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December 3, 2004
I'm riding a train from Lucknow to Varanasi in northern India as I write this. It's about two in the morning, and although I have a second class sleeper berth the fellow above me is snoring really bad. So I'm lying here awake, waiting for morning. The light of the laptop's screen illuminates the keyboard. With the rocking of the train it's difficult to type at times, but the hand-eye coordination challenge distracts me from the snoring. I tried just lying still and meditating-this is India, after all-but there's some kind of bugs in the wool blanket they gave me to keep warm, and they start to tickle every time I even think about nirvana. So I'll try using my laptop. I'm in India for three weeks, researching some articles and shooting photos for Response magazine, as well as covering the work of Action by Churches Together (ACT) with victims of flooding in the far northeast state of Assam. It's my first trip here, and I confess it's a bit overwhelming. The size and cultural diversity of India are staggering, its history enthralling, and the more I learn the more I realize I don't understand. Beyond that uniqueness, however, lie some themes that ring true elsewhere, like that of the struggle of women to be free of violence. In India, violence against women can take some nasty forms, including the widespread practice of aborting female fetuses, killing infant girls, and burning women who can't produce enough dowry to satisfy their husbands' families. A few days ago I was in the Methodist Hospital in Mathura, in part because it's starting an HIV/AIDS ward. In the hospital's primitive intensive care unit I talked with and photographed a 23-year old woman who had gasoline poured over her head and was then set afire. She's in pretty bad shape; her face is so badly scarred I had no idea how old she was until I asked her. India has more than five million people living with HIV and AIDS, the second highest number in the world after South Africa. The spread of the virus is rooted in ignorance (39 percent of rural Indians don't know how the virus is spread), and nurtured by severe discrimination against people who carry the virus. Not far from Mathura I stayed for a couple of days in the small town of Mursan, where the Methodist Church is starting an HIV/AIDS program focused on education, testing, and support. I sat in on a support group for people living with the virus, and heard one woman whose husband recently died of AIDS talk about how she was being turned out of her home by her brother in law who wants her to go away. Yet she has literally nowhere to go. Despite such treatment, she has a feisty streak to her and the church is starting to train her as an advocate and educator, someone who can reach out to others living with the virus and help them struggle with the stigma and discrimination that are more lethal than the virus. In Lucknow, I spent some time with the staff and students of a women's college started by a Methodist missionary over a century ago and still supported by the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries. I had a great time traveling with some of the students to two rural villages where they performed street theater about HIV/AIDS and against the practice of dowry. All of these images are bouncing around in my head as the train gallivants along. The snoring hasn't changed a bit, so I lay here wide awake. As I wait for morning, I think particularly about those two women-the burned one and the one who's HIV-positive-and I try to imagine what they're waiting for. Both have been injured by a patriarchal system that literally kills women. Both have found a moment of respite in the church, but their pain hasn't ended. What do they hope for? How can we respond to their hope? It was into just such a world that Jesus came. I was in the U.S. for most of November, and saw the beginnings of the consumer rush toward a commercialized Christmas. Too often our theology wants to hurry toward Christmas as well, but in our rush to Bethlehem we skip over an essential part of the drama: the waiting. Maybe we need to develop a discipline that helps us learn to wait. I'd suggest being held captive with a snorer in the night train across the plains of Uttar Pradesh. In a few hours we'll arrive in Varanasi and I'll escape. Yet for many who live at the margins of our societies-be it India or the States-there is no escape in sight. Where does their hope come from? What's a messiah for them? And what's this have to do with me? With us? With how we understand mission? With how we see ourselves as a church? Good questions to ponder while we wait. Paul |