“Ma’am, please calm down.”

After a two month slog through the visa application system, we are very happy to report that we have both been granted the visas we need to return to India! It was a long series of administrative mishaps involving BLS, the company to which the Indian consulate has outsourced its visa services.  Since the only job the Indian consulate has outsourced to this company is to make sure that all the necessary documents are present and stacked in the right order before they get submitted, it was confusing to repeatedly have our applications—which the BLS staff had checked over and approved—instantly rejected as incomplete at the consulate.

The lack of organization at the office was so extreme as to have been laughable, if so much of our lives didn’t depend on it. Their website required us to make an appointment beforehand, but on arriving at the office, everyone is given a number and waits for their turn regardless of previous appointment. We should have known it was a bad omen when we walked in the very first day and overheard a woman dressing down the manager for his office’s “sheer incompetence.” We had heard the horror stories about people receiving stranger’s passports in the mail instead of their own, or passports being lost altogether, but we hoped that we would be spare that kind of misfortune (my passport did end up lost at one point, but fortunately only for a few hours; it was found in the truck that ferried passports back and forth between BLS and the consulate).

What was laughable, even in the moment, was the bulletin board in the office which proudly displayed “appreciations”, letters of apparent praise written by those lucky customers who eventually had made it through the gauntlet. One letter, dated from a few months before, declared that the customer could see the company was in a sort of “panic”, but that he was confident that with more time and hard work, “you will become the kind of company you wish to be.” Another letter offered more back-handed praise to the company as a whole while marveling over the wonder of having found a single employee who was helpful: “Dear Mr. A., I would like to thank you first in trying to help me… In fact you came as a ray of hope for me otherwise I was lost between Travisa, BLS and Consulate General.  It is very hard to reach [the office], then getting somebody helpful like you is just a miracle.”

Comradery builds quickly among visa applicants in the office. One day several of us overheard a staff member asking someone to contact them if they had any further questions. “But how can I,” the woman countered, “when none of the numbers work, and you never answer your email?” “Yeah,” I chimed in, “None of those phone numbers are real.” “One of them is a fax machine!” another person shouted from the second row of chairs. Another day, a fellow applicant called me over and told me in conspiratorial tones that the excuse the staff had just made to me about the most recent problem with my visa was a lie; she knew it because she was here the day it happened. We all shared stories and bonded over recounting the absurdities of the application process. Everyone was in the same situation: no information on their visas, after weeks of waiting and multiple visits to the office.

In that environment, it wasn’t hard for my husband to lead a sort of quiet revolt on Christmas Eve, and have security called on him. When he found himself trying yet again to wrangle information out of an unhelpful staff, he insisted on waiting next to the manager’s desk instead of waiting “five more minutes”, again, after two hours of waiting, and his act of calm defiance inspired others to join him. They, too, had waited a long time with no effect.  Fortunately, by that time he had already made enough visits to the building to have befriended the amicable African immigrant who stood guard outside, so the whole matter came to an anticlimactic end after the security guard made his entrance, grinning, and politely invited him to take a seat.

One of the last times we visited the office, the woman at the information desk asked casually, “Did you ever make it to India?” I stared at her blankly, incredulous.  I suppose two months would have been enough time to do that, if we were so inclined to subject ourselves to this twice in as many months.  But did she not recall seeing us continuously during that time? A few minutes later one the staff said brightly, “Wow, you guys have spent so much time here it’s like you’ve become our family!” He said this without irony. I think I managed a weak smile.

Now, visas and tickets in hand, we’re thankful and relieved to be putting this season of waiting behind us and get back to the life we left behind in India. Uncertainty abounds there, too, but it takes on a different shade in the light of concrete hopes and plans.

Between Points A and B

Well, we’re still in America– not where we expected to be by this date. Many people have told us encouragingly that there must be something else we’re supposed to do here before we go back to India… otherwise we’d already be there, right? There are definitely meaningful and important things that have happened during our stay, but these days we’re mostly feeling bored and looking for useful ways to fill time.

I don’t think there is anything left that I’m supposed to do. What’s becoming clear to me is that the challenging invitation in front of me while I wait isn’t actually to do anything, but rather to learn how to stop doing. Perhaps the reason I’m still here (besides the incompetence of the people handling our visa applications) is that I’m being given an opportunity to learn how to truly wait for something.

I don’t wait well. I’ve rarely ever waited for anything in my life. Because waiting means embracing emptiness inside of oneself; living in the actual tension of not knowing what will happen next, and perhaps even reaching a point of spiritual indifference from which one can joyfully embrace whatever answer or circumstance arises.

I don’t usually embrace emptiness. I run from it– which is why most of the time my “waiting” is actually an active process of filling my mind with all sorts of plans and counter-plans and contingencies, thinking ahead in both directions to prepare myself for every possible outcome before it happens.

I spend time forecasting how long I think it will take for whatever I am awaiting to arrive.

I count down days.

I imagine how I’ll feel when it happens.

I imagine my response if something unexpected happens, and then explore what each and every one of those things might be, so that I will expect them if they happen.

Creating my own plans and answers is no substitute for patiently waiting and receiving the plans and answers that God has for me. But there’s a paradox here, because as human beings we are co-creators and co-conspiritors with God, which means that we work cooperatively with Him to create the future. We have an important role to play in shaping what kind of person we will become and what kind of world we will live in! Where we delude ourselves is in thinking that we can actually create ourselves or our future independently of God.

Rather than action plans and will-power, our growth ultimately depends on our decisions to receive grace or not. Will we accept God’s invitations in our life? Will we recognize God’s activity; push into that realm of weakness and vulnerability that brings us closer to God? Even a thwarted plan or an unexpected delay can be a grace to us if we allow it to be.

So we can resist and kick and scream and slow down the process of our own growth, but we cannot engineer that process to ensure our preferred timing and style. Waiting is not merely a formula of putting in a set amount of time and effort to get a predictable or desired result. It is always an opening of ourselves to the unknown; a giving of consent for our own expectations and plans to be subverted and changed, and for new possibilities to come into existence. Waiting is a patient, sustained yes to God which humbly lays aside our own desires—not disregarding them, but accepting the possibility of giving them up in exchange for something we would not have chosen for ourselves.

I am in that in-between space now, trying to wait with open hands. Amidst my boredom, confusion, frustration, and uncertainty about the future, I am trying to learn how to take hold of the grace that is offered and to allow it to change me. It isn’t easy and I don’t always take it, but as many times as I get wound up in anxiety or bids for control, I find that I am allowed to wander back and try again. I find that grace is offered to me again and again.

The Bad News is Over

          As a mentor of ours in New Zealand likes to say, “The Good News is that the bad news is over.” He says that to discover what Jesus’ message is for a given person or society, you first have to find out what the circumstances of that particular person or group are: their motivations, their hopes and fears, their problems, and their life experiences. What is it that is keeping them from God? Where are they in need of hope, or healing? The amazing thing about Jesus is that even while he proclaims universal truths about what it means to be human, he also approaches individual human beings with a personal message of truth for them. God is one, yet he meets each of us on different journeys and in different ways.

To the rich young ruler, the good news is that Jesus is inviting him to cast off all of the wealth, possessions, and comfort that have blocked him from experiencing real life with all of its joys and sorrows, and he lays before him the opportunity to commune with God through loving service and relationship with other people. To the impoverished paralytic by the side of the pool of Siloam who has never known comfort or riches, who has spent years waiting for someone more powerful than himself to rescue him, Jesus speaks words of healing and empowerment: “Get up and walk.”

To the Pharisees, who have spent their lives pursuing the spiritual disciplines of fasting, pious works, and thorough obedience to religious law, Jesus breaks through the delusion that they have achieved true relationship with God by denouncing heir false piety and pointing them toward the path that would rescue them from their particular bondage: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” His repeated, harsh rebukes of these arrogant men are actually a loving and persistent call for them to embrace the only change that could save them. But with those who are buried in shame and guilt rather than pride and apparent righteousness, Jesus takes a different tack. There is no rebuke from him for the woman caught in adultery. Jesus never snuffs out a smoldering wick or breaks a bruised reed, and he recognizes the poor in spirit when he sees them. In this case, it is the self-righteous accusers who are shamed out of following through with the punishment they had planned, and Jesus offers that fallen woman the surprise of mercy and a fresh start instead of the anger she expected from God and society alike.

Everyone’s journey is different. Some people come chasing after Jesus with a determined hope that refuses to be turned away—think of the blind man crying out to Jesus over the demands of the crowd for him to shut up, or the guys lowering their disabled friend down to Jesus through a hole they had dug in a stranger’s roof, because they were determined to get to Jesus in spite of the long line of people waiting outside. Other people are just minding their own business, or even hiding from Jesus, when he begins pursuing them: that’s the Samaritan woman at the well, who’s taken off guard by the man who strikes up conversation with her in spite of the taboos which divide their genders, their religions, and their races. That’s also Zacchaeus, who thinks he is inconspicuously observing Jesus from the safe distance of his tree branch when Jesus puts him on the spot and invites himself over for lunch.

And so it is with our journeys: different people, different seasons, different truths which Jesus speaks into our lives to guide us down the particular path which will lead each of us to God. I’m trying to get better about accepting that, so I can stop judging other people according to the truth that has been give to me. Like Peter on the beach with Jesus, hearing that the road ahead of him will include suffering and a sacrifice of his personal freedom, I turn to others and want to know, “What about these guys? Are they going to have to give up as much as I do to follow you?” And Jesus, still the same 2,000 years later, replies simply, “What is that to you? You, follow me.”

It is probably my growing awareness of the unique and personal nature of journeying with Jesus that has me so frustrated with the spiritual formulas, the moral rules, and the angry God of judgment that I so often hear proclaimed in churches as supposedly “good news”. This message of fear and judgment does nothing to cure the disease of the righteous religious people who already know the formulas and keep the rules, and it crushes the people who are already “bruised reeds”–the sexually broken, the abused, those who already hate themselves and expect rejection from God with equal intensity.

I think the Good News is love—in all of its universal truth and individual expression. Love was what Jesus offered to pharisees, paralytics, and prostituted women alike, but because he knew each of them down to the very core of their being, the path toward God he offered to each of them was unique. The good news for each of them, and for each of us, is that the bad news is over.

On Miracles and Justice through Community

          This week I heard a moving story about a family’s brush with death and their experience of God’s miraculous intervention to save the life of their newborn daughter. They described the six hundred people who were interceding for them all at the same time, the nearness of God throughout the whole ordeal, the state-of-the-art medical facilities and the world-class doctors they were able to get treatment from. I appreciated hearing an honest and personal account of a very difficult situation, and at the end of the story I felt happy and relieved to see a photo of their adorable little girl who continues to develop as a normal, healthy child. But this story of miraculous intervention and the avoidance of tragedy also brought up more complex emotions and questions for me. I couldn’t help but think of all the babies and children in my neighborhood in India who have died of preventable causes over the past few years– things much simpler than the condition this baby suffered from. I wondered whether those children are any less precious to God than this little girl who was saved. I wondered whether God is really petty enough to count the number of intercessors before deciding whether to get involved.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve begun trying to sort out the difference between God’s blessings and the privileges that we hold onto for ourselves. In this story, it was remarkable that the child survived a very serious health condition and a very rare complication after a high-risk surgery– her recovery is certainly a miracle that goes beyond the limits of medical treatment. But still, a part of her story is that she was operated on by, literally, the best surgeon in the world. A part of her story is that her family had access to some of the best medical centers in the world, that they could afford it, and that their families were wealthy enough to put them up in a hotel and provide for their every need while they waited for their daughter to be able to leave the hospital. All of these factors of geography, income, and family connections played a significant role in determining whether the child would live or die.

I’ve waited outside of crappy public hospitals in India with families who shuttle relatives back and forth from home to bring meager provisions for the patient and the people who are waiting at their bedside. I’ve seen the families who come in from the villages for treatment and who just sleep outside on the grass or curl into the fetal position on one corner of their patient’s hospital bed for nights on end because there’s nowhere else to stay and no money to pay for accommodation. I’ve seen situations in which so many odds are stacked against them that it would take a big miracle to save anyone, and I wonder– have we taken some of our privileges for granted and given God credit for things that global economics, or politics, or we personally have allotted to ourselves? How many Indian doctors and nurses are competing for high-paying positions in American hospitals instead of taking positions at hospitals and clinics in their home country where there are severe staff shortages because our country can afford to pay them more, and because treating wealthy patients in spacious, private offices is less stressful than treating poor patients in overcrowded clinics?

I’m not resentful that children in my home country get great medical care. On the contrary, I join this child’s parents in celebrating the gift of her life! But I am also disturbed that children in my adopted home country hardly get any medical care at all, and I also grieve with the parents of so many children whose lives have been lost– not for lack of divine intrvention, but for lack of basic medical care… and maybe for lack of God’s people intervening.

I’m struck by how much relationships can determine in our lives. I know many wealthy people who are extremely generous amongst their friends and relatives. They are often quick to respond to any need that is brought to their attention, but the problem is that few needs are likely to crop up in their network of relationships, because everyone they know is also likely to be fairly educated, wealthy, and well-placed in the world. Likewise, when entire families, neighborhoods, groups of peope, or nations are poor, chances are that the neediest people will only have other needy people in their networks of relationships when some crisis arises.

What if we could change that? What if we who are wealthy (if you’re literate and have access to a computer and an internet connection to read this, then you are in that category) could expand our circle of friends and family to include those who are poor? If a stranger needs housing, or cancer treatment, or a hot meal, we may or may not contribute through some indirect, sterile line of charitable donation. But if our sister or father or friend is the one who is ill or without a job or in need of a place to stay, there’s no way we would let them go without!

The redefinition of family and responsibility for our fellow human beings is at the very heart of the Kingdom Jesus preached. He scandalized his listeners by declaring that his mother and brother and sisters were not merely his biological kin, but included all those who did the will of God. He revolutionized our concept of the “neighbor” whom we are to love as we love ourselves to include not just those who are ethnically, religiously, or geographically close to us but even those who are our enemies. Many people were offended by these teachings because they believed that Jesus was devaluing the relationships between parents and children, or between people of the same nation or religion. Those people didn’t understand him. He was actually telling us that we owe that same level of committed care and compassion to whoever is in need of it, whether they’re biological family or not.

Expanding our sense of family and neighborhood goes beyond just moving money around. It means making our time, our energy, our resources, our connections, and our know-how available to those we have accepted as part of our surrogate family. Maybe that means moving into a neighborhood where poor people will live nextdoor to us. Maybe it means creating opportunities to build relationship with people in need by volunteering somewhere where we will cross paths with people we wouldn’t meet in the course of our usual routine. However we go about it, it’s bound to take some intentional effort and creativity because it will take us beyond our comfort zone. But I believe that if we can do that, then all of the advantages we’ve been given in life—whether direct gifts from God or the unjust gains of an unequal system—will become true blessings to those who give and to those who receive.