But I'm so small I can barely see,

...How can this great love be inside of me?
Well look at your eyes, they're small in size, but they see enormous things...

...But I'm so afraid and I'm set in my ways,
Well He'll make the rabbits and rocks sing His praise...

...But I'm so tired, I won't last long,
Well He'll use the weak to overcome the strong...

...Though all that we eat brings us little relief,
we don't know quite what else to do, we have all our beliefs,
but we don't want our beliefs,
G-d of peace, we want You.


-mewithoutyYou


I've been having a quite a strange string of coincidences all relating directly to St. John of the Cross. Not like reading his name a couple of times coincidences but having multiple extremely difficult/deep/spiritual/whatever-you-want-to-call-it discussions that all end in talking about him then pulling his name out of a hat containing over 200 saints names. There's no doubt in my mind that God is trying to tell me something, the only hard part is figuring out exactly what it is. I can't find any of his books here and all I've really been able to find out about him is what I've found on Wikipedia. If anyone who reads this happens to be an expert on The Dark Night of the Soul, The Ascent of Mt. Carmel or knows anything about St. John of the cross it would be greatly greatly appreciated.


Today was quite an eventful day, to start it off our dear friend from Seattle, Lizzy, left today. She was the one who surprised Michelle, Emily, and I by sitting in our hotel lobby the day we got here without us even knowing that she was in India. We all grew very close to Lizzy while she was here and it was very hard to choke back the tears as we were walking back to our hotel from motherhouse this morning after mass. She is an incredible girl with a heart made of pure gold and with enough laughter to drown a clown. She is simple, easy, lucky, free, and beautiful and I am so so so thankful that I got to spend so much time with her the past two months.
After the tears I went and met with Adrianna to go take photos for a different organization called Calcutta Rescue. This is another amazing opportunity that I think only Kolkata could possibly offer. Calcutta Rescue is a non-profit NGO that was started more than 20 years ago by a doctor, Dr. Jack, traveling through Kolkata. While he was here he started giving free treatments to people living in the slums and on the streets out of the back of an old jeep, he loved it so much that he decided to keep doing it permanently, and now it has grown to have about five medical clinics, a certified fair-trade handicraft workshop, a leprosy clinic, and two schools. A few weeks ago I met Charlotte, the administrator for CR and asked if they needed any photography work done and that I would be here for another month or so and her response was, "Of course! We always need photographers!"
Exciting to say the least.
So Adrianna, the education director of CR, and I headed to School 1 to take photos of their children participating in a drawing/painting contest that is going to be displayed in galleries in England, New York, Switzerland, and even in many European Hard Rock Cafes. We got to the school and for the most part it was all smooth sailing. Very strange for Kolkata. We took photos of about 75 children with their artwork and I took some photos of the classrooms so they can update their website and then we went to the boarding schools where they sponsor tuition for another 40 or so children and did similar.
After we wrapped up at the schools we went to go "take snaps" (as Adrianna likes to say) of the students homes in three different slums. Each of them were just as awful of living conditions as the last. The first row of slums that we went to were alongside the river where extremely steep cement slopes caught me off balance on a number of times and almost sent me and my camera gear tumbling into the Hooghly. There is literally nothing to stop you from falling in the water if you misplace a step walking out of your front door, say you step eight inches instead of the six inches that make up the flat cement walkway you would soon be taking a bath in the muck and myre at the bottom of the thirty foot embankment. The students homes along the embankment can't really be referred to as houses. Homes? Yes. Houses? No. When we arrived it we saw a line of black tarps, clear sheets of plastic, and old vinyl signs seemingly hanging with no support about a mile long. No bricks. No wood. No cement. Thick bamboo poles, ropes, and twine were the only thing holding the plastic tents up and together. People were everywhere and we couldn't make out where one structure ended and the next began. Small holes served as doors and cardboard or rice straw served as carpet over bare ground, although some were lucky enough to have cement poured half-hazardly on the floor of their shack, none of which were larger than 7 feet long or wide. We talked to the parents, siblings, aunts, and uncles of the students who welcomed us into their homes which were shared by the entire family with open arms. I was lucky enough for them to let me take pictures with them and their patience and excitement was almost as overwhelming as the sight of eight people crammed under a four foot tall tarp.
The second slum we visited was near by, where the railway into Kolkata runs alongside the river separated by a road and a row of shops selling everything from snacks to flowers to Hindu prayer beads. We made our way through a small pathway between two shops and found ourselves in a different world. Along both sides of the railway track were the familiar structures found in the last slum. A mix of tarps and vinyl signs suspended by bamboo poles and tied together with small bits of string and rope. Some families had split bamboo roofs or bits of wood planks for walls and even more some had small brick "fences", about two or three high to keep out the water during monsoon season. Another warm welcome and exchange of smiles, bows, and the Hindu tradition of respect of touching ones feet then your own head and I felt like I was at home the people of the slum laughed and joked with us while our translators helped us from feeling like we were invading too much personal space, although to be honest I still can't help but feel more than a little invasive about the whole ordeal even though we were assured we weren't. The homes at the second slum bordered the railroad tracks by about three feet on either side. And I thought out-loud, "Surely trains don't still run on these tracks do they?"
"Of course they do! Why wouldn't they?"
It wasn't really the response I was expecting, in fact my question had been quite hypothetical before the answer. Children as young as two or three were walking, running, playing, shouting, and dancing on the tracks and men were pushing old rusty bicycles right down the center of the track to avoid running over a neighbors rope holding their roof in place.
Then the unimaginable happened. First a low rumble, then the ground shook, everyone, even the children, calmly stepped off the tracks and between huts to let the passing steed of steel and grinding gears pass. As it did it blew the tarps and rope with hurricane strength gusts which I could have sworn would have ripped the roofs right off the old huts. But they held up and as the train went past people went back to doing what they had been as if nothing happened. Girls strung flowers together in garlands and boys threw rocks down the track. Men tended to the stove or mixed cement with straw to patch a part of their fence while women carried water or hemmed the ends of their sari's. We chatted a little longer with the women of the tracks then made our way to the days last destination.
The third and final slum that we went to was near the Howrah Bridge and just down the road from the world famous Kolkata flower market, which Emily and I visited in the beginning of October. We walked past this vast stretch of tarps and twine and I had absolutely no idea it could serve as a home, let alone to so many people. These structures again were similar to the last ones with the exception that they were built along a tall cement wall on a sidewalk and spilled out into the tiny street, which for Kolkata had a surprisingly small amount of traffic. Goods carriages, three-wheeled delivery vans, rickshaws, and bicycle carts packed the side of the road and the spaces where you could see in between vehicles men and women stood or sat and mingled while naked children, wearing nothing but a chord and stone around their tiny waist, clung tightly to the edge of their longhi or sari. Another warm welcome and we walked from home to home and where we were greeted similarly with handshakes, hugs, smiles, and "Namaste"s. Two women invited me into their home to have a look and as I ducked through the door and turned to the right I couldn't see anything but their beaming eyes so proud of their home, not only because I couldn't take my eyes off of them but because the three of us took up the entire room. I couldn't see around them to make out what the back wall looked like but I knew the second woman had her back to it the same way I had mine against the wall facing hers, both of our shoulders touched the two side walls and I had to hunch over in fear of doing irreversible damage to their roof. I looked around and saw two pots, a serving spoon, a calendar, some scrap wood, and a doll with half a head of hair and made the assumption (again just an assumption but I'd say it's pretty accurate) that these were their family's only possessions.
As I walked out a little boy grabbed my hand and led me to an upturned cart with an axle once holding two bicycle wheels that at one point had been attached to the back of a bicycle cart known as a van. He showed me his "room" with pride. He pointed to the bits of scrap paper adorning the walls and my heart couldn't help but break a little more than it's stretching point. He was beautiful with dirty black hair, a light Indian complexion, dark brown eyes, and a smile that wouldn't stop.
Another couple that we met here were the grandparents of one of the students CR sponsors who is living and studying in a boarding school about a forty-minute walk from the slum. Both were very old and very sick but still made it out of their home to greet us and welcome us with pride. The boy was orphaned when he was very young and the grandparents, who are both too old to work (but still manage to make it, God knows how), raise him and love him as their own. They didn't have any pictures of him but I had met him earlier in the day and he was a quiet little ball of joy that was as anxious to have his picture taken as any child would be standing in line at Disneyland.
There's a saying that's been pounding in my head all day, "Let's make this house a home." or something along those lines. In an area where houses are all but non-existent I found the true definition of home, about a thousand of them. It's hard to explain but I feel as though these people have such a richer, truer sense of community and family than I would ever be able to experience anywhere else and I was only with them for a few hours. These people need each other and rely on their neighbors and the other people who no one else will care about to care for each other and that is a beautiful thing. If there is only one, then that is the only beautiful thing.
I would think that seeing these slums would make me miserably depressed, disgusted, sad, angry, or at least give me some sort of negative feeling, but in fact it's done the opposite. I had one of the best days of my entire life because I swear to you I saw Jesus today. I saw God in every one of those people that I met and in the communities that I so briefly visited. I'm not naive enough to think I know or could even imagine how these people live their day to day lives or that I know the true struggles that they go through but I do know from what I saw that it's a completely different level of poverty and suffering than I have ever seen in any magazine or news story but each blow is seemingly met with a smile even as every day must be a struggle to survive (again an assumption, but how could it not be?). I don't know if any of them were "christians" or not, I don't think many of them were being that this is primarily a Hindu city, but I do know that these people know God. The one true God of love and peace, the one that resides in everything in all of creation, from the yellow leaves falling in Autumn on the west coast to the pink clouds that come with the setting sun to the lines in the Indian dirt. I felt him stronger in the handshakes that I received today than I ever have and I know that he lives inside these people.
Again, I'm not trying to tell anyone to think like me, I don't think I have it figured out. Today I was again surprised at how much I changed from the time I woke up to the time I'm writing this. I don't want to offend, convert, upset, or brainwash anyone who reads this. I just want to let you know about the amazing day I had and hopefully get your brain ticking a little bit. About what? I don't even know. Please please please if you read this and want to ask me anything about it or correct me or tell me off do it. I want to learn from whoever is reading this as much as I learned from the people I met today. These are only my thoughts and impressions and I'm not trying to claim any sort of truth. I'm just trying to find it.

I love you.
-Heath