The Worst Place in the World

(I wrote this last week as part of a collaborative "40 Day Fast", organized by 40 different bloggers who are interested in the subject of poverty relief.  It was inspired by this Pulitzer-winning picture at left, of a little girl struggling to make it to a food station in Sudan.  We were asked to highlight an effort to aid the poor that was particularly meaningful to us.  My cause we Compassion International.  Please sponsor a child.  Or ten.

We'll be talking a lot about Compassion's work in the days ahead on WAY-FM.  Sorry about the length.  I'd never written about this particular day before, so it's actually a good exercise for me.)

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At that moment, it seemed like the thing to ask.

"Dan, is this the worst place in the world?"

Without hesitation.

"Oh, yeah."

And Dan was the guy to ask.  He had all the cred.  He'd lived on most continents -- not just visited -- was a Fuller missiologist PhD guy, and was the head of Compassion International's operations in Asia.  He'd seen a lot in his 50+ years.

We just stood there together, taking it in. 

It's not the typical look of poverty.  The streets were narrow canyons, with tallish, ornate buildings that you just knew were once beautiful, now darkened by soot and filth, like an eerie French Quarter, the Day After.

And to an American, there simply wasn't enough room in the streets for everyone:  In the stultifying heat, there were marchers walking past, holding drawings of their goddess -- the goddess of destruction -- preparing for blood sacrifices.  Naked children and their mothers, sitting on the broken pavement, near piles of animal feces.  Disfigured begging children.  People lying in the streets, unable to move.  Emaciated cows and goats.  All with the soundtrack of loud chanting to the goddess.

Dan and I had just emerged from a temple, here in the center of the city named for the goddess "who devours time."  In the walls of the temple, in the midst of nightmarish poverty within and without, they were offering blood sacrifices to the dark goddess.

We just stood and watched.  And then, a loud crackle and boom.  It grew darker, and started raining.  Thatfast.  A lightning and thunderstorm.  We were getting drenched.  The chanting continued, and the water -- remarkably -- instantly was ankle high in the streets and climbing.  I couldn't believe it:  This place had just gotten worse.  Get me out of here.

"Dan, is this the worst place in the world?"

"Oh, yeah."

There are, apparently, no rainouts for the goddess Kali.  She gets worshiped, rain or shine.  After all, she was vengeful, and they named the place after her:  Kalikata, now "Calcutta" to westerners.

We had to get inside, somewhere.  Dan ran to see if he could get the van.  I ran to a door next to the temple, on the other side of the wall from the temple, knocked loudly, and marveled at the downpour.  The water was knee high.   What happened to the people lying in the street now...?  Someone opened the door.  A nun.

"We can't let you in right now," she said.  "It's after-hours."  Then, she took in just how hard it was raining.  I didn't have to say anything.  "Wait a second..."

The door popped open.  I followed her into a room, where she told me I could sit down, on the end of an occupied bed.  There were rows of beds, all taken, with motionless, skeletal human beings lying on each one.  There were a few nuns, moving about, and a few quiet volunteer-types, taking sticky food from pans, manually opening the mouths of the starving, and feeding them with their hands. 

I took note of a plaque, with a quote from the woman who used to run this little place -- this place the other side of a thin wall from the temple to the dark goddess -- named Teresa.  These people lying on the cots, unmoving, emaciated?  They were Jesus to her.

The nuns and volunteers finished, and filed out.  And turned off the lights.  And left me there.  Lightning and thunder in the windows, illuminating a room of the sick and dying.  I just...sat.  And, of course, I cried.

In Calcutta, a very thin wall separates darkness from mercy.

The next day, blocks away, I walked in another room with rows -- rows of beautiful, smiling mothers.  It was beyond beautiful, with golden light reaching through the windows.  And children, wearing polos of different bright colors, laughing and playing with the kazoos I'd brought from the U.S.  Then, a performance for their guests:  They danced to an American worship song, "The Power of Your Love."

At this Compassion International project, I talked with children who were now young adults.  Engineers, accountants, computer programmers, out of poverty, because they had sponsors.   I watched the children perform a bit of Shakespeare, and while I watched, I held a little girl who'd been burned over her entire body when her mosquito net caught fire.   She was waiting for a sponsor.   I talked with counselors about a little ten-year-old orphan girl, who lived in the school building when everyone else went home.  She had a sponsor.

The wall is very, very thin.  The wall divides a bloody temple from Mother Teresa's home for the sick and dying, and it's a very thin wall.  For the children I've met in central America, Africa, Asia -- the wall between hope and hopelessness, between smiling young engineer and disfigured beggar, is a very thin wall.

And, borrowing from Solzhenitsyn,  that wall runs through me, and my checkbook, separating life and death, mercy and darkness. 

And it's very, very thin.

Comments

[Lynda]

Brant,

WOW! As a mom I can't even imagine holding my child in the midst of that. I've read a fair amount of Mother Theresa's writing and you really illuminated the conditions she worked in and what the other nuns still face. It really puts my teeny, miniscule problems in perspective.

What a timely blog, especially when another princess' death is being remembered. Thank you.