There is a drainage canal running past my community that carries away sewage, industrial waste, agricultural effluent, trash, and excess rainwater. It's not as nice as an underground sewer, it smells, it occasionally overflows during the monsoon, but it's functional. A few weeks back I was walking along the canal when I noticed a crowd gathering.
"What's happening?" I asked a random stranger. Hindi. I get a response in Hindi. (One of the beautiful things about living here is how many languages and cultures and people groups exist side by side. One of the frustrating things is that now having spent 2 years studying one of those languages I'm still nearly totally unable to communicate with people who only speak one of the other languages). The one word I pick out is baccha. Baby.
I look, and I do not see. There are no kids crawling around over there, on the other side of the canal where everyone is staring and now another crowd is gathering. There are often kids playing on the path by the canal or sitting on the banks of the canal or occasionally in the canal collecting recyclable bottles to sell. Why this ordinary occurrence should draw a crowd is beyond me. Again, I look. Again, I do not see.
Instead I walk, I cross the bridge, and I notice more people gathering. So again I ask, "What's going on?"
There's a baby in the canal. A dead baby.
And what had been an ordinary walk turns my world sideways. What kind of world is this where a baby ends up in the drainage canal?
Sadly, I already know the answers to that question. It's a world where mom and dad both work and there are not enough eyes and hands to keep watch for little feet that may fall into the canal on accident. It's a world where kids get sick because there is not enough money for clean water and don't get better because there is not enough money for the doctor. It's a world where there simply may not be enough money for a funeral. It's also a world where there sometimes is not enough money for one more mouth to feed.
At that moment the canal became a desecrated place to me.
I have some friends who work in another desecrated place. And this month they invited me to come with them, carrying flowers into that dark place. The social business they work with provides employment for women who have been exploited in the sex trade or who are vulnerable to trafficking.
The red light district seems, in many ways, just as toxic as the drainage canal. A place of suffering, hopelessness, oppression, and death.
But I got to go with some women who used to work there. They don't anymore. They work in a beautiful business making beautiful blankets and bags with their own hands. They earn their livelihood, their dignity, and their freedom from that dark place.
And on this day, once a year, they take flowers into the red light district and hand them out to the women who work there. They say, "a beautiful flower for a beautiful girl," flash a smile and move on to pass out more flowers. It may not seem like much, but that small glimpse - of a person who cares, of beauty, of a smile - may mean a lot. And it's backed up with the commitment of my friends who will go back, again and again, to visit the women who work there. It is backed up with the offer of alternative employment for those who can take it. It's backed up with hope grounded in reality.
Going into that desecrated place is not fun or easy. There are no simple or easy solutions. But I got to go with women who have redeemed their own stories. Who now carry a bit of the sacred in their story of freedom. Women who are working to make that desecrated place sacred again.
"What's happening?" I asked a random stranger. Hindi. I get a response in Hindi. (One of the beautiful things about living here is how many languages and cultures and people groups exist side by side. One of the frustrating things is that now having spent 2 years studying one of those languages I'm still nearly totally unable to communicate with people who only speak one of the other languages). The one word I pick out is baccha. Baby.
I look, and I do not see. There are no kids crawling around over there, on the other side of the canal where everyone is staring and now another crowd is gathering. There are often kids playing on the path by the canal or sitting on the banks of the canal or occasionally in the canal collecting recyclable bottles to sell. Why this ordinary occurrence should draw a crowd is beyond me. Again, I look. Again, I do not see.
Instead I walk, I cross the bridge, and I notice more people gathering. So again I ask, "What's going on?"
There's a baby in the canal. A dead baby.
And what had been an ordinary walk turns my world sideways. What kind of world is this where a baby ends up in the drainage canal?
Sadly, I already know the answers to that question. It's a world where mom and dad both work and there are not enough eyes and hands to keep watch for little feet that may fall into the canal on accident. It's a world where kids get sick because there is not enough money for clean water and don't get better because there is not enough money for the doctor. It's a world where there simply may not be enough money for a funeral. It's also a world where there sometimes is not enough money for one more mouth to feed.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
From Wendell Berry's "How to Be a Poet"
At that moment the canal became a desecrated place to me.
I have some friends who work in another desecrated place. And this month they invited me to come with them, carrying flowers into that dark place. The social business they work with provides employment for women who have been exploited in the sex trade or who are vulnerable to trafficking.
The red light district seems, in many ways, just as toxic as the drainage canal. A place of suffering, hopelessness, oppression, and death.
But I got to go with some women who used to work there. They don't anymore. They work in a beautiful business making beautiful blankets and bags with their own hands. They earn their livelihood, their dignity, and their freedom from that dark place.
And on this day, once a year, they take flowers into the red light district and hand them out to the women who work there. They say, "a beautiful flower for a beautiful girl," flash a smile and move on to pass out more flowers. It may not seem like much, but that small glimpse - of a person who cares, of beauty, of a smile - may mean a lot. And it's backed up with the commitment of my friends who will go back, again and again, to visit the women who work there. It is backed up with the offer of alternative employment for those who can take it. It's backed up with hope grounded in reality.
Going into that desecrated place is not fun or easy. There are no simple or easy solutions. But I got to go with women who have redeemed their own stories. Who now carry a bit of the sacred in their story of freedom. Women who are working to make that desecrated place sacred again.
