The decline of the Roman empire was marked by apathy within Roman society. Rome had been a culture that flourished as it sought to establish itself as a republic. It advanced in technology, science, art, and literature. Roman culture began to flourish as it sought self-governance—rule from the people rather than the dictates of a single totalitarian ruler. Though our republic and that of Rome have a few great differences, they spawn from a similar idea: can man rule himself? Both answered in the affirmative. But inside Rome, something happened.

Cultural and religious values play heavily into the makeup of a society. Roman society worshiped human-like gods. These gods were not infinite, but simply amplified versions of human men and women. They exemplified the Romans own greatest traits of strength, power, passion, and love, as well as their weaknesses, temptations, crimes, and treacheries. At the studs of Roman culture existed these gods who, like the Romans, were struggling to get a grip on both the weightiness and the finiteness of their own humanity. In the end, the gods couldn’t pull it off.

Roman society eventually caved in on itself; it’s amoral gods were unable to hold up the weight of a people attempting to rule themselves. As is fact proven by history, an amoral society is fit only to be ruled by a despot. It takes a dictator to bring a form of order, a form of peace where all people hold to one moral: each is right in his own eyes. It is impossible for a society to function such a mindset. With no hope in the gods, society turned its head to man and the emperor became god. When all do what is right in their own eyes, soon all will be forced to do what is right in only one’s eyes. And that is what we call a dictatorship.

But what Rome did not have, the United States of America does have: an infinite Ruler from whom our Law is derived. I do not speak here of a dictator or human ruler, but a Creator. As we pledge ourselves to our own republic, we recognize that America is indeed “one nation, under God,” who indubitably has and gives “liberty and justice for all.” These are not arbitrary ideals decided upon by a group we refer to as our founding fathers. They are rights set out for all humanity by the Creator, God himself.

Our society does not have to crumble from within as Rome did. For within, though our society is given to amorality and decadent indifference, the studs of our republic have been sunk deep into a reality that goes beyond our human selves. The God our principles are founded upon is not one created from our image, but we from his. We must now go back to the sources, in search of meaning that goes deeper than ourselves and that which we may create.

- John B Moore IV, Loveland, Colorado

Virtue and character inspired the doing of great deeds and the faithfulness to ordinary and everyday duty. Today, the grand majority of the stories we tell are founded on trivialities of the drama of our lives. Objection to the plots of many feature films and sitcoms revolving around drama in the lives or ordinary as well as extraordinary people is not that such drama is at all times fictitious of our own lives, often it is a mirror. Objection comes however when we desire to have children and neighbors who base their actions on virtue and character but the stories we marinate our lives in say nothing in support of such values.

The stories we tell our children and ourselves, do matter. We base our life’s perspective of reality character’s in books and movies. And if we tell stories that have noble characters, we will be more likely have children who grow up to live and act more similarly to the heroes and heroines of those stories. If we tell stories of in which the philanderers and womanizers are exalted and prostitutes are proclaimed as admirable and upstanding women, we will likely have children who grow up to be and procreate bastards and whores.

The poem that follows is the Village Blacksmith, by Longfellow. It is left to you and I to decide if we shall will to pay the high cost of raising a generation who will once again hear stories of valiant, the courageous, and the faithful.

The Village Blacksmith

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, -rejoicing, -sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees its close!
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.

Ah, the last documented adventures of college…or were they. Whether or not these are indeed the last adventures of one young man’s Bryan College experience to be documented, it is likely one of the very last videos you’ll ever see on this blog. But, who can say what might happen in the future? Not I.

From a beach hotel in Florida, here’s to one last homework assignment.

Peace be with you,

John

"Presence of the Three" (on the Grand Prairie)

On the western bank of the Mississippi, the Arkansas Delta sprawls forward in a flat, melancholy river-bottom plain and rises into the Grand Prairie. At first glimpse, the geography of this region may be unappealing to the eye of the contemporary man or woman, but to a few before us it was the “Land of Opportunity.”

Much of this frontier was settled in the latter half of the 1800s by immigrants from Europe. The hardworking people saw opportunity for a vibrant life to grow from the rich soil and the lands aptitude for agriculture. It was not an easy life for those who came, cleared, and attempted to scratch means to survive on out of the dirt. But the promise was not ease of living, but opportunity.

This is an introduction to a place and a culture. It is a story of those who live and breath upon the same land these early settlers and the indigenous peoples before them did. Today it is a forgotten place and viewed as all but a “Land of Opportunity.” Those who live here today have not seen the same opportunity their fathers and grandfathers saw, but instead have taken on a view of pathetic, victimized need. From this impoverishment, the residence of the Arkansas Delta fail to behold the same opportunity seen by their ancestors. And instead of a thriving culture and livelihood in the midst of hardship as our immigrant fathers and mothers experienced, the people of the delta region of Arkansas live in a daze.

I hold that the same opportunity perceived by the settlers of the Delta still exists. My aim lies with my forefathers’: to take hold of that opportunity and to help my neighbors discover the same. Opportunity is always present, it is only a matter of seeing with the right eyes.

Below are photographs from this homeland, the rural delta of the Mississippi. Seeing begins with our eyes.

Nearly two and half months ago, we arrived in this strange land. We found ourselves in a swath of unknown culture and language. But those people who were first beside us seemed so foreign—foreigners themselves, though we stood as the true foreigners. They continued to bear with us as we at first endured and adapted, and later awkwardly beginto learn their custom and language. Today we are highly honoured to find ourselves standing beside them, brothers and sisters, friends and different family on the other half of the world. Their home is far away from ours, but even this place has the feel of home to it. In the midst of these, India has become for us, a strange place to call, a home away from home.

Today  with tears in our eyes, we say goodbye to these good ladies and gents. To the Asirs our family, to Binesh first our brother and second our roomie, to our Uncle and Aunty Thomas Rajan, to sister Jackquelin, to our street and the neighborhood kids at Thangam colony, to India a land in which God continues his Revelation to his World, which began here so long ago.

We are grateful to these and to our loving and good Father for bringing us safe thus far. Our journey leads us onward to Italy for a week of reunion and debriefing with five other friends and students who’ve been scattered across the globe for the summer as well, and three professors from Bryan, our college. We proceed homeward August 6 and meet our families and homeland, whose presence’s we expectantly await. We look back to the friends we leave behind and ahead to the faces we shall soon meet. And not much of anything makes either all so easy. But It is life in this world, and these are the one’s whom we’ve grown to love. Onward.

——————————————-

below is a scrawled, short account what happened in Madurai, (written earlier):

Our last trip into the field ended the 25th of July. It was a crammed week spent in Madurai, where we had a nice ordered schedule (typed up and handed to us! A first since we’ve come to India. Usually there is no given schedule, except once we sat down upon arrival in Pondicherry (in the house of Rishi David) and were told, “I don’t know what God’s plan is for you while you are here, so we shall wait and see.” And so things simply unfolded as they came.). The home we stayed in is the New Life Center for handicapped and mentally retarded children, run by Word for the World staff. We slept upstairs and ate in the office downstairs with our host Packiraj, and our guide (and schedule giver) Ebeneezer. When we would go out, it seemed we would end up squeezing out of an cramped  auto-rickshaw only to find ourselves addressing an all Women’s college. Other ministry included visiting a three old folks/retierment homes and elementary/middle schools.

Here too there is much more to be told, of ‘kerchiefs and muslim young ladies, of kids with unbelievable energy and hunks of 500 year old concrete and a man named Packiraj. These stories too shall lay low. Snaps from the trip may mysteriously arrive on this page in weeks to come. We are grateful for your prayers and thoughts. Faithfully, the Father has kept us.

Life separated from your own kind, kin, and culture draws out of one a deep desire to return to home. More than strange food, oppressive climates, or the throwback of India’s state as a developing nation, interactions inside a culture that is a world away from your own brings on the greatest weariness to the soul. Though our native tongue, English, may be the “lengua franca,” we think broadly in a different spectrum from those outside of our Western context.

Caleb and I pick up Tamil words and phrases here and there, we can give greetings and ask for names and give our own, compliment the food and give our thanks for it, but still we wrestle inside a box that limits us, and somehow cuts our freedom down from the fullest extent which common communication in our own “native place” lends to us. Deep in my psyche (where ever that is), I’m internally troubled by this—-to the extent that every now and then I’ll almost try and rely upon some shaky Spanish I once thought I knew. And it just boggles me when I realize that I’m stuck. Not even bad Spanish will get me out of this one.

“Giving messages,” “Sharing the Word of God,” or “preaching the Gospel” to People (in twos and threes or twenties and thirties) doesn’t get any easier when filtering words through the understanding of a translator. The rhythm and cadence of normal speaking (in public even) slows to a sentence or two or an idea at a time. Ideas given in steps. Words limited to a minority. Vocabulary strangled to concrete words which will make the jump to the ears of someone who understands your culture to be just as foreign. The audience may or may not laugh at your humor which you tried to help along with a big smile and a laugh and body language that in this setting may not mean what you know it to mean. A full Sunday schedule along is enough to wear a couple o’ suthern boys out—-plum tared.

Surely, God is good. Grace gives life to us, the same as it does to the leper, or the blind man, or the lame man who Jesus heals. And somehow that is also our message. Somehow it’s one I find we’re living inside of and at the same time, through such poor means of our own, proclaiming as Gospel.

Our souls long to for our homeland, and that time too shall come. Soon.

(July 31 we will leave India for Italy debrief with other students from Bryan who have been around the world this summer.

Aug. 6 we will leave; final flight from Frankfurt to Dallas: O South, O Texas, how we shall be happy to meet thee.)

Bay on Bengal: a blue sunrise (dawn)

Hello World.

Stop for breakfast en route to Pondi

Caleb and I are two “plain and tall” country boys from America’s heartland, and somehow we’ve wandered into a story in India that is far too large for us. We find ourselves in the company of full-time missionaries from India who minister continually to the dejected, the broken, the downtrodden. They go to the sick and the lame and the leprous; when you look for them they will be found in the places where the lost dwell.

In these darker corners of the world–in these slums, villages, and leper colonies, we go with Aaron and John, two missionaries here, to take good news to the hopeless. Simply put, we sit in with the lame, or the blind, or the leprous and touch them and love them and pray.

We listen to their stories, and tell them our story, the story of a loving Father who loves his children. It’s the only story of hope, and still sometimes it’s hard to see that hope. Sitting on a concrete floor in a dark room next to an old woman who bears the image of God but whose physical body is marred by the marks of leprosy, we shared this story with Evan-Marie. She reminded me of my own grandma, I told her; yet she asks how can God be good while she suffers from her wretched disease that robs her of touch and sense and feeling. While the weight of her words gets lost in translation, the deep lines and tangling expressions of Evan-Marie’s beautiful face communicate the ache of so much that she’s lost. The dark shadow of leprosy has stolen her hands from her, her feet are shrunken, and her life is empty and void of people, relationships, and love.

It is no health and wealth prosperity gospel that comes to save this world. I don’t think such gospel ever penetrates the heart of the darkness here in these villages and huts and colonies (“nagar”). It seems that it can be, it will be, and it is nothing less than God himself coming down to save us from our darkness.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

God Standing in our darkness with us, saves us from our darkness. God coming inside our dark and cramped huts, brings to us light. Joining himself to our sickness and our sin, he heals us. He came to save us in our darkness. To save us in our sickness. To heal us in the midst of our disease.

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

I am a liar if I look in the mirror and find myself any more healthy than Evan-Marie. Or if I think that my house and my body are anything more than this poor woman’s. God came into my hut, he came into my leprosy, and he came into my village to save me. And today, he still sits in my sick hut comforting me, he still bathes my wounds which I still suffer from, which the world still feels. And even though leprosy doesn’t at all lose any of its peicing sting, hope is there–is here, because God is here.

Where a nose once was beautiful, now depressions sink it into her face. Here his leg used to stand, now only a thigh is still there. Where did these things go? How did they slip away? Mahgiemai or Immanuel’s disease robs them of that which we all long for–the feeling of touch. They’ve been sealed from the feeling of pain, but I’m sure, in actuality, it is pain that they well know. Our father knows this well also. And in an extrordinary way, these two lovely people have hope and joy. They have an understanding of this God who comes to save them, which wealth and prosperity gospels do not. They know a God who gives more and offers more than riches and even health. For what the heart of man truly longs to know is his Father who also desires to know his children.

Caleb, Aaron, John on the coast outside the leper colony (Bay of Bengal)

On a different note, we are still very much in India, which at all times (except for a few strange moments or moments of great frustration at the lack of what we’ve always considered “normal”)–at all times we are provided with the most interesting of sights and experiences. Such as this good fellow (he wears a lungi, a traditional Indian skirt-like piece worn by men in the mornings…sometimes all day).

Another great scene but even better experience when sweat has drenched your kurta (traditional Indian shirt) is this:

Indian airconditioner.

There are many more of these experiences we want to share with you–our friends and the world–but only so much can be spoken here. Pondicherry has not given us any less reason to roll on the floor with laughter at times at the crazy things that happen during our days. Like why we, along with our host Jacob, always walk on one side of the road on the 3 mile (or so) journey by foot back to his place every night when at the end, only to have to cross the road to the other side. Or like our friend, who walks everywhere (such an enigmatic man he is; but we enjoy him and walking).

For so many prayers we are vrey greatful. Our health continues well and our lives are continually enriched; we do feel weariness of the roads of this journey, but we are blessed to be among such people as these. Thanks be to our good God.

In a very cramped booth in a 4 “system” cafe near Rajiv Ghandi Square in Puducherry,

John

Thomas Rajan walked into their homes and greeted them, shaking their hands or wrists, laughing and loving those who are never touched by anyone outside of their families, and perhaps not even family. He began ministry here nearly 20 years ago, coming here to Chengalpatt for seven years before those who mocked him slowly began coming to the hope of the Gospel. The message offers what nothing else and no one else in this world does: hope. Hope for a better life to come. Hope for a redeemed heart. Hope and faith and “rest for your souls.”

Peter

There remains an inordinate number of stories which accompany the tales from Mumbai and our precious time there, they may be shared in a few photographs and explanations, or they may wait for a glass of sweet tea and a porch swing in Roe, Arkansas. So many silly things happened, and so many changing things.

Tomorrow night we say goodbye to our friends Matt and Danielle who came for a short visit, and then in a few days we’re off to Pondicherry. Pray for Matt and Danielle as they continue on to China to see other members of the Bryan College team on field there. We will head down the coast on a 3.4 hour bus ride to this former French colony; our prayer is to simply follow the steps of our Savior.

With mosquitoes in Chennai,

John

On Friday, the 6th of June, Caleb and I caught a flight from Chennai to Mumbai, aka Bombay. Coming in, our plane swooped low over the small mountains which hem in the city to the sea–the Arabian sea.

Here we are staying in a small, two room teachers’ house which is vacant at this time. School begins June 11 for a Word for the World school in Chinchpada slum, one kilometer away. At that point, Caleb and I will begin teaching in the school there. At this time, we are going out and visiting slums with Limma, a W/f/W missionary (originally from Orissa) who lives there in the slum. We are being taken care of by Ponraj Abraham (Uncle Abraham) and his wife, Auntie. Our conversations in English consist of a few incomplete sentences comprised of misplaced words and further interpretations when Caleb and I get back to our quarters. Still, much joy is found in our fellowship with them.

Also, great joy is found in visiting these slums around. The day we arrived we went out to a prayer meeting in Chinchpada where we joined in with nearly 30 folks in a one room house smaller than a two person  dorm room. Mostly women and children, seated on the floor with legs crossed, worshiping God. Chairs were, as always seem to be, given to Caleb, Limma, and myself. I joined in on a guitar and Caleb shared a message translated into Hindi by Limma from Psalm 90. Afterward I prayed for these kind, beautiful people, for the family whose home we were in. We sat and shared puffed rice and cheese type crackers (or something similar) and then sipped chai out of small metal cups.

From there we took an auto rickshaw to Nocil, another slum where we met a family in their home. They are believers; three generations of women: grandmother, mother, daughters. It was a small, one-room tin building with a concrete floor. We watched Pop Eye the Sailor in Hindi on a small TV in the corner and then Caleb and I were given Pepsi in glass bottles and biscuits (small cookies). We sang a few songs, I again accompanied with guitar, and then I shared from John 1, the story of the world. It was condensed and unplanned and as simple as it truly is; Limma translated. Caleb prayed for the family, again translated, we talked, laughed at our short, poor Hindi phrases we keep trying to use, and then, as Limma says  “moved” ["We move?', accompanied by a head bobble].

The story continues, and it spills into the next day when we went back to Chinchpada and on to another slum and visited Hindu families Limma has gotten to know through his magnanimous love (and his wonderfully big, bold smile, full of very white teeth). There, in a small two room shack,  I told the ancient story of a giant and a boy, David, to children sitting around our feet. We took chai with the people and then prayed for them. Limma translates our prayers for these people to come to know the true, living God. Our messages, even to the recent believers saved in these slums from Hinduism, are the story of the Living God who created all things. As we read the Bible, it is this God we find chasing after the heart of man, and finally becoming man himself. It’s the story in which God takes on flesh and dwells with us. It seems unthinkable, with a description of this all powerful, all holy, living God. But it seems the only story that may at once and finally give hope to a young woman from Chinchpada whose husband has died and who has one small child. It seems that this story of a God who lives with men and then dies for them could be the only story that gives hope to the hopeless who live in the shanties where they always give us the chair to sit in while they take the floor and their always sure to  serve us something, even if it’s only water we can’t drink. These people have joy. They find life in the midst of a slum. I find life and I find joy in the eyes of these, the hurting but hopeful, those who are stricken but have come to put their trust in this God who we are told of in such a story. They are wrapped up in this same story. They too are at the heart of redemption, even in the middle of a slum you’ve never heard of in a land worlds different than your own.

//////

Scenes from Navi-Mumbai

Worship in a house church

on the back edge of Nocil slum

//////

Scenes from the journey up to Mumbai (some that you never saw)

a view of a few foothills of the Himalayas. a winding, sickening road up.

at the back of the taj mahal, a side (and a river) you may never see.

//////

a series of trains

authors on a train

train to chennai: the pensive traveler

the local train, local style

had your breakfast? homemade: grill cheese, cheese toast, and bread with jam. this is Navi-Mumbai style (*peekaboo*)

morning chai with binesh in chennai in our friendly neighborhood tea shop

thanks for all prayers. our health remains good, glory be to God. We are somewhere in the middle of moving into the life of those who only know the slum and the all too funny mistranslations of Uncle Abe and Auntie (who keeps giving us rice even after we tell her to stop). We don’t always know what to do, know what to say, or how to preach. But somewhere in the middle we are met with enduring graces of our Savior Christ Jesus. Thank you, thank you for your prayers.

By his grace,

john, Navi-Mumbai