The Kingdom of Christ - Contemplation

Here is my reflection on The Kingdom of Christ.... it's a repetition.

God, I beg you for your grace that all my thoughts and actions be directed toward the advancement of your Kingdom. I offer up all my time, money, service, suffering, spirit to the advancement of Christianity both here and there with you.... In so doing I ask that I will act against sensuality and carnality and worldly love of things.

So, here I am in the Lord's presence as I work at my various tasks throughout the day. He labors immediately beside me. I can reach out and touch Him, or look at what he is doing (as if on his desktop)... a co-worker. We are in a large tiled and marble columned round room like a rotunda. Around the perimeter are many Biblical and other unknown saints standing behind the great ancestors of mine, who stand in front of the heavenly throng. I can look around at the crowd of witnesses watching me and the Lord, and in the front row are John Williams (missionary to the South Seas, martyred), Jeremiah Williams (circuit rider preacher to the land of Lincoln and Ohio in the late 1800s), Emily Williams (Jeremiah's wife of 7), Benjamin and Ruth Williams (my parents and active Evangelicals), Hope and Burton Winke (my Aunt and Uncle -- Hope and Ruth helped their mother found dozens of Christian Churches in central India during the early 20th century), Edith & Ross Willobee and their deceased child David (my mother and aunt's missionary parents to India 1907 ff - Ross and David are buried in India), Uncle Smith (the black missionary from Trinidad who immigrated to India was died there as an old preacher who taught me at his knee and shoulder to sing "Rolled Away, All my Sins are Rolled Away" in Hindi). And over the shoulders of these blood relatives are the saints of old, resting their hands on my ancestor's shoulders —altogether watching my every move. ..... My breath and voice of my many murmuring prayers are at the vertex or foci of the rotunda and my audience can hear everything I whisper like those acoustic museum displays. Indeed I am living in Hebrews 12:1.

Then, I notice that the saints (mine and the Biblical ones) are standing, if not hovering, over beautiful polished marble of various colors... and beneath me is compacted dirt. Over the saints is a tall and ornate roof to protect them, and over me the roof is missing, exposing my efforts to sun and wind, rain, and fog, hot and cold. Sometimes my flooring is mud, other times it is hard, but it is never grass. I am in the heavenly court, and I am on display as evidence...but of what kind? Am I evidence for the prosecution or the defense? That is my choice. What will I do?

Tonight, will I make a good examination of conscience and confession? Everyone watches and prays for me.

Indian Legacy Passed Down

My grandmother, Edith (Flesher) Willobee, at an early age at the turn of the 20th century, was drawn to India to be a missionary. She went alone in 1907 and joined a small group of other American missionaries from the Pentecostal Bands. Two years later a young man, Ross Willobee, whom she had met in Bible school, followed her. The following year, after they had learned Hindi, they married. Two years later, in 1912, their first daughter was born, Ruth, who became my mother. In 1915 a second daughter came, Hope; and in 1919, in the middle of a great Indian famine, my uncle David was born. In 1921 my grandfather, Ross, died of black water fever. Edith took down the new doors in their bungalow to make a coffin for him. It took days for her to obtain the local chief's permission to bury Ross, a strange and uncomfortable custom to the Hindustani; they were used to either burning the dead (if they were rich); or after a brief ceremony in the middle of a field the poor carried the body to a river bed where it was buried on the shore in a shallow grave for animals to dig up and eat that night. A custom still followed. Three days later my little uncle David died. He collapsed suddenly during play of an unknown illness. Distraught, Edith, all alone, except for her daughters, removed the new window shutters from the bungalow and made a second coffin. Without waiting for the local chief's permission she buried David next to his father. The story continues for decades as my grandmother, after a nervous breakdown, gets out of bed years later and packs up three ox carts and for 5 years establishes Christian churches in Central India.


This past week, our eldest daughter, Trudy Nelson, traveled to India on her second short term missionary adventure there to do some teaching with a group of other ladies from her Baptist Church. Their goals was to teach a group of former untouchable ladies about growing in the Christian life. A recent India national law has allowed the untouchables to leave their low caste, join a religion, and change their life. Here is the link to pictures of her trip to Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. In this picture she wears a sari I purchased during my trip to India in 1982.
picasaweb.google.com/mtrudyn/IndiaOct07

Addendum:

After I posted the above, my sister wrote me (after seeing the blog link) and reminded me that today is the anniversary of our father’s death. Benjamin R. Williams (d. October 24, 1989). Such a date to Catholics is a celebratory date, because it is the date that a person goes to his reward, which in the life of a saint like my Dad, is the moment when he “won the race set before him.” Dad couldn’t wait to go to heaven and praise Jesus. It was a driving motivation in his life...e.g. his eventual death. My mother, Ruth (the tallest of the girls in the picture above) was much the same. When we buried Dad, I can remember my mom standing next to his fresh grave and joyfully pointing to her future grave next to Dad and saying to me, “Someday my body will be right there. But I’ll be in heaven.”

This morning at Mass the priest (Fr. John Riccardo...yeah, I'm lucky) was telling us a little about St. Anthony Mary Claret (d. 1870), whose life (and death) we celebrate today, giving us yet another example upon which to model our life. I had forgotten that today was the anniversary of dad's death. As I was hearing about a little about the life of St. Claret and the example he was to us, I thought of my Dad...and how he was saints too, and a great example for us to follow. Then I thought about Ross and Ross, and my daughter's recent trip to India...literally (for a few days at least) Trudy was following Edith's example to preach to the poor of India....Edith’s great motivation.

We have all these role models for us...and it was cool that I thought through all of this during Mass this morning...as if my guardian angel was reminding me that today was a very special day for me...because of my Dad.

Nectar in a Sieve

Nectar in a Sieve has affected me deeply, although I am familiar first hand with the life described in it. Although I am a westerner, born and raised in the U.S. Midwest, white, upper-middle class, well-educated, and Christian -- I know something of India -- and know that the spirit and essence of this story is as true as anything real. It is of immeasurable value.

L-R:Ruth (Willobee) Williams, Edith
(Flesher) Willobee, David Willobee,
Hope (Willobee) Winke, Ross Willobee

My mother (Ruth) and aunt (Hope) were born of missionary parents in India in 1912 and 1915. In 1921 their father (Ross) and my grandfather, died there of black water fever. A few days later their 2-year old brother (David) dropped dead while playing -- all during a famine. Their mother (Edith) stayed on. India was British back then, but poverty was deep and wide throughout the land, and my grandmother lived nearly as poor as those around her, being supported by donations from the U.S. that amounted to 25 cents to a dollar at a time. I have her accounting books and I grew up with stories, and later came across over 1,000 pages of diaries from her that are very much in keeping with life that Kamala Markandaya writes about.

In 1982 I accompanied my mother and aunt back to their birthplaces, which were still in the midst of extreme poverty and the ignorant stupidity of which Kamala describes through the eyes of the white doctor Kenney. I've eaten with families on dung floors, and help stir pots of curry over open fires. I've met and photographed families living on streets with only what they can carry to their name. I've been to temple in the middle of the night and breathed the pungent smoke of dung cakes used for fuel, and watched as a dead leper was carried from her mud-dung hut and given an impromptu funeral in a field before being carried off to be buried in the sands of a river so animals could easily dispose of her body at night.

Perhaps it was all of that which spoke to me in Ms. Markandaya's writing. But I will tell you this. Reading this novel, if you are a Westerner of any ilk, is more important than eating. Let your children go without food for a few meals, if that will give you time to live, love, and walk with Rukmani. This book should be required reading (period - no qualifications). In its reading you will be a better person, and your children, sans meals, more healthy. If you are a priest that hands on penance, Nectar in a Sieve should be reading for any sin involving wealth, greed, abundance, or a lack of human dignity or marital infidelity. I dare to say that before Christ came to Earth to care and love the poor, he read this book. (It is a possible thing, you know.) On the outside Nectar in a Sieve is about the suffering and trials of living near the bottom of the cast system in rural India. But what it's really about is how love and hope can possess the human heart in the most desperate of lives.