Micah Morphosis

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excerpts from India

October 06, 2006

I’m going to start off with a journal entry from my touchdown in Pune, India in April of 2006. I spent a month in India with YWAM during a DTS i was doing in Spain. I feel to share some of my initial reactions and maybe in the future, some closing thoughts, just so you can get a sense of where I’m coming from and where my heart is.

April 19th, 2006- Pune, India
Arrived today in India. It was hard to know what to expect. When i first got off the nicely air-conditioned plane, it hit me. The humidity is like that humid July night that happens once in a blue moon back in Nova Scotia. Only it’s April. There’s just so many people. You can’t drive 10 minutes without seeing a huge coloy of shacks made of scrap metal, tarps, straw, whatever’s available. It’s so primitive. People parked beside a busy street under a hung sheet, raising families, cooking food…I’ve never seen anything like this. Seeing all the children with their ratty hair and pleading eyes was harder than i thought. You see it on TV and the movies but it seems surreal, like it’s depicting “a long time ago in a land far away”. But here I am in the midst of it all. I feel so white. Everywhere we drove we turned people’s heads. They’re not used to foreigners and i see why. No road signs, no lines on the road…but good on them. They’re not homogenizing like the rest of us. They’re feeling the heat too i suppose (no pun intended) “learn english, get an education, you can’t get an education unless you learn english. be successful, you can’t be successful unless you learn english.” But I feel like their culture is being sucked away by an even more subliminal message, “trade, investment, mass production, over-consumption.” I see a family being raised beneath a massive billboard with some happy white people on it. (these are ideas i’m still processing, i hate to draw conclusions). Needless to say, it’s hot! Our living quarters are not exactly 5 star but i’m positve we’ve got it better than most people in this neighborhood. oh there’s buildings being built but they’ve been “being built” for quite a few years now. The kids at the orphanage are sooo cute and i can predict a very fun time with them. I just want to pray that i can touch them with the hand of Jesus Love. If i can’t give them money or chocolate, i want to pass on the Love and healing of Christ through a simple touch of my hand.

This experience was the beginnings of a newly discovered sensation of compassion. I learned that compassion is more than feeling pity. Compassion goes beyond emotional response and initiates an action. Pity is fleeting and disapates as we become inveloped in our everyday lives. Compassion is a continually burning ember that is fueled by seeing people in desperate situations and is ignited by an opportunity to participate in positive solutions. Since my time in India, i have never been so liable to shed a tear simply by hearing of an unjust act on the radio. If you think you want to travel to an under developed country, please do it, but be careful. It’ll turn you into a softy and there’s no turning back!

Posted by Marygrace on October 6, 2006 07:28 PM

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