Below you will find the online journal of Margaret, who was in India this past January on a Mission Trip.

Margaret Shafer served the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church for thirteen years, first as an Associate for Education and then as our Associate for Outreach. She has left her mark on much of our church, most notably in regards to our homeless ministries. Before coming to FAPC, Margaret taught in public schools, served as a Christian educator and worked on the program staff of the National Council of Churches. She is the daughter of missionary parents, and has academic degrees from the College of Wooster (Ohio), McCormick Theological Seminary (Chicago), and Fordham University Graduate School of Education. Her husband Byron, who recently served as the senior pastor of Rutgers Presbyterian Church in New York, also joined her on this mission trip.

May 6, 2007

Chickadees are my link. After the monkeys ran across the tin roof this morning and sleep was banished, I looked out the window and noticed a tiny chickadee hopping around on the pine tree. I suddenly realized: here is my link.  We have chickadees in our yard in Yonkers. Chickadees visit the deck of our cabin up in the Adirondacks. Chickadees are the friends you never have to leave behind. As we wind up our four and a half months in India, the emotional tugs from the different parts of our lives insist on being felt. Eager as we are to return, it is also hard to leave. But I can always enjoy the chickadees.

This past week we were called upon to help with assorted classes and workshops. Byron, the Egyptologist, answered questions for 4th graders for an hour. Byron, the religion scholar, lectured for 2 high school classes in Religions of Semitic Origin on Judaism and Islam, and then spent an hour on the Sermon the Mount for the Introduction to Christianity course. In the evening we became workshop leaders at a couple of residence halls.  Time Management and Study Skills were Byron’s forte. Margaret did two on Anger Management and one on How to Get Respect. Students at Woodstock come from all over the world, they are exceptionally bright and articulate, but their struggle with a sense of identity and social responsibility show the effect of trying to survive in a world with more change than stability. Someone said the other day, “We have so much diversity around here that in any given situations you get 25 definitions of what would be “common sense.” As I look at the students here, I wonder if they are on the crest of the wave that is pulling the rest of the world into a new era.  An era where we leave behind a world community where nationality and religious affiliation and traditional vocations no longer carry meaning, and move into a time where being an involved citizen and practicing your faith and working to make the world a better place can be embraced without labels or limits. Yet as I talked to the high school boys about the realities of bullying in the dorms, we seemed caught between the world that was and the world that should be. It may be coming, but it is going to take careful work. 

Pondering the universe and describing new eras and old eras is a bit grandiose, but the setting inspires big thinking. Whether you look miles and miles across the Tehri mountains blued with haze, or stop to notice how many million tiny asters grow in the rocky pushtas, or watch the sunset between the thundercloud and the mountain silhouette, or listen to the octave owl that hoots repeatedly on exactly the count of 8, or notice that the long-needled pines have dropped their needles and are suddenly changed from brown to green…this is a place to make one philosophical.

We’re told it rained a little on the plains this week and brought the temperatures down from 110 to 100. It still sounds pretty hot to me. Hopefully we can tolerate the heat for the couple of days between our cool heights of Mussoorie at 7000’ and the airplane at whatever cool heights it rises to. We fly out of Delhi on Air India Friday morning, May 11th, to London and then JFK and home, with all the time changes, by Friday evening. We’ll be in time to help our grandson Max celebrate his First Communion on Saturday morning.

Thank you for reading these notes. We appreciate the motivation you provide to reflect on and record some of the fascinating experiences we’ve had.  This trip has been such a gift!

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April 29, 2007

Three evenings in a row we have had the most extraordinary experiences.  Mussoorie has surely outdone itself during our stay here.

Last evening was the Woodstock Mela which in former times was known as the PTA Sale. The Quad and the road out to the school gate were draped with tiny lights (a cross between Christmas and fireflies.). My contribution in preparation was putting tablecovers and signs on the 42 stalls for food and handicrafts   and souvenirs from every NGO in the area. The food was ethnic, including ethnic American hot dogs and ice cream—eating is a wonderful way to celebrate the variety of cultures here! There were fun booths including bean bag toss and dump a bucket of water on your favorite teacher. Almost continuous bands and choral and dance groups were performing in a corner of the Quad. We were especially impressed by the 9th grader from Finland who danced while twirling flaing bricks on 3 foot chains…somehow its related to skipping rope, but beautiful and scary at the same time.

The previous evening was more high brow. The students studying classical Indian music gave their final recital for the year. When the lights came on in the auditorium there were 19 gorgeously dressed students seated on Persian rugs; 6 tabla players on each side flanked the 4 sitar players, one Indian guitar (played flat on the lap), a surmandal (a square stringed instrument played by two things that looked like back-scratchers but made a wonderful sound reminiscent of a xylophone, and two singers. One of the singers had a lap harp on which he would play an arpeggio with a great flourish at the end of number. A commentator tried to explain to the audience the way melody (raz) and rhythm (rag) are combined and how they escalate in each piece. The whole ensemble played and then half a dozen individual  students played. They demonstrated admirable levels of concentration and musicality. But I can’t honestly say I absorbed it all and classical Indians clearly felt no time pressures and most pieces seemed to go on and on, beautifully and interminably. The final treat of the evening were a dozen Elementary School girls  who have been learning a couple of Rajasthani dances. They were dressed up in wonderful outfits with lots of reds and golds and big floppy necklaces and flowing scarves and they danced as though their lives depended on it. They were most enthusiastic about the jumping up and down in place and they worked very hard on their sinuous hand motions…performers par excellance!

Our third extraordinary evening was a soiree at a lovely home at the top of the hill; 60 people sat in the garden with an open fire in the middle.  Between the moon and the climbing roses it was a perfect evening to listen while poets and authors and singers rose spontaneously to entertain us with their own and classical works in assorted languages. It ended with a delicious dinner at 10:30 topped off with the best gulab jamans I’ve ever eaten. It was part of the First Mussoorie International Writers Conference organized by Steve Alter.

From this past Tuesday through Saturday, a group of 20 distinguished writers and 3 publishers/editors from both India and the USA gathered here at the Hanifl Center of Woodstock School to interact and discuss such topics as “Writing across Cultures,” “Verbal and Visual Points of View,” “The Editor’s Perspective,” “Audience, Form and Genre,”  and “Many Languages; One Literature.”  Byron attended along with many other lovers of literature. If you have a chance to buy or borrow a book of poetry by Erica Funkhouser, grab the opportunity. (If you’re at all intrigued by Annie Oakley, read Funkhouser’s biographical poem about her in Sure Shot and Other Poems.) Byron also highly commends the fiction of Nayantara Sahgal (if you like Indian narratives set against Indian political backgrounds), the non-fiction of Andre Bernard (a publisher), and two works by Kirin Narayan (Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels and the forthcoming-in-November My Family and Other Saints). Several quotes from the week: “Fiction writing is finding the magic of ordinary things,” “The Hindu mind never comes to any conclusion. When you speak one truth, you need to understand that the opposite is also true,” and “In literature, can the city replace nature as the element that enables understanding to cross cultures?”

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April 19, 2007

I’m writing from Mussoorie where our Guest Room has the most spectacular view you can image. We see for miles in 3 directions. I’ve started this news note two or three times, but keep getting distracted. My last beginning a couple days ago was:

I’m drafting this by hand, hoping by the time I’m ready to send it the electricity will have settled down. It has gone off half-a-dozen times this evening in the midst of a windstorm. We could use a change in weather systems.  Although it is cool (60-75 degrees} up here in the mountains, it has been unusually hot (110)  on the plains and a thick dusty haze covers everything.

Well, change it did!  The next morning we had a spectacular electrical storm that woke us about 5:00 am and Byron and I stood transfixed at the windows for almost an hour watching the storm pass from West to East along the mountains. Byron kept saying, “I never looked DOWN into a thunderstorm before”. It was a huge storm and we watched dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds, of lightning bolts going down, up, and sideways.  I think some places in the Doon valley got a lot of rain, we just got a little of the edge of the storm, but it was enough to clean out the air and pull the old leaves off the trees, so the new lighter green of the spring growth is now dominant color of the hillside. The oaks will darken as the season progresses and soon we’ll see the silver undersides of the leaves showing in contrast when a breeze goes by. Meanwhile, it is crisp and clear and clean and the lights of Dehra Doon sparkle 4000 ft below us at night. We haven’t seen the snows yet, but we will go to the top of the hill tomorrow for church and hopefully we’ll be able to look back northward across miles of mountains to see the high snowy peaks.

One of the young men, students from the Leadership Skills course I taught at Baring Union Chirstian College, who I’ve stayed in touch with over the years works in Amritsar for Campus Crusade. It was wonderful to see him last week. He told me he had looked back in his diary and found an entry 10 years ago which said  Mrs Shafer asked us what we thought we’d be doing 10 years from now and I said “I’ll be a leader for Jesus.” Well, he has worked at his dream and seems happy and effective.  He phoned me this morning to tell me this amazing story.  He and some colleagues were driving to Agra where he was scheduled to lead several days of training for new Campus Crusade recruits. They had a new printer of some kind in the car that they were taking to the Agra office. On the road from Delhi they were stopped by the police who gave them a very hard time about driving too fast, and where was the paper work to show the printer was not stolen, etc., etc. When one of the police began to beat up their driver, Manoj got out and insisted they go to the police station and handle this properly. After some very angry, rough talk, the police man asked Manoj if he were a Christian. He said he was, and all of a sudden the policeman’s demeanor changed, it was almost as though he were frightened and became very polite. Then he told Manoj that he was a Hindu belonging to a conservative group, but that he had had a dream that someone was going to come to him to show him how to find a different life. He, the policeman, was sick of all the corruption and bribery of which his life consisted and could Manoj help him find a better way to live?  Manoj talked to him awhile and has arranged to meet with the man and his wife and his father on Sunday to talk some more. Then they went on their way to Agra.  Who knows how this will come out. But, isn’t that an amazing story? If you have any extra prayers you might send one Sunday on behalf of Manoj’s meeting with the family.

Here at Woodstock I’m trying to help the staff develop some processes to put in place that will give them a more satisfactory role in the development of the school. The abrupt departure of the principal has left an opportunity to re-engage a faculty that were beginning to feel like flunkies with no stake in the company. It involves a lot of listening to complaints as well as dreams, but it is an important moment in the institution’s life and we’re glad to be part of it  There are also lots of activities going on to keep us busy, ranging from the 3-day all India basketball tournament - teams from 12 schools - to a Writers Conference organized by Steve Alter bringing together more than 20 published authors from India, Britain, and USA. And next Saturday is what all old Woodstock people remember as the Woodstock Sale, now called the Woodstock Mela. Such fun. We wish we could share this amazing experience with you all.

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April 8, 2007

Happy Easter to each of you. I watched the sunrise across the rooftops of Amritsar with the nearby train whistles for trumpets and a myriad of birds for a great chorus. We will be picked up after breakfast to go to a village for a proper Easter service.

Our journey has been comfortable and full of warm friendships and interesting moments. One of the most enjoyable parts was the 36 hour train trip directly north from Bangalore to Delhi. Let me chronicle just one hour of it…imagine you are with us in an air conditioned car with dirtily tinted windows looking out on changing scenes.

6:30 am: We have been on board for 10 hours and are sound asleep.  A persistent knocking on the cabin door roused us. It was the porter delivering chotti hazri.  We rearranged ourselves to drink a cup of hotwater with whatever. I thought coffee sounded good, but couldn’t get the packet open, so perforce chose tea. When I looked out the window I thought we were in a desert, just dirt, a little grass, an occasional scraggly tea. Such a contrast from the garden city of Bangalore.

6:45 am: However, the more carefully I observed, the more the contrasts struck me. As we moved progressively south to north, the scenery changed from wasteland to beautifully tended farm plots with irrigation ditches and trees showing the bright green of new growth. I kept wondering where the people lived. I could see no villages, though I could see people working here and there in the fields.

7:00 am: We passed a town of houses so fancy I said to myself, must be gulf money. The migration of labor from India to the Arabian Gulf states has brought a lot of capital into India. Next we passed what looked like the layout of a major development—nice straight streets with black and white painted curbs—lined with young neem trees. After streets without houses, we crossed a ravine to see houses with no streets. Dozens and dozens of the tiny (9’ x 9’) box-like concrete structures with 1 door and 1 window looked as though they had been dropped from above at random.  As we moved along we came to another government issue housing development with more orderly streets. But one street had been built with a great rock in the middle of it too big to move. People just squeezed around it.

7:15 am: There are strange rocks everywhere now. Most are the size of an automobile, several are 2-3 times that size. They appear to be the nubs of ancient hills which crack and break in the sun’s heat. Now we are passing what looks like fields growing rocks roughly the size of pumpkins.  The uniformity of size and even distribution makes them look planted—but it defies imagination to think of human beings breaking rocks to this size or even carrying them from anywhere—so I am assuring you it is a natural phenomenon.

7:45 am: The rock fields suddenly give way to huge industrial complex with no name I can see anywhere. There is a large central building, rows of factories and or godowns. All appears new, probably within the last five years I’d guess. It has that wonderful modern Indian architecture of odd shapes and sweeping roofs at unusual angles. Soon we see the town, a residential area where every second building seems to be putting on an additional storey, adding an outside staircase, columns, arches, elaborate grille work, all the décor of the nouveau riche. Nothing is finished, all is in process.

8:00 am: Pretty much all housing now, but less fancy, interspersed with storage sheds and factories surrounded by high brick walls topped with broken glass and barbed wire. Somehow, as we travel along it gets increasingly depressing. Population density, cramped housing and crowded bazaars unrelieved by any green space. One large tree is visible but it is leafless and has 5 large vulture nests on it.

8:15 am: Suddenly we enter a different, orderly world of 5 to 6 storey buildings beautifully whitewashed with well maintained grounds. We pass through the most attractive RailRoad station I’ve seen, lined with flowering trees and a neat white-washed boundary wall. Clean. The station sign says “Nature Care Hospital.”  Was it my imagination or did I actually see 3 men on the platform and all 3 were doing morning exercises or yoga?  We ride by a slum of tents, crossed a dismal waterway, and find on the other bank a slum of corrugated iron huts. A slum is not just a slum…clearly the second slum is more upper class than the first.

8:30 am: A few more minutes and we discover we are at Hydrabad, the capital of Andra Pradesh. It is clearly a major metropolitan area, complete with an amusement park with roller coaster and a lovely large lake edged by a park. The train paused almost 10 minutes at the station. The next hour showed us that the way out which is much like the way in. Somehow it was like looking at the rings on a cross-section of a tree. I quit looking out the window after several minutes of the dirtiest roadbed I’ve ever seen—plastic bags, the curse of the earth.

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March 25, 2007
Have you ever been confused by why it is sometimes called the “Near East” and sometimes the “Middle East”? Well, India has the sensible answer. Here it is called “West Asia.”

We’ve been enjoying some other breakthroughs in vocabulary.
“Very less” means a lot less than should be, as in “Charitable giving is very less.” “Invigilate” is what you do when you supervise the exam takers.
“We much appreciate you” is used in a formal thank you with “appreciate’ serving as an active verb, where would more distantly have said, “We would like to express our appreciation of your whatever.”

This week we celebrated Ugadi. It is the new year for Telegu speaking people. If you didn’t know there were Telegu speaking people, don’t deride yourselves.  It is one of the ancient languages of South India but without enough political clout to have a state or region of their own and they are pretty much intermingled with Tamil and Kannada speakers. However, festival holidays are one way of keeping a culture alive and Ugadi is a good example…schools and the post office were closed for Ugadi,  even the ticket windows at the Railroad station had shortened “Ugadi hours”. It is a day for Hindu pundits to make predictions for the coming year. And everyone happily eats a simplified version the Ugadi specialty, a parantha (a flatbread folded over and over and fried in oil) with brown sugar inside. The real thing, we are told, would have the jaggery made from new sugarcane, raw mangoes, neem flowers and new tamarind together reflecting the reality of human life - combination of sweet, sour and bitter turn of events. There is something uplifting in people who can look forward to a new year acknowledging its wholeness of bitter as well as sweet. 

This is valedictory weekend at United Theological College when families came from all over India to celebrate the graduation of their dear son or daughter. Saturday morning workmen put up elaborate tentlike walls on the big circle lawn and stuing lights everywhere. The Valedictory program of many speeches a few cultural songs and skits was followed by dinner served to 1000 people. But such events are handled with a practical simplicity.  Everyone simply turned the plastic chairs set up for the program into circles of friends, no tables are necessary. Food is served buffet style.  Everyone eats with their fingers so no place settings and the single plastic plate is easily washed. Sunday evening was worship and degree granting. I particularly liked having all the students who had just received their degrees stand and make a statement of commitment to their families and friends.  It ended with this pledge:
          To reach out to those unreached;
          To care for those uncared for;
          To liberate those needing liberation;
          To preach to those needing the good news of reconciliation and peace;
          And to practice what we teach and preach.   Amen.

We leave Thursday evening by train for Delhi…2 nights and a day…in First Class air-conditioned, so don’t feel too sorry for us. We’ll stay with Woodstock friend Dilawar Chetsingh and his wife in Delhi. Then we’ll travel up through the Punjab to visit friends in Jalandhar, Amritsar, Batala, and Chandigarh. We’ll be celebrate Easter weekend in Amritsar, guests of the Bishop, who has Byron giving one of the 7 Last Words on Good Friday and preaching an Easter Sunday sermon in a village. It is just about the hottest time of the year in that area, so we will be glad to get to the mountains on Thursday, April 12. We will be staying in the guest room in the Quad at Woodstock, for those of you who know the school. We probably won’t get another of these missives off until then.

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March 18, 2007
While the students here at UTC are finishing up their term papers and studying for exams, it is pretty quiet, so I want to share my notes about THE most impressive place we’ve been on our recent trip. 

Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore is a huge place on two major campuses plus lots of off-site locations. But whenever one enters a CMC compound, it feels like order in the midst of chaotic world outside.  CMC’s renowned excellence in medicine stands out among the haphazard ways of India. It has a culture of commitment and egalitarianism in a society where 87 % of the people are poor, do not participate in rising expectations from globalism, and are the victims of unbelievable corruption and greed. In contrast, Dr. George M. Chandy, Director of CMC, proudly told us the salary spread is only 6 or 7 to 1 and that most of their doctors, if they should choose to leave, would pull salaries at least 5 times what CMC pays. They stay because they care about excellence in medicine and in service to people in need whether they can pay or not. Their extraordinary staff of 5.600 people includes 1000 doctors. The Medical College graduates 60 new doctors a year at almost no cost to themselves, plus granting 140 advanced degrees. Many of India’s leading physicians and specialists trained here. More than 200 nurses and 200 in Allied Health Sciences graduate annually. An awesome amount of research goes on as well. 

The Hospital was founded around 1900 by Dr. Ida Scudder and has grown from 1 bed to 2234 beds and 3614 outpatients per day and including all its units provides health care in and around Vellore for 146,000 people. The hospital is 96% self-funding with no patient turned away for lack of funds.

The Chaplaincy Office at CMC Vellore must be unique in this world with its 17 full-time chaplains augmented by several volunteers and co-operating Roman Catholic priests who work with them on a regular basis. The Chaplains minister to patients & their families, staff, and students. They also train theological students and pastors and provide worship services in 11 different languages on Sundays.

LCECU stands for Low Cost Effective Care Unit and is a response to the growing hi-tech medicine. It is the passion of Dr. Sara Bhattarcharji who believes Health has to be in the hands of the people not the professionals.  The unit helps poor patients who could not otherwise afford hospitalization to stay in safe, clean, spare lodging where they get the nursing care they need. The families are trained to help, and they have access to expert physicians as needed. The unit also goes out into nearby slums where they do mostly health education.

Rehab Medicine serves mainly spinal cord and head injuries. Their goal is to help each patient to be as independent as possible. Again we saw families being made integral to the healing process as they are trained in the necessary therapies and in patient care. Once a year they hold a Rehab Mela (festival) which brings back former patients for check ups, games and sports, education and encouragement.

Mental Health Centre is 50 years old, one of the first In India, and has a staff of 18 psychiatrists. All of India with its 1+ billion citizens has only 3500 psychiatrists. Dr Pratap Tharyan explained how they work within the patient’s framework which usually includes faith healers and black magic, traditional therapies and lifestyles, and how they incorporate the family into the treatment plan. They have a keen understanding of how spirituality is an important part of psychotherapy and will host an upcoming conference as the World Council of Churches to draw the world’s attention to the importance of psychotherapy connected to spirituality.

CHAD is part of what has made Vellore CMC famous. Community Health and Development with a sister unit works with 140 villages. Their staff of 200 social workers, nurses, and doctors deliver health services in a rural setting in cooperation with local midwives and other healers. All doctors training at CMC spend two weeks living in villages and learning how to care for public health. They also train many foreign medical students for whom it is a unique opportunity to see actual cases of many diseases and conditions in their textbooks. With CHAD’s wholistic approach to health care, they discover many ancillary needs. We saw a Day Care Center where little children can be dropped off when mothers find work outside.  It was such a success the government agreed to take over its support.  The Senior Day Care Center is a recent attempt to meet a new problem in a society that is changing from the old joint family system where families lived together in such a way that there was always provision for the elderly.

We came away saying, “Thank God for CMC Vellore.!”  

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March 11, 2007
Margaret is back from 2 weeks on the road as companion to a group of 8 lay leaders from the Fifth Ave and Rutgers Presbyterian Churches in NYC who wanted to see the work of Christian churches in South India.  Byron was able to join us for some of our travels, but he had to get back to teaching, reading student papers and leading a retreat.

Early in the trip planning we had decided we wanted to see people more than buildings, and ministry more than institutions, so this is not a conventional travelogue.  We did see the most extraordinary array of people whom we would count as saints carrying out creative ministries in impossible situations.  The level of personal commitment was inspiring, and in India the scope of need seems unlimited.  People were in there doing what they could even though the macro-level problems continued.  Our group kept trying to think what any of us could do to address the issues that keep fueling the problems, but what we saw  was local people ACTING on their convictions, doing what they could.

Rev. Dr. Abraham Stephen, professor of Religion and Culture at UTC, with his wife has developed a relationship with a village about 15 miles from Bangalore. They took us out to visit.  They go out once or twice a month to work with the children in the government elementary school and have gotten to know many of the town leaders. Many of the residents are poorer than poor—agricultural day laborers who may find work only 3 or 4 months a year, and that at miniscule wages.  Suicide rates are very high; hope is almost absent.  Out of their own pockets (and those of their friends) the Stephens are helping poor families buy uniforms and books so that the youngsters will go to school and benefit from learning and the free lunch program.  Meanwhile, they are working with the school headmaster and the village council on how to lobby the government for a medical clinic and various school improvements.

Another UTC faculty member, Rev. Solomon Benjamin directs the YMCA training program, while his commitment is serving the street children.  We had dinner with the boys in a hostel for homeless children.  As we heard their stories and walked through their city, we knew Dickens would have felt at home.  Someone estimates 300-500 children under the age of 18 arrive in Bangalore EVERY DAY, looking for work.  Very few of them commute home at night, most are runaway/throwaway children.  The 70 in the particular Boys home we visited are mostly under the age of 12.  Social workers in the slum area try to persuade the boys to at least come to eat and sleep in the hostel where there is a measure of safety for them. Strictly no frills, they eat and sleep together on the floor of the big all purpose room—bedtime is unrolling a cotton rug. The older boys help the younger ones learn to behave and survive in a legitimate world.   The principal works with the government child welfare agency to try to contact the families, but very few families want the boys back, and especially if the kid has been able to find enough work and sent some money home.  In the hostel the boys are free to come and go, but the workers gradually try to get the boys into schooling and vocational training so they can eventually get life-sustaining work. There is a large group of alumni who help when they can.  Rev. Benjamin said he has conducted at least 40 weddings of “his boys” and there were success stories to match the tragedies. But it was the twinkling eyes and cheerful energy of the four and five year olds who had been living off garbage on the streets as a better option than being starved and beaten at home that became a new measure for us in the resiliency of the human spirit.  How about girls? Yes, there are many, we were told.  But its much more difficult because the organized crime wants them for sex workers and does not brook interference.

Joshua Das showed us his efforts to help his neighbors left behind when the Kolar Gold Mines were closed 8 years ago.  Joshua graduated from seminary a year ago and has been living with his mother in the Gold Fields and commuting many hours each day to work in a parachurch organization.   But his passion is setting up training programs in tailoring, computers, automotive repairs for the unskilled people at home who have no way to go anywhere.   As we visited the 4 tailoring institutes which graduating their second batches of about 15 young women in each, we wished we could see a garment factory rising on one of the slag heaps.  However, in the midst of the stagnation there is now movement and hope and who knows what next.

And then there was Jean, a retired school teacher, who took us out to a colony of ragpickers with whom she has worked for about 10 years.  When she started, the group of about 30 families had zero literacy.  Their roadside slum was demolished 8 years ago and the government relocated them into a low-lying area that floods when it rains…but it doesn’t rain much, they told us cheerfully. There are about 20 Christian families and they have organized a little church, with the support of Jean’s church in the city they have a young couple pastoring them.  We joined them for Sunday worship which was full of energy, enthusiastic singing and drumming.  The older children had their Bibles and read with confidence.  All the children now go to school, the community can access health care and govt bpl (government’s below poverty line) programs and there is a vision of the future in that village that rises so far beyond their past one can only think in terms of miracles.  They still live off recycling garbage, but now they live with a measure of hope and dignity.

This is only a sampling of a feast of inspiration we discovered when we went looking. No, feast is the wrong metaphor to use in the face of so much hunger and poverty….  Our spirits were constantly torn between the need and the accomplishments, but we are oh so thankful for the opportunity to see and learn and be inspired.

We saw lots more, but that will have to wait for another time.

Incidentally, I take this as a sign of civilization.  I had asked the driver who brought me back from the airport if there had been any riots in Bangalore since I left.  No, he assured me solemnly, the politicians all stay quiet so as not to upset the children who are taking final exams this week.

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February 24, 2007
“Incredible India! 31 states, 1618 languages, 6400 castes, 6 religions, 6 ethnic groups, 29 major festivals and one country. Surely as a nation of over a billion people 1/6th of the world’s population with some of the finest minds that today run global corporations, conduct scientific research of the highest calibre and a part of multi-cultural, cutting edge organisations that bring the best to the world, we ought to have pulled India out from poverty and the third world image that came with it. Today, without a shadow of doubt India has arrived on the world stage with a determination hitherto not displayed. From its political institutions to its business governance practices, the new India is displaying a maturity.  Can we wish away the threats of terrorism, or global environment damage, or for that matter monumental mismanagement that can wreck havoc with our future? No, we cannot, but today’s India meets these challenges with a steely determination and a steady resolve of purpose…..India endeavours for peace and offers its spiritual message of harmony to the world showing how a divine culture with a mix of religions cannot only coexist but flourish…God bless our beloved nation.”

So writes Rev Dr. Ashish Amos, Gen Secy of ISPCK (Indian Society for    Propagation of Christian Knowledge), India’s foremost Christian publishing house. Those of you who traveled with me a few years ago will remember meeting him in Delhi. These excerpts are from the ISPCK newsletter.

As we here at United Theological College in Bangalore dash from one school function to the next…a film festival, Sports Day, College Day with ethnic food stalls, activities for all ages, academic prize giving, and a 12 item cultural program of songs and dances…it suddenly dawned on me that part of what we are doing is training these young men and women in how to organize and run events. There are so many formal openings and closings and thank-ings, all done by different students, that after four years here everyone should know from experience how to do everything.  I was also astounded to learn every student has to take a month-long turn on the team running the mess hall where about 150 students eat 3 meals a day. Responsibilities includes planning menus (with the help of the cooks), purchasing food (which doesn’t mean picking up the phone and ordering Sysco to deliver—it means going to the bazaar and buying it), working within the budget, organizing serving food and clean-up.  Those of us who went to Seminary in the USA sometimes have been heard to complain that our training did not really prepare us for the realities of life in the parish. Well, here is a better idea.

This will be my last missive to you for a couple weeks. Tomorrow our group of 8 travelers from the Fifth Ave and Rutgers Presbyterian Churches arrive for a two week visit to learn about Christian mission in South India. I get to travel with them the whole time. Byron will take off three days to go with us to Vellore, but he’ll miss out on much of the fun. Such dedication to duty! Wish us well. 

Byron was the leader of Quiet Day, four preaching services observed from Tuesday evening at 8:15 pm through Ash Wednesday at 8:30 am, 11:00 am, and a Communion Service at 3:00 pm—the longest string of preaching he’s ever done. Thanks to ten years at Rutgers Church, with various Lenten programs, he had enough material to rework/adapt to see him through, since he only had a few days’ spare time to prepare all of this.  The Rutgers Ash Wednesday “fire ceremony”, where we burned up our sins to make the ashes mixed with palm fronds which were marked upon our foreheads, was an instant favorite among students and faculty. In fact the whole series was “quite well reviewed.”

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February 18, 2007
At 5:00 pm Tuesday, excitement spilled out of the chapel as students streamed in to watch 9 teams compete in the Quiz, sponsored by the Quiz Association of Karnataka. The room was set up with computer, projector and screen while the contestants sat in a big semi-circle on chairs. The audience sat behind. There must have been 75 people in the room. The buzz of excitement surged; the Quizmaster had arrived. At first I thought he looked the part of a sadhu with long hair and full beard, but then I noticed blue jeans under his crumpled kurta (long shirt). He came in and calmly went over to the computer and took a string from around his neck. For a moment I thought it was the sacred thread of a Brahmin, then I watched him plug in his memory chip and I came back to the present with all the applause and cheering. It turns out his day job is teaching English at St Joseph’s College, but his passion is the Quiz Association which does over 100 programs a year around the state. The Quiz is rather like Trivial Pursuit, where we would be shown one or a series of pictures and had to make intelligent guesses about what we were seeing. It varied from well-known people to a series of screw heads to a duck-billed platypus, etc.  The contestants were allowed to confer and make a group answer.  The rest of us were supposed to be quiet and work individually. It went on for an hour and interest never abated. In the end, Byron and I had both done better than the lowest team, but not as well as the highest team. We utterly failed when it came to cricketers and movie stars.

One of the most endearing qualities of young people in this culture is the whole-hearted enthusiasm with which they do things. They have not acquired that pseudo-sophisticated façade of boredom one sees so often in USA. They enter totally into the occasion: whether it is cheering on Sports Day or carrying out the “fashion show” of beards and moustaches among men and hairdos among the women at Hostel Night (sort of talent show) to which we were invited. On the other hand, I sat passing notes back and forth with a group of totally bored students Thursday morning as we sat for 3 and one-half hours, captive audience at the Golden Jubilee celebration of CISRS (Christian Institute for Study of Religion and Society). The organization being feted was founded in 1957 and has played a significant role in organizing conferences and seminars and keeping the Christian Church focused on dealing with social issues. The occasion made a promising start with a prelude of tribal drummers  followed by several intricate and colorful folk dances. But then they started calling the dignitaries to sit up on the stage. There were no fewer than 30 of them, a veritable who’s who of the Churches of North and South India, Methodists, Lutherans, Orthodox, etc. But each had to be introduced, garlanded, and allowed to bring greetings. This took about an hour and a half.  Then 12 books and magazines recently published were officially “released” …each with a presenter and a recipient who had to make brief speeches.  The event had started promptly at 11:00.  It was, by now, past 1:00 and they recognized each of the 15 or so staff members of CISRS with a garland (and mercifully no thank you speeches except for the Ex Secy and the seniormost member). At about 1:50 we finally got to the much proclaimed public lecture by Rev. Dr. Sam Kobia, the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, which turned out to be worth waiting for, but the promised lunch which we finally got to eat at about 2:20 was even better. The notes being passed down our row included a question to me about “Do they do things like this in America?”   and an English translation of a song sung in the process of the proceedings that included 12 verses. I had to admit that in the USA we do not do very well on ceremony sometimes and we have been known to sing only the first and last verse when programs run long. My four buddies all want to come to USA.

Ash Wednesday will be celebrated as a Quiet Day here with a series of four meditation services spaced throughout the day. They usually bring in a Bishop to lead them, but this year Byron has been asked, so he has been busy preparing. Margaret’s latest new assignment is to teach a series of 6 classes on Education for Social Change. I decided we’d use the methodology of Paolo Freire’s Pedgogy of the Oppressed, so we’ve rearranged the furniture into a Roundtable and empowered the students to be the experts on the social context and we are enthusiastically into discussion of how to revolutionize education to transform society. It’s great fun and I hope meets the course objectives. Surely, the students are learning more than if I were to lecture.

May the beginning of the Lenten season be a rich time for each of you.  And may the snow and cold as reported this past week in the northeastern US be a thing of the past by the time this arrives.

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February 11, 2007
I’ve been collecting quotes to think about.  My favorites of the week are:

“I am not a Christian.  I am only trying to become a Christian.” (Paulo Freire)

“The tree does not withdraw its shade from the woodcutter.”
(On a tree in the Ecumenical Christian Center)

“Why is it that the Salt of the Earth so often become the Wretched of the Earth?”
(Superimposed on a poster of a well-known picture of the cracked and splayed feet of those who marched with Gandhi to the sea in protest to the price of salt.)

“Happiness is temporary joy.  Joy is permanent happiness.” (Rev. Chris at the Vacation Bible School All-India Training Conference, Bangalore Feb. 1, 2007)

“All work and no play makes John a poor scholar.” Well-known, not profound adage, but describes our week. We have been having ourselves a fun week, replete with participating in a string of social events.  Thursday evening we hosted the monthly meeting of the UTC  Fellowship Group to which we’ve been assigned. The Fellowship Groups are a collection of faculty, students, spouses, and children who are assigned across the natural groupings by language and by program. Makes for interesting discussions. 35 crammed into our “flat” and enjoyed brownies and lemon squares with their tea. Then on Friday we gave the semblance of an “American Dinner” for the 9 YMCA Secretary-Trainees (here for a 10 month training course) for whom Margaret has been doing Leadership Skills Training. The young men had asked earlier for some guidance on etiquette should they ever have the opportunity to go to the USA. We had a delightful time with them and they embraced the idea that they could just be their winsome selves and not worry too much about etiquette.  About 9 o’clock a young woman. whose MTh thesis I’m reading to help with English usage,  came over to help wash the dishes and while she and a volunteer did the clean up, the rest of us played the game “I’m going to America and in my suitcase I will take - such and such - name an item beginning with the next letter of the alphabet after repeating what everyone else packed previously. We barely made it through the 26 letters amidst much laughter and prompting. Then a young man said, “That is a good American game. We can’t play it in Tamil because we have 246 characters in our alphabet.”

Saturday we were the honored guests at an all day outing to a lovely mountaintop park in the Nandi Hills, some 40 miles north of the city. 10 of us got well acquainted in a minivan from Bangalore. The 60 others of our group came West on a bus from the Kolar Gold Fields…most of them had never been on an outing before and seemed to think of the multi-hour bus ride crammed with people to be a great treat. They endured the long speeches graciously, played games and sang enthusiastically and ate the biryani in quantities which testified to the uniqueness of a day on which they had plenty to eat. The group were the students, staff, and assorted children of the 4 tailoring institutes which, in an effort at community development, Joshua Das has organized, Rutgers Church has helped finance, and, like-it-or-not, have been named the Shafer Tailoring Institutes. A memorable day!

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February 3, 2007
We have been here for a month now. We’ve been treated to a plethora of new sounds, and it occurs to me a sure sign of settling in to a place is learning to identify many activities by their sounds without having to rush to the window to see what on earth is going on.

The water delivery truck is the loudest noise we usually hear and it comes at odd times of the day or night, with its assistant who helps them back up to the underground cistern with much shouting of instructions. As is true in much of India, the infrastructure is inadequate for the growth. In this “high tech” city, water comes through the pipes for only a couple hours a day.  In order to keep people happy in a residential community like ours, water is purchased and trucked in….I haven’t discovered from where yet.

Another vehicle sound that is totally different is the small metal hand truck pushed around campus by an old man who collects the garbage. There is a black plastic container which hangs wired onto the bottom branch of the mango tree outside our door. I learned that you put your bag of garbage in it, put a big tile across the opening and within a few hours the squeaky, rattley handtruck arrives and takes it away. It is up out of the way of dogs and cats. The tile is too heavy for the crows and chipmunks to dislodge.  A great system—as long as I don’t have to know where the handtruck goes to dispose of it. I do know that there is a whole slum of people who sort through garbage for their livelihood, but I haven’t seen that yet.

The sweeping of leaves off the walks and lawns seems to go on all day long every day. The straw brooms are quite effective, especially one guy that holds one in each hand and does a kind of rhythmic dance that moves amazing piles of leaves around. However, my back aches every time I look at someone bent over a 3 foot long broom. It’s hard to imagine why the concept of adding a handle and working upright has not caught on.

We hardly hear him anymore, but the first few nights I would awaken with a start when the night watchman went by. He carries a 6-ft. staff which he pounds on the pavement as he walks and he has a blood-curdling whistle that he blows from time to time. I imagine he has a perfect record of never encountering an interloper because you can hear him coming across the campus. Nevertheless it is reassuring to know he’s out attending to business.  

My favorite of all sounds is the muezzin calling us to prayer five times a day. We can identify at least four mosques within hearing range. Each call is unique and they don’t synchronize on timing, resulting in a wonderful cacophony to the glory of God. Sometimes, if I waken in the early morning hours, I can also hear chanting of Hindu mantras and early Sunday mornings there is some group, maybe students, who sing bajans whole-heartedly at dawn. This is the wonderful part of a society permeated with religious belief and ritual. We enjoy this devotional aspect which has not been co-opted by power-hungry so-called “religionists” who thrive on riots. (We’ve had no more riots since I wrote last week.)

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January 27, 2007
Our political consciousness has been raised this week. Monday morning the phone rang a little after 7:00. It was our friend Diana in Bombay calling to be sure we were all right. Their news was full of the Hindu-Muslim rioting in Bangalore on Sunday night. Soon after the phone rang again and it was the woman who comes to help us, saying the buses were not running so she could not come. Her home is near the area where the rioting took place and she saw the 3 burning buses (empty).  Schools were closed for the day and we learned the next day that Bangalore had deployed its Rapid Action Force, a special army unit, to help the police. One of the Librarians assured me the next day that everything was now okay because “they have given the police Section 440”—which apparently is orders to shoot troublemakers. Well, that is one kind of OK. The communal trouble apparently was triggered by fanatics tearing down the signs for each other’s rallies. The rallies themselves were held quietly and without incident, but anger spilled into the streets and several shops were burned. In our quiet enclave we heard and saw nothing and. since all the faculty and students live on the campus, routines were not affected.  And the city’s life seems to be back to normal now.

Today, Friday, is Repbulic Day,* with another kind of political awareness.  We began with a flag raising ceremony at 7:00 AM. The speaker on this occasion was an octogenarian, Shri V.T. Rajshekar, a well-known journalist, ane of the country’s strongest leaders for human rights and solidarity of the oppressed and editor of the Dalit Voice newspaper.  He began with “I am the wrong person to have been invited to speak at a celebration of Republic Day. How can we celebrate a Republic which exists for and serves only the 15% who are in the ruling class and oppresses or ignores 85% of the people of this country?”  He went on to talk about how only the few are “Flying. Shining. Soaring” (favorite words describing the soaring economy and entry of India into the world markets). He spoke of the UN’s Human Development goals for the Millennium and the fact that India falls behind China and even Bangladesh in its Human Rights Index.  He spoke of the agricultural sector which is failing with suicides among farmers increasingly common. Education in disarray as government schools in the villages are empty with no teachers. Growth in housing is not housing at all, but slums and hutments. The economy is now only a consumer economy, industry is disappearing and with it jobs and inexpensive goods. It was a dim picture he painted, but one which held up realities everyone recognized as truth.  Afterwards, as I talked with him, he noted how seldom the truth is welcomed. He has been jailed four times and escaped 2 assassination attempts to silence him. It was a call for the Christian community to embrace truth and commit itself to the betterment of the 85%. Some 90% of Christians come from the outcaste or lower caste backgrounds, so if they can keep the vision clear, there may be hope. I quote the Benediction from Friday morning worship (you may know it already from its use in churches in the USA):

May God bless you with discomfort—at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you my live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger—at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears—to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and conflicts, so that you will reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness—to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

*India is the seventh largest and second most populous country in the world. Though India got her Independence on August 15, 1947, the Indian Republic officially came into being on January 26, 1950 when the Constitution of India framed by the Constituent Assembly came into force.

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January 21, 2007
I don’t know what news was broadcast in the USA, but we were unaware until the morning papers arrived that there had been a riot in Bangalore Friday evening. A pro-Saddam rally had turned ugly in our main shopping district and a number of cars and pedi-cabs were burned and several policemen slightly injured. I went out this afternoon to a nearby shop and everything seemed quiet and normal. United Theological College is a walled compound in a very quiet residential area, so we are unlikely to ever be in the thick of any disturbances.

“Winter” is finished and summer has begun according to the Tamil calendar. Fortunately, it doesn’t “feel” like it yet. I don’t think any day has been over 82 degrees. But this week was the big Pongal holiday and it celebrates the changing season. One of the joys of the diverse groups in the seminary is learning holidays and customs that are regional. Tamil-Nadu is the region south-east of us. The Tamil Fellowship on campus led us in an extraordinary worship service on Wednesday.

I wish you could have joined us sitting in the shade of our enormous trees on red molded plastic chairs in the big circular driveway in front of the library. The centerpiece at the foot of the steps was a simple 3-sided brick fireplace with an earthenware pot on it and a smoky fire from sticks and banana stalks. On either side were designs on the pavement made with rice flour paste and filled in with colored powder. Sheaves of green stalks and leaves were set around the steps and to the side was a low dais on which the worship leaders sat cross-legged. Pongal was explained as celebration of the end of the month of winter harvest. At this time laborers and domestic animals are to be honored as the sustainers of our lives. There were traditional songs and dances leading up to the dramatic moment when the Pongal pot on the fire which is filled with milk boils up and over…at which moment everybody shouts “Pongal o Pongal” with much clapping and cheers. Goodness overflowing! Then we all lined up to receive a small cup (made out of a folded banana leaf secured with 2 thorns) into which is served a big spoonful of rice boiled in milk and brown sugar—delicious!

That evening a group of about 30 from the UTC, responded to an invitation to a Pongal program from a group of nearby slum dwellers—homeless people living in 72 hutments on the sidewalk near the Church of South India hospital. While waiting for everyone to assemble, one young woman invited us in to see her family’s home, a family of 9 people—two rooms, each about 6’ x 6’. The top, I can’t call it a ceiling, was about 5’ plastic sheeting propped up with bamboo poles. There were no windows and no electricity so everything was pretty dark. A stove fueled with smoking scrap wood was by the door and grandmother was valiantly trying to fan the smoke out the door while we looked around. The front room was for cooking and eating, they explained. An old door was propped up on a few bricks to give the effect of a kitchen counter for off ground storage, but all I could identify were a couple of pots and battered metal plates and glasses. The back room was the place for sleeping and dressing; there was no toilet. [The nearest public toilet is a couple of blocks up the road at the train station.] The sleeping room was divided almost in half horizontally by what they called a bed—we would have called it a loft if it had been higher up, but it was a large sort of shelf constructed of odd pieces of lumber nailed together to support half the sleepers about 3 feet off the ground while the other half the sleepers took their rest on the floor. There were a couple of rolled up blankets and quilts on the “bed” and a string across the room served as closet for the entire family’s wardrobe. It was virtually empty. Our hostess was a high school student who is working hard to learn English which will get her a job that might just get her and her family out of the slum. Some of the Seminarians have been tutoring her toward that goal. The drive and vision she showed was awesome.

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January 14, 2007
It’s Sunday morning and we are back from church service. We went to St. John’s Church CSI Church of South India) today. Senior Priest or Presbyter-in-charge is a woman. 150 year old church; 1500 members, about 700 at the 8:30 am service, one of three each week. It is an Anglican-type service. There are very few of what they call “indigenized” churches. Sunday evenings the UTC community gathers for worship at 6:30 pm in the auditorium. Byron is to preach next week.

We have now been through a week of classes in full swing. In addition to our classroom work, Margaret is helping those preparing to lead chapel services with oral expression. And she’s reading two students’ thesis-drafts for English grammar and word usage. The students seem eager for all the help they can get, and I’m sure we learn more than we teach. One of the chapel meditations last week was particularly good, on the various ways we use pain. We can be overwhelmed with pain and withdraw into our own world. We can try to avenge pain and make those around us hurt as much as we do. Or we can use our pain to move us out into the world and share the suffering of others.

Our doorbell rang at 6:45 am this quiet Saturday morning. It was the milk boy (about 10 years old, comparable to paper boys I have known). I (Margaret) had forgotten to hang my bag on the front door with as many coupons as I wanted ½-liter bags of milk. He is obviously pleased to have a new customer and is trying to train me properly. It is quite wonderful to get milk so easily, and I was thankful for it. But then I had to take it and put it in a pan, light the stove, and boil it for 10 minutes—after which it has to be cooled, skimmed, and put into a pitcher. Everything takes longer and is more complicated than I’m used to. I am quite humbled by my American laziness and I’m trying to learn from this experience of living abundantly in the midst of so many needy people. Nonetheless, I’m finding simple living for just the two of us quite a challenge. I suppose many things become habits and routines. But I haven’t yet got the hang of turning on the water heater half an hour before I shower, or of putting water on to heat to wash the dishes before you sit down to eat your meal, or of allowing enough time to peel all the vegetables as well as cook them. I also wonder if I will get used to having just one gripper handle that has to be put on and taken off each and every one of our otherwise handle-less cooking pots. And I have an assortment of pots and pans coupled with only 2 lids, which aren’t the appropriate ones for any of the pots. (The Visiting Professor’s Flat was obviously furnished by extras from other people’s households.) On the other hand, we really have everything we need, and the seminary has even just purchased an iron and ironing board for our use. (I had asked about an iron before I learned there is a man with a pushcart who comes around every Saturday afternoon and irons whatever you bring him—I gave him eight shirts and the bill was less than $.60). It will be nice to have my own capacity to iron if I need it, but nothing beats nicely ironed clothes at about 7 cents a piece.

Vacation Bible School operates here almost the same way it does in USA - volunteers gather up community children during vacation periods for games and songs and learning about Jesus. The past couple of summers I’ve enjoyed teaching VBS in North Creek, NY, so I was eager to learn how it happens here. On Wednesday I was taken to VBS’s all-India headquarters here in Bangalore and was blown away. They write and translate their curriculum into 11 of India’s major languages; they provide a CD of Christian songs that have to be redone for each of the 11 regions because the rhythms and styles of music for each vary. I asked how many children they serve. The director pondered, “Based on our sales, about 2 million children, which means, in reality, probably at least twice that many.”  Four million children experiencing the Good News. Imagine!

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January 9, 2007
This morning, like every morning, began with a 20 minute devotional service led by students. It opened with a Bajan (sung in one of the many native languages) accompanied by drums, a harmonium, and a small rattle of some kind. Only a few students know any particular Bajan, because they come from so many different regions. The singing of a hymn from the Methodist hymnal was embraced by all, highlighting for us one of the perplexities the Church in India has to deal with. The common language and literature is essentially “foreign”, but without it the tiny Christian minorities scattered across the sub-continent cannot feel their solidarity. The Seminary conducts all its business in English, but we are discovering how immense the challenge of building community where some 20 different mother tongues are gathered-—none of which is English. Complicated, of course, by denominationalism and an amazing array of theological viewpoints.

Life is beginning to fall into routines. Classes began at United Theological College on Monday and the extra-curricular activities are beginning to take shape. Byron’s big class of 27 students is being introduced to Wisdom Literature (Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes). He has a hardy 7 who are studying Amos in Hebrew. Margaret is working with two groups of non-matriculated students. One is for the wives of seminary students who meet daily for an introduction to the various fields of study in the seminary. Margaret’s role is to teach them English and Communication Skills. She is also meeting eight YMCA trainees with whom she will work on Leadership Skills. Byron also helps several MA and PhD students with their theses and Margaret meets with students working on Oral Expression especially reading Scripture aloud.

We arrived a week ago today, and are beginning to feel pretty well settled in. Our “Visiting Professor’s Flat” is a large and airy second floor looking into huge trees on every side. A nursery school is below us, but the happy voices are only here until noon and then it is pretty quiet…except for the not-so-far-away train line, which operates with a great deal of blowing of whistles and horns. We have a woman, Aroyika Mary, working for us part time who does the cleaning, laundry, and shopping. So far we’ve been invited for tea by three of the faculty families and dinner once. We are trying to learn names, but many of them remind me of names of our Madagascar friends where many many syllables is the norm. Fortunately for us, most people seem to have a nickname.

Sunday we visited the big Church of South India (CSI) Cathedral in this diocese. A most impressive establishment. They have 4 worship services every Sunday. We attended service at 8:30 am at which there must have been 1500 people in attendance. It is particularly heart-warming to see so many young people involved in everything we have seen,

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January 4, 2007
We want to let you know we have arrived safely in Bangalore and at the same time inaugurate a little news sheet for our friends who eagerly asked us to stay in touch while we are away.

New Years Eve in Mumbai with classmate and dear friend, Diana Singh-Roy, was memorable. In the course of celebrations I spoke with a young journalist I had just met. I was staggered by his statement about Mumbai, the world’s largest city. “The destitute people without homes who live on the streets and hutments (shacks) make up between 50-60% of the population of the city.” Imagine the scale of change necessary! When I raised this question with another journalist, her quite cynical response was, “I think melting glaciers is the only answer to Mumbai. Unless the city is totally destroyed and cannot be lived in, we cannot set things to rights.”

Tuesday morning we came on to Bangalore and were met by the United Theological College minivan and brought to a room in the campus conference center. Friday we will move into the Visiting Professor’s apartment in a building next to the Library. It is light and airy and will be quite comfy. It has a spare bedroom if you can be enticed to pay us a visit. Most people are still away on Christmas leave but will be streaming back for inauguration of the third term Sunday evening. Classes begin on Monday.

Our first overwhelming impression of Bangalore was the welcoming beauty of enormous trees. Miller Road is lined with huge overarching dark green foliage. The campus feels like a botanical garden with all manner of growing things whose name and family I do not know. Every path is lined with plants promising a spectacular array of flowers. The campus is approximately one square block surrounded by a brick wall over which bougainvillea vines throw sprays of flowers. The gate from the street opens onto a circular drive, the lawn in the center hosts a lovely artistic stone statue of one man helping another (evocative of the Good Samaritan) and carries the school’s motto “NOT TO BE SERVED, BUT TO SERVE”. Among the huge trees are nestled the offices, faculty homes, dorms, and classrooms of a lively seminary with a residential community of about 300 people. The side lanes are all lined with the feathery palms that make me feel like next Sunday must be Easter. Every day is bright sunshine with air temperatures ranging from 60-80º.