A small reunion of small people (some at least)

With a shout of 'Forth Eorlingas' the host of Rohan rode out of Edoras on what was thought the last ride of Theoden king of the Golden Hall...  the galloping of the hooves of the mighty army echoes in the minds of us four Eichers as we are coming to the middle of The Two Towers.  What drama, who nobility!

And what imagination a young boy (and his happy Dad) can have when it comes to seeing these characters come to life in Lego!

For verily, there are the newly empowered King Theoden, riding his mighty steed Snowmane - and beside him is the White Rider - Gandalf himself!


The King and the Wizard ride forth together - not knowing that the wrath of the Ents has brought the trees of Fangorn to their aid!

With them are three other members of the Company of the Ring.

They have travelled many leagues on foot - hoping against hope to be able to rescue their two small friends - only to find that they seem to have disappeared into the untracked forests.

Our three friends are of course Legolas the Elf - clad in his grey garment and carrying the bow and arrows that the fair Lady Galadriel of Lothlorien gave him.  In the absence of Gandalf, the leadership of the company was thrust upon Aragorn - son of Arathorn - who wields the newly reforged Anduril.  With him - and a bosom-friend of Legolas is the ever faithful dwarf Gimli son of Gloin.  Though there was little love between the elves and the dwarves - these two have forged a bond of deep affection that takes them through many an adventure.

And what of those two halflings that the company was searching for?

Merry and Pippin are looking none the worse for their adventures in the forest with Treebeard the Ent.  In fact, they have been renewed at many levels and are ready to rejoin their friends - whom they welcomed at the gate of Isengard.  This all took place after the Ents thoroughly destroyed Saruman's fortress after the evil wizard had sent all his forces to crush the men of Rohan in the battle of Helm's Deep.

What a happy reunion it was - and how excellent we all felt to have these friends back together again.

You just know when you read Tolkein that you are not just reading a set of idle thoughts by a bookish don who loved language for the joy of making new tongues and writing poetry in them.  What we are reading about is a deep look at the very core of who we are - and what the great patterns of truth and meaning do actually play themselves out in our world(s).

In the mean-time - its a joy to have the company of the Ring back together again - at least to have 6 back - and we are wondering what is happening for Frodo and Sam as they move towards Mordor...

The rod of repentance...

I am back with Sam for a bit more.  Samuel Austin Cravath that is - my great great grand-uncle.

I talked to my Dad on the phone this evening.  I am hoping to spend time with him over our upcoming holiday in Mussoorie (only 8 days away now) walking down his (and Mum's) paths of memory.  But this time I want a voice recorder to be on so that we can capture their pasts a bit more.

Dad wasn't too keen.  And here is the reason.

As Dad was talking with me on the phone, sitting at his desk in Shanti Kunj, he was holding a tome in his hand.  It was a celebration of one of his early colleagues - who then went on to start other work.  Dad said 'its full of colour photos and congratulatory letters from bishops and the like.'  He told me that he had put the idea of penning down his experiences on hold after getting this volume.

The last thing we need is another hagiography.  There are enough books that pain people as being perfect.  But how many memoirs are there that show the gritty stuff?  With Dad I don't think we need to worry about a puff-job.  In fact, I think the challenge would be where to exercise the editor's knife and keep things tidy rather than trotting out a catalogue of errors and minor skeletons he has collected over the years.  I won't say even hidden in closets as I have heard them outed from time to time in the past.

My pitch to Dad was partly based on reading SA Cravath's life.  I have no idea about the man - but now have those 69 pages that give me a picture into the 1840s - through the civil war era - and into the end of the 19th century.  Its like I have gone to another country.  Which I have.  And another time.  Ditto.

That's what I want for Mum and Dad's story.  Something that can be chewed upon.  I do not particularly like everything I read in SA Cravath's notes on his life - but they are challenging thoughts - and worth pondering and measuring my experiences against.  

Do stay tuned for more.

But lets get back to what for me is one of the most challenging parts of the Samuel A. Cravath's life - namely his early spiritual formation.

Samuel's father died while little Samuel was just a few months old.  His mother remarried and his step-father is a man called Galcott Kinney.  The family moved to the then frontier town of Oberlin where his step-father, who he refers to as 'Father Kinney' took a plot of 30 acres of forest. As written about earlier, the family worked hard to convert this forest into a farmstead.

Here is what Samuel writes about his religious experience as a boy:

"Broad is the road the leads to death, 
And thousands walk together there,
But wisdom shows a narrow path,
With here and there a traveler."


I do not say that this fairly represents Oberlin's teaching at that period, Indeed I learned in later years that it had a more kindly side and more consistent doctrine, but such views seethed about the colony in the ignorant outskirts, and were such as to affect the imagination of childhood and weave themselves into the web of my daily life.


Father Kinney was naturally, I think, kind, generous and indulgent, tho' passionate - a man of not much education, yet he must have had some ability as an exhorter, for he was in demand all through his life as a leader in neighborhood meetings and as an agent of the S.S. Union [probably Sunday School Union] in later years of his life.  


He was feared rather than loved by his children, especially when he came home from attending revival meetings - and revival meetings were of very frequent occurrence in those days.  He seemed to come home with an awful sense of his responsibility for the salvation of his family.  His prayers were loud, long, terrifying on those occasions and he sometimes interspersed his prayers with a vigorous application of the rod.  Unfortunately for the children, this kind of conversion had to be done over repeatedly, since every dereliction of duty, failure in obedience, or disposition to play when set at work, was regarded as evidence that the work of conversion had been incomplete.  (p. 18-19)

later Samuel talks about his mother:

Mother never punished us.  She was much of the time an invalid.  We were sometimes called into her room, when she would talk to us in a kindly way and urge us to be good boys and faithful Christians. I was past eleven years of age when she died.  


My recollection of her is distinct - how she looked, how she talked and especially how she sang.  She was a sweet singer and had a fine musical education for those days.  She was quiet, even tempered and anxious for the spiritual as well as the temporal welfare of her children.  


As I look back upon those years, I know it must have wrung her heart to have the rod used upon her children, for she was never present when punishment was being inflicted.  Yet I think she was under too great a sense of responsibility to interfere for it was the teaching of the times that the eternal salvation of the souls of the young might sometimes be secured by the application of the rod.


Mother's death occurred about eleven years after that of my father, and as I have previously stated, the Oberlin home was then abandoned.

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How horrible to have the love of God twisted into a stick that was used to try and beat repentance into a person.  Samuel certainly seems to have retreated into a cool shell when it comes to discussing his faith - and his early experience of his step-father using a stick to try and beat Christianity into him resonates throughout the later years of his life.

How different my own story.  On Friday I was talking to a friend about the challenges of raising kids.  He has a 1.5 year old who is busy testing the limits of parental patience - and I walked back in memory to how Mum and Dad disciplined me.  There was first the clear statements of what we could and could not do.  Then the statement about what the level of punishment may be... and then if we broke the rules - there was a punishment.

I remember my father and mother spanking me.  The going into the room alone with them - and having 'the talk' was usually more painful that the sharp sting on the bottom.  Painful because they were so loving and reasonable when they talked to me.  I don't remember ever disagreeing with their points of why the were punishing me and remember clearly the pain that they felt.

Once - and only once - do I remember my father punishing me in anger.  And that too, I do not remember the actual punishment.  It occurred when we were living at Gulmohor Gardens in Versova.  I must have been 4 or maybe just past my 5th birthday.  What I remember is Dad bringing me back into the room for a talk.  And his asking my forgiveness for having punished me in anger.  The details are fuzzy - but the words struck home.  My respect for the love that Dad and Mum gave to me those many years ago continues to resonate.

As I think about our experience in helping Asha and Enoch understand the value of self-control, I know that I have made my share of mistakes.  Too often I want robot-like obedience - and too often I am treating them as we used to do 2 or 3 years earlier.  The kids are growing and Asha is pushing into adolescence ... so I have much to learn about the joys of shaping a new set of lives.

One of the joys that parenting has been for me is having Sheba's wise and helpful inputs - and us balancing each other out at different times.  In this remarkable opportunity to help shape the inner and outer parts of two amazing lives, Sheba and I are humbled by the trust God has placed in us.

And so we say good-bye to Samuel A. Cravath for some time at least.  I would like to now dip into the life story of my Great Grandfather - E. Austin Cravath to explore his life and times.  And see our lives look like when laid side-by-side with his.

Shadows on the wall

I have just been putting up the wet clothes (at an unearthly hour) and have walked in and out of the children's room.

They are asleep.  Deeply so.  We had a full day what with meeting for church in the morning (Sheba went over to the JSK Centre to do her rounds with the two patients who are admitted).  Then lunch with everyone at church.  Then a prayer time and going out to meet people in their homes.  Then the gospel meeting at 6 PM.  Then cleaning and setting up for the VBS that starts later today.

It is wonderful to see them sleeping.  The miracle of sleep.  So calm.  And yet beneath the closed eyes refreshment looms.

Walking in from the miniscule balcony I saw the pattern of lights below on the wall - and I was taken back to my childhood days.

We spent many happy years growing up in a bungalow in Nana Chowk - on the compound of the John Wilson Education Society.  There were trees outside.  And our house jutted out into a busy street.  So all day - and most of the night - we heard traffic.  We felt traffic - the large double decker busses would sometimes cause the house to shake.

And at night the street lights probed their way into the windows.

Opposite me on the wall I could the the fantastic shapes made by the moving tree branches outside - their leaves weaving a tapestry of shapes.

But I did not like these shadows.  There were times when they seemed to show evil creatures.  I was actually quite scared of them at times.  Add to that my normal insomnia (something that at 43 still seems active - hence my tapping the keyboard at this hour) - and you have a young lad who would emerge and announce to his parents that he just could not sleep.

I don't recall whether I told my parents about the shapes - though I think I would have.

But I do remember Mum's statement that she often told me.

"He gives His beloved sleep"

A quote from one of the Psalms in the Bible.

Something I have remembered often.

I am not afraid of shadows or sounds anymore.  But I still need the assurance that I am not alone.

The men that Anil and I visited this afternoon told us that they believed in Jesus - but that their economic situation has not improved.  The subtle subtext is - 'so why continue believing in a god who does not seem to help.'  One of them said that when his wife and grown children are asleep at night, he lies awake, worrying about how he will get money to pay for the rent, for the 200 rs. that he promised his children...

"Its hard for poor people like us" he said as we sat in his garage, next to the hulk of a large ugly truck which he and his partner were stripping down and rebuilding.

We did not have an easy answer for our friend.  There is no small button to press and everything then turns out all right.  But we did share from what we learned in the Bible.  From Peter who had fished all night without success - and who after getting the large catch of fish did not jump around for joy - but rather understood his own deep fallen-ness.

As the dogs bark away outside, I know that I can sleep in peace.

Guten Abend, gute Nacht,
mit Rosen bedacht,
mit Näglein besteckt,
schlupf′ unter die Deck!
Morgen früh, wenns Gott will,
wirst du wieder geweckt.
Morgen früh, wenns Gott will,
wirst du wieder geweckt.

Silent roads

It strikes me as strange that you can be in multiple places at the same time.

Not physically of course (at least not to my knowledge - though I would be happy to be corrected).

But in the alleys and byways of the mind.

Here I am in Thane.  There are tons of things going on all around me.  We have a woman - our dear Nalini - dying in our centre.  We have interns - tons of them - with us.  We have the stresses and strains of working with our team.  We have the VBS just around the corner.  10 days from now the blissful thought of a vacation in Mussoorie looms...

But while I am here I am also in a number of other places.

In 1840s frontier United States for one.  Reading the memoirs of Samuel Austin Cravath (my great, great, grand uncle) has taken me there - and I find myself thinking about his life and measuring it along side mine.  I know so little about the past - but having read through SA Cravath's life, I feel that I have been taken back and given a look into another world.  Time-travel of sorts.  While also wrestling with the structure of how he presents his life.  The tapestry of a life stands out as something especially worthy of exploring.  I am hoping to do some delving into my parent's life-stories later this month!

The rough and tumble of what it takes to run our country is another place I inhabit in my mind.  I get my small dose of this in the form of articles in the Indian Express which arrive every morning in a crisp, unread paper, causing my hands to itch to unfold it and have my eyes skimming through 'what's happening.'  Sadly, things in Bharat - at least as served up by the Indian Express each day - seem to be so way out of kilter.  Our brightest and best appear busy with other things - private advancement but little for society.  Which leaves the worst to do what we seem to have been doing since the crows started flying - a steady stream of shoddy nonsense - punctuated with the occasional 'scandal' which leaves barely a ripple in the on-going stream of sludge we are wading through.  Reading about Chief Ministers of Bengal arresting people because of cartoons - and the latest govt. official to be kidnapped by the Maoists makes dreary reading.  Of late .I find my eyes spend more time looking at the sports pages and the international news.  One blessing of the venerable Express is that there is a page of the "Economist" everyday which gives an always well-written picture on the world out there.

Yet another place where my mind travels is the heroic journey of the company of the Ring.  It has been a long time coming for us to read this as a family - and now we are finally doing it in nibbles.  But we are almost through 3 of the 6 books - and have come to the gates of Isengard and Saruman's downfall - where two of the hobbits meet up with most of the other members of the party.  I have read this book at least 4 times over the past 30 years - and still the sheer nobility of the motley crew whose acts of bravery take place in a darkening world moves me deeply.  The largeness of the canvas - and the many different tales woven in and out of the story allows my mind to wander down many a lonely way in the company of old friends in arms.

Strangely the most important book for me - the Holy Bible - is one which I have often found hardest to read.  The words of the Bible become more and more my own as the years of reading and trying to apply move on.  But I find that the soft sound of the paper being laid on the other side of the front-door will almost always break my concentration and have my hands itch to open the unread broadsheet.  My tiredness does not seem to show up when I am reading The Lord of the Rings (or when I am typing a blog entry late at night - like now) - but when I get up to read the words that have been inspired by the Holy Spirit I find my eyelids happily obeying gravity.  One of the saving graces for me is that so much of our work, family and worship is centered on this book - and so each day I usually get a goodly dose - for my good.

And over the years it has been the Book of books that remains the standard.  As I read through LOTR I come across images of the soon and coming King Jesus.  I see the ring-bearer taking a heavy burden and struggling but refusing to give into the temptation to wield it for himself.  As I look out across the pretty bleak political picture in Bharat-land my heart yearns for the truth, forgiveness and righteousness to sweep across this amazing country.  And looking back at SA Cravath's life  (and my own so far at least) I have to keep thinking and testing to see what makes sense in the light of eternity.

These conversations that reading allows me to participate weave their way into the more mundane parts of my life too.  They provide strands of meaning and must be counted as some of my closest friends.  Long may this conversation continue!

And oh that there would be more time to simply read - with a cuppa of coffee in one hand and the crispness of a cool morning bathing the room with light.

I guess that this dream will have to wait for our annual pilgrimmage to my parent's home at Shanti Kunj in Mussoorie to become a reality (only 11 days and counting down as of today 5.5.2012!).

In the mean-time these strands will continue to be woven together in the silent roads of the mind - which continue to be trodden even if the body continues its mono-spatial existence!

Taller than Enoch

We are well into the final countdown.

The flight commanders are tense.

Mission control is full of people who have bitten their nails down.

Cups of old coffee sit untouched as all eyes are on the screen.

The big number keeps going down.

Procedure after procedure is rattled off.

Will everything work after so many years of planning for this day ... so many thousands and thousands of man-hours invested in a single propulsion that will take a small capsule into the great unknown of space?

The margin for error has always been zero.  But here we are, with the hopes of a nation pinned on a select few holed up hundreds of meters above the ground.

With a colossal amount of explosive beneath them - waiting for the controlled ignition which will - hopefully - fling them out of earth's orbit.

In the mean time the tasks keep getting ticked off.  Blast-off is now not some distant dream - it is the almost here and now.

This and a hundred other stories are played out in the Eicher home during summer holidays!

After a long time Enoch and his Daddy got together to do some serious lego work.

Here is the result.  Our best rocket yet.  Taller than Enoch!

Prayers for cure

He came to the JSK centre yesterday.

He had come a long way.  From across the country by train.  From Dehra Dun - at the foothills of the Himalaya.

Lets call him Mithun.  Mithun is from the Dehra Dun area.  Some years ago he found out that he was HIV positive.  He started on the treatment for his treatment at the government ART centre.

Then he joined a local church in Dehra Dun.  This church prayed for him and declared him healed of HIV.  Mithun was so grateful for this and stopped his medication and went back to live in his village.

But then Mithun become sick again.

He came back to the church.  They told him that he should go to Jeevan Sahara Kendra - that all we would make him better here.

Yesterday he arrived unannounced.  He wants to be cured.  When Sheba explained to him that we did not have a sure-shot cure here he was very disappointed.

Mithun is coming at a bad time for us - we seem to have very little success at the moment.  The three people that we are looking after as in-patients are just not getting better.  One of them has been with us for a month now and has lost all her bodily controls.  Another man keeps having a spiking fever.  A third lady keeps vomitting.  Its hard when you want to heal and the people we are serving are not improving.

Here is the crux of the matter:  Mithun can't see why he is not cured of HIV.  After all, he has prayed to Jesus who healed everyone who met him.  We also pray to Jesus - who brought back a man from the grave after 4 days of being buried.  Why are we not able to heal him?

Why indeed?  When the largest number of people with HIV live in Sub-Saharan Africa - arguably the most Jesus-following place on the the planet.  When millions of prayers for healing go up every day. Why do we see so few people healed?

At Jeevan Sahara we have seen people come back from the brink of death.  From being in a semi-comatose condition to being able to live a normal life.  But we have yet to see a person who has been rid of all his HIV.   The one person who came and told me he had - did not have any medical tests to prove it - and asked me for a donation pretty soon after we had become acquainted.

I believe that God has the power to rid a body of every single virus.  But for some reason this is a prayer that He chooses not to answer in the way that we wish at this point.  The Bible tells us that when Christ returns there will be a day when no disease, sorrow, tears will remain - and that God Himself will wipe every tear from our eyes.

And so we come to the present.  We have lots and lots of unanswered questions.  As a family we are reading through the book of Job.  42 chapters - largely dominated by a scab-infested man searching for answers for his sufferings - and increasingly strong accusations from his 'friends'.  One of the take-home messages is that we do not have easy answers for everything.  The writer of Job - some 6000 years prior to us - struggles with some of the same issues that we go through today.  But is also able to say through his pain that he knows that his redeemer lives - and that he will see him one day - with his own body, his own eyes.

In the meantime we hope, love and pray.  We are committed to telling the truth.  As soon as we have a fool-proof cure, as soon as we see the kind of healing take place through prayer that we wish and hope for - we will shout it from the mountain-tops.  Till then - we continue to serve - one person at a time.

The story with Mithun is not over.  

Re-Treat

Retreat.  To some it may sound like we are running away from something.

This year we had our JSK staff retreat right where we always are - in the training room of the Jeevan Sahara Kendra Community Care Centre.   The place where we meet every morning for prayer before the teams go out to see people in their homes, the place where we train local church members and interns, the room where each month our positive friends come for a support group meeting.

We held the retreat here because we now have a 24 hour care centre going.  We are looking after 3 very sick patients through this whole time.  We do not want our nurses and doctor to miss out on this time - and so we had our speaker Sam Thomas come all the way from Dehra Dun to minister to us - while we remained here.

Well, almost.

By God's grace Amy and Kerstin - visiting American nurses - helped cover some of the shifts which allowed our on-duty nurses to attend.

We also had 3 mini-outings.  On Friday into the edge of the Borivali National Park.  On Saturday over to our place for pizza and a movie night.  And on Sunday afternoon we went as a team to the Tikujiniwadi Amusement Park for lots of waterslide action (thanks to the generosity of some close friends of ours).

The retreat, however, was more than just fun.  There was deep stuff to walk through.  We delved into the whole idea of 'living out your dream' using a man who had done so 5000 years ago.  Walking through the life of Joseph, son of Jacob took us through a remarkable set of experiences.  Sam Thomas helped us examine our own dreams - and realise that the great things in life - the things that really matter are not just a product of our own - but are actually stirred by the Spirit of God himself!

We then looked at the challenges of dealing with challenges - the very hard times that we go through - and what we do with it.  For Joseph it was all about being faithful - and the lessons he learned stood him in amazing stead.  Over and over again the words 'the Lord was with him' ring out.  Would that this would be true for each one of us.

Prosperity? Great responsibilities? Its all part of God's plan, part of the dream - but it is not for ourselves.  Joseph's rise to be the prince of Egypt was not to get himself a mansion on the Nile (though I am sure that came with the pay-package too).  Rather it was all about the saving of many lives - and bringing healing and forgiveness into a very, very fractured family.  Would that this would be true for us too!

And along the way we see a man of integrity.  One who ran - presumedly unclothed - away from a situation that most men would willingly fall into.  His integrity was intact - though he had to suffer more humiliation in the process.  Being faithful in these areas - God gives him greater and greater responsibilities - which he fulfills - and for a long time too.  His 80 years after being made Prime Minister of Egypt at 30 have no hint of scandal, no stain of self-aggrandisement, no abuse of power that so clogs our leaders of this era (and most eras before and after Joseph for that matter).

And what a man of forgiveness.  Instead of nursing his hurts, tending his bitterness, and then extracting the most painful revenge that he could (and to whom all power was given at that point), Joseph takes a totally different route.  He loves his brothers.  Forgives them.  Saves them.  Comforts them.  Brings them to a new place of safety.  Heals them.  If a man who was almost murdered and sold into slavery - despite his pleas for mercy - can do that, then surely you and I - with God's help - can forgive too?  We don't need to hold on to the bitterness inside.  Jesus has shown us that as He was being nailed into a twisted piece of wood.  Choosing to love instead of take revenge, Jesus prays 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing."


There were of course many, many other insights that we were blessed with and are still mulling over - but just to finish off ... Sam urged us to finish well!  We are great at starting things off with a bang - but do we finish them?  Joseph did.  And so can we.  We have been placed where we are to make an impact - and to prepare ourselves for the next bit.  Both in the here-and-now and in the world-to-come.

Lots and lots of good things.  We are blessed.  A treat.  A veritable feast of treats.  Such was our re-treat.