Christmas in India

The one picture above is of children in a school that MCC helps support in Afghanistan. The other is of the snow capped peaks of the Himalayas as seen from hill station where Ruth and I spent Christmas. I began to write this Christmas post from New Delhi. We already feel like old pros as we tool our way around town in auto rickshaws. We have come to enjoy this city. It’s hard to believe that our first three months of language studies are already behind us. Those Hindi script squiggles that meant absolutely nothing are now beginning to form themselves and make sense to us. Language study can be both frustrating and incredibly fascinating for our fifty year old brains.

We spent Christmas in Mussoorie, an ancient Himalayan hill station that is 6,000 feet above sea level. We went there for several days of relaxation and also to check out further language studies for our MCC team. Chitranjan Datt, the principal of the famous Landour Language School, graciously interrupted his vacation to meet with us one morning. We had a fascinating discussion about Hindi and how our brains learn languages as we sipped tea on his patio overlooking the hills.

This is the first Christmas season that Ruth and I celebrated without our children. December 23 was also our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. We could not help reflecting on how this year marks a new epoch in our life journeys. I remember teasing Ruth many years ago as I was studying Buddhism that the last stage of one’s active life, following that of a householder, is the stage of renunciation. I jokingly said that I was thinking about becoming a monk after our children left home.

Maybe Ruth and I have become a monk and nun couple if there's such a thing. We said goodbye to so many things, including our children and our home in Virginia, to take this assignment. At times we’re painfully aware of all we left behind but we’re also amazed by the new world unfolding in front of us. We absorbed the stark beauty of the distant snow capped Himalayan peaks as we trekked on various paths and ally ways around Mussoorie. One day a knowledgeable Indian man showed us the various peaks through his telescope. He claimed that the most distant peak we could see was actually in Tibet.

In the past month Ruth took an administrative trip to Afghanistan to visit with our MCC partners. She was shocked by the devastation she saw in Kabul, to war-torn capital city and could only imagine what the rest of the country looks like. There is little to see from the billions of dollars the American government dumped into the country. She was also impressed by the love and perseverance of our partners. Will the Afghani people finally be able to achieve a degree of self-determination in order to rebuild their devastated communities?

We also participated in an MCC strategy session on Myanmar (Burma) that was held here in Delhi. That country has captured my heart and imagination ever since I traveled there for MCC in 2000. Its people have known no peace since the Second World War when it became a front in the fight between British and Japanese forces. Thousands of Indians fled the country, many of whom died in the long trek to Bengal. After a short spring of independence after the war, the government was hijacked an oppressive military junta engaged ever since in a protracted civil war with its ethnic minorities.

I am now finishing this post from our apartment in Kolkata. There will also plenty to occupy us in India in the coming year as we assume the roles of Ed and Twila Miller, our capable predecessors. We look forward to settling into our apartment and beginning to work with our excellent staff that has kept this program running with their years of dedicated service. It rarely makes headlines but it is, nevertheless, so necessary for creating communities that reflect God’s grace and justice. Things like education for children, healthcare, and community development are the bedrock for flourishing neighborhoods.

It is also evident that we will need to give more attention to the work of peacebuilding and nurturing healthy and mutually respectful interreligious relationships. Tensions between Christians, Muslims, and Hindus have flared into communal violence in several places in the past months. Some of you may have heard news reports of violence in Orissa and Nandigram. I especially look forward to leaning to know the Mennonite communities in India in the coming year. Hopefully we can work together toward a grace filled and transformative presence in the subcontinent.

This Christmas season Ruth and I reflect on the meaning of being followers of Jesus in our world. Jesus was born into a poor family in a land occupied by a brutal empire. The Christmas story involves the humiliation of this family’s forced travel to their home province to pay the mandatory Roman taxes. During this trip Jesus was born in a stable with common shepherds as witnesses.

One can easily imagine Jesus becoming an angry and violent revolutionary. Instead, he chose to live out of the center of God’s love for the whole world. His strategy for social transformation began with himself and his band of disciples. His struggle for peace with justice was always through peaceful means. Ruth and I pray that we can be true followers of this Prince of Peace in the coming year.