the brown chair

This is the story of how (or perhaps where) I found Advent this year- in a sort of soft, unlikely place. A place of waiting.

In my house there is a brown recliner. All tufted and worn down in the seat like the velveteen rabbit. It sits in foot warming distance to the black wood stove, and stares out the paneled window pane. What it sees is a scene that I carry in my mind like a proud parent photograph. Ask me and I'll show it to you. Don't ask me and I'll probably show it to you anyway. You'll see the field lined like an eye by the road and the creek. Decorated with blackberry bushes now lying dormant. And the hills that make the low places a valley. This is the view. And this chair is called the Brown Chair. Bet you weren't expecting that one. We talk about the Brown Chair with a sort of serious jest and a mutual understanding of frailty. Because for those of us living beside it in the little blue house on Hardscrabble Road, the Brown Chair is more than chocolate-coloured. It has more than a sudden, familiar twang when you crank up the foot rest like a jack in the box. It has also become our metaphor of transition, the epitome of helplessness, and the most sought after seat in the house.

I remember almost exactly two years ago when my sister sat in that chair on her wedding day and with the most childlike voice she owns, said only "weeeeeeell...." and continued sitting and staring despite a million things that needed doing. It's become a family joke. A funny remembering when one of us sits in imitation of her and croons "weeeeeeell..." We all understand. Because we've all sat there, and watched over each other when it was someone else's turn to sit in the Chair.

Today my dad was giving me a brief history of missions from Perpetua to Whitman (a summarized version of the college course he just finished teaching,) and sharing with me the excitement of being a graduate school student. I, of course, need to first figure out the excitement of being an undergrad student. Like father like daughter? I could see all the wheels spinning in his head as he talked, like the innards of the grandfather clock he made mom. They rotated in the unique way they do with him- metal parts unlabeled and in perpetual overdrive, but solid and steady anyway. He's using himself in the way that burns every calorie and brain cell and leaves him feeling spent and purposeful. For humans this way of spending ourselves is hit and miss. Sometimes we find it, sometimes we just sort of... float. And our exhaustion then comes from a feeling of airyness, and a deep fear that we are a figment of our imagination... or worse yet, of God's. It's been awhile since I've seen my dad this charged. He moved out of the Brown Chair. Which is a good thing, because a few days ago I came home from India and I needed to move in.

When you're in the Brown Chair people make you cups of tea and build you fires. When you sit on its hollow and let it hug you in the way a wall does, you don't mind that you're eating breakfast at what was dinner time only two nights ago. You don't mind that you can't find the words to tell people how you feel because words come from something, and there is nothing inside you. You don't mind that for some reason every person you've ever loved has come to mind and you haven't missed them or laughed at old jokes, but just held them with you, there in your confusion. Maybe it comforts you when you're too numb from the sting of change to realize you're hurting. Maybe it tells you again who you are when you're too jet lagged to remember. I may be in the Brown Chair for awhile. Until I can get my "feelers" back, as a good friend calls his feelings. Until my words come from something, even something undone.

Leaving the Brown Chair starts small. Baby steps, they call it. Tonight I got out of the Brown Chair to thank a few courageous high schoolers for loving my friend Imagination who lives on the street in Kolkata. They are fighting for her by providing for her. They humble me, because they haven't even seen her pain, or the way she welcomes you and draws you in. Not just you, but every stranger and random by-passer. They love because they're seeing with their hearts instead of their eyes. Tomorrow I will get out of the Brown Chair so that I can wear high heels. One can't very well wear them in that chair, but to go to the ballet I find bright red ones are best. Soon I will get out long enough to go walking in the rain that's hardly stopped since I got home. I might even cry. And then I will come quickly back to the safety of the Brown Chair, and try to give myself the grace that others must right now.

I'm glad Christmas is almost here. This captive Israel has gotten a little tired of half singing, half begging, "O come, please come quickly, Emmanuel." But today, from where I sat writing this in the Brown Chair, I could see on the mantel a tiny manger made of banana leaf. In the midst of my recent quivering I remembered a journey longer than mine. I remembered to wait with baited breath for something that has already come. And that now I sing in expectant hindsight.

ami ashchi

The time of goodbyes has come. And I'm not ready, of course. Who is ever ready for life-altering transitions? No matter how much you know it's coming, you always end up feeling blindsided. Like the motorcycle that hit me with his rear view mirror on Mizra Something Street yesterday (I can't remember the full street name.) He honked for about five minutes. How I still managed to get sideswiped is beyond me. Ah, well. I have a lovely bruise.

In just a few hours I leave for the airport. And kiss Kolkata goodbye for now. I just walked here eating my last pack of Elaichi creme biscuits. I'm all packed, and I even managed to sleep last night. One can only hope I'm improving at this whole moving from country to country thing.

Thank you so much for following me through these last few months by reading my words. It won't end here. There are things tucked away in journals that I have yet to put down here. And as I process what I've seen further, those thoughts will also find their way. Your letters and emails and love from over the oceans has been at times the grace I needed, the reminder I needed, the love I needed. This sounds so simple, so ... small. But for those of you who have supported me I give a million thanks. I've found a lot of things in Kolkata, some expected, some unexpected. But I've found Jesus, too, in ways that have redeemed me. I'm boarding the plane with a bit of luggage, and some of the most beautiful faces tucked away in my heart. They will never fail to be for me a picture of perfect joy. The joy found in our suffering saviour. The peace found in life lived with and for the poor. And the grace that I've found each time I've failed to love.

Freedom, the girl I wrote about in the 'Exodus' blog gave me a present when we said goodbye. The most hideous porcelain figurine I've seen in some time. It looks like a cross between a wedding cake topper and a grandma knick knack. It is one of the most precious presents I have ever been given. And perhaps the most valuable Christmas present. It is a reminder for me of Emmanuel, of Christ making the long journey to earth. Of the perfect Word made flesh for the sake of love. I'm going home for Christmas, but I've found Christmas here in Kolkata. The monastery chapel where we had our debriefing retreat had these words above the altar:

"The Word here made flesh dwells among us."

I have no better words to leave you with.

A bit of last Kolkata lovin' is coming your way.

Love.
H

how to

If anyone comes across a book with a title sounding something like this: How To Be a Feminist In India: a different sort of travel guide, please, please let me know. I can't even find it in the "women's issues" section of Powells. Okay. So I don't actually know if it exists. I may have just made up that title, but there are self-help books written on every subject under the sun, how could someone have overlooked such a perplexing topic? How To books are usually something I stay away from, due to their elementary and boring nature. They always remind me of fifth grade when your teach made you write step-by-step essays to teach you the importance of... I'm not really sure what, actually. "Imagine you're explaining it to an alien," she instructed. And you proceed to write in minute detail how to tie your shoes or make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "Step 1: Walk to the cupboard containing a loaf of bread. It should say 'bread' on the plastic wrapper. Untwist the top of the bag, and remove exactly two pieces. Set them on the counter. Step 2: Scoop out enough peanut butter* to cover one side of one slice of bread approximately 1/4 inch thick..." You get the idea. Yet despite this disdain for micro-managing tutorials, here I am, a feminist in India, and so unsure of what that looks like that I would gladly take the instruction.

"It's fine for you to think like you do," a good friend once said to me, "but do you have to use the term feminist?" I understand his concern. It is easy to attach ourselves to a term or movement and not really understand its claims or connotations. Like many I know, this word for him might be falsely synonymous with the words "man-hater" or "femi-nazi." I do claim it still, and more importantly, it is such a factor in my journey to India, that I cannot leave it out. Surely feminism has branched throughout history and taken different forms and philosophical shapes. And there are those "radical" women who are angry at men, or women who fight social norms at their own expense. They fought/fight for things like the right to vote. The need to be more than just a homemaker. The ability to speak in church of the ways they see God. I have been all these things. And while even sometimes disagreeing, I recognize that social change rarely comes about except through radicals. I've recognized the patriarchy that exists still in America, and in the church. I have grieved the lack of the feminine in God in protestantism. And that the "Founding Fathers" of our theology considered women to be of the earth and not spirit, to be desirable and therefore sinful, to be incapable of the spirituality of 'mankind.' A loving Heavenly Father is a beautiful thing. But if God is solely man, then 'He' does not understand me, and does not love like me. I do not portray God nor does God contain me. And my value as a "woman of God" does not lie in how much I opitimize the list in Proverbs 31.

I say this not to be accusatory to man or God, but simply to recognize that one of humanities longest gaping wounds is in the way it has honoured (or should I say dishonoured) its women. In almost every culture throughout history, you find the oppression of women. Please do not tell me to move on. Or to quit living in the past. Oppressed groups who have been repaid with un-segregated schools or reservation lands are always told this. "What do you want me to do?" We ask. "It is not our generation who has done this, and I'm tired of feeling guilty." Many of my male friends understandably feel this way when I talk excitedly about feminism. To you I say that if we are to be people of redemption, then we must always carry the cross of wounds we have afforded each other, as long as they still hurt. And only the wounded can tell you when the hurt is gone. The one who has caused the pain (even if only by their unchosen gender) does not get to choose when the healing process is finished. When things are whole and well, then it will stop hurting. Until then we must bear and repay a debt we may have had no part in incurring. When a woman-child's virginity cannot be sold for extra rupees I will believe that women are free. When a woman's marriageable qualities are not her household skills or her dowry, then I will believe. Maybe I hope for things I will never see. That's usually what hope is.

Men in India have intrinsic value. A son is the families pride and joy. Women, on the other hand have a value that is directly proportional to her relationship to man. She is a daughter. She is a girlfriend or a wife. She is a whore. She is a mother. These things are more than just a title for a woman, they are the description of all that she is. Some of these roles a woman plays are beautiful to me, and I will be delighted when I can fill them. But what I have to offer the world will not come from how much I please the men in my life.

Men, I do not blame you any more than I blame women. We must learn to see ourselves differently, also. Rather, I blame the brokenness in us all. Perhaps this is one of the cruelest parts of The Fall. The imperfection we are born into. The words in Genesis that say, wife, your desire will be for your husband, and husband, you will rule over your wife. The problem is simply this: the brokenness makes one the oppressed and one the oppressor. This is not a critique of man. Or a criticism of a gender that I truly appreciate. Rather a distinct call for truth. A truth that if we let it, will not cause guilt, but will move us to freedom. That asks each of us to change our mentalities. Maybe even to fight for each other. And alongside each other. To not be angry or to blame, but to be honest so as to fight the societal oppressions that result from gender issues. Such as sex trafficking. And "ladies and physically handicapped" seating sections on the public transport. :)

I'm not here to teach Indian women how to be Western. Or how to not need men. Or how to find a 9 to 5. I am here to love women who have no value but the price of their body. And to teach them that they are worth teaching. And that they have things to teach. Stories to tell. Redemption to live. That they are intrinsically valuable and that the world needs them. Desperately. This is the only way I know how to be a feminist in Kolkata. If only it were as simple as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

*preferably Trader Joe's organic crunchy

exodus

It's hard for me to write about the Gach. I don't want to further exploit the women in Kolkata's largest red light district. They are more than just stories, and I cannot do them justice. Yet I know the power of words, and just as I came here to learn and to share a bit of their lives, I also want to share what I see so that their realities will no longer be cloaked in silence. I've written about the women I meet and the time I spend in personal spaces, but I have yet to be able to put it here. I won't use the women's real names. I've used instead the translated meanings of their names. So here goes somethin'.

When you come upon the main lane, you find what you expect to. Girls standing in a row facing the road, like a fence on both sides. This is why they call it "working the line." Women are seated inside doorways in small clusters talking or waiting. The girls are wearing saris, salwars, or sequined mini skirts. They have beautiful eyes and painted red mouths, the likes of which you would only see at a classic car show. Some covered lips are lined with black, and it looks a bit like costume makeup. Or an ink drawing. They stare, of course, because I am white and wandering there. The ones who know us call out our Bengali names. We stop and shake hands, which actually turns into holding hands for the remainder of the conversation. How are you? What did you have for breakfast? Has marriage happened to you? No? Why not?! This is how our greetings go. Marriage here is not something you do. It is something that happens to you.

We stop into different brothels to visit friends. One of the numbered buildings is a mint green, and we go into this one first today. It has a cement staircase winding up the back. I'm afraid I'll trip because my eyes haven't adjusted to the pitch black. After the dark steps there's a mashi cooking fish in mustard oil on a coal stove in the hall. A man is smoking a bidi against the rail. He moves only slightly to let us past. Some doors are closed and locked. The inhabitants might be in or out. At the end of the hall four girls about my age, some a little younger, are sitting on the bed playing a game. In the gach your house is a room, and in the room life is lived on the bed. You sit and chat there. Dance to a Hindi song there. Sleep there. And of course, work there. Freedom is there today. We've been working on her English each Friday. She looks beautiful, as always. She has high cheekbones, not as round as the usual Bengali woman. And a mole on her cheek that makes you think not of a witch, but a movie star. She's still open, alive. She's been here only four months. Her friend is there also, she's been working in this brothel for a year now. She supports a father and four younger sisters in the village. She will work until the sisters are well married, she says. Then she will be able to look after her own future. We talk about dancing. Sometimes we dance for the customers, they tell me. They dance as a group of girls for a group of men. Or they dance until they are naked for one man. They grab us here, and here. She points. I'm sure my sadness is apparent in my eyes. They're really breaking my heart today, Sarah says to me. I'm relieved when the subject changes.

They take great joy in critiquing my appearance. I've passed today. The bari-walla's son asked why you don't live here, Sun asks me. You should come and work with us. You would take all the customers. How do I tell her no man can buy me, without suggesting she herself has a price tag? The girls in this brothel don't work the line, as they are for higher paying clients. Bottled up here, they make around 150 rupees a trick. About 4 dollars. They have an owner with whom the money is divided. Last week a man came in while we were painting each others' nails. He chose me. The girls laughed and told him I wasn't available. Wait for me, my friend said, as she got up to serve her "client," the one who had beckoned to me. For a brief minute I understood. And yet I understand nothing. I am a bideshi. A foreigner. I will get up and walk out untouched. I am free to go when I please. There's a bank account with my name to it, and my family supports me, rather than the other way around. Poverty is not my lover. Nor desperation my customer. Here in the sunny streets and dark staircases of this district 10,000 women live and work. It is one of 17 sex districts in the city. The women here are victims, many of them, and prostituted. But they have new identities in my mind, those of sister and friend. Slowly I watch an exodus. Some days it feels too slow. And the Egypt of money and circumstance and gender seems binding and unshakeable. It's a wild hope I cling to as I hold their brown and graceful hands.

rainy days and mondays

The rain came quickly, sneakily.
"It's going to be hot today," Mhalo said just a few hours ago during out morning toast ritual.
Here it is now, falling like wet marbles to pock mark the dirt on the soccer field. The crows have found leafy umbrellas, and protest with a cry when their trust is betrayed, and their oil slick feathers turn slimy. An abandoned kite swings like a possum dripping, dripping. A man fleeing unashamedly gets a bucket worth of water from the dokan tarp. They dump down sometimes. One tiny drop fills it too full and it releases its liquid load on some poor person's head. I've been in his wet shoes before, but still I laugh at him. Bits of the bamboo walls and tower forehead are the last bits of the Pandel caught in the rain, drunk from the festivites and all that's left of Durga Puja. The thunder shakes me. I can hear it inside of me and out, even before the lightning fizzles out. I imagine being shocked by, maybe through osmosis, and now my hair is on end mad scientist style. An arm in a flannel crimson shirt slid out from between two wooden cha stall frames. With a stick he pokes and prods the garbage and leaves from the drain, which looks like a small cattle guard when it isn't covered by the trash and water that flooded our street last month. As the man digs at the metal, the water and offending plastic start to whirlpool away. Satisfied, the red arm retreats, and the man watches, content with his act of goodwill. His victory is short-lived, though. After a minute, the draining puddles grow still, like a lake after a rock has been thrown in. With a sigh that's visible, if not audible, he plunges his arm in up to the main muscle and starts to feel around. He emerges pleased and disgusted with his findings, and with that the movement begins again.
Still the water falls faster than it goes away.
I watch and remember until I'm dried up like the rain and soggy as the dirt.

cold weather and a cyclone

It's been much too long since I've given a legitimate life update (not that poetry isn't legitimate,) it's just a bit... small. I have been writing, some of it particularly with home in mind, and I will share it all very soon. I just haven't taken the time to get it online yet.The weather here is cooling down, and it is my idea of perfect. There is a bit of sun, but it isn't too warm, mixed up with some days of rain, which aren't too cold. I sound like a weather man turned Goldilocks. This perfect temperature isn't fully true, I guess. The other night I wore my green moo moo nighty (given me upon arrival by Beth,) some knitted socks, and a shawl to bed! It was freezing. It must have been about sixty five degrees. I made fun of the bike rickshaw driver who had a red and white scarf wound around his head, only to go home and shiver all night long. Oregon winter, here I come?! There's been a breeze lately, but I can't fully enjoy it when I remember it's actually the last bits of the cyclone that just smashed along the coast of Bangladesh. An entire area is left devasted. Death tolls (according to BBC) are at least two thousand and tens of thousands of homes have been demolished. Send them strength when you think of it. To rebuild while you grieve is no easy task.

come on home

"I'll be home for Christmas... you can count on me... please have snow and mistletoe... and something about presents under the tree?") Apparentely I should look that up. Anyway. It's true. I'm coming home. Soon. December 15th actually. Let me tell you why.

Some time last Spring, in what could best be termed traveller's greed (and in typical Hannah fashion) I decided that if I have a plane ticket to India, I might as well see as much as I can while I'm there. I decided to wander. I wanted to go to Nepal. To Thailand. And all over India. (Not to mention to Cambodia and Myanmar... but one has to be realistic.) So I decided to stay on after my four months of living in Kolkata with Word Made Flesh, and this became and remained the plan. Although it began to shift. When I got to Kolkata I began to understand something. That this trip was for me a living, breathing kind of faithfulness. I decided to give up most of my travelling. Now I would be living almost the whole time in Kolkata, with some weeks in Thailand.
Until recently when I began to realize how unsettled my heart felt. I wrote it off as homesickness and ignored it. Yet it was enough to keep me from actively working on the details of the trip, or feeling peaceful and expectant. This is when "the understanding" came. I believe God speaks clearly to some people. And perhaps even does to me. Although I also think we throw "God told me" around a dangerous lot in our faith culture. I've come to call it "the understanding" for lack of a better term. For me it means some combination of intuition and wisdom and I like to think... God. The understanding was that come Christmas, it was time for me to leave Kolkata. When the understanding comes, it usually comes quickly and crazily and leads me to do such things as drop out of college and move to India. For this reason it is something I both love and loathe. I find that as a person often guided by intuition and some intrinsic understanding, that there is always the danger of emotions interceding. I began to spend time listening and waiting. And sometimes speaking. Reminding God that on the deepest level I was not afraid to stay. That I was finding more of the depth of relationship by which I tend to measure the value of experiences. That I came here and fell apart even as I was put back together again. That Humpty Dumpty was scared to say goodbye. The longer I waited the more I knew that I needed to go home.

Many things have come from my time here. One of those things (and this has many parts) is that I can never seperate myself from the poor. I've seen and learned too much to walk away. Sometimes I curse these eyes and this knowledge, because I can never forget. But in this knowing there is also something that can only be described, as St. Francis did, as "perfect joy." In the meantime, there are people at home that soon will be moving apart to new cities, jobs, and husbands. I want to end with them what we started together. There are certain things that are as of now... unfinished. And would remain incomplete if I did not return. Whereas things here are reaching a stage of feeling settled as my time with Word Made Flesh draws to a close. I'm of course so very excited to be home to eat candy cane cookies and sit by the fire with my beautiful family. I'm looking forward to living with dear friends and joining Wild Hope on the streets again. I'm looking forward to Stumptown and sweaters. And of course listening to my Elvis Christmas tape in my Oldsmobile. I'm also grieving the loss of several months of teaching the children I've come to know at Shanti Dan. And leaving the women at Sari Bari who show incredible patience with my slowly developing Bengali skills. I wish I could learn more of what it means to be present in the Gach. To go in week after week and earn the right to call the women there 'my sister.' All of this I am still processing...

Through this I'm learning a few things about myself. Such is the nature of struggle. I'm seeing that sometimes I would seek adventure over constancy, even when this constancy is what I need (or what others need.) That sometimes I don't know the difference between everything and enough. And that sometimes, even gypsies have to stop their wandering and come on home.

words of another

But, my friend,
why do men with crippled legs,
lifeless eyes,
wooden legs, empty stomachs
wander about the streets
of this civilized world?

Teach me, my friend, the trick,
so that my eyes may not
see those whose houses have no walls
but emptiness all around;
show me the wax you use
to seal your ears
to stop hearing the cry of the hungry;

Teach me the new wisdom
which tells men
to talk about money and not love,
when they meet women;

Tell your God to convert
me to the faith of the indifferent,
the faith of those
who will never listen
until they are shaken with blows.

I speak for the bush:
You speak for the civilized-
Will you hear me?

- Everett Standa, I Speak for the Bush
(Standa is president of Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya)

bread and ashes

Just "a few poems" yet again. These are about my struggle between feeling like not enough or too much. Sometimes even both at once. I watch as I walk around in desperation, holding myself out to people in an attempt to give or take love, only to scare them away or to drown them because I am, yet again, too much. Other times I fear that people take willingly what I'm hesitant to give, only to discover in disillusionment that I am, as always, not enough.
I 'know' that it's okay to be either/or. My humanity makes me such. But sometimes to know something and to live it out in freedom are two very different things. Like the difference between a medical class lecture and an operating table.
So I'm learning about my bread and my ashes. They are the metaphors of my insecurity. And also symbols of sustenance and grief, abundance and deprivation. I'm learning how they come from each other, and that I need not fear either, despite their differences.
Bread and ashes. I guess I'm learning to hand out the one in compassion and the other in vulnerability.


bread becoming ashes

i made you an airplane
and taught you to make
the whirring sound
of a propellor
the same way your lips would move
to blow bubbles in bath water

the two of you travelled the
seven seas of the tiled floor
the plane used your skinny arms
for stilts
and slowly absorbed
the form of your fingers
abandoning lumpy wings
for a clenched palm print
a tiny hand fossil

with horror i imagined each
flying machine i'd given away
like a birthday party
balloon man
turning to brilliant mush
the bread becoming ashes
in your choking mouths



ashes becoming bread

a few poems ago
i watched a plane
plummet and fall
and i tumbled over
it had landed like an axe
and chopped clean through

we both burned brightly
our crash a mutual cry for help
till we were nothing
more than a heap of ash
and metal fittings

scooped up and kneaded
like clay full of air
like the back of the dying

set out out to rise
like heat from a wick
like the equatorial sun

baked brown and encrusted
like summer skin
like the thirsty earth

a fresh loaf of ashes
broken for the masses
quick while it's still scented
warm

and there were twelve
baskets left over

"photographs and memories..."

I've put some pictures online from Kolkata, Kathmandu, and Darjeeling.

Here's the link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/hannah.jo.harrod

"... summer walks and bedroom talks, oh how i loved you then..."

my beeeeee-you-tea-full big sister

What happens when two people want to be like each other when they grow up? I guess they just spend their whole lives being unalterably themselves, and adoring each other. Such is the story of my big sister and me. I was recently reading her new blog, and came upon this entry. Hope you don't mind if I share this, sister. It's beautiful. And since I can put whatever I want on my own blog, this is what I want. Perhaps the power I hold over this poor web page is going to my head. Regardless, here are some words from Leah Ray (Harrod) Rupp.

The Vote
Here is a confession: I don't usually vote, and I am very embarrassed about it. I mean to. I want to, and I believe in doing it.The one and only political act in my life has been to march in the peace rally in Portland this year. Even then, I felt a bit ignorant, like a second rate marcher, who was going to be found out, and kicked out, because I wasn't wearing a shirt that says "Bush is the Antichrist". I don't find myself championing for any one political candidate, or party, and I feel horribly uninformed, so I bow out in a very cowardly way.Today in my Gender Communications class we were discussing the history of Women's Suffrage, and how so many women and men fought a long and hard battle, so that I would have the right to vote. I was humbled, and grateful.It means the world to me to have that opportunity. It really does. Almost as much as it means to me that my mother has stuck out a tough few years as a female youth and family minister, within a church tradition where the female part of that is a problem for many.She does it because of God's call on her life. She has a message about Jesus that she wants to share through her work, and so she is willing to take the heat, and carry on.She also does it for her daughters, and granddaughters. So that we might not discount God's call on our lives, or our spiritual experiences as less than valid within our church families.I am so thankful for people who see a bigger picture than just what is acceptable in the culture around them. I shudder to think about where we would we be if no one was willing to question the social norms of their day and age. Let me throw out a word like....slavery, for example.(On a side note...sex slavery and human trafficking have not been eliminated from the world. At all. Not even close).So.....I am going to make a conscious effort about becoming an informed voter. Not just for the presidential elections, but in local things that affect the schools and people who live in my community.


I almost forgot... I'm home from Nepal. Although 'home' is relative right now, it's still delightful. I'll share about Nepal soon.

Jai Jesu.

an aged sort of youthfulness

When I woke up this morning, the house was still asleep. No water was running, no one was utilizing the hallways, or filling the rooms with sound. It was just me, and since houses can be rather out of sorts first thing in the morning, I decided to let it sleep awhile longer. I laid in my bed and made shadow puppets on the wall, much to my own amusement. I made an alligator, and a cat, an emu, and my crowning glory... a llama, complete with a rather oddly shaped tail. At one point a little brown spider crawled across the wall, and was strangely pursued by a bouncing bunny. These times of simple play redeem me, yet so often I choose to forget my call to be a dreamer, because our society really has no place for its idealists. And only its finest artists can make a living as such. The rest of us must suck it up, throw on a suit, and enter the 'real world.' It's times like these when I feel all at once really young and really old. I am just a little thing, with bright red lipstick smeared around my mouth, tromping around in high heels, womens size 8. I'm only playing dress up, pretending to be grown up. My childishness is painfully evident these days. I know so little, it seems. I also feel so old, a bit worn out. Like one who has seen the heaviness of life, and is content now to sit on the porch and watch the dragonflies, waiting for the promise of perfection. I've wandered a lot for someone my age. I've watched African women serve chai to a crowd, bending low from the waist in a humble bow, something like a mountain bowing down to the grasses. I've walked by Cuban soldiers roasting whole pigs by the ocean, getting ready for another government sponsored feast. I've become the playground for twenty of India's children, abandoned, abused, diseased. Each one I pick up like a stone and carry. Partly because it is beautiful, and partly because weight is meant to be borne, so it might as well be me who carries it.

Standing now under a tree, sipping liquid mango and sugar from a juice box, I do the only thing I can. I take the stones and add them onto my wall. My wailing wall, with numerous names and grievances stuck in the cracks for cement. This is an alter to my age. And then I begin to draw all over it, with imaginary sidewalk chalk. Pictures of redemption and peace. Birds and trees and beautiful things. And this is a tribute to my youth.

why i became a kite, part 2

Today is the first day I have loved Kolkata. I adored it briefly, for the way it made me feel. The classic case of "exciting and pretty" like the new red shoes I bought this summer. Then, soon after, I began to watch it suffocate me, as my own desperate needs bubbled to the surface. I couldn't simply kick it away like those shoes when they began pinching, walking barefoot across the grass. There is little grass here, and what there is lies spotted with ants and foil chewing tobacco wrappers. Needless to say, the honeymoon phase doesn't last long in Kolkata. I don't mean that I didn't still see beauty in this place. I admired her from a distance. I saw the richness of her sari. Calcutta cotton is known across the country. Her eyebrows black parenthesis turned horizontal... thin storm clouds surrounding a red bindi sun. This is how I took in Mother India. Until today, when she caught me gawking and surprised me with a smile. In that smile was the laughter and promise of her youth, and wrinkles and sorrow of her age. All this I saw today as the bike rickshaws fled the heat, in hot pursuit of the row of Jacaranda trees. This too, I saw, when I became the teacher and the playground for twenty of her abandoned children. I see it now, in perfect peace as the airplane rises. From here it looks like the crows surround the flying lights like moths around a lightbulb. This lightbulb is the same one that has come on above my head, blinking an idea like in the old cartoons. This idea is love, and it makes itself known to me on my porch. It winds around the garden growing wildly from the cement head of a neighboring building. The one whose hair is styled like a terrace Cubano. It ends up wound around the kite of the little boy across the way. It whispers to the kite as it watches the birds and the plane, turning green with envy. The kite of scavaged plastic and twine belongs to a little boy with no field, only city. As we sit together in this Kolkata night, the kite says, "cut me loose, so we too can return to the ones we belong to, and the roads that know our feet." Not this time... No. I whisper back. Tonight I choose to be like you. And in an act of silent joy, I put down my pen and pick up a rope instead. Tied roughly around my ankle I stand on the mottled banister and jump. For love of Kolkata, I become a kite.

why i became a kite

One of my favorite Kolkata scenes is the varied rooftops of the flats making patterns against the after-sundown sky. The air around you is dark, and it feels like night, but you look up and see that the sky is still holding onto the light. This seems to be "the hour of the kites." Boys on tip toe fly their paper creations from cement playgrounds. Last week was also the kite festival. It happened while we were in Darjeeling and I was dissapointed to miss it, as the familiar kites are such a beautiful past time. Each time I see one I am reminded of my choice to be here. I see in the kites the same paradox I have discovered in Kolkata- being tied down, inescapably grounded, and yet free from the earth, flying inexplicably above all things solid. Bound to the dirt and to an aching heart, and yet finding there can be nothing deeper, nothing that loosens more your binding self. Sometimes I look up at the birds, and I want to rise above the city and fly on home. Kolkata "wears its brokeness on the outside" as I've been told. The worst part of it is that here, I too wear my brokeness on the outside. If you want to stop being a white washed tomb, move to Kolkata. You will face your decay as you meet the desperate. You will realize how desperate for love and affirmation you are when you meet the decay. The poet Joseph Brodsky wrote, "what I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness." When you choose not to escape, not to run away to a place where you can forget, or at least self-medicate through various vices, you begin to see truth in its most basic and eloquent form. Truth without the trappings of striving to be relevant or holding onto the old ways. Truth outside of culture and economics. Truth so beautifully alive in its simplicity, that you remember Jesus, and even though his journey is alot scarier than you've noticed before, it's also a way of peace. I know I'm not the only one starving for peace... peace to set prostituted women on an exodus. Peace to stop children from being the soldiers in someone else's war. Peace to stop husbands from beating wives. Peace to end the genocide in Darfur. I was hoping to rediscover at least a little bit of this, as it's been swallowed up by doubts and questions lately. I wanted to know what it felt like to be free here, but not to escape and fly away. I think I am just staring to understand, in this otherwise insignificant moment. You might say I've had my own kite festival.

"happy birthday, dear Gandhi..."

Tuesday was Gandhi's birthday. It was also my first official Good For My Soul Day, which is short for its complete title, "Good For My Soul, Tummy, Self-Awareness, and Adventurous Spirit Day." When I asked myself, what would be good for your soul today, Hannah Jo? I quickly answered myself, beautiful books. So I made my way to Earthcare books, a social justice bookstore tucked away behind a car lot/restaurant called the Drive Inn. Earthcare has books on sustainable farming and agriculture, feminism and women's issues, religion, trees and birds of India, war and peace, and poetry... just to name a few. I had to laugh at myself, because by the end of my perusing time, I was wandering around with arms weighed down in typical Powells style. This is the point where I stand helpless for twenty minutes, distraught at the knowledge that these books, quickly becoming new friends, can't all be bought on my budget. I say goodbye to them, feeling like I'm abandoning them to the cold while taking the chosen ones home for the night to a soft bed, a bowl of soup, and a warm bath. Maybe I'm being a little dramatic, but every time, I struggle to narrow it down. As if the books won't still be there next time I come to the store and drag them around with me.

I did finally manage to choose. I bought a book called Nature and the Environment, by an intriguing Indian man (whose name slips my memory,) but who turned down the status of highly-honored guru, declaring himself simply a man, wanting to both learn and teach. I also bought a few small, simply bound poetry anthologies. The poems are written by boys and girls who work sweeping the trains and selling bottled water at the station... but who are more than station children. They're learning that they are writers and dreamers, and most importantly, that they have something intrinsically valuable to say. These children are taught poetry by an NGO working here in Kolkata and elsewhere in India.

I then proceeded to be annoyed at Gandhi's birth. Okay, it wasn't so bad as that, but I did for one brief moment find myself angry at this small, bespectacled man in swaddling clothes. How can you get frustrated with Gandhi, you rightfully ask. Well, I made my way to the US embassy to see about a visa extension (a trip which I'd been procrastinating, of course.) Only to be laughed at by the man at the front door, because, as every one knows (including myself) it's a national holiday. When this happens, there is a brief moment when you selfishly wish that Gandhi wouldn't have been born... or at least not on this particular day. Shaking my head at the shallowness of my own thoughts, I quickly realized how ridiculous I was being, and returned to celebrating a beautiful man. It was humbling for me to be in India on this day, in the place that formed him and for which he fought valiantly, armed only with self-sacrifice and love. India was deeply changed because of him, is still in the process of changing. There were no big celebrations, or speeches, or memorial meetings. It was actually a quieter-than-normal day in Kolkata. Many businesses were closed, and people were at home. I found this a fitting way to honor him. I bought myself a coke from a street vendor, and watching the street from a shady spot of sidewalk, I raised my glass bottle, and sang "... happy birthday to you!"

biscuits and bacardi

I can declare that after trying the majority of the "biscuits" here in Kolkata, my official favorite is (drum roll, please...) Priya Elaichi Creme! They not only have cardamom flavored frosting and cost five rupees, but the creme is also tinted a beautifully fake green color, such as you can only find in artificial food coloring. Biscuits are really more like cheap, packaged cookies in such a variety- salty and sweet, round and square, cream filled or plain. They're best eaten during an evening stroll around the city, or an evening constitutional, as some well-worded people might call such a walk. Let me know if you want to try them, and I'll send you a package.

Another exciting snippet of information is that I am now an official member of Naga Christian Fellowship, I even filled out a form. This means that for the remainder of my Sundays in Kolkata, I get to hear special songs by boys wearing "If there isn't Bacardi in heaven, I ain't going there" t-shirts. Oh, the joy.

And finally, I rejoice in the fact that after years of searching, I have discovered a language with as much time confusion as I have. In Bengali, the word borshu means both day after tomorrow and day before yesterday.

"My India is Great!" (As the blue dump trucks say. I couldn't agree more.)

feelings of flimsiness

Today I had a picnic in a park, all too complete with a trail of ants. My dear-hearted Lara and I picked up some bread and fruit and sweets and made some space for ourselves on a green bench.

Kolkata at night is my favorite. Perhaps because its swollen and slow-moving, having eaten too much rice for dinner. Maybe because at night you see labourers and lovers taking a slight break from the cares of the day. Maybe because cities at night make me want to wander into a small cafe and chat till morning.

I feel sort of flimsy these days. I'm overwhelmed by my own thoughts and the complexity of this woven life which in truth, I was never asked to unravel. I'm walking around in sackcloth and ashes. It's a hurting unlike what I've felt here so far. It's not acute or emotional. It's sort of numbing. I'm grieving the abandonment that has taken root in the children at Shanti Dan. I'm grieving the loss of autumn. I'm wishing I could share two things with my sister: an americano and the beauty of morning prayers to God through Our Lady, Mary. I smell like playdough and sweat. It seems like just when you find joy and contentment, it slips away. Ocean waves. Such is life. I'm going to wait with sandy, salt crusted feet. I'm here, whenever you want to wash back my way.

a few poems... again

Finding a Church

we don't think the same
be the same
share the same ideals
sometimes i worship theology

we don't see the same
sing the same
create the same beauty
sometimes i worship art

we don't touch the same
commune the same
seek the same poor
always i worship love

here in the noise
not of buses
but synthesizers
and parroted repeating

here in the colour
not of nature
but waxen flowers
and velvet curtains

here in the Hallelujahs
i shout to love
'ready or not,
here i come!'



Shobuj Brishtir Nice*

the last time i tripped
and fell
and scraped my knee
i cried
not from pain
but from the sight of the blood
not from seeing myself bleed
but from watching it run
Red
down my leg like vein patterns
worn on the outside
for decorative purposes

driving up the mountain
the one marked
with Tibetan prayer flags
flipping their farewells
like train station kerchiefs
waving goodbye to me
in a gesture of welcome
i knew what i must do
and with a quaking hand
i cut clean
with an old forked stick
down the ragged scar
i thought was out of sight
out of mind

i wept then
with the delight of myself
recognizable once again
as the familiar green
came instantly pounding
and singing
in rivulets of cell and chlorophyll
feet in the dirt
and a voice in its own
stream of a self

my hands a clasped clay
cup full of the liquid story
of my fluid life
i tossed it up
to hit the underbelly of the clouds
and come raining back down on me

who has found a place in the garden
just another tree
i raise my limbs to the sky
like theirs
to catch peace in our webs of leaf
and drip green together

* Under the Green Rain

so pleased to meet you

I'm still catching the blog up on life here, so here's something from what seems like forever ago. It's just a little somethin' I wrote right after arriving...

It was raining when we arrived in Kolkata. I rolled down the taxi window anyway, if only to keep from being suffocated by the incense burning to Ganesh, stuck in the dashboard like smouldering birthday candles. It's almost my birthday, too, I tell him. Just in case he wants to throw me a surprise party. Our driver in a wet and dirty tanktop, the once-had-been white now transparent from some combination of sweat and rain. The horns are a sort of sonar it seems, like bats flitting around trying not to collide. Shush, I tell them. Let me meet the city. Introductions are sacred. Like puja, like prayer. In them you read the silent longings, the spiritual pleas. Like an old text, an ancient scroll. In this manner we greeted each other, Kolkata and I. I read boldly its crippling poverty, its burning spirituality, and its beauty which is rooted in a history older than my body plus my soul, times a thousand. In return its scalpel eyes saw my crippling selfishness, my spiritual poverty, my burning desire for love. I kneel to touch the feet of this place, and it returns the blessing with a hand on my head. As I walk away from this first impression, I am actually moving in. Moving to this place where wounds like tendons lay exposed, still pulsing with inextinguishable breath. Out of my silence then came the only word I knew to say. One that's been lying dormant and dust covered for awhile now. Mercy, I whispered like a lullabye to the men sleeping exhausted on their rickshaws. Mercy! I shouted at the marble hotels, white... oh-so-white. Everywhere the word fell it returned from, louder and shining. Mercy, the wind whispered in song as I slept. Mercy! it shouted and rained down respite life.

puja season is upon us

We are entering the season of Pujas, folks. Puja means prayer, specifically prayer to the Hindu gods and godesses. It is also what the celebrations for these same dieties are called. Starting with "motor vehicle puja," which isn't its official name, of course. During motor vehicle puja, all the cars were draped with streamers and garlands of marigolds, and offerings of sweets and incense burned under their parked hoods. Pigments marked their metal forms in streaks and dots, as on the foreheads of devotees returning from the temple. Kali Puja and Durga Puja are coming up, along with the festival of lights, with prizes for the best displays. Apparentely the US isn't the only country whose celebrations have become competitions, also. I know the celebration time has come because a few days ago I woke at five am to classic Bollywood Hindi songs blaring from the site of a soon-to-be display outside my window. Overnight the braces for a huge structure have gone up several stories high, and men climb around on these like circus performers to secure the frame with rope. Bamboo structures are going up in different communities across the city. With only poles and canvas, huge replicas will be made of the Taj Mahal, the Victoria Memorial... even the White House has been known to have its very own Puja replica. Trust me, India, one White House is more than enough for all of us.

rickshaws and wings

I spend several hours a day transporting myself around the city. Perhaps I should more accurately say that rickshaws, buses, and the metro transport me around the city. If only I really could transport myself, I would, of course, choose wings. They would be varying shades of green... bright, chlorophyll green, and dark, earthy green fading into brown. This way I could sometimes sit unnoticed in the trees.

Anyway. The buses are insane, I have yet to figure out the number system (as evidenced by my hours spent wandering unknown parts of the city.) They are numbers like 45 B/1, 205 (not to be confused with 205 A,) and 1C/15,000. Okay, the last one might be an exaggeration. I'm sure they are systematic... but it's a system that is far beyond my comprehension. Sort of like the periodic table of elements. At this point, most of you are wondering why I don't understand the periodic table. If you figure out why I am so bad at chemistry, please, let me know. Sometimes one must have a running start to board the bus, or exit with a flying leap as the money man announces they just passed your stop. This is not so easy as it sounds, since you are shoulder to shoulder with more people than could possible fit on this bus. And then ten more come on.

I take a bike rickshaw to and from home to the metro when I'm too lazy to walk, or when it's dark outside. The first one I took was hard for me. It provides jobs to many men, and I want to be able to support them. Yet, sometimes it's hard for me to ride along, the cause of physical labor for a few rupees. I feel a bit like a Turkish princess in a veiled stoop, riding along on four muscular shoulders. Except for the pot holes and speed bumps and the lack of wine. The bike rickshaw wallahs all look older, I think, than they really are, and there isn't an extra ounce of fat on their bodies. Perhaps their thin faces contribute to their aged appearance. They also have a community that interests me. They wait together, and take turns. I would imagine them competing for customers, but it seems, rather, that they take care of each other.

In travelling around Kolkata, I find, you cannot escape from people. Such is life in India. In the US, we get in our own personal car, and we (in some states) pump our own personal gas. We drive in straight lines, awkwardly looking away if we make eye contact with the person driving in the other lane. In this city, I cannot forget by whose labor I am getting to where I want to go. I slide around in the water on the floor of the metro, while a group of men scrape the dirty liquid over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks. I sit across from men and women staring unabashedly at my Western form. This is exhausting. But it is also humanizing. I am a part of something. One in a million. I must choose which part, and which something. Hopefully, the rebuilding part. The broken part. The part that fights for freedom. Hopefully, the friendship something. The God something. The world something. All these thoughts and a ride home... and it only costs me ten rupees.

getting ahead of myself...

So, I realize as I look over these thoughts I've put forth so far, that they are bits of my life slightly absent from their context. That is to say, that they are scattered and ambiguous to ones who cannot see what I see and feel what I feel. Reading these sundry ramblings are, as you all know, rather like living life with me, so I suppose you aren't all that surprised. However, this is my attempt to (in the words of Piglet to Winnie the Pooh on a rather tumultuous Hefalump hunt) "begin at the beginning." Oh, the wisdom. So, the next things I will put down should tell you more about my daily-ness. Logistically and spiritually. Thanks for sticking with me. For your sakes, I will try to be more linear. Gypsies don't tend to think or live in a very straight line. I need your prayers tonight. I miss coffee in the mornings (and afternoon... and evening.) I miss the trees that are just starting to take on that ochre color that tells you that Autumn is just around the corner. Walk quickly and you may catch it unaware one day quite soon. I miss being known. From Kolkata, peace is flowing to you. Dekha Hobe. Love, love.

my cup

As a community, my WMF team has been discussing Henri Nouwen's book, Can You Drink the Cup? It's about what it means to drink fully the cup of Christ in all it's horror, humanity, and joy. We spent some time writing down what "our cup" holds for us here in Kolkata, what we must drink every last drop of. Some days the cup seems easier to drink than other days. Some days, like Christ I wish for another, perhaps a different kind of cup or contents. But without the bitter, there would be no sweet. I'm rediscovering the beauty of intentionally caring for a group of people, and letting them care for me... I'm remembering how to trust. I'm so aware of my own lacking here, that the love of people washes over me in deep and refreshing ways. What follows are my thoughts on what I have only just begun to taste. From those first sips I can see that the cup is full, and that it holds both the tasteful, distasteful, and the tasteless. From all three, good Lord, deliver me. This is what I wrote during our time together. This is my cup:

I landed bright eyed and newborn on the runway.
Joy has been lying dormant.
Self-doubt has chopped itself a space in my life in withering ways.
Questions about God have abused God's love.

My cup is full of healing. It's time for my trust to blossom and reclaim itself from the winter of deep hurt. I choose to trust perfect love that will not reject me. The cup of healing requires reconciliation. It's time to rejoin myself with people. To find community in my teammates, the beautiful children and women of Shanti dan, and the poor and prostituted in Kolkata. It's time to reconcile my heart with the protection of God as father, recognizing that this doesn't give him the broken traits of man. I drink the cup, and find the strength to claim the name Gomer and run on home.

As I drink deeper I discover humility. I am like the ants at my feet, bumping into walls and eachother in a mad scramble to carry a load to heavy in a time too short. I must drink deeply the humility of Christ. I must learn that the poor have a beautiful theology, often more truthful than my own. I want to be taught by the goodness in those around me. The courage of the women seeking freedom from prostitution that is slavery, rather than an occupation. I would cry "abuse" and cling to my anger. The "simple" women at Shanti Dan who have more love in their twisted limbs and burdened minds than in my entire being. They embrace me over and over without bothering to know me... if I'm worth it... if I deserve it. Kolkata is a cup brimful of humility.

Here in this place, I want to laugh all of my laughter and cry all of my tears. The deep intersection between sorrow and joy is the call to Christ. I want to know sorrow. It's time for joy to rise up. This is my cup.

a few poems

A few of the poems that have been borne...

birds eye view

off the balcony
of this fifth floor flat
i watch the north end
in a green floral nighty

rickshaws mostly
automated
buses and men
men walking
men riding
few women are out

the street is suicide
distance below me
the birds are level
scouring and flirting

i see the people and feel
nothing
the crows rise
i feel everything


the Gach*

your child has an empty stomach
so you give him yours
full and brown

your child's eyes have gone dry
so you give him yours
full and brown

your child's mind sees only Kolkata
so you give him yours
and you see only a room
a street
the tree

what will it be today, sir?
Mother God, hear our cries

*Gach is the Bengali word for tree, it is also the word by which we refer to Kolkata's largest red light district.


untitled

here in this place of hatred
and horns
across the street from the prostituted
not whores
children
ripped open, run dry
like a wooden sail boat
dropped on the rocks

you can't even close your dreams
and eye it
for you've never seen the sea

in my mind's eye
the eye at the center of the storm
same, same
there is a harbor

i dock you there
safe and salt swept
by the oceans healing licks
long enough to paint
your names
along wind weathered sides
and seal it over with varnish


first full moon

tonight the man on the moon
is a woman

a Bengali woman
who has eaten too much Mishti

i laugh at the earnest way she sings a story
as she waits

for her husband to cross the sky
bridge, and come in for dinner

when she was born, she was clever
but like other women here
she rarely has a chance to think

her round bulb of a head
has grown

not from a wisened mind
but from paneer

in her favorite rose water syrup.

welcome

Hello, dear ones! I'm not normally a blogger, as I don't feel like anyone but me would be interested in reading it, in which case it's less work to just journal. Then, one day not long ago, I moved to Kolkata. What follows is a collection of thoughts, poems, and general life updates for all those who want to go on an adventure with me. I hope you will be able to learn and suffer along with me as we become intimately acquainted with "the poor" who are more than an economic class, but also dear friends... sisters and brothers. You will see here my struggles and brokenness, and also, I pray, the rise of hope. As I begin to try to live out God's heart for the poor, I am discovering that Christ makes home in the intersections. Physically, Jesus often lies on the side of the road- at home in Portland and even more frequently here in Kolkata. I'm also finding that in the inexplicable intersection between sorrow and joy I find Jesus. When we too make home in sorrow too real to ignore and too big to carry, we discover also the joy of worth redeemed, of freedom. Only here can opposites collide and be harmonious. Here in Kolkata I find the intersection, and with it I find love, which is after all, God.