something light, something dark

Now that you have Christmas packed away and Valentine's Day all wrapped up for another year and are swimming through waves of bunny rabbits and Easter chicks, I want to tell you about Christmas in India.

It was different, but not so different. The big shops in Durgapur were packed mainly because they were having a "buy one get one absolutely free" sale. This message blared through the sound system over and over again. No soft Christmas music playing in the background to entice you to dig dipper into your wallet and buy that gift for Auntie.

At St. Michael's, there was the usual round of Christmas caroling throughout the neighborhoods and there was a big Christmas get together with all the churches in the diocese. We even had a service of Lessons and Carols.

Of course there were the programs: school programs, Sunday School programs, and Diocesean Children's Project Programs. I saw Nativity Pageants performed by Christians and Hindus and being totally objective here, I have to say our slum children's Nativity Tableaux was the best. Our costumes were really nice, sarees for the kings, dhotis for the shepherds, and cute little white dresses with shiny wings for the angels.

Not many people decorate their homes for the season. No tree, but since there are no live Christmas trees here, I guess that's to be expected. There are artificial trees, not made to look real, but made to look artificial, mainly a pole with tinseled branches widely spaced and standing no more than 3 or 4 feet tall. My own little faker was about 12" tall but the branches, also widely spaced, sort of had a fir look to them. It was easy to decorate with one little silver strand which had ornaments spaced along it. I cut out wrapped packages from an old Christmas card and stuck them under my tree. My grandchildren sent me a better tree all decorated which held the place of honor on my table the rest of the Christmas season. Putting Christmas away was very easy.

Since there were no Christmas trees, there were no wrapped packages under the tree. There was nothing to shake, no packages to count, and no piles to measure. the Indians may be onto something here. Usually the family just takes the kids shopping and lets them pick out a thing or two and that is pretty much it.

The only Christmas Eve service at St. Michael's was the midnight one, so I arranged to stay at the center so I could attend. It was a candlelight service, but there was no musical accompaniment, and there were very few of us in the congregation, maybe six. Since most people walk, cycle or ride motorbikes getting out at such a late hour just isn't done.
Fr. Sam was all alone at the altar, preparing the table, juggling a candle, and leading the singing of Oh Holy Night hoping we wouldn't fade away in the middle of it when he had to stop singing for a moment. Well, when he stopped, we all stopped, a nice little pause in the middle of the liturgy. Having the entire service in candlelight was clearly not a good idea, but we sang Silent Night and Once in Royal David's City, so it was okay.
The next morning, 7:30am, the service was not much better, but at least there was an altar helper and a keyboardist. Then at 8:30, there was the Bengali service and I stayed for that one mainly because it was packed with people spilling out into the yard and little children seated on the floor in a space up front. We ended the service with Angels We Have Heard on High, so my three favorite carols were sung and that was enough for me.
The church was gaily decorated with balloons, crepe paper streamers, and other brightly colored lanterns hanging from the ceiling of the church. I'm sure the Indians would think our "greening" of the church pretty drab in comparison.
So guess what! It happened anyway. Christmas happened without the hype and the hoopla, without my packages arriving on time for my family to open them together, without Christmas carols weaving in and out of the daily routine. But what struck me the most about Christmas here is that everybody celebrated it. The Hindu children in my building had a Christmas party, complete with Santa and a little tree, on the roof to which I was invited. A Hindu teacher from the school played the keyboard at the Bengali service on Christmas Day, and as I said, just about all the Nativity plays were performed by Hindus.
When the Hindu Poojas were in full swing last fall, everyone celebrated with them. Yes, there are some fundamentalist here in India, like everywhere, but so far they haven't shattered the spirit of tolerance and respect for other faiths. Here, everyone was wished a Merry Christmas, not a Happy Winter Solstice, and in Oct. we were wished a Happy Diwali.
It this little corner of the world, it almost seemed like Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.

From the Dark Side:
I've been giving some thought to death lately; the different kinds of death one might experience, the violent ones, the tragic ones, the war ones, the old age ones, and the peaceful ones.
Eventhough St. Francis welcomes Sister Death in his Canticle to the Sun, death, for most of us I think is not an easy thing to contemplate.
Sometimes we are able to say "He died in peace," or " She lived a full and happy life," and if the loved one had been battling cancer or AIDS, or Alzheimer's we can say "At last the suffering is over."
In America, death takes its toll on the highway wiping out the lives of both young and old; such a senseless way to die.
Our decadent life style takes more lives, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity; again, such a senseless way to die.
Since I've been in India, Iv'e been exposed to another kind of death, death by poverty, starvation, neglect, ignorance, such a senseless way to die.
This kind of death is ugly. Here, death has dominion.
I am fully aware that death is part of the cycle of life and that we need it to close one generation and make room for another, but does it have to be by poverty, starvation, neglect, ignorance?
As most of you know from my e-mail about the woman in bed#28, I witnessed the dying of a woman who was all alone in this world. Imagine that! No one caring about her, no one assisting her out of this life to whatever lay ahead for her, no one to tell her good-by or that she was loved. That kind of lonely, cold, despairing death makes me shiver.
How did that happen? How did she get in that situation? Where was her family?
Then there was Punima, 13 years old; a beautiful young girl who, escaping an attacker, jumped from a second story window. She broke her leg in the fall and ended up in the government run hospital. She was discharged at some point, her leg still in a cast, but readmitted sometime later. Her leg was still in the same cast and because she had been bed-ridden the whole time she was at her home, bedsores appeared over most of her buttocks; deep penetrating sores eating through her flesh and tissue all the way to the bone and into the bone. Neglect and ignorance landed this child with her severly infected body back in the hospital. I could do nothing for Shakil in bed #28 but keep her cleaned and fed until the day she died, but I was able to talk to the Misssionaries of Charity about Punima, and they decided to get her discharged into their care. Punima would die, but she would die knowing that there were others who cared about her.
These kinds of death are happening all over India on a daily basis. They are happening in countries in Africa where AIDS has a mighty grip on the population.
Maybe you're thinking it's a population problem and a little family planning would solve everything. That usually seems to be the first response whenever the subject of povery arises, but I think that's a "cop-out" kind of answer, one that frees us from the responsibility of looking deeper into the root causes of poverty. By looking deep, we might just discover that we are playing a big role in the plight of these people, our neighbors on the other side of the world.
There is always talk about addressing the issue of poverty with all its ramifications, and in Sept., 2000, something concrete was born- The Millenium Development Goals. These eight goals were drawn from the Millenium Declaration that was adopted by 189 nations and signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millenium Summit. Since then, many churches have adopted the MDGs as part of their own declaration to fight poverty; The Episcopal Church in N. America is one of them.
The MDGs address the issues of extreme poverty and hunger, lack of education, gender equality & women's empowerment, child mortality, maternal health, HIV/AIDS, and environmental stability and global parnerships. Couched in all of these are some serious questions about excessive life-styles and how these life-styles exacerbate the issues at hand. This is where thinking DEEP comes into play. It's realizing we are connected to each other, Shakila in bed 28, Punima, and scores of other men, women, and children who, in one way or another reap what we sow.
Their pain is our pain.
Their misery is our misery.
Their despair is our despair.
"How is this possible!" You might exclaim.
Just think about it.
Where do you shop?
What do you buy?
What do you drive?
Where did the resources used to build your nice, new, big home come from?
The farmers in Ethiopia hit by draught due to extreme climate changes don't drive SUVs, we do.
Agri-business coffee growers have forced many family coffee growers in Central and South America to abandon their farms and look for employment elsewhere, perhaps across our borders. Still not buying Fair Trade Coffee?
The MDGs are a great step in the right direction and only a pittance is required to help with the funding, 0.7% of your yearly income. Even I can afford that.
But to stop the cycle of poverty and all that goes with it, we must be willing to make the necessary changes, real changes, life-style changes, and yes, it will hurt, but it will also liberate. Until we do, death will continue to have dominion in the impoverished countries of the world.