Pilgrim Posts: An Ashram at the Heart of India

We as a family are on a pilgrimage, but even before we left our beloved Lalitpur at the end of May, I had been visiting a few places on behalf of Sheba and myself.  Here are a few glimpses of another one of these journeys.  This trip was a two day visit in the middle of May 2019.

Booking on-line tickets is amazing.  My father used to stand hours in line to book our annual holiday tickets from Bombay to Madras Egmore station and then on by meter gauge to Kodai Road.  Today some thrifty internet use and a handy debit card can do wonders.  And even if your ticket is wait-listed, the different sites have predictions about whether it will ‘clear’ when the final charts are made.

One of our near-and-dear had strongly suggested visiting the Christa Panthi Ashram in Sihora, Madhya Pradesh as part of our pilgrim wanderings – and since it was not even close to our already fairly eccentric plan for our post-HBM Hospital wanderings – I decided to again go on behalf of both of us to meet and pray with the saints there.

The good folks on the ticket prediction sites said that I had something like 72% chance of having my waitlisted berth cleared, so I went to Lalitpur station for my night train fairly certain I would get a sleeper berth. 

Well, for the Sihora trip I was in the 25%.  No confirmation and so into the general compartment I went.  I can’t remember the last time I did this (and then again, I don’t remember ma ny, many things).  The first 45 mins were spent standing, then I got a tiny place to sit straddling the two luggage racks above my fellow passengers.  I was very glad for my back brace and for a splendid book: George Macdonald’s The Curate’s Awakening. A hot night was spent off in Victorian England as God worked His way in and through broken souls and our train trundled through the warm air of a summer night in Central India.

The Christa Panthi Ashram was started when in 1942 three young men from Kerala were sent off with the blessings of the Malankara Marthoma Church to start a new life.  The founding trio were inspired to serve people in North India in the name of Jesus and a fresh living-out of the age-old idea of the Ashram.  Ashrams big and small have been intentional faith-communities across our land, and have usually been linked with one of the many streams of Hindu faith.  Building on the ideas and lives of Christ-followers in India such as Sadhu Sundar Singh and E. Stanley Jones, the three founders set out not knowing where they would end up.  In God’s providence they arrived in the tiny town of Sihora in Central India and founded the Christa Panthi Ashram community of Christ-honouring faith and service to all the villages around them.

The Ashram today is housed in a sprawling 25 acres of land and the Achhans and Sisters who have chosen to join the core community are involved in an active monastic life of prayer, work and reflection which has overflowed in many forms of service.  You name it hueas been done – and much continues to be carried out:  educational work through village pre-primary centres, primary schools and a large English medium high school; health work through a clinic (which previously was a thriving hospital) and new initiatives to reach out to villages around them; agriculture and horticulture through fields and orchards; animal husbandry through goateries, chicken raising and a dairy farm; helping village children with education through boys and girls hostels; an old age home for destitutes and on and on.

The years of faithful service have borne fruit – many lives have been touched and both people on the street and those in authority know and respect the work that the Achhans (usually wearing an off-saffron kurta) and the Sisters do. 

The land around the Ashram is dry and rain-fed, with most farmers cultivating small plots of land and migrating seasonally since there is not enough for them to survive on.  The difference between Sihora and Lalitpur?  My short visit showed me more evidence of granite mining in Sihora – extractive work for which the Jabalpur district is well-known for - and a much higher percentage of tribals (belonging to Gond and other indigenous but largely impoverished groups) than we had in Lalitpur.

It was a real joy meeting with Roshin who recently joined to help reboot the medical and community health work of the Ashram.  Roshin has both extensive theological training as well as sklls and experience in community transformation work.  He loves being out in the villages and made sure I was well protected for our field visits in the oven that central India is in May!

Some of my take-aways after this visit:

Deep respect for the Achhans and Sisters who are living a simple no-possessions life.  They know they will be buried in the Ashram cemetary along with those who have gone ahead of them.  The line of tombstones is a sobering reminder to all of us about how fleetining our life-times are and how much of eternity stretches ahead of us.  A life of prayer is not a wasted life.  A life of living faith 

intentionally with others can have massive impacts.  Spiritual formation is in such short supply in our 2=minute-maggi-noodle world.  The unforced rhythms of the Ashram and the choice to have “thy will be done” (both allowing God to control and also yielding to each other) have much to teach all of us.  We are all in intentional communities of our own making – our homes and friends reflect much of the decisions we are making individually and corporately.

Hope about the possibilities that the Ashram has to provide long-term change to the communities around them.  Having taken a step of bringing in a non-Achhan to serve as a manager with them, it opens up new opportunities and adds the fretshness of a person who has also experienced life and served in other part of the country.   The tremendous rapport and trust that the Ashram enjoys with the local communities is so precious.  Much stlll needs to be done in the communities around and the Ashram has the potential to see a new generation experience transformation.

Belief in the power of persistence.  Where people have stayed for long, change can be seen.  The network of village level learning centres is testmony to this.  Change can’t take place by remote control.  Lives must be invested.  Jesus reminds us of when he tells us to seek first the Kingdom and its righteousness.   How many of us have been blessed by the presence and investments of others in us. To whom much is given, much is expected of. Money can help, but lives and changed by other lives.

Questions about the nature of institutions over time.  How to keep being relevant and fresh, while at the same time celebrating the amazing things done by our fore-fathers (and fore-mothers too!).  How can wonderful people keep being wonderful, and draw more and new people in?  How much structure  is needed?  Where to allow change, where to hold on to what has been handed down?

The trip back to Lalitpur was blessedly uneventfuil.  Having done many, many trains trips in these month, I am so grateful for the great network of stexel that spans so much of our country and allows us to move from here to there and then beyond so quickly and so cheaply [these words are being written while on a train, travelling from Vishakapatnam to Chennai on the Coromandel express].

Onwards!