The Gift of Peace

"...The fruit of service is peace."
- Mother Teresa

I live in a world with out peace. My fellow Canadians are dying in Afghanistan. Women around the world are being abused, kidnapped, sold and murdered. The streets of my city are filled with the homeless, the hungry, the violent, the mentally ill, the outcast, and the down trodden. My mind is constantly processing where my next job will be, where I can live, what to write next, how to maintain relationships, what are my priorities, where is God. When I cannot sleep, when I cannot pray, it is because I don't have peace.

Peace is "freedom of the mind from annoyance, distraction, anxiety, an obsession, etc.; tranquility; serenity." (Dictionary.com)

Who does not desire peace?

At first, serving the women of Shanti Dan created more turmoil in my life than I had before. Everything from the fear of hurting a patient, to the early rising to go to the home created an uncomfortable state of being. Slowly, I have established a routine at Shanti Dan. In the mornings I take a woman for a walk. We stroll down the road within the facility's walls. Sometimes I sing and we often stop to watch the geese either waddle around or swim in the pond. The sun is usually shinning, and luscious fruit trees flower along the roadside. When we reach the gate, the woman I walk, Shanti, presses her face to the crack where the hinge meets the perimeter walls to watch the outside world glide by. Then we walk back. Often Shanti holds my hand.

It was on one of these walks that I was thinking about peace. With the sun, and the geese and Shanti I realized that I was content and that I had stilled my soul. I was at peace. I can't say exactly how it happened. I can't pinpoint when serving the women turned from chore to privilege, but it did.

In Bengali Shanti means "peace" and Dan means "gift of". It wasn't until a few days after I learned this that I realized every morning I walk with Shanti, is a morning I walk with peace.

Love and Service

"...The fruit of love is service..."
-Mother Teresa

I have been trying to figure out if love really does come before service. Even before stepping foot into Shanti Dan the idea of mentally handicapped women frightened me. I thought I wouldn't be able to understand them. They would ramble and scream. Do they bite? How do I interact with them? They would drool and wet themselves. All this frightened me. What if I hurt them? What if they hurt me?

From the beginning, when I was going to serve, I was frightened. Can you love something you are afraid of?

When I finally came face to face with these women it was not the scene from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" that I expected.

And now I love them.

So does service come before love?

I think of James, my boyfriend, my best friend, my love. It brings so much joy to my life to cook him dinner, to rub his feet, to make him smile. I serve him because I love him, I do not love him because I serve him. So perhaps love does come before service.

And if that does hold true, then I must have loved these women I had never met before. I must have loved them in some form to over come my fear of them. Or maybe it was my love of someone else that brought me to serve the women who frightened me.

It was late March when I felt God call me to India. Yes I love to travel, but this was different. I am not a natural server. My personality is inclined towards selfishness and self-centeredness, a truth that has taken me years to face and admit. I was not sure I wanted to serve, but God asked me to go.

I think it is my love of God that produced the fruit of service in my life.

And the fruit of service is peace. This I will write about soon.

Being Christine

I returned to Shanti Dan today. I have been looking forward to this morning for a while. The bus ride, the walk down the rural road, the pathway beyond the gate, all stretched farther than I can remember them doing before. My feet carried me anxiously.

Why do I love these women so much?

The first moments I spent back in the ward caused confusion and glee. These women are used to seeing volunteers such as myself come and go. It happens so suddenly and so often that what we may consider a constant interruption of structure and security is common place for these women. A framilliar face returning is uncommon.

The welcome set my heart on fire. I couldn't smile big enough for these ladies. Kisses and hugs and feet touching all around. My cantankerous Shanti smiled in surprise at me, then quickly regained her furrowed brow and permanent frown.

Of course, some are unaware of these types of goings on in the world. I doubt they ever really saw me last time through their veil of mental illness. It warmed my heart never the less. Though their eyes portray a blankness, they still shine of humanness.

I was happy to see Sister Mary Angela again, the sister in charge of the ward where I volunteer. She was glad to see me, but had a confession.

"I have forgotten your name," she said in her thick Mandarin accent.

It is difficult for non-English speakers to reproduce the "che" sound that is so verbally prominent in my native language. This makes my name a difficult one for my foreign friends to pronounce, let alone remember.

"Rachel," I smiled.

"Raykel."

"Ra-chel."

"Ra. Ra. Ra-gel. It is so hard no?"

Before I really even thought about it I offered my middle name. "You can call me Christine."

Sister Marie Angela smiled. "Christine." She added a nod of approval.

The day continued as any other at Shanti Dan. I began combing lice out of peoples hair. While humming and catching those small gray bugs in the teeth of a wooden comb, I let my mind wander. Why did it feel so good to be back? Why was I so happy to comb lice out of this old woman's hair? Later I will clip their toenails, rotting, ingrown, and black from fungus. Why am I looking forward to this?

It was then that my mother, my middle name's sake, stepped into the path of my wandering mind.

E-mail
May 24th/2007
From: Christine Hahn
To: Rachel Hahn

"Had a really good visit with Nanny yesterday. I went down to do her nails. She had just had her hair done and then I did her nails, so she felt pretty special. She even joked with me and asked if I did toes too. She seemed genuinely happy."

My mother visits her mother, my nanny, several times a week in a nursing home. It is a 45 min drive both ways on the congested QEW. Often my mother brings offerings of her love and devotion: a dress she had dry cleaned for her, a new cotton night gown for the warmer summer evenings, fruit jellies that are Nanny's favourite, news of the family, fresh fruit from the local farms, and a manicure kit to do her nails. Nanny, with her advancing Alzheimer’s, has become less and less responsive over the past year. Her communication is often limited to one word replies. To see my mother with her you would not know that anything has changed for decades. I have always admired that strength in my mother.

I pulled one rather large lice from a gray strand of hair and squished it between my gloved finger tips. I realized what had happened. I had given my mother's name as my own, and I had learned why she is so happy to paint Nanny's nails.

"Christine!"

I looked up from the infested scalp to see Sister Mary Angela waving for my attention from across the ward.

"Come cut nails!"

The Himalayans

I have been in the mountain town of Darjeeling for 5 days now. The team and I arrived here early on the 22nd. It was raining heavily as jeeps took us up the winding roads for 2 hours. Slowly we climbed through the clouds until we reached our destination, this land of mists and mountains.

Two nights ago was the last evening the team spent together. We sang songs of worship huddled together in an opulent and cozy meeting room furnished with thick carpets and plush chairs. As the fire crackled in the stone hearth I asked God to be pleased with our words of love and adoration.

That night, as we prepared to sleep, a magnificent storm rolled in. Sitting on the back veranda of our hotel one could see the speckles of lights in the valley far below, the dusting of stars in the black sky above, and the clustering of storm clouds directly beyond in the distance. Within the storm clouds lightning danced unaccompanied by thunder. Bolts and flashes flared for more than an hour. A silent symphony of light.

I heard these words in my heart - "I am pleased."

A business card

Someone once offered to make Mother Teresa business cards. She had this printed on them:

The fruit of silence is prayer
The fruit of prayer is faith
The fruit of faith is love
The fruit of love is service
The fruit of service is peace

I'm trying to understand these words. I've gotten as far as the fruit of silence. In this city of blaring horns, angry dogs, calls to prayer, crying children, the chant of beggars, the beckon of merchants, the songs of mass, the chugging of generators, and the caw of ravens, silence is a luxury.

Today we had breakfast at an upscale hotel where a cold buffet costs more than many Indians make in a month. To get there you stroll down a busy main street on a broken cobbled sidewalk. To your left and right are slumbering locals. The fortunate lie atop wooden slates, the less fortunate have only the uneven cobble stones for a mattress and their forearms' for a pillow. Step over them and turn right as soon as you see an arch way. Within the next few step the oppressive heat and noise of Kolkata disappears and you are in a world of crystal chandeliers, marble floors and trained servants. Escapism at it's finest.

It seems that only the wealthy can afford to pray in India.

Today I volunteered at Prem Dan, a home for long term patients whose journey will more that likely end in death. There is a chalkboard on the wall that keeps a monthly tally of the number of patients who were admitted, who were discharged, and who died.

April
Admit - 0
Dischar - 2
Dead - 4

I fed an old frail woman who was tied to the bed with medical gauze. She kept pulling off her dressings. She doesn't have the strength to sit up, so I propped her tiny body with myself from behind while I reached around to her mouth. I asked another volunteer, a paramedic by trade, what was wrong with this woman. She's just old, and weak and loosing her mind. She will die soon from pressure ulsers. She's dying from bed sores.

I tried to pray for her, but the sound of her choking on her food and the clanging of other patients' metal plates drowned out my plea to God.

My days usually begin like this:

I wake just before 5 am. I set my watch alarm for 5 but my body doesn’t trust alarms that early in the morning, so I tend to wake myself with 15 or 20 minutes to spare before the digital chimes. I go across the hall in my hostel and knock on the door. A boy, usually Rob, answers, usually in his boxers, and I tell him it’s time to get up.

At 5:30 I head out. Other travelers and I walk down a non descript street lined with vendors, rickshaws, and water pumps that, at this time in the morning, are crowded around by nearly naked lathered men washing their bodies for the day.

At 6 we arrive at Mother House. Here the Sisters of Charity have daily mass. Any volunteer is welcome, but a sign strictly prohibits non-Catholics from partaking in communion.

At 7 the volunteers gather in a back room. Here we each get a small banana, a thick slice of white bread, and a cup of hot chai. The chai in India is not spicy and fragrant like our North American version. It tastes like the tea I used to have as a child at my English Grandmother’s home. I didn’t like tea then, but it was essential to drink it when visiting, so I loaded it with milk and sugar until it was unrecognizable a tea. I don’t drink much of it at the volunteers’ breakfast. I prefer to dip my bread into it.

After cleaning up, reciting a prayer and singing a song, we disperse, to walk, catch buses and hop in auto-rickshaws. There are many houses founded by the Sisters in Kolkata. I catch the 202. It costs 5 rupees, 14 Canadian cents, and takes 20 minutes. The bus ride is followed by a 15 minute walk. By this time in the morning the sun has become harsh and threatening in the sky.

Finally, I reach Shanti Dan.

This is the home for mentally disabled and abused women. Unlike other homes, I don’t have many menial chores to perform. Many of the women here are very self sufficient and do their own washing, bathing, and eating. They suffer most not from their mental and physical afflictions but from boredom.

A few of the over weight patients were delegated to me by the Sister. I walk them because if they don’t loose weight they will die. That’s what the Sister said, more or less, in her broken English.

Everyone has lice. It seems inevitable that I will soon too despite my effort of keeping my hair tied up and covered with a scarf. I’ve seen cases so bad that it looked as if the woman was wearing a soft white crown around her head.

Sometimes we dance, often I sing though I can’t carry a tune. There’s a skeleton of a woman who has bulging eyes and implores me to sit next to her as she sobs in Hindi, or Bengali, I’m not sure which. She knows I can’t understand.

The women like to be massaged, and a few require physical therapy exercises. I often kiss them on the face.

Everyday, when I arrive, and before I leave, they bow to my feet and place there heads on my toes. I remember the first day, as soon as I walked in the door, and they were crowding around just to touch my feet with there faces. I couldn’t believe what I was experiencing, and I was immobile with shock. I came to be like Jesus to these women, and they are like Jesus to me. They are like the weeping woman who washed His feet with her tears and her hair.

Home for 11 days

I spent the past week in transit.

We visited Agra and saw the Taj Mahal, an amazing testament to undying love, or perhaps an amazing testament to egotistical architecture and oppression of the masses. I read the Taj described as "poetry in white marble." When Agra was the capitol of India, hundreds of years ago, and King Jahan ruled, he (the masses he ruled) built the tomb over a 27 year period. It holds the body of his favourite wife. The structure is shrouded in grief, white being the traditional Indian colour of mourning. His wish was to have an exact replica made across the river in black stone. This would be his tomb. Unfortunately for Jahan, his son believed his father's wish outlandish and a detrimental strain on the people and the economy. He imprisoned Jahan until his death upon which he was entombed next to his favourite wife in the Taj. The single unsymmetrical feature of the building is Jahan's sarcophagus set off to the left of his wife's.

Next was Varanasi, the holiest city in India. Here is where Hindu's desire to die. They believe dying in Varanasi releases them from the cycle of reincarnation. To die in Varanasi means to have your remains be a part of the sacred Ganges, the river that runs through the city.

If you'd like to hear more about my trip so far, tune into CIUT's morning show Take 5 on 89.5 fm Monday May 14th. I am corresponding with the show during my trip and the first instalment will be then.

Now, in Kolkatta, I'm settling into my home for a while.