More than all of the different areas, the exotic buildings and ways of life, it has been the people of this country that have touched me the most.
The solid lives of so many who live in a place with so much chaos, beauty, and of course suffering. So much does not make sense, and there is generally a hardness or a distance from this in many. Perhaps it is only my American eyes that see this.
The blessed of course have their smiles, but the stricken and the poor seem to have forgotten how. Children playing in the best of homes or the slums see little difference, but it does not stay that way forever.
Yet their are some who have undergone immense pain and sorrow in their life, but they carry on dancing and singing.
Husbands bereaved, children lost, diseases dealt, property stolen, cheated, and so much have made their mark. But the mark is gone in some of these people.
I ask,(knowing the answer) what, or who enables these people to dance with exceeding joy upon the dangerous and devastating hand of a fallen world? From what power come their smiles? How can old women have a joy that is so child-like and innocent even though they have nothing left?
And O what comfort and relief they give to those who have undergone the same sufferings! I tell you this, those who harden themselves in the face of the dirt and mud of life, they will only be able to share in the quiet silence and distance from the flux of the few years each has to live.
I have known this before I came to India, now far clearer. It is only love that will
heal these broken lands and nations. A giving hand with a turned face is a cold shoulder to the poor, who will go and dwell with them? Who will serve them not from a distance, but next to their hearts? Him who dwelt with Tax Collectors only. Not us!
I am still far and cold, but I am getting closer. My vision of these people is still like yours, images, names, faces that are so far away and do not touch us. I am here though, and the joyful onces, those dancing children, some even with gray hair--these are shaking things loose.
It is only the indestructible joy that awaits those who would let go, lose, dive into this fallen abyss that mankind has made for itself.
"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable...Other than heaven, the only place where one's heart is completely safe from the dangers of love is hell." - C.S. Lewis
