On Grief

Just before I left for India, my last remaining grandparent passed away--my paternal grandmother.  I was in Michigan, which meant a quick trip home for her visitation and back here in time to catch my flight. I came back from India just in time to start classes again, so there's been little time to think, not to mention grieve. 

Grieving on your own like this is an odd sort of thing, though. There comes a point when all of the lovely and well-intentioned "I'm sorry"s just aren't enough, and you wish for a different sort of empathy that can only come from shared experience. It's the silent waves of never-agains, the I-wishes, the should-haves, the remember-whens, and the flash-photographed memories that make this hard.

I purposely didn't allow myself to do any of that in India, because I wanted to take in as much as possible without connecting it to that grieving process.  That it worked, I'm glad.

But now, I'm one week in to another semester at seminary and still haven't made the time to do any of that processing. My family has a massive head start, which means that they've already made it to the fighting-over-possessions stage.  Meanwhile, I'm 300 miles away and still back at "wait, what?"

And so I try to envision, once again, at what the new normal will look like after so much turnover. New pieces keep getting added to an ever-changing puzzle picture, and I sit here praying "Lord, what's next?" 

And instead of "go," I hear "sit, and stay a while."

Week One

Last week, I was standing in a small scarf shop in India talking liturgical colors/seasons with friends, deciding whether the orange or the pink scarf would be better for spring, and knowing that I had to come back to Michigan that night, silently scheming ways to return to India.

Today, I sat in the atrium at Western Theological Seminary watching the snow fall.

It's hard to believe that an entire week of spring semester has passed already.  I think I was asleep through most of it, to be honest, but I'm slowly coming to terms with the reality that this is, in fact, my life.  I've given in to the necessity of things like laundry, dishes, and vacuuming. I'm slowly succumbing to things like Greek vocabulary and New Testament reading.

But as I start a new semester, there's a strange tension lingering between how I want things to be and how they really are--the 'should be' and the existent.  Lately, I find myself daydreaming far more often than I ought to about the world, particularly my world, in better shape than I find it in. It's encouraging to know that such a world might be possible.  But there's a fine balance between hoping for a better world and becoming bitter at the world you see, and I'm really good at falling all over that line.  I'm not lying when I say that every fiber of my being wishes it were in India, but I'm also fighting to be present here.

So as I conquer jet lag, clean up my terribly messy apartment, find some semblance of a routine and hope that it stops snowing someday, I also hope for a world without daydreaming--a reality that I'm excited about and not slightly terrified of. 

...

 

And speaking of slightly terrifying things, standing on this bridge in Kerala was exactly that. This bridge is made entirely out of old pipes and tree limbs, tied together with rope. We fit eight people on it for a photo, and we honestly thought for a while that we would end up in the river.  But we got a fantastic photo out of it, don't you think?

Finding Hope in India

Every fiber of my being wishes it were in India right now.  The snow and bitter cold outside makes my skin ache for warm sunshine, the empty apartment awaiting me makes my heart long for more conversation, more people, more time there to process, and the long list of books to read and papers to write makes my mind long for rest under a cotton-silk tree in Lal Bagh Da.

Sometime, I'll post a play-by-play of what we did, where we went, and how it all shattered my brain into tiny little pieces. 

But before I do that, I'm going to say this:

I didn't use my time in India as wisely as I should have.  I was distracted and anxious and couldn't really think straight much of the time. I hadn't slept properly in days. I tried to absorb as much as I could, take lots of photos when possible, write down what we did and a few of my thoughts, but I wasn't able to enjoy India as fully as I wish I would have. 

It's not a fault in the design of the trip. or its leaders, or my companions--it's just a result of too much going on in my own head. So, as I try to process this, forgive some missing chunks and some bad cultural exegesis.

That said, my experience in India was still mind-blowing, heart-shaping, and above all, full. 

It was full in the sense that we crammed about a month's worth of activity into 10 days, but the India that I saw, particularly in relationship to the Church there, is full of so much good stuff that it's difficult to articulate what exactly I mean.  I'll try, but I make no guarantees.

The India that I saw is, first and foremost, a gorgeous country full of wonderful people doing amazing things in the name of one god--the God who became incarnate in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  (How's that for trinitarian thinking, Dr. Stubbs?)

India is full of great coffee (ohsomuch coffee) and delicious food.  I would walk across town in the snow if it meant a south Indian breakfast awaited me somewhere.

The Church in India, in particular, is full of hospitality and love for strangers. So much so, that we actually had to turn down food once or twice because we honestly couldn't eat any more.

Finally, (for today at least) the Church in India is also full of hope in the power of the gospel.

Christians in India, though a very small minority, often know exactly what their faith will cost them. Conversion may irreparably sever relationships with family members, it may get you in trouble with friends or authorities, and may make you into the cultural "other," the outcast.  And yet, people still do it.  They walk away from the life they've known and into a new life with Christ at the center.

Knowing that Christians are considered outcasts in some communities, particularly small ones, may sound rather depressing and sad.  And to be honest, it is sad to know that those relationships are broken.  But knowing that these people were willing to make that choice gives me immeasurable hope that the power of the gospel is not lost in the contemporary world--that the story of Jesus can still turn someone's world upside down like it did mine.

And sometimes, all it takes is a Bible.  I heard story after story of how reading or hearing Scripture changed lives forever--no sermons, no liturgy, no altar call required.  If that's not God at work, then I really don't know what is.



This poster was pasted on the wall outside of our guest
house in Bangalore. It fits just too well.

All this to say that the Church in India is alive and well, friends, and it's doing amazing things. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise.