I am doing ok, and she has had me over to her home to feed me at least once a week since I have gotten here. A few days ago, we spent the whole day together in her home. We chatted in the morning, she made me tea, we chatted more, she made me lunch, we took long naps next to each other on her living room sofas, she made me more tea, we looked at a photo album of her family, and then she took me on yet another interview. It was literally like going to a grandmother’s home and being loved on all day.  When you are homesick like I admittedly have been as of late, days like this are so valuable. They build a kind of home in a foreign space, bringing you the kind of peace and rest you only get with family. Yesterday, she called me just to say that I am welcome at her home any time, so I will definitely be spending time there before I go home.  Thank God for mothers of all kinds! And then there is wonderful Sandhya, my adoptive mom from last summer. I have actually been so busy, that we have not seen each other yet, but luckily I have time this coming week to visit her, which I plan to do a few times.

I am realizing that this post may be reifying some very normative ideas, suggesting that women are somehow specially endowed with powers to love, nurture, and protect. I don’t think that. The love and the nourishment of parenthood knows no boundary of sex or gender. However, I will say that our cultures expect a lot of women and the way they manage, often with incredible grace, to fill the multiple roles expected of them and spread love, is truly mind-blowing. AND I will say that without the women who have filled in as my mothers here, without my own mother’s encouragement and prayers, without the inspiring strength of my working mom and my working mom friends, this trip would have been very difficult for me.  So to all you women, legally or biologically mothers or not, filling a billion roles expected of you by our cultures, raising life, spreading love, feeding your families, enriching your communities, balancing, working, and keeping your spiritual lives ablaze—thank you. Your strength, when so much is expected of you is astounding. Don’t forget it. And thank you to moms of all kinds.

And a special thank you and happy birthday to my own mom, Opal Andrews, whose (ahem) 29^th birthday I will not be able to celebrate until after my return home. I know it has not been easy for you to have your daughter half a world away, but you have handled it with grace and have given me such encouragement. I can only hope that when my kid, if I am so lucky one day to have one, does something annoyingly independent, that I can be as encouraging as you. Happy Birthday! Oh, you, who have been mother to countless kids in LISD or, along with my dad, to your childrens’ circle of friends, you make the world better.

And, finally, thank you to all of you who parent in any way. To parent is to embody the unconditional love of God, and, so, to be the hands and feet of Christ.

Your prayers for my health and safety are much appreciated. Please tell me how I may be in prayer for you.

Blessings,

ashlee

On Unfathomable Goodness and Learning to be "Adventurously Expectant"

“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike ‘What’s next, Papa?”. God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know how he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritence! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!”

Romans 8:15-17

  

This week I update you from that confusing space between homesickness/comfortsickness/controlsickness and being fully present here. Locationally speaking, I am talking about the space between my protected room at the Ramakrishna Mission, and the intimately shared, love-filled spaces that dozens of Kolkatans have opened to me.  It is also the space between totally freaking out in your luxurious air-conditioned hotel room when your internet stops working, and realizing that you really don’t need much at all if you have community, basic shelter, and clean food and water.  It’s the space between doing your damnedest to make sure your world is sanitized and controlled, and saying a prayer and just eating that food that might make you sick because it was given out of love. It’s the space between wishing I was home, and enjoying where I am fully right now. It’s the space between me at my worst, and catching glimpses of what it might look like to better live the Kingdom. 

This is all coming out a little vague and bumbling, so, first, let me paint some pictures of my past week. Actually, I just paint my favorite picture.

Monday I took the bus to Hena’s office at the Society for the Visually Handicapped. She helped to found the SVH, a non-profit organization that primarily produces educational materials (i.e.audio books, Braille books) and programming for blind students. They work entirely off of private funding and grants. Many of the women and men that work with Hena are volunteers who travel by bus or train for hours daily to volunteer their services, and on multiple occasions, when they have heard that my project is to study Hindu religion, they have told me that the truest religion is to serve and love humanity. It is possible that this statement is one indebted to the incredibly influential Kolkatans Shri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Mother Theresa but whatever the original source, their lives are guided by this beautiful belief. Hena founded the SVH over 30 years ago with two other family members, feeling called to the work after she worked for a blind scholar. She believes that if you work passionately for something that benefits others, God will provide. She has this totally uncanny ability to simultaneously exude warmth and love and a no-bullshitting authority. I thank God daily that my academic advisor connected me with this incredible woman who has taught me so much about service, hard work, faith and love, and without whom my research would have basically been impossible. I tell you all of this not only to illustrate what a blessing Hena has been, but also to illustrate the goodness of the people I get to visit with everyday.

(First, a side note/digression/soap box lecture you can feel free to ignore: Ramakrishna and Vivekananda both suggested that Hindu, Christian, and Muslim religious belief were guided by both their love of God and their emphasis on service to humanity and, in that way, persons of these faiths should discontinue their divisive thinking. This thought, Mother Theresa’s years of service here, and the beautifully inclusive nature of individual Hindu belief may also explain the presence of images of Christ hanging in many Hindu homes I have visited. My identity as a Christian has been shared in many of the conversations I have had with folks, and it is treated with great openness. Folks have tended to emphasize how both traditions share an emphasis on loving of others and God. I am continually amazed by the generosity of such an approach to my Christian identity.  When speaking of the history of Christianity in India, there is a good bit of darkness, especially here in Kolkata, which was for many years the capital of the British empire. The British argued that their colonial control of India was a civilizing mission supported by God, and for many generations approached Hindu thought as inherently backwards and in need of civilizing and ‘modernizing’ that only the British could do.  I won’t go too deeply into this, suffice to say that Kolkatans could be familiar with the figure of the Christian, non-Indian scholar approaching their lives and traditions with disdain, critique and an air of superiority, and it feels like an act of forgiveness each time my Christian identity is approached with acceptance. Ok, I’ll step off my soap box and get back to my picture painting….although I do highly recommend learning about the British colonial legacy in India as it still shapes cultural, political and religious life today.)

So, back to Monday: Hena had arranged for us to walk to the nearby home of dedicated volunteer to see his wife’s thakur (home shrine) and interview her about her daily rituals. This volunteer had been essential in helping the SVH to procure audio tapes years ago when the organization was producing educational materials on tape for students (they use MP3 players now). He was so dedicated that the SVH soon started looking for other work for him to do that they could pay him for (as he was in need of an income). He and his family live in a government housing facility just a few blocks from the SVH.  He and his wife welcomed us into their home with total enthusiasm and, as with every other home, humbling hospitality. Their home is very small, perhaps 300 square feet, with two small rooms and a tiny kitchen and bathroom. It is extremely clean and well-cared for, and both of them are very well-dressed and wearing very proud faces as we enter their space. The entry room, which doubles as a bedroom for many families, has as many Indian homes, a large, very hard bed that doubles as a seating area. His wife brought us into her bedroom, which consisted of another large bed, a small dresser and a beautifully cared-for shrine. We sat on the floor in front of the shrine and talked. As we talked a neighbor came by, and listened, and her daughter and husband sat on the bed listening politely while she showed me her shrine and spoke candidly with me for around an hour. After our discussion, she, of course, offered us tea and biscuits and we all gathered on the bed in the entry room and chatted about their family and the hard work that the husband had done for the SVH. Many Indian homes do not have glass windows, but open windows with iron gates from which they hang drying laundry and perhaps a curtain. The Indian breeze blew into the room and as we sat and talked I was struck by the deep goodness of the people I was spending time with.  The husband offered to ask his neighbors if they would let me see their shrine room and speak with them—such a generous and kind offer to me, an invader. In this housing complex, everyone seems to keep their doors open and people seemed to flow in and out of one another’s homes. We flowed into their next-door neighbor’s home, an older woman, widowed, and living with her daughter and son in law. She had given them the larger room and normally slept in the room in the entry of the home, where we were currently gathered to talk.  As we chatted, the neighbors came by and listened; we flowed to another home, taking the neighbors with us, and we all crammed into the third home admiring the shrine and speaking with the woman about her no-nonsense, loving approach to daily care of God. She had prepared her shrine for our viewing, lighting a candle, incense and twinkling lights, and she looked so proud to share it. After we talked, the second older neighbor invited us all back to her house and she made tea (again). So we all crammed into her entry room (which is also her bedroom), drinking the tea she made for all of us and talking about traffic in Kolkata, and the nearby temples, the best way to get from one temple to another, and the best thing for an upset stomach,-- just sharing life. As I sat in that room filled with neighbors all drinking tea, looking after one another’s kids, I was absolutely confident that this was a piece of the Kingdom. 

I live in an intentional community and I love it. We make lots of intentional decisions to be a part of each others’ lives and to, when time and work allow, be with one another, in service, communion, and prayer. Others in the community (ahem, Tim and Carrie) are way better at this than me, making time to take care of Noel at least once a week. But we have to be intentional about our community. I have to work to make time for my community; I have to work to be hospitable; I have to work to find time (and its rare) to spend with Noel. But these folks are community; they seem to live and breathe it in a way that is unfamiliar to me. I don’t think there was some intentional decision to be made at some tenant meeting about how to do life as a community. Its more likely that they just lived right next to someone, because that’s what the housing situation allowed, and they made one another a part of each other’s lives, sharing tea and time and food and space as needed, because that is how you do it. But, they seem to thrive as they live in this way.

I do not mean to make the overly rehearsed suggestion that Indian culture is just inherently more communal and American is more individual—although I do think there is some truth to it. And I definitely do not want to romanticize the difficulty, which I did not see, but which is likely there, that accompanies living in the kind of economic situation that means one living in a government sponsored housing development. I’m sure daily life can be quite difficult—finding money for food, for a child’s education, for medicine if one gets sick. But nothing about what I saw was pity educing.  The families I met were strong, exceptionally hardworking (and I mean like working from 6am to 11pm kind of hard work), proud of what they had produced, and very happy to share what they had earned with others. I mean, they are volunteering for the SVH! Moreover, they have an authentic joy that was palpable as they shared space and time with one another.  It didn’t matter what they were doing. As soon as someone came by, they dropped what they were doing, made some tea and made time for one another.

I guess what I’m saying is that they’ve got their priorities right, far better than mine. What I am saying is that I met some of the best people I have ever had the opportunity to meet.

Ultimately, what I am sharing with you is that you cannot fathom the goodness that is hidden in homes throughout the world. I would never have had the opportunity to be in that space, to share in that goodness, if it hadn’t been for Hena, and for this kind gentleman’s willingness to open his home. But I got that opportunity, and it was eye-opening. I feel like I have won some kind of ultimate “travel package” where I get to meet the best human beings just doing life in their homes. I am only a visitor. I cannot pretend to belong in these homes, although they make me feel more than welcome to do so. I do not bless them the way they bless me, so the relationship is uneven, making it feel like I am just some tourist that takes from the place.  But it is such a privilege, such an honor to witness such goodness, to step into a home that I would otherwise never have stepped into and meet people that I would on any other day never have met, and to just sit in their rooms and share conversation and, for just a few seconds, life, with them, is truly one of the greatest gifts I have ever received. And those visits will continue to bless me because they will remind me of a better way to live, and they will remind me that the goodness of people is bigger than I can fathom. 

I am telling you that while, yes, we all encounter other humans when they are at their worst, and while we can be that human at their worst with others, hidden in homes you have never been in, amongst people you will probably never meet, in every corner of the world is a goodness beyond measure. When I question the goodness of humanity, or its future, I will remind myself that it is there. It is everywhere. It was in those homes, and it is in others, in unique and miraculous ways. There is goodness, yall, and it is beyond my comprehension the depth and breadth of that goodness.

So you may be asking yourself, if you can be in the midst of such goodness, where’s the conflict? Why want to be anywhere else? Good question. The short answer is that from my totally clean and safe room, I can feel like I am totally protected and in control. Outside of this room, lots of things are out of my control and lots of things can happen, some of which I might need protection against. Of course, some of the things “that could happen” include the lovely, unforeseen conversations I have had in good people’s homes. But it’s the threat of everything else that keeps me, some mornings, feeling like I just want to stay in bed, or counting down the days until I get home.

Now some of this feeling, and this counting down of days is just me missing all of you, missing my family, my church and my community, and the way that a blue sky looks in Bloomington (its somehow bluer than it is here), the way the morning coffee Nate procures at the Farmer’s Market tastes, or the way it feels to ride a bike down a b-town street, and, especially, missing the hugs and cuddles and every day life with my dream of a husband. I am going to feel that. Its good that a feel that. It’s a reminder of the gifts that absolutely permeate my life. Who wouldn’t feel that?

And a lot of these feelings are feelings we, living in the middle class first world, are taught to feel about “Other” places. When the news reports on South Asia, it reports on rapes, on poverty, on bribes and corruption, on terrorism, on diseases, on the abuse of women. It doesn’t do pieces on the people I have met or on the way Bengali sweets taste, or the delight of sharing tea with another person, or the beauty of a Hindu festival. We have been trained to fear South Asia, to think it is in need of more saving than us, and that it is also somehow beyond saving. That’s why when I tell someone I am going to India, most often they say, “Stay safe”, not “Oh, what an opportunity!”.  But I also cannot say I wouldn’t say the same thing. We have been taught to think the worst of this place. And, yeah, the water can make me hella sick and, yes, the police aren’t trustworthy, and, yes, I don’t like being out at night (something that some Americans could probably say of their own cities). But, as I hope my stories have illustrated, this place is so, so much more than that.

The problem is that I let these feelings totally pull me out of this place and time. I let my homesickness, or the unknown, new, and uncontrollable become, in my mind, something to be feared and avoided.  I wrote that last time I was here, after taking an unintended bath in flood waters, that I had realized that whether I am in India or in my familiar Bloomington, I’m not really in control. I am probably in control of more things in Bloomington infrastructurally, linguistically, and culturally speaking, and, to be honest, there are some new threats to health and safety here. But the big stuff—you, know, living or dying—is out of my control no matter where I am. Life is not in my control. That is a lesson that takes constant relearning. India just more poignantly has provided the reminder because it is so unfamiliar. That is one of the gifts of being here. Its also what sometimes sucks about being here. It feels better to live in the ignorance of control.

So some mornings here as I prepare to go out I get these uncomfortable twinges in my stomach and I feel overcome with anxiety for a few moments and pray the same prayer for health and safety that has marked each of my trips to South Asia. Then, I try to remember the verse in Romans: “This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike ‘What’s next, Papa?”.  There’s a lot in that verse, and it has new meanings with each day’s experience. It reminds me to trust in a loving, good God who turns all things to something good; it reminds me to act courageously and strive to serve selflessly (neither of which I do effectively). But more than anything on this trip, it reminds me of Colleen Rose who, one night during one of our small group meetings said something that has helped me step outside the door and (in my good moments) embrace what is in front of me. We were talking about a friend who has been considering adoption. We were discussing all the issues this person would have to negotiate if they adopted: how to integrate an adopted child into their existing family of three; how to be a working mom of two; how to negotiate the application process; how to somehow make enough money to care for two children and still have time to care for them yourself. Then Colleen said, “Well, what the hell is life for if it isn’t for adopting someone who needs a home?”  She said it casually because she meant it, and because it is filled with truth. What is life for if it isn’t for doing some honestly crazy and hard shit out of love?

Now I’m not really doing anything hard. I am not serving anyone or doing anything selfless at all. I am doing things that feel hard for me because of my own neuroses, so that it is something, but I am not really helping anyone, beyond listening to them. Instead, I am being helped. Still, it can feel anxiety producing. And still I miss my many beloveds in the States. So when I get caught up in counting days (which is, like, every 6 hours or so) or worrying about whatever random thing I have decided to worry about, I just ask myself, “What else is life for than going to India and meeting incredible people, than seeing the face of God in the face of strangers as I drink tea in their living room?”.

Underscoring all of this is a call for me to have a deep faith in God’s unfathomable faithfulness and goodness; to have trust in what he will do with me and for me and others here and throughout my life, and to, in that trust, have a joyful openness and enjoyment of life here and now. I do not expect to figure out how to do this while I am here. As Ann Voskamp suggests in her book One Thousand Gifts, such a present-ness, and openness to living fully and joyfully in your here and now, out of trust in God’s goodness, is a discipline that takes constant work. But I think I am getting good practice here. And as I practice, and fail, I am getting the most incredible experience to meet God’s people and experience a totally different world as loved and filled by God as my own little Bloomington. So that is my current struggle—embrace this place here and now. Be here with Him.

That’s a lot of rambling for now. I ask for your prayers for my continued health and safety, as well as for your prayers of thanks and blessing for Hena and all of the people I have met. Please let me know how I may be in prayer for you. Thank you for your support, prayers and love. They keep me stepping out of the door each day.

Blessings,

ashlee

(Note: the confidentiality clause of my research means that I cannot share the names of the people I am interviewing, which is why I am not addressing people by their names)

Humbling Devotion and Hospitality...and food, so much food!

Week one. Where do I start? So much goodness….

Let me start with some little snapshots—what my day looks like and what I get to see, do, and eat while I am here.

The work of my day consists of taking notes from the previous day, riding on a very long bus ride to my research assistant’s office, a ride that gives me the opportunity to see Kolkata and sweat enough to make up for my sugar intake, visiting with her co-workers who have graciously agreed to be interviewed for my project, then going to one of their homes to interview them and their families about their home worship, observing the evening worship performed by the women of the household, and then riding a very long bus ride home, after which I take a very needed and enjoyed shower, eat, and collapse. It is very fulfilling and exciting because I spend most of the day actually kind of doing a thing I have prepared five years to do, and engaging with the most incredible women in a complex city.

It is extremely gratifying work, but also totally exhausting. My interviews are only about 2 hours long, but it is pretty mentally draining to try to translate and speak Bangla for that entire time. The bus rides are humbling. I do enjoy them when I can get a seat by the window. I can watch the activities of people and take in all the little images that make Kolkata what it is: food stalls and people standing and eating rice and dal and fried goodies in the middle of their lunch break; the very particular brickwork of Kolkatan sidewalks; Kwality Walls ice cream stands; people on bikes and motorcycles expertly navigating around the giant buses; sidewalk bazaars selling fruit and veggies; different neighborhoods, each with their own particular kind of bazaar, sometimes for saris, sometimes for plastic goods, sometimes for auto parts; people dodging puddles and hailing cabs; uniformed school children being escorted by their mothers; the Kolkatan police in their white spaceman uniforms; the bus helper helping children on and off the bus and yelling at men when they sit in the women’s only section; that same Indian dog that you find throughout the city; goats, cows, and monkeys meandering through the street; business men dressed to the nines eating and gossiping at the tea stand; and ladies dressed in beautiful saris with their hands full of shopping bags; and every Bengali always has their cell phone and umbrella in their hand. It’s a rare opportunity to just get to view this out my window.

But if you don’t get a seat, the bus ride, for lack of a positive outlook, sucks. Its hot, it takes anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours to get to the part of town I work in, and the traffic is basically insane. That bus ride twice a day for the whole week had definitely taken its toll on me by Thursday night (after only 4 days of work in the field), and I was glad to have a break today. Of course, practically everyone else on the bus does that journey everyday because they have to. Humbling. Individual, air conditioned transportation is a privilege. (Yeah, you’re going to hear some privilege talk in this blog—deal with it).

The home interviews have been the greatest experience of the trip. I cannot believe the willingness with which these women have opened their homes and lives to me. And they act so excited to have me over. I arrive at Hena’s office and they run up and greet me saying, “You’re coming to my house today!”. I wish my Bangla were better so I could more fully express my gratitude. THAT is the hardest thing about not being fluent—I lack the ability to fully communicate the depth of my gratitude and the impact these women have made on me. For now, I just have to resort to thank yous (in English, since the Bangla equivalent is not appropriate) and “you make my heart happy”. To give you an idea of what happens in the interviews, I will share a snapshot of my first one.

I am sitting in the living room in front of their beautifully decorated and lovingly cared for shrine. They bring a light close to the shrine so we can more fully gaze upon it. We talk about worship, and eating, and God’s role in their life, and the peace that comes upon the women when they are with God, the fact that God is like a brother or a son, and that we are, in that very moment, spending time with God and, for that, making God happy. The mother explains that her knowledge of how to worship Gopal (a form of Krishna) is, indeed, a special skill, a special kind of power, that she gains more and more authority over the more she performs it. Then the father mentions that this is what makes us (Hindus and Christians is what he meant in this conversation) one—this presence with and love of God and our willingness to recognize God as the source of our gifts. That is why, he said, both Christians and Hindus recognize God as the source of “our daily bread”.

I don’t know how all this stuff works, but there has been some serious love and grace flowing between these folks and God and it was a privilege to see it and share in it. I’m not going to make universalist claims or try to explain away difference—difference is important. Hindu religious beliefs and practices should not be dissolved into some universalist or even Christian truth claims or practices. There are distinct differences between my own particular Christian religious beliefs and practices and the stories I tell, and their own, and it would be wrong for me to say “They are all the same”. To say so would deny the particularity of these women's own beliefs and practices. But I will say that these folks REALLY love God and the way they love God--like a literal part of the family that they honor and engage with in material and pragmatic ways every day--and the peace God gives to their certainly hectic and, in some ways downright difficult, lives, surely is something I will never forget; it gives me joy and challenges me to think about the extent to which I engage with, love and trust in God.

Now to another very important topic, and one that is integrally related to God: food. Oh my, the food has been so good, and such a material reminder of the goodness of life and the immense hospitality of Bengalis. Also, I promised Nate Delong that I would eat good food for him, so I have to share all of the foods I’ve been eating to prove I am keeping my promise.

 The Ramakrishna Institute of Culture serves us three really wonderful meals a day, and sometimes I have the opportunity to eat with other scholars here. This is a real gift when it happens because it can actually be quite lonely doing research on my own. I am used to sharing life with people who flutter in an out of my home throughout the day, and community mates I can see through my window and visit and share meals with, and a group of friends I know I will see each Monday at our community dinner, and I’ve come, very quickly, to re-realize the necessity of community and to miss my own. This is a topic that I am positive will recur throughout my posts. But, I digress…to the food!

Breakfast consists of strong tea, bananas, corn flakes, hot milk and fried balls of goodness called “vegetable cutlets” (vegetables and nuts rolled into balls, fried and serve with chili tomato sauce) and sometimes a really yummy dal with fried chapatis. Then at lunch and dinner they serve a total abundance of food. Meals always start with a delicious broth, then you have the main dish. So far, they have served the most delicious chicken curry, a Chinese inspired chicken dish with chilis and onions, a chicken cutlet with fried potatoes, a chicken stew with potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and, of course rice, and, on the best days, a mind-blowing collection of vegetarian dishes: spinach, potatoes, paneer curries, okra, and sometimes fish, always finished off with a whole delicious mango, a piece of sweet squash cooked in a spiced syrup, and yogurt. Every meal is a gift and a treat and I want to take a picture of them to share with you, but I stand out enough, so I’ll just hold them in my heart rather than being a total hipster and taking an instagram photo.

Then there is the absolutely humbling abundance of food that is given to me in every Bengali home.  I have been to three homes this week and in each home, I have been offered tea and food every time. And I’m not talking the tea and food I would probably offer guests, which is usually the stuff that doesn’t cost much and is low on prep time. I am talking the kind of hospitality that I think we are ultimately called to show: serving your very best joyfully. From what I can tell, every Bengali home always has a variety of sweets and treats, teas, sodas and bottled waters not to be consumed by the family so much as for guests who may come over. For example, yesterday, I went to a home and was lovingly served a plate absolutely overflowing with a variety of Bengali sweets* and even an omelets. This was given to me even though I invaded the space and then took up a woman’s time asking her questions about her forms of worship. In the other homes it was much the same story: Bengali sweets and tea, and, of course, prosad.

Prosad is the food that remains at the end of worship. During the daily worship that many Hindus perform, but especially in the forms of worship that I am studying –the daily worship that women do at the home shrine—food is offered to the divine. In many homes, all food that is cooked for the family is first offered to God, but in other homes, they will only offer particular foods during worship. Usually, they will offer fruits, sweets, some rice and, occasionally rice-based dishes.  The food is offered to God because God is recognized as a family member, the most respected and beloved family member who receives food first. God is believed to eat a portion of that food and then whatever remains is eaten by devotees as a substance that is healing and good for both the body and the mind. So, if there is prosad, it is offered to guests first, and when it is offered, you take it.  In fact, yesterday, one woman (I can’t share her name for privacy purposes of my study) literally fed me the rice and sandesh (a kind of sweet) with her hands. She told me that it was her belief that this would provide me good health and a clear mind. Every time I was offered food, I couldn’t help but think about how my own hospitality pales in comparison, not just because of the sheer gastronomic abundance, but the really genuine joy that you could see on people’s faces when they shared time and food, and especially prosad with you. And the crazy thing is that I am imposing on them. Im coming into their homes, taking their time, asking them questions about their intimate religious practices and beliefs, intruding on their worship, and after three hours they tell me, with total authenticity, that it was a joy to have me in their home.  I like having people over, hosting community dinner or having a community mate stop by, but I don’t shower them with food and bow down telling them that they have brought my heart joy. Usually I’m in the kitchen too quickly trying to clean dishes or sweep the floor.

But the hospitality I have been met with extends beyond the home or kitchen, although I have felt it most poignantly there. Everyday, when I walk into Hena’s office, I am greeted by the women I have been working with as if I am a long lost friend. They immediately compliment my clothes, ask how I am doing, inquire how I liked the family I spoke with the night before and then tell me how much that family enjoyed me being there. They offer me drinks, pull me into the bathroom to fix my hair and put a tip (the little decorative dot worn on the forehead) on my forehead, and then give me the prosad from their office shrine (usually a cookie and a piece of Tulsi, a kind of basil that is believed to be sacred). They individually tell me when they are leaving and tell me to have a good day and inquire after my health.  And they do all of this when I have walked into their office space and interrupted their time.

I have also had incredible kindness from strangers; I’ve had so many people take pity on me when I look lost or tired, offering me a seat on the bus, or helping me to find the right bus. This happened last year as well.  You hear stories of people taking advantage of white folks, because, why not, but I have had such incredible, undeserved kindness. Two instances on buses are especially poignant: I had a bus driver literally chase down another bus because he knew I was on the wrong bus and the other bus was the one I needed to be on!  I also had a bus driver drive me to another bus and ask them to wait for me to get on. This is ASTOUNDING. Buses don’t stop for people to get on or off, at least not for long, so the fact that on two separate occasions, I had bus drivers go out of their way to get me on the right bus, is really special, and totally undeserved. I  don’t even know if it would happen in Bloomington. So much grace, so much kindness and angels everywhere.

Honestly, I have seen nothing but the face and hands of God everywhere. As a Christ follower, I try to commit my life to compassionate care for others. It was in my wedding vows and my baptismal vows. But this trip has humbled me, and made me realize that more often than not, I am the one being helped. I am the one being served. I hope that in the coming weeks here, upon my return home and every day after, I can have the courage—taken from these acts of love and hospitality—to be the kind of servant I have met again and again here.

I have many more stories to tell, but I’ve written enough for now. I am going to Hena’s house to eat a lunch her Aunt has spent four days cooking (yes, more radical hospitality!). I can’t wait to tell you all about it. Please keep my health and safety in your prayers and share with me any way I may be in prayer for you.

Blessings,

ashlee

*A quick note about Bengali sweets: Bengali cuisine is probably best recognized for its incredible variety of deserts, or sweets (in Bangla : mishtie). These are usually bite-sized little bits of goodness made out of everything from milk, cheese, rice, wheat, sesame seeds, nuts, sugar and jaggary.  Besides fruit, this is the most common item offered to the divine in worship so they are found in shops throughout the city, and, like I said, in basically every Hindu Bengali cupboard.

Godspeed: God sightings in my (second) first day in Kolkata (June 2014)

What a day of answered prayers! Actually, what three days of answered prayers as I journeyed here. But, today was truly a perfect first day with many delightful answers to my questions of what these 5 weeks would be like. I have been worrying about this trip, and trying desperately not to worry about this trip for literally years, but especially for the past few months or so…What would my accommodations be like? Would I be able to talk to Travis or anyone else back home? Could I handle five weeks without internet if it meant I couldn’t see Travis’ face or hear my mom or dad’s laugh? Was I going to be lonely?... And then little things like… Would my driver be at the airport? Would my ATM card work? Would my luggage show up? How long would it take to get my new cell phone and be in touch with others?

The truth is that these things didn’t need worrying. Worrying didn’t fix them. I just worried. And talked about that worrying. And I thought about the relationship between that worrying and my faith and my desire to be present and joyful and a good person while I am here. And you all heard me talk about it. And God certainly heard me—every morning—talk about it (and still will, for sure). And you all prayed for me and with me. You laid hands on me. You hugged me. You told your friends to pray. You sent me encouraging emails and texts. You all understood the importance of this trip, and the depth of emotions that have surrounded it for me. And you’ve walked with me. And God and I have been talking about it every morning over coffee as I starred out the living room window at the Bloomington summer.  I shouldn’t need a perfect first day to remind me that I am not alone—that you and God go with me, but I did need it. And I got it. And I am so thankful for it.

Let me give a most recent status and then I’ll share a few wonderful details of my trip prior to the trip here, just to illustrate the many answered prayers and God sightings displayed for me today. You don’t have to read this. I am not going to write eloquently or thoughtfully; I just want to get my thoughts out there so I remember. Because this serves as one kind of prayer of thankfulness to God and, in the future, a reminder to me of God’s rich faithfulness.

Aside from being tired from jetlag and not really sleeping for the past couple of days, my flights from Thursday on went totally perfectly, all of my luggage arrived, my ATM card worked, and a very nice man picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture—everything as planned. WHAT?! Yeah. And I checked in at the hotel and they took me through this lovely courtyard up to my room, which is definitely the nicest place I have stayed in South Asia—A.C., reliable electricity, fan, a daily jug of clean water, a personal bathroom, everything spotless, a water heater for tea, hot water in the shower, extra (clean) sheets and towels, a shower, a toilet, a desk, annnnnnnd out of nowhere, totally unexpected….. AN INTERNET CONNECTION! Its definitely not the institute’s, so it could disappear at any time, but I had the pleasure of skyping with Travis and my mom today. Its amazing how much of a difference feeling that connection can make in your total well-being. I don’t know how long I will have this internet, but I am taking advantage of it now and feeling very, VERY thankful for this connection to all of you and the outside world. Connection is priceless when you’re out of your comfort zone.

The other wonderful surprise was the incredible food here. At breakfast there was yummy tea, bananas, gluten-free cereal (yeah, I know), warm milk, chapattis and delicious chickpea curry. Lunch was even more impressive: chicken curry, fresh vegetables, rice, and fresh mango. Then when I came home this afternoon after my excursion, hot tea and milk showed up at my door! WHAT?! Im pretty sure my problem on this trip will be eating too much, rather than the opposite, which is truly a luxurious pleasure. (food update: Lunch Sunday: an assortment of delicious Indian vegetables: fried potatoes and bitter gourd; potatoes and squash cooked in a cashew cream; spinach and potatoes cooked in spice pods…then fish, cashew rice, dal, and fresh mango….yeah… WHAT?!)

At breakfast I met a woman named Simanti Dasgupta. She is an Assistant Professor at Dayton University in the Anthropology department. She is doing some VERY impressive work here—like the kind of work I have always been in awe of. For the past five years, she has been spending her summers here working with grassroots sex work and sex trafficking advocacy groups. Basically she works one on one every day with women who are doing sex work in the red light district and exploring the difficulty of simple definitions of trafficking and sex work. She tells these women’s stories of both agency/independence and violence in their field of work and basically just tries to be of help to them in exchange for hearing their stories. Five years ago, she had to present her project proposal to a panel of  women who are also sex workers who head up the grassroots advocacy group she works with. She had to defend her work to them, and they agreed but asked that she help them with their everyday needs. What has grown out of this are deep relationships and connections and trust. She hopes to develop a fuller and more complex story both of these women’s lives and the issues, particularly global, that shape and define sex work and sex trafficking.  That was my first conversation here! She gave me all of this advice about ethnographic work and was so, so encouraging. It was a special, God-filled moment. As it turns out, she is my next door neighbor here and she told me to holler if I need anything or any more advice.

Now before this day, I had a layover in New York and got to spend a whole day with the great John Jeffords, who showed me around his adorable neighborhood and introduced me to his equally adorable and charming Lindsey and Stephen. I ate some great food, had some great coffee, watched America move on in the World Cup and sat in Washington Square Park with the greatest brother in law ever.  Other wonderful encounters: basically everyone I encountered as I was navigating the New Jersey Railroad and the Subway to get to and from the Newark Airport, were kind and forgiving of my deer-in-headlights, I’m from a city of 70,000 people look. There was even a man who noticed that I was having trouble getting my luggage off the train who helped me. He carried my giant India suitcase off the train, just to be nice. Did I mention that he did this all with one arm? WHAT?! Then, as John, Stephen and I were walking home from dinner, we ran into a monk from the local Hare Krishna temple who gave us a book about devotional cooking.

So basically, God was like, “Look, Ashlee, even if I have to beat you over the head with this,  and it doesn’t matter how much you try to ignore it by getting wrapped up in your own neurotic whatever, I will remind you that I am with you. “

I mean, how’s that for an abundance of answered prayers. My cup runneth over. I can hear God whispering in my ear: “See, I’m here, silly. Now get out of your box of worry and control and be present here, aware and thankful. “  

My challenge in the coming days is to move beyond myself and the worry and need to control that has tended to characterize my trips, so that I may see God’s story here and to more fully be with and tell the stories of others than I have been able in the past—to move past the distractions of ensuring I was ok (since God’s got that), and be more mentally and physically present with the people I meet.

I was hoping to post some pics of my room, but I can't get them to upload; I'll try later in the week.  Hopefully, in the posts to follow, I can share less about myself and my situation and my neuroses and share more about the world and people that I have the opportunity to engage with.

Although I do not yet have a working cell phone, I am hoping to arrange a meeting with my research assistant, Hena Basu, the most capable and wonderful woman in this country. She has invited me to her home to watch her home celebration of Ratha Yatra. Today is a festival day that celebrates Lord Jagganath’s journey on a palanquin with his brother Balabhadra and his sister Shubhadra to their aunt’s home. People celebrate by building or buying small chariots and pulling little forms of the deities through the streets. There are also special foods prepared, of course, so I hope to see and better understand those aspects of today thanks to Hena. Hopefully our meeting will work out and I can share what I have learned with you.

I miss you all and hope that I can share many more updates about this place and the people I meet. I so, so very much appreciate your prayers, both of yesterday and tomorrow. I’d like to be in prayer with you too, so please let me know how I can pray for you and just how you’re doing.

Blessings,

ashlee

My Adoptive Mom

Reporting from the Delhi airport, on route to home.

I didn’t imagine myself crying as I left Kolkata.

Although it has been a privilege to experience India, I must admit that I have been counting down the days to returning to a world in which I can fully express myself and more easily control certain aspects of my life. I’m not saying such control is a good thing…or even that it truthfully ever exists for any of us, but when I had no control over what I ate, rarely knew where I was going if a taxi driver veered off a main road, and had a lot of trouble telling him that I knew that he was meandering to get more money out of me, the idea of getting up in the morning, making a cup of coffee then wandering through my beautiful little Bloomington (at night!) and hanging with my community sounded awfully, awfully enticing. Plus, I’ve been missing all of you fine people and I longed to sit in Colleen and Will’s living room and shoot the shit with my community about life and God and Will’s hatred of certain soccer teams.

But its not as if I didn’t have a community, or at least a little family in Kolkata. Aside from my beautiful friends Sryia and Laura who opened their lives (and in Sriya’s case, her family) to me, I had a mother in Kolkata who I fell in love with and who took care of me with so much more joy and concern than I could imagine someone giving to someone they’ve only known for a couple of months. Sandhya is my Indian mother. She adopted me from the first week of my trip, making me tea and bringing it to me in the afternoons, preparing me delicious food, and patiently trying to decipher what I meant with my broken Bangla so that we could develop a connection with one another.

She is who I picture sitting in the airport and the reason I find myself crying, despite how excited I am to return to the States, its comforts (yes, I’ll admit I’m excited about the comfort of clean running water and opening my mouth in the shower) and my family and friends.  I can’t help but think about our nearly daily tea time. At some point in the summer, maybe three weeks in, Sandhya started bringing her own tea in the afternoons when she brought mine. She would sit in my room and we would talk over tea about all kinds of things: husbands, her work, her daughter, her fights with her daughter, the importance of education, the best Bengali foods, the festivities during Durga Puja…and then the really personal, really-real stuff. One day, she told me she had previously lost two children in childbirth and that she still thinks about them on their birthdays. I shared Jack’s life with her.

What a gift to bear sorrow with another. What a gift to have learned Bangla so we could share in grief and understanding that night.

This week tea time each day with Sandhya was particularly long. We were trying to get the most out of our time together. As I do with my mama back home, we grew closer over caffeinated beverages and we spent the week talking about how much we were going to miss one another and made plans for future visits so we didn’t have to be sad today.

And like my mama back home, she was always worried about how I was feeling and was excellent at treating her sick kids. When Travis visited, he had some tummy troubles in the middle of the night one evening. His mom always gives him ginger tea when he is feeling ill, but I don’t have access in the house to the kitchen, so I knew I would have to wake up Sandhya at 2am to get some boiled water. I felt terrible waking her up, but all I had to say was that Travis was sick and needed hot water and she shot into action. Then she spent the next few days making him rice and tea and bringing home mishit doyie (sweet yogurt…it sounds like it would make a stomach worse, but somehow it makes it better), and then bossing him around and telling him how to take care of himself…you know, like any good mom.  Just this morning as Travis and I had a final skype session before I left, Sandhya was hanging out in my room.  TJ mentioned that his lungs had been bothering him, and she immediately issued a stream of warnings and commands: go to the doctor and get medicine, you’ve been changing environments and it can make you very sick and if your chest is congested you can get very ill, so go to the doctor today! He tried to explain that he didn’t need to go and she just said, “No! You’ll go”.

Although the house owners I stayed with were astoundingly good to me, and very, very generous, and although they both had purposely hired Sandhya and her older brother so that they could all stay together in the house and not be separated—a more generous consideration than many homeowners might have--Sandhya was markedly different around them. Its entirely possible that they were all just playing out cultural roles and power dynamics that I couldn’t understand, and that they were all totally comfortable with, as an outsider looking in, it seemed like Sandhya sort-of shut down around them. She stood at attention during dinner time when they were there, but with me, she would sit at the table and talk.

But of course, she would never eat with me. She and her family members ate separately upstairs.  I thought that perhaps this practice of seperation is no different from two families in America eating separately, but I don’t think that’s all that is going on. I believe there are some pretty deeply engrained class divisions being played out in the separation of dinner tables. When Travis was visiting we decided it would be fun to eat a meal with Sandhya and her family, and nice to give Sandhya a night off from cooking for us and her family. So we planned to bring some food from a restaurant on an evening when her homeowners were gone.  I bought Sandhya’s favorites: chow mein, chili chicken and prawns from a really tasty Chinese joint.

Sandhya seemed excited about the “secret” dinner at first, but as the day neared, she started to act very nervous about it. Then, when the homeowners changed plans and were still there when Travis and I arrived with lunch, she was very nervous, almost jittery, when we showed up with the food. We whispered in the kitchen and she begged me to bring the food into our room and eat it separately and then bring the food up to them when we were done. In the end, I realized that we were actually asking a lot of Sandhya and her family, and in some ways we were disrespecting lots of cultural norms. For one thing, hospitality is an extremely big deal. There is a lot of shame wrapped up in being inhospitable. If the homeowners had learned that we had a dinner separately from them, they would have thought that we thought they were inhospitable—either to us or to the people that worked for them—and it would have caused conflict between us and the homeowners. I wasn’t too worried about that, although I was nervous too when I saw that they were home. But more importantly, we were asking Sandhya to disrespect her bosses, which could have had really dire consequences for her.  While I don’t at all agree with the class seperations functioning throughout Indian society (or my own), I had irresponsibly put Sandhya in danger, and I realized we just couldn’t shared that meal together if there was any chance at all of the homeowners seeing us.  What might be fun, even self-indulgent, stint in generousity for Travis and I, what a danger to Sandhya and her family’s terms with the homeowners and possibly a threat to her job.  As Travis observed, sharing a table is just to revolutionary of an act.  When you share a meal with someone, you let them into your social world, into your family; and when you eat with them you might even let a little of them (their spit and dirt ) into you. The open table is a revolutionary idea. I, of course, couldn’t help but think of the Eucharist.

So the only food Sandhya and I ever shared together was tea.  But she gave me a lot of food, and not just all the delicious chicken curry, payeesh, dal, okra, chicken stew, or “Italian” chicken she made me. She told me that when a stomach is happy a heart or soul is happy, which is why she likes to cook. Everyday she would ask if my stomach and heart were happy and I would tell her that she made them so. The item I am bringing home with me that I will cherish more than any other is a bag of the tea leaves that Sandhya uses to make tea. There is a very sweet story accompanying her giving it to me.

Over our last tea time, Sandhya was pointing out everything in my room that wasn’t packed yet so that I was sure not to forget it. She pointed out a 10 rupee note that was sitting on the window ceil. I had left it because it was torn and I have learned that most stores or drivers won’t accept torn notes. So I told Sandhya this and she asked if she could have it to try to use it in the market. I felt like a little shit watching her smooth out the note. For me, that note had become garbage but for her 10 rupees (that is a sixth of a dollar) was worth saving and trying out. A few moments later, I gave Sandhya a small gift, hardly enough to repay what our relationship has given me, and in all honesty I should have probably just given her an envelope full of money to help her with the costs associated with her daughter’s education (the only reason I didn’t was that I totally forgot to stop by the ATM on my way home and missed the banks before they closed).  I bought her some nice fabric to make a shalowar kameez top and bottom set. It was pink- her favorite color- and had some nice stitch work, but I could have given her so much more.  I bought Rakesh, her nephew, a new shirt, and I tried to hand it to him, but he wouldn’t take it. He said thank you, but made his mom take it; it struck me that a little 9 year kid, when offered a present, wouldn’t eagerly grab for it. It was almost as if he didn’t think it was right to take it.

When I gave Sandhya her present, she looked at and touched the fabric with such an expression of love. She told me I had paid too much and then she just stared at the fabric and stroked it and then patted my knee.  An hour later she was back from the bazaar bearing gifts of food—the language of love that she speaks in best (because I don’t need any translating maybe?). She had purchased a 100 rupee bag of tea leaves, dried beans and all the spices to make Travis’ favorite bean dish and then she told me the recipe for both.  I know she spent at least 150 rupees on the gift, which is a lot, and I wonder if she used the rupee note she saved from my carelessness. I told her I would make the tea as soon as I got home and think about her all the while.

This morning, the homeowners slept in, but Sandhya got up early and made me an extra big breakfast to fill my tummy up for my long two days of journeying. (I forgot to mention that last night she made me my favorite meal of chicken stew, mangos and ice cream that she purchased from the ice cream vendor across the street from the house—the Kwality Walls, Travis!).  Rakesh and Pinkey also woke up, even though it was their day off from school. Then the whole family, including Sandhya’s brother who carried my very heavy bag full of un-necessities down three flights of stairs, walked me to the car downstairs. I gave Sandhya a big hug and she held me for a long time. Then she walked me to my car, opening the door and then sticking her fingers through the open window so we could touch one more time. Pinkey and Rakesh stood outside the other window waving. This is exactly the scene when a family member leaves their family. It felt like that much love.

I didn’t improve my Bangla enough to do my dissertation research without a translator, which was my goal for going this summer. But as the program went forward, I realized that as long as I could speak and understand enough Bangla to connect with Sandhya, that’s all I really cared about.  But at the same time, Sandhya taught me more than anyone the rarity and privilege of the kind of education I have received. I have had years and years of school at some of the best places, and traveled to India and Bangladesh, and I haven’t really paid for any of it. My parents and various institutions and governmental grants have given me that privileged.  Sandhya didn’t ever get to go to school. She had 6 brothers and sisters and her parents simply couldn’t afford to feed her, so at the age of 7 she left her home and traveled 6 hours away to live and work in Kolkata in middle class homes. She told me that the greatest sorrow in her life (and she has had plenty) is the fact that she didn’t get to go to school and, as a result, cannot do much better than work in the house she is working at. So what do I do with my, basically, unearned privilege? I can’t be drowned in self-indulgent guilt but do something that turns my blessings into blessings for others. I don’t know what that looks like, but I am called to remain open to God’s call to do something with what I’ve been given. That is the knowledge I return home with. Sandhya didn’t get what I have. She doesn’t get to go home to all of the opportunities and freedoms and luxuries I will go home to. And that had lit a fire under me. How do I live to do something good with the things Sandhya should have been given to.

On the flight from Kolkata to Delhi, I cracked open my copy of The Irresistible Revolution to the section in which Shane Claiborne discusses his time in Kolkata at the Sisters of Mercy Mission and the leper community founded by Mother Teresa. He talks about his own adoptive family.  He talks about the love of Christ being available to everyone and about seeing Christ in his adoptive family and them seeing Christ in him, and he says that this happens when we simply love another with God’s love. Sandhya shared Christ with me and I think I shared Christ with her with every cup of tea and every pat on the leg and every head nod.  I hope I can share the love Sandhya has given me with my community, my family, my friends and those I encounter.

And that’s why I’m crying in the Delhi airport.

Postscript:

Thank you all for all of your prayers, support and positive thoughts. I am home safe and healthy and feeling incomparably blessed--thank you, thank you, thank you!

also, I can't stop paying with my right hand, nodding my head and saying "Ha" instead of yes.

I love you,

ashlee