Dear Saints and Aints.

Shalom!

Swifter then clouds fleeing headlong before the furies of a storm - my days are passing; and like the clouds, they coalesce, losing their individual identity and often, so it seems to me, like them are – devoid of any real content.

But a few days ago, so it seems, I was with you enjoying your company, laughing, sharing, telling tales from this strange land and regaling you with stories of my kids and testifying to a faithful, caring God.  Now back to where I belong I garner again tales of all that makes up our life; a helter-skelter of joys and sorrows, of triumphs and tragedies of proclamations of faith and admissions of fears.

For some time after my return to India I felt depressed. There was no reason and no explanation for it – except for being tired. I simply felt no joy though I had and have much to be joyous about. It was like a cloud hovering over me. I did much praying and listening to the Scripture – I purchased an audio Bible - but the cloud refused to lift. With it came a touch of paranoia; I guess I got that from my mother who lived through two World Wars. Walking down the street with the constant fear that something might drop on your head – something that did not originate from the inside of a bird – must have been disconcerting, to say the least. But, as it says in the Bible, (KJV) “And it came to pass … which, I assume means – it didn’t come to stay … And it didn’t.

And now, this teller of tales is again ensconced cheerfully and contentedly in his computer chair looking bleary-eyed at his creation on the monitor. The T-shirt he wears should have seen the inside of a washing machine a long time ago (many suggest the garbage bin) and the cup with that precious liquid he holds could have benefitted from a good wash for just as long ago. But the scent that old T-shirt exudes has defied the skills of perfume makers to duplicate though hard they must have tried ... As for the cup - it has reached a state where it could be considered art, art the Louvre wouldn’t have enough guards to protect where it on exhibition there. More prosaic, I love that old T-shirt and cup. What does it matter after all, a million dollars from the hands of a beggar – is still a million dollars … And a fine tale, though typed by a man in a grubby T-shirt with grubby fingers on a keyboard matching them - is still a fine tale…

My thoughts, for what they are worth, are interrupted by the shouting of one of the staff telling the kids not to shout so they can hear him shout. I shake my head. What a place. What a world we are creating where the smell of urine is forgotten when seeing the happy grin of a little kid – who just contributed to that smell. A world where laughter is background music and where a marble is of greater value than the gold in the bank and a biscuit is considered manna from heaven, where food and security are assured and care can be taken for granted; a world where the Seeds of the Kingdom are planted; hope is kindled in hearts and dreams ignited in minds.

Scoffers tell me I am too imaginative. Maybe I just see the world through the eyes of my kids … And ah! Is it not the poet’s task to dress the common in the garb of the wondrous? Should he not open people’s eyes to the extra-ordinary that surrounds them, to make them see that all earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush is on fire with God? Also, is it not his duty, so to say, to “kiss the frog” to release the prince?  This apart, we are not really creating a new world but uncover the wonders that underlie our world. It is a rediscovery of the world the Good Book, the Bible, speaks about - the time when the trees clapped their hands, the morning stars sang together and the hills skipped like calves … and the psalmist joyously proclaims “let the mountains sing together.” Are we then presumptuous to perceive the brooks to giggle and the streamlets to chatter or hear the trees joyously laugh as the wind tousles their hair? Or to be denied beholding in wonderment roses posing proudly in a diadem of gloriously sparkling diamonds – dewdrops. Or watch a shaft of sunlight turning into an artist as it paints common leaves on branch and bough golden? Admittedly, there are times when weariness and worries dull our eyes to these wonders – for a season. But, as for now – I perceive them…

Obviously, with my 73rd birthday in less than two months, it is also a time for introspection, for reflection on the past. Of course, the past is no judge of the present. After all we judge a statue by the way it looks now and not by the way it looked when the sculptor found the block of stone in the quarry, neither by the subsequent stages when it was shaped. These are but yardsticks to measure our progress - if any. They also show to what degree we were willing to submit ourselves to the hammer blows and to the sharp-edged chisel of the Artist. Of course, frequently we remonstrated with Him with tears to desist for the pain was too severe and the fear of being destroyed rather than wrought into something beautiful --was so real to us. 

We also submitted ourselves to the Refiner’s fire – there too often unwilling, complaining and crying as our strength and resolve was ebbing away. We prayed for relief even though we understood it would not be forthcoming was God’s purpose for our life to be accomplished in us.

Yet during those endless days, in spite of the distress, I longed to be that end product as I believed the Artist envisioned it; that beautiful statue, that glorious, shiny bar of pure gold and -- I am still longing for that future for the process continuous and the pain though lessened persists but we bear it because we know – that God is at work in us so that we be conformed to the image of His Son – to become beautiful.

While this process continues in my life, the running of the homes, as I indicated in my last letter, is passing out of my hands into the hands of younger men. And so it ever must be. I have stood in the gap till now protecting my kids and this property. Now they need to be prepared to stand in the gap with trowel and sword – to build and to protect. I have nothing to offer Bapu and Yohan except this - a prayer---

---that God, my  God, the God Whom I love and serve and Who has proven himself to me so incredibly faithful and wonderfully caring and kind – be their God. This is my prayer for them, a prayer I beg you to join me in. Then that world we are creating, a world where laughter is background music, where food and security are assured and care can be taken for granted; a world where the Seeds of the Kingdom are planted; where hope is kindled in hearts and dreams are ignited in minds – will continue.

Thank you, thank you Saints for helping us to make this world – possible!

Frank, Bapu and Yohan.