A passage to India

During the Christmas break, Tiffany Curtis joined a group of students from Chapman University in a trip to India. After she returned, she offered this reflection:

Despite an ever-shrinking sense of distance in our world, there are some places that still have the distinct flavor of exotic foreignness. India is undoubtedly one of those places. No matter how connected we all are, there is something about saying you are going to India that breathes heavily with spice and conjures up images of playful monkeys and women with timeless dark eyes and brilliant elegance of sway in iridescent silk.

My Indian friends assured me before we left that if there was one place to go to have your current worldview shattered, it was India. Perhaps because of this expectation of the incomprehensible, I found India less foreign than I had thought I would. I thrived in the unfamiliarity. There was something about the overwhelming sensory stimuli, the complexity of cultural practice, the richness of history, the throngs of humanity that seemed so natural. Despite the constant stares from all around and targeting by street vendors and beggars, I felt a certain ease with slipping into the culture.

India is something you just do; forget your preconceived inhibitions, and dive in. That is something that is admittedly hard for a lot of us to do. It has only been in my short adult life thus far that I have begun to dare to try, and to trust in God. A lot of times, as Christians of intellect, we forget the beauty of "letting go and letting God." Yes, there is a lot that we ourselves control, and there is a lot that we can compute and calculate and ponder, but there are also some things in life that are just like Indian traffic-it doesn't seem logical or ordered in any way, shape, or form, but it works.

I have been on a number of mission trips, and one commonality between them has been this sense of broadening my worldview and overstepping my boundaries. India, more than anywhere else I have been, is a place that forces you to let go. Take a deep breath and trust that your rickshaw won't hit a cow or a motorcycle en route, that your digestive system will not let you down as you swallow the food that is delicious, but that you know was prepared on the floor, and that your smile will suffice when you know the person you are communicating with doesn't even know Hindi, let alone English, and you are at a loss for any local dialects. This kind of experience is so formative in every respect-spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, and socially; it is a practice in faith, and that is what makes it so valuable.

Tiffany Curtis is in her first year as a HELM Leadership Fellow and is a member of Familia de fe Christiana, a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) congregation in Downey, California.