I haven’t written yet about India. I’m not sure why. I think it’s because I’m still processing everything I learned. I don’t know how to do it justice in a few words. It was unreal.
Here’s an attempt - but know that my literary skills severely inhibit me from having the ability to convey how much I was impacted over reading break.
If I was to take one “thing” that impacted me about my short time in India it is that I found the experience very humbling. My idea of serving the poor was entirely off. I think I had this North American ideal that I would walk around, hand each person 10 rupees, make their day and walk away feeling like a wonderful Christian University student who was bettering the world. But what about when there’s someone begging every two steps you take? What about the fact that there is a good possibility that the person you hand the money to isn’t actually the person getting it? …When you feel like all your efforts to help are contributing to a greater problem. I don’t have the solution. And here’s the real question: if I did, would I be doing anything about it anyways?
I hate to make my trip overview sound like a depression session, because despite the hard things I saw I came away with a general sense of encouragement and hope for India. I spent most of my time (well, all of my time that I wasn’t stuck in airports) at the organization that my sister has been working with for several months, Metropolitan Mission. This reminded me that God is working amongst such poverty. Every village we went into we were welcomed with smiling faces, flower garlands, and usually a meal. India knows how to do hospitality! Another thing I found was their incredible emphasis on prayer. It didn’t seem like an “add on” to their lives; in many cases in was undoubtedly the centre, where they legitimately placed their hope.
Religion in general seems to be celebrated much more blatantly in India (at least from what I saw). A majestically decorated temple sits right beside a catholic church and at both places people come to cry out to God in worship, and they don’t seem to be concerned with offending each other. I’m not necessarily saying this is better or worse, because I think our culture in North America overall just doesn’t respond to blatant acts of any type of expression well, but at the same time I found it interesting and kind of found it intriguing that people with such fundamental differences had learned to live in harmony.
I’ve considered both scrapping and revising this blog about five times now; it all seems so trivial when I write it down - like such an impersonal way of explaining the impacts I experienced. But I suppose it’s start. More to come. Maybe.
