I’ve been thinking a bit more about the work of the early missionaries in India. It truly is awe-inspiring. They set out without the benefit of travel books or web-sites, of orientation programmes or reading lists, and without any of the medical protection that we wrapped around ourselves before travelling. Their journey was surely unimaginably long and difficult, and they would have arrived in a culture that was utterly alien. For all my delight in things Indian, there were days during my stay when I really longed for familiar language and the cultural backdrops of home. (I really did thank God for a certain café chain, with a branch in MG Road, Bangalore. We only visited when we were completely desperate, but it was comforting to know it was there when we were).
Those missionaries, in contrast, were totally adrift, with no sense of what they might expect and few, if any support structures to turn to. Strange country, strange people, strange food and a whole battery of unpleasant diseases.
En route to Kanyakumari, we passed many wayside cemeteries, - and the crosses there reminded me of the missionaries who literally gave their lives for the people of India, just because they loved God and felt called by him to take his love into new places.
In their turn, they deserve to be remembered with love – and indeed they are.
They are the unofficial saints of CSI, spoken of with affection undulled by the years. Their faith challenges me. To journey so far, and risk so much for the love of God and his people - in comparison, I know I haven't even made the starting blocks.
Today, their obvious legacy is the churches, schools and hospitals that so often bear their names, - Sawday Memorial Church, Hudson Memorial, Platt Memorial - and their sepia photographs remain on the walls of many presbyteries and ashrams. Better still, their emphasis on love in action has clearly continued to shape C.S.I. so that the social work that the church is involved in makes all the difference in the world to so many.
The Karnataka diocese is rightly proud of its social action programme and was anxious that we should experience it at first hand, so our first 10 days were projects, projects all the way. If I’m honest, while the first few in each category made a huge impact, this diminished somewhat as we were exposed to more and more of the same. For me, our visit culminated in a marathon day spent trailing the Bishop as he dedicated a new church, launched the centenary booklet at another, opened a project for school drop-outs, and a community dining hall, and presented the certificates to graduates of another programme for disaffected young people. By the end of the day, most of us in the semi-offical party wore glazed expressions, and were beginning to panic at the thought of yet another garland (no ceremony in India is complete without flowery speeches in all directions, and numerous presentations to guests of honourThe wor itself was, and is, all tremendous stuff though and I mentioned to the Bishop’s wife my admiration for the church’s involvement in social action.
Her response was typically robust
“If the church isn’t involved in this sort of work, then the church is meaningless”
Ouch. I suspect she’s right, but it can be hard to see where to start in a context as comfortable as ours here.
Perhaps that’s one reason why some missionaries, even today, elect to spend their whole lives in India. If you can fall in love as thoroughly as I did in just one month, its easy to imagine that working there for a longer period might irrevocably spoil “home” for you. I met one such long-term missionary, Brother John, on my first Sunday in Bangalore.
Conversation with him was fascinating for, now in his 80s, he has been in India for most of his adult life, living through the “quit India” campaign of the 40s and the terrible violence surrounding partition. He spoke of "Gandhi-ji" as a friend, and had known
E. Stanley Jones (who wrote the wonderful
Christ of the Indian Road) well too. As he talked to us, history lived and his whole being shone with love for the country and its people. Before we left, he took us outside his one-roomed home, in the compound of St John’s Church, and showed us the garden he had made. The trees which towered above us were all of his planting.
This had been home for him for 40 years, and that’s a long time even in arboreal terms…
He’s still at work planting seeds, as he was due to run a mission in one of the city’s senior schools in the two weeks after we met…
I’m willing to bet that some of those seeds will grow too,- like those planted by his predecessors in the mission field.
an outing to the Sales with Hatti Gandhi...netting one new skirt, 2 tops and a truly wonderful stripey mohair jumper from Monsoon.
Good friends and an open fire. Can life get much better?
came the Boxing Day walk - just me and the dogs on Crickley Hill, as everyone else was still half asleep. Selfishly, this was exactly what I needed - even extroverts enjoy a window of solitude now and then, provided they know it won't be prolonged and we were out so early we didn't even need to be sociable to other walkers.
The service proper must have lasted all of half and hour, but afterwards there was a constant stream of families past the crib to rearrange the scene and count the camels.
Hatti Gandhi has just given me a Christmas Eve present with which I'm entirely delighted.
Our Eucharist this morning was bubbling with suppressed excitement as we admitted 5 children to Holy Communion for the first time. I presided and FabVicar preached about Bethlehem the house of bread, and included mention of my beloved Lancelot Andrewes, who in 1615 connected the little town with the Eucharist
Over the past couple of days I can report that there have been a few moments when I've felt distinctly Christmassy. Most of them involved catching Hatti Gandhi's eye as she sang in the choir during the Nine Lessons and Carols last night...it is so good to have her home for the holidays, and back in the choir stalls too. But overall, I'm still waiting for the breathless eight-year-old style excitement that usually grips me this close to Christmas. I do hope that India hasn't spoiled me for something I'm usually unashamedly enthusiastic about. The tree is up at home, and there are candles all over the place,- which means you can see less of our familial mess in the twilight. There are some parcels wrapped and ready to place under the tree. I don't actually have to prepare that much more for church. So here I am, waiting for the reality to dawn. Perhaps I'll actually have to hang on till Midnight Mass this year - but that might not be such a bad thing.
While considering the wonders of Luke's account of the nativity, I found myself re-reading past Midnight sermons (which, interestingly, all seem to have been on John...it's clearly high time I engaged with Luke for myself) and remembered the year that I, as a Reader, was conducting the first part of the Midnight Mass at Great Rissington, and had to fill in until the priest managed to get there from another eucharist in one of the neighbouring villages. That year nobody could complain that they didn't get to sing their favourite carol. We had the lot, interspersed with assorted readings, chosen on the spot to pad out the Ministry of the Word. It was also the year that, by tremendous serendipity I managed to so time things that we reached the last verse of O Come all ye faithful just after the church clock struck 12.00 - so those words were the very first uttered on Christmas morning. Before that, though, I took them around the highways and by ways of English literature, including this poem, which I'd almost forgotten. Did you know that Hardy scorned his novels, and wished to be remembered only for his poetry? Much of it is, imho, on the edge of twaddle, but this, I think, is rather lovely.
My good friend Marcella is complaining (only quietly, of course) about not feeling specially Christmassy...and, without any good reason, I have to admit I'm in rather the same state.
En route to Kanyakumari, we passed many wayside cemeteries, - and the crosses there reminded me of the missionaries who literally gave their lives for the people of India, just because they loved God and felt called by him to take his love into new places.
Conversation with him was fascinating for, now in his 80s, he has been in India for most of his adult life, living through the “quit India” campaign of the 40s and the terrible violence surrounding partition. He spoke of "Gandhi-ji" as a friend, and had known E. Stanley Jones (who wrote the wonderful Christ of the Indian Road) well too. As he talked to us, history lived and his whole being shone with love for the country and its people. Before we left, he took us outside his one-roomed home, in the compound of St John’s Church, and showed us the garden he had made. The trees which towered above us were all of his planting.
is part of the wonderful Wildgoose collection, Candles and Conifers, which makes life so much easier in this time of desperate creativity as hassled clergy across the world try to proclaim afresh the wonder of the season. I'd forgotten it till leafing feverishly through the book earlier in the week...and was so excited, because, you see, I was there, only 4 weeks ago! I'd had breakfast and supper at the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary in Madurai where Rosie had stayed when writing. Indeed, Indian friends suggested that I might do a short course there some time in the future, as a good pretext for a return to the country. So, in my current, "ever- so- slightly -homesick-for-India" state, finding these words was a real gift. The pictures were taken in the grounds of TTS, which provided a welcome haven during the Journey from Hell to Kanyakumari. As Rosie points out "Come, come" - or, in my experience, "Please come" is probably the phrase that visitors to S. India hear most.
are very much the rule in CSI. During the time I spent there, I was shown a model of ministry that is almost shocking to someone trained and working in a western context.
