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Sunny Side Up with Kathleen Gibson Nov. 12, 2008 We�re all the same in the dark Temperatures vaulted to �shrivel and fry� as Eldonna and I traversed India a few years ago. Our Jeep had no air conditioning, but we didn�t often roll down the windows. Sometimes when we slowed, dark faces peered in. Our long slacks and t-shirts stuck to our skin like postage stamps. I pined for the familiarity of shorts and sleeveless dresses. But we�d come to India to serve, not to antagonize. Revealing bare legs or a feminine shoulder is brazen to most traditional East Indians. My Canadian clothing had stayed home. As we negotiated the sprawling mass of open markets, and streets teeming with everything from beggars to cattle and feral dogs, I regularly wished for more in common with the people surrounding us. But as each day of our visit melted like candle wax into the next, I felt two things: more fascinated and increasingly different; as out of place as a snowflake in a wildflower garden. Immense relief met us one day in the cool comfort of Krupiah and Cantamma�s concrete apartment. The retired schoolteachers welcomed us warmly. �Here you will sleep,� they said, pointing out a mosquito netted-bed�their own bed�in the main room of their tiny home. Cantamma and a younger woman, both in saris, served us dinner, heaping our stainless steel plates with rice, fragrant curry, chapattis and yogurt. Eldonna and I sat at a small table and ate with our right hands and no utensils, following custom. (Have I ever mentioned that I�m left-handed?) The ladies stood outside the room, peering in and dashing to refill our plates as they emptied. �Please sit with us and eat,� we pled. �It makes us uncomfortable having you serve us like this. We came to serve you!� They laughed. �To do what makes you comfortable, makes us uncomfortable!� We ate alone, feeling guilty. Everyone gathered in that room that evening�until the lights went out. �Oh, current!� came Cantamma�s voice through the black. Instantly, she found a candle, lit it, and beckoned us to follow. We joined hands and made our way outside to where a staircase climbed steeply to the flat concrete roof. Stars like pins on black velvet dotted the sky above, though I recognized not a constellation. But on the street below sprang a constellation I recognized. The people of the city, from beggars to hawkers, began lighting up the darkness with whatever they had on hand: candles, lanterns, tiny fires, flashlights. The light grew slowly, until a soft glow bathed the city. It�s taken me almost five years to understand the lesson God gave me that night. In those dark moments was displayed my most common ground with the people of India: We have equal need of light. To our sin-blackened world, long ago, God delivered a candle. In the dark, it looked the same as us. It cried like a baby. But it shone, though uncomfortable, until it lit up the entire world. Mary called the candle Jesus. I call him Savior. �2008 Kathleen Gibson Respond Home |
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