James

Difficult to blog from my I phone in the ten minutes between breakfast and walking out the door but suffice to say I have a heart full of good things for this place. People are generally very kind- no one more so than James, our sweet guide and friend from Mombasa. He and Peter run Blessed Camp leprosy colony. James sings under his breath in a voice I wish I could record, and i try to make him laugh as much as possible- Everything about him is steady and calm- even the other day as he navigated all of us through a massive car accident involving a taxi we had just gotten out of. He is the most gentle person I have ever met, and his manner and quiet uncomplaining presence makes me feel unrefined by comparison. He misses Mombasa and his wife and 1 year old son Caleb. We will meet them both in a few days and I will sit with them in church next Sunday and celebrate James who is graduating from his seminary program. Today we will spend the day in a village outside the city with two leather workers named Tom and Mattua. Sure to be a long day looking forward to being back at this table tonight for dinner and back to our hotel to rest.

Xo,
E

Im in Kenya!

I landed in Nairobi four days ago and have been working every available moment. Good work, that makes me happy- work that I love. Later I will explain what exactly it is that I will be doing here for a month. Internet access is not readily available so it may be days before I post again. 

Today I just want to tell you what I love about this place. From the minute I left the airport in a taxi at 2 am I was in amazed at this place. There is a phenomenon here of familiarity, at least for me there has been. The smell especially is amazing- every inhalation brings back another childhood memory- it seems I am reliving my whole life. 

I smell the bakery down the street in the morning and I am eleven years old again and have been transported back to my mother's kitchen, I smell my grandfather's cologne and I imagine him walking just ahead of me. Sometimes I've found a trace of the scent of my grandmothers purse- the old leather handbag stuffed with lipstick-stained tissues and cinnamon gum, that's one of my favorites. Yesterday riding in a taxi to a village outside the city I smelled cedar and incense and I was 16 again and listening to the Afro Cuban Allstars.

The weather is lovely and the breeze cocktails the smell of sweat and dust and grass. This is most common but not unpleasant- the type of smells we mask at home under perfume and soap. But here I like it, it's what I knew as a kid playing in the back yard all afternoon and into the evening. It feels satisfying in a way I cant explain. I so wish I could.

Love you all, 

Ev

PS....one sleepless night last night- the only thing that made it better was my brother's new record "The Wanderings of an Illustrative Mind" by Among Savages. If you want to know what Kenya sounds like for me this week...

Home

Friends, I am home.

I apologize for the delay in relaying the message, but I had good reason. Krista and I decided three weeks before we left, for a number of reasons, to forego backpacking through western India and instead fly home early and surprise our family. We were so excited! We changed our plane tickets and contacted my brother Peter, who agreed to pick us up at the airport. We said our goodbyes and avoided mentioning anything of our departure in our emails- my last entry was written the morning that we left.

I had been very sick for a week before we boarded the plane with what I thought was a serious case of food poisoning but the excitement of coming home had kicked my weak body into high gear and gave me the adrenaline I needed to get through the beast of a trip back to Tennessee. By the time we reached Nashville Krista and I had not slept in well over 24 hours and we didn't care! We made our appearance at my good friend Tyler Jame's show where Peter was playing and we surprised not only my family but all of our friends. I was overwhelmed by being home and surrounded by all the people I loved and had missed so much.

The next two days were spent with my parents, who had come into town to see Pete perform- I felt relieved but was losing energy and my symptoms had not lessened. By Sunday evening, I plummeted. I became severely dehydrated and over the next few hours was unable to tolerate even water. My friend Kerry was with me and I am so thankful. Had circumstances differed only slightly I would have needed to be taken to the ER.

Krista took me to the Infectious Disease clinic at Vanderbilt the next morning and they began running lab tests. I am unclear about what happened, except that they gave me an iv and a liter of fluid. I know first hand that Krista is a wonderful nurse, she stayed by my side for five hours. I don't remember coming home or the two days that followed, but there were flowers in my room and friends who came to visit, and my sister. My sister Emily played nursemaid and my sweet boyfriend Mark stayed close by. My Mom came back in town. I slept. I was given a heavy dosage of antibiotics and within a week I was back on my feet. My body is weak, as though I woke up from a coma-which isn't, I guess, so far from the truth!

What a miraculous turn of events that I came home when I did! I can imagine what could have happened  had I been traveling through Rajasthan when I became so sick. I am increasingly more thankful for the people in my life and the overwhelming abundance I have been born into. My life is blessed. Beyond what, even after this experience, I can comprehend.

Having seen sorrow, I know I have never tasted it. Having met despair, I know I have never held it's hand. Having witnessed poverty, I know I have never slept in it. Having touched disease, I know I have never worn it. I look at my healthy body, at the wealth of our country, I notice the safety of the walls of my house, the clean air and water, I look at the faces of my friends and family, and my complaints die on my lips. What do I have to add but "Thank you!" ? What do I have to offer but gratitude? What do I cling to but humility?

I thank each of you for coming with me, for participating in this process. No one has a community of friends like mine. Your prayers were my arrows.

All my love,

Ev


P.s......I may write again. We will see what adventures the future will bring! I leave you now with one of my favorite quotes which has become my prayer :


"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive, but to justify all that has happened."
                                                                                                
                                                                                             (Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

A Word on Fear from the Dark

Last night a power outtage in our district left me with no time to write and plenty of time to think. I thought mostly of my experience here and again of the chapter I posted last about fear. It struck me after a couple of hours and I was instantly wide awake-in the corner of the humid black room I lay in my mind lit like a small match and I smiled. I am slowly sewing this quilt together here in the dark...

The thing about that chapter that struck me as so powerful, so insightful, is that it is an accurate description of the environment here. Read through the history of this city and you will discover a long, sordid love affair with fear. The political unrest and corruption of this communist state in West Bengal is as corroded by fear as it is by acid rain and acts of terrorism. It is in the mortar of the buildings, the grease on the wheels of business and religion. People drown in it on the sidewalks. Imagine the description from "Life of Pi", only mulitply the instant described by a lifetime of moments and you will begin to see semblance of some of the people I have encountered and the world that they know so well.

Here is the unique twist. When Krista first proposed this trip she mentioned that she felt she was coming here to encounter suffering. Krista and I then stepped into this world briefly, as though onto an elevator platform, and for a brief period of time we have been painted into the landscape. We have been afraid, we have been sick and exhausted. We each entered into our own kind of suffering- our tiny personal prisons of discomfort and disappointment, made smaller by the vastly worse conditions surrounding us, from which we have largely been protected. We have been pricked with enough pain and at the right moment to make us aware of who we are and how we live....and how often we fail to consider both counts.

No coincidence that as each of us struggled in our own way through conditions we find nearly intolerable (though 17 million people survive them every day), I remembered in my bed last night the words of Matthew Henry in his commentary on Psalm 58:6. Where David writes "You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not recorded in your book?", Henry explains "What the psalmist is saying here is that we need no other weapon than prayers and tears." What words!

From one of the most brilliant military tacticians in history comes this simple and tested advice: to engage the enemy you must first feel fully your own defenselessness. Lay your intellect with its flat factual comprehension prostrate before something greater. We must engage fear with hands not armed, but folded. We look it in the eyes until we see through it. We cry out in pain and in prayer to the one who is ever-attentive to our needs.

And then, though blind as we may feel, this:

In foreign countries, in frightening places, out from dark corners and down treacherous roads answers this voice...

"I will lead the blind in a way they do not know, in paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do and I do not forsake them." Isaiah 42:16



Promise kept.

A Chapter on Fear

Another bout with sickness has had me trapped flat on my back for three days. Building up a tolerance for water, but only that-the one thing I am devouring is books. I have read and read and read until my eyes burn and my brain clicks and dings like a typewriter. Today I finished "Life of Pi", which I began yesterday. I read slowly so as you can imagine I have had plenty of time.

However graphic and gory in detail, this book sent electric shocks through my mind. It is the story of Pi Patel, a sixteen yr old Indian boy and sole survivor of a sunken cargo ship who finds himself on a lifeboat in the Pacific ocean with a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan and a 450-pound Royal Bengal Tiger.

Chapter 56

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins with your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons of technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the sopt. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies, hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficut to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

Annie Dillard

"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aged and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I have come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them..."

The New Church

Krista and I visited Sari Bari yesterday, a four year old organization operating out of the Kalighat red light district and at work to change the lives of women being exploited by prostitution. The vision for this business is restoration, pure and simple. They foster relationships with women "working the line", they visit brothels and over the years have created a blossoming community in the midst of a very dark and hopeless place. Similar to the work of Freeset, this smaller community offers an alternative to prostitution through learning a trade and creating handmade products which are sold through the website. The name "Sari" (a word often strongly associated with women) and "Bari" (meaning home) is a beautiful description of the work that takes place here- old saris are torn apart and given new life and purpose.

The temperature here is climbing rapidly-even in the last two days we have noticed. The dusty grime of the sidewalks and streets mingles with sweat and by mid-morning you feel like you have a second layer of skin. We boarded the 45B bus and walked down the street to the entrance of the Kali district and waited for Brent and his wife, friends of Krista's who have been living here for a year now and working with S.B.  They appeared out of the crowd and ushered us through a series of small alleys and into the four white washed rooms of this non-profit.

The women sat on the clean concrete floor in a room with happy red trim and a fan spinning high over head- a calm, clean respite out of place in this district. They were strong and kind, ranging in age from late twenties to fifties. I cant explain the gravity that they have, a self posession that changes the way they walk and move. You feel like they are your mother- or your aunt- and it is clear that they are all your superior. Brent led a brief Bible study in bengali followed by an English lesson and then their work day began. The women are not only trained in their craft but educated- all of them learn basic math skills and are taught to read.

Krista and I and two other visitors sat outside and talked with a girl my age named Beth who is originally from the states and has been living here for four years to be a part of this organization. She gave us the background story and explained in detail how Sari Bari works, what they provide for women who are brave enough to step out of the line (401k, retirement plans,health insurance and education funding for their children!), and how relationships are forged and sustained within the community. It is a delicate process made possible only through the tears and sacrifices and courage of the small staff here. She said if she had known ahead of time what horrors she would encounter in the brothels here she may well have chosen another direction in life. Beth just signed another three year contract largely in part due to "the beating heart" of the operation- the Indian women I met yesterday who have undergone this "metaporphosis"  and make all of the agony worth it, who outweigh the bad with the goodness and light they bring to this work.

The poor understand limitations. The women here have no option, they are forced by whips of desperation and poverty into the shackles of this trade. Living in little more than cells inside the brothels-some of them never being permitted to leave their rooms, they are well acquainted with surrender. This is why, when given the hope of a new life through the hands of an organization like Sari Bari, the process of restoration is realized.

I don't think I fully connected the experience today until hours later I listened to a discussion called "Breathing Under Water", by Richard Rohr. He said,"The poor hold the seed of the gospel and in every age in so far as the church incorporates the outcast, those that it pushes to the edge, those that it hates and rejects-the church rediscovers Christ just where he said he would be- in the least of the brothers, in the little no-bodies of the world."

 "The real spirituality of the church is surfacing in the third world, not through the intellectualism of our society," said Rohr. The work of the preoccupied church is being executed and accomplished by other hands who are reaching out to broken women, to the elderly, to the abused, to the mentally handicapped, to the unlovely and the diseased."We always say there are no prostitutes who work at Sari Bari, only our sisters," Beth said. Unlike in my life and in many congregations, shame is never a part of the equation. Any one of those women in their apparent devastation have found a greater sensitivity for spiritual things than I have in all of my successes, and Beth who has chosen to give up three more years of her life to the hidden work in these narrow alleys will leave a richer mark on humanity than many who have acquired both wealth and power.

-Ev