"Hearing They Hear Not:" A Belated Christmas MessageUpdate It has been some time since I have written. Since then, I've completed my November travels, celebrated Christmas and New Years away from home for the first time, and continued to work on developing a new health program in my organization's outreach. I have a backlog of experiences to write about during my November travels from a camel festival, trip to an amazing medical/development nongovernmental organization (NGO) in southern India, and Nepal trip to renew my Indian visa. I'll try to get going on that, though I have notes about it. Some highlights include me conversing with female sex workers participating in an HIV/AIDS prevention program, falling off a camel (after it fell first), waking up to an earthquake in Delhi, attending a Tibetan cremation ceremony at a monastery, and having lunch prepared in the middle of a rice field with my taxi driver and his family. I threw a Christmas party at a friend's house; it was well attended by my NGO colleagues and friends. I even rented a plastic Christmas tree. When I told them we use real trees in America, the first questions were "What do you do about the roots?" and then "What do you do with the tree after Christmas?" I was fortunate to be invited to a Christmas party by a family who saw me attend church a few months earlier. I even spent Christmas afternoon lunch with their extended family, although I was sick from eating food at a cultural fair a couple days earlier. I even sang carols on Christmas with a group of singers at church; my picture made it into the local newspaper. I spent New Year's with my host family at the local "Field Club" in a high class setting with good food. After completing a lengthy report on my NGO visit in southern India, I have continued to develop a health initiative which has morphed into a program that encompasses men's primary and sexual health, men's involvement in women's and children's health, and HIV prevention. I have concluded my niche is thus a health programmer/coordinator. The idea is to use a primary health service for men as a foundation for male involvement in the health of their families. ARTH, the NGO I work with, has successfully implemented reproductive and child health programs with clinics and outreach for the past ten years. But these programs have primarily addressed women and children. Yet men need to be engaged for many reasons: there is a need to address primary health of men in the area; the well being of their families as a whole; their own self interest; they are the financial and health decision makers; in a patriarchal society, their decisions directly affect the health of their families; their understanding of women's and children's health issues increases the likelihood health care will be sought; etc. Some concrete examples include encouraging husbands to facilitate antenatal checkups for their pregnant wives, making sure their wives deliver in a health center, allowing their wives to take a lighter work load during pregnancy, and challenge the conception domestic violence is an entitlement of a man. Migration, particularly male migration, contributes to HIV infection in rural Rajasthan when people migrate to large cities like Surat, Ahemdabad, and Mumbai and return home to infect their families after engaging in risky behavior like commercial sex or IV drug use. HIV prevention in ARTH's context encompasses treatment for sexually transmitted infections (some of which can increase the chance of HIV transmission), condom programming and provision, and clinical and community outreach for advocacy, education, counseling, testing, and treatment referral. All this sounds fine and dandy you might think, but a competent health program needs to be researched according to international standards and public health fitted to the local context. It requires writing a concept note for peer review and then a grant proposal for funders to provide the needed finances. It requires planning and staffing for doctors, health workers, lab technicians; acquiring materials like HIV test kits, condoms, phallus models, information, education, and communication supplies. Linkages for treatment or HIV testing which cannot be done at the clinics need to be established. Self assessment on what programs are actually feasible for the organization needs to occur. What is our current capacity for a new service? How will including more men at the clinics affect the setting? What needs to be accommodated physically and socially? Should we refer patients for HIV testing or do it in the clinic? What training needs to be done for staff? Who will do the training? And many more questions like these. So this is what I've been engaging. Recently I have been visiting government health centers within Udaipur District to assess and learn about the HIV voluntary counseling and testing (VCTC) that occurs at some. I wrote and presented a concept note on all this on January 5 which was very well received. I'm in the process of a second draft before it is sent out for peer review. The ultimate goal is to then have it sent to funders who accept and fund the proposal, so when I leave this new health program will be in a preliminary phase of becoming a reality. We'll see what happens. I have left out a lot of detail here; but I feel all the "learning and discerning" I have been doing here, is now in the "acting" phase. But it is all still potential – kind of like the life of a young man. To say "I" am doing all this would be somewhat of an overstatement. When I asked a physician in Karnataka on my November trip what America has to learn from India, one of things he mentioned was India's emphasis on "we" rather than "me." I am lucky to be in a reputable organization with competent people who facilitate me being a facilitator – and I use that seemingly redundant phrase deliberately. Not all nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are competent and have the level of expertise ARTH does. Not all volunteer interns have supervisors like mine who consider me a colleague, guide me in planning, and will carry forward my culminated work. I consider myself lucky, a catalyst and facilitator. Essay The following is a continuation of a theme which has been discussed in my previous emails – the dichotomy of the rich and poor. Perhaps this is just a salient issue in my mind. This essay has overt religious overtones sparked from an experience I had on Christmas Eve. Sometimes I feel such essays can be a bit melodramatic or may take time away from portraying a more complete view of my experience. There are many things I could write about but have not sent out in emails. Hopefully I'll catch up on those. In any case here it is: "Hearing they hear not": A Belated Christmas Message When I told Dr. Sharad I was invited to sing Christmas carols in one of the world's most luxurious hotels, he joked it would add to my "palaces and poverty" theme in experiencing India. He was right. Invited to a Christmas party a few nights earlier, I attended church with the hosts on the following Sunday and practiced Christmas carols with a group of singers. I learned they planned to perform on Christmas Eve at The Oberoi Udaivilas Hotel, voted the best hotel in the world earlier this year. Udaipur, a tourist city, is known for its hotels such as Udaivilas and the Lake Palace Hotel featured in the James Bond movie Octopussy. Figuring it would be a memorable experience and a great way to spend Christmas Eve in a festive spirit, I decided to participate. I arrived at St. Paul's Catholic Church to practice carols and meet Father R.H. Lesser. Our group of singers hailed from the protestant Shepard's Memorial Church, which is part of the Church of North India – a coalition of Protestant denominations in north India. Father Lesser welcomed my friend and I into his office as we arrived first. Eighty years old, hunched over, and hard of hearing, Father Lesser first came to Udaipur in 1955. For the program, he planned to intersperse a Christmas message between the familiar holiday songs. This man, who had preached and practiced in the huts of the rural poor, was tonight readying to spread the gospel in the halls of the rich. He recited the Christmas message planned for the evening and eagerly showed us the collection of books he authored over the years. I borrowed one entitled, "Why I Am Here: A Missionary Speaks," which documents his childhood in India, service to tribals in rural Rajasthan, service to God, thoughts on conversion, interfaith dialogue, his love of India and its people and insight into the role/rationale of missionary work in an increasingly hostile environment for such activity. He assured me to not start reading his novella on a plane crash involving a Parsi pilot, a congressman, a burly American journalist, a bitterly anti-Christian Hindu nationalist, a beautiful Muslim film star, and a few missionaries because I would not be able to put it down. Though worldly and well-read, Father Lesser seemed a bit senile and particular during rehearsal, and I could tell I was not the only one who noticed his fly was open. Who dare tell a priest to zipper his pants? As we travelled to Udaivilas on the hotel transport bus, my peers and I sang to get into the Christmas spirit. I also experienced again the inner wrestling of associating myself with high-brow society amidst my ideals and the plight of others I see everyday. Why was I going to sing Christmas carols for a bunch of rich people? The evening provided some answers to this question. For anyone else, and almost certainly for an independent observer, what happened was completely unremarkable. We simply sang carols in a hotel lobby. But for me, it presented a metaphor for the relevance of The Word in both palaces and poverty. A yellow chandelier hung above a marble fountain at the center of the lobby. We readied ourselves in front of a ten foot, artificial but beautifully decorated Christmas tree. Including Father Lesser, we numbered twelve in all – an auspicious number for Christians communally going out into the world. Father Lesser looked more like Father Christmas in his white robe and white-bearded chin as he sat in front of the tree. Yet there was a delay. A microphone and amplifier for the keyboard could not be accommodated. They were being used for a singing and dancing performance down the hall. The exposition of truth, carried by the voice of an eighty year-old priest with over 50 years of service as a missionary, was secondary to the consumption of entertainment – an unfortunate characteristic of modernity. Irked but not dissuaded, Father Lesser stood with the assistance of a singer to exclaim his Christmas message introduction. His fading voice reached only some in the vacuous halls. He asserted the celebration of Christmas has been reduced to a mere "social feast" resulting in Christ being taken out of Christmas. He also noted that Christ did not only come for Christians; there were no Christians in Jesus' time. Jesus came for all peoples. After a short prayer, the chorale opened with "O' Come All Ye Faithful." By this time, a few families and couples had gathered around. Father Lesser stood again to give a prelude to "Joy to the World." He observed that some people do not like invoking Jesus at Christmas because it presumably turns a festive occasion too solemn. To the contrary, Father Lesser insisted Christ is the source of joy. This pattern of introducing songs continued. Before "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night," Father Lesser observed the first to receive the news of Christ's birth were poor shepherds. He also noted Jesus seemed to have an affinity for the poor and marginalized during his life. Yet Father Lesser then importantly recognized that Jesus did not only come for the poor as some schools of thought suggest. Before we sang "We Three Kings of Orient Are," he noted three travelling, rich kings followed the Star over Bethlehem to pay tribute to the newborn Christ. Reflecting on these points while living in India makes them even more poignant. I can picture the rural farmers shepherding goats, cows, and sheep outside of Udaipur receiving the good news. I have seen the black sky and brilliant stars amidst open fields of rural Karnataka in southern India. The Star on the first Christmas must have shone great light amidst a landscape of darkness. I can visualize Rajasthan's famous Maharajas, the proud, traditional, feudal kings of the area, following the Star in a great entourage of camels or elephants bearing spices, colors, incense, and gold to place before Jesus and worship him. Even more amazing to think about is where and to whom Jesus was born. Christ was not born in a palace but in a manger wrapped in swaddling cloths amidst cows, donkeys, goats and thus dung and flies. I have seen newborns wrapped in swaddling clothes literally within feet of smelly dung and goats inside huts. To think of the Son of God born into that setting is a powerful revelation on what matters to our Creator. To picture mother Mary giving birth in a carpenter's shop or on a dirt floor to the Savior of humanity at a time when half a million mothers in similar conditions still die of maternal complications every year is another profound thought. Every year in India, 2.1 million children die before the age of five; half of these are in the first 28 days of life, making India number one in the world for newborn deaths. The birth of Jesus Christ in this context should provide a new perspective and priority for maternal and child health. Recognizing a person does not have a choice in where he is born should also challenge the sense of full entitlement many people born outside of poverty feel they hold about their relatively comfortable lives. I am simply blessed to have been born into an educated, relatively affluent, stable family in America rather than an illiterate, poor, unstable family in rural India. I have one additional and inherently contentious thought. Like the babies I have seen here, Jesus was most likely born of brown skin color. If a person is born in Europe, he will probably be white. If in Africa, he will be probably be black. And if in the Middle East or South Asia, like Jesus, he will probably be brown. Now, of course, race matters nothing to God and ideally should matter nothing to people. But picturing God the incarnate as a brown man could have the following positive effect for both Christians and non-Christians. For Christians, particularly Western Christians, it could reinforce the fact we are world citizens – bound together for some as followers of Christ. For non-Christians, particularly among non-Westerners, it could be a way to see Christianity as not part of the globalizing, Western juggernaut. To the surprise of many and the consternation of a few, Christianity was historically in India, before it was in Rome. And as Father Lesser noted in his Christmas message, Christ came for all peoples. I am acutely aware of my race and skin color in India. But singing Christmas carols in India with Indians to an overwhelmingly affluent and white audience provided another perspective. While singing, I began to observe the characteristics and demeanor of the listeners and passers-by. Well-dressed and well-groomed, most were waiting or heading towards their planned Christmas Eve activities. Some remained disinterested and perhaps relegated us to the status of elevator music. Others sang along to familiar tunes and brightened when "Jingle Bells" came along. Those sitting on the ledge of the marble fountain in the front row wanted to move on to their dinner or event but felt obligated to stay out of courtesy; plus they made up most of the listeners. Two teenage siblings palpably exhibited the most popular mood and expression of my generation – "this is boring." An aristocratic and attractive woman wearing a high-skirt looked disillusioned in the back of the lobby while slouching on a chair. She may have had thought the invocation of God, compounded by the fact it came from a priest, was something to begrudgingly tolerate rather than accept. Others thought Father Lesser to be a cute old man worthy of their attention. Those arriving into the lobby seemed too busy or in a hurry to hear the music, or The Way for that matter, and quickly moved on to their rooms, dinners or performances. Watching this whole scene was like looking at myself in a mirror. Nothing can be more real, and sometimes startling, than literal and figurative self-reflection. At some point in my life, I exhibited every one of the traits and demeanors of the listeners and passersby in the lobby. When Jesus says, "It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God," He does not mean the mere fact a person has wealth adds to the wrong side of some check list held by St. Peter at the gates of heaven. I believe He rather means when a person has so many riches, he forgets he is fully dependent on God. When people always have access to food, water, clothing, a house, and education, often in urban concrete jungles, it promotes the illusion that humans are independent, self-created beings[i]. We forget Jesus' kingdom is not of this world. Our pride limits us from admitting our own humanity as subordinate to the Divine. We forget we are the created and not the Creator. This is the first step towards disobedience against God illustrated and indoctrinated as The Fall of humankind. But we take it a step further in modernity and post-modernity. We strive to be greater than God as our own creators with our riches and prideful, extreme individualism as our tools and creed. So when we hear The Word, when we hear The Way, whether it is at church, reading on our own, or in a hotel lobby on Christmas Eve, we are not prepared to hear it[ii]. Nowhere in the Bible is this better illustrated than in the parable of The Sower. While learning to read, one of my first books was about the parable of the Sower. At that reading level, simple sentences often accompany colorful pictures. This story-book was no exception. I remember a picture of Jesus throwing seeds as he walked along a path. The seed, of course, represents the Word of God spread by the Son of God. Other pictures showed kidney-shaped seeds with faces fighting off thorns, baking in the hot sun, or being unable to take root on a stony place. The Word does not often fall on fertile ground. Although Mark 4: 1-20 and Luke 8: 5-15 tell the parable, Matthew 13:1-24 presents and explains it the best. After attempting to paraphrase, I believe reciting Matthew's account from the King James Version of the Bible in full is appropriate. 1 The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side. 2 And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. 3 And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; 4 And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: 5 Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: 6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. 7 And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: 8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. 9 Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. 10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? 11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. 12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. 13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. 14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: 15 For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. 16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. 17 For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them. 18 Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower. 19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side. 20 But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; 21 Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. 22 He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. 23 But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 24
Anyone who receives the seed/Word can experience one or multiple outcomes as described in the parable. The metaphor the latter part of this essay focuses on is the thorns. People hear the Word but because of "the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches" it becomes choked. And thus, hearing they hear not. The relevance of the Word in palaces as well as poverty could not be clearer. All is not lost though. My story-book ended with a picture of a bright orange and yellow sun and prosperous, green saplings after a few seeds landed on fertile ground.
[i] This may be why the practice of fasting is so important. Some of us have never really felt hunger before. When we fast, it becomes clearer we are dependent creatures. It also enables us to empathize with those who really do not have food. The Jewish tradition places greater emphasis on fasting as a spiritual practice; it is a discipline Christians should learn and adopt.
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