Life and Death

It can be challenging to express my attraction to India. After reading what I have shared below more clarity came to me as to why. What I garnered from this powerful piece is part of being truly alive is being in touch with death...

For twenty-two years we have listened to the drum and bugle band of the girl’s high school next door practice their marching; boom, boom,boom, over and over again. My mind is drawn back to the drum of the Daily Office; Life and Death and Life and Death.…. It is the constant song of the streets here. Memories rush in. The pretty woman up the street who lived on the stoop of the Bata Shoe store with her two kids. Every year for the next four another baby would appear, and she grew older and weaker. Then one day there was only the father and the six kids. Soon they had left. Life and Death,Life and Death….. Every few days we can watch as a Muslim coffin is born up the streets from the community just down the street from us.There is such a feeling of brotherhood as the deceased is carried by the men, alternately sharing the burden as they go to the cemetery not far from here. What an honoring to be born by your brothers!Life and Death, Life and Death…. For years different families have camped on our sidewalk, just beyond the fence with their meager possessions and plastic sheets for shelter. They are not much help with the torrents of rain in the monsoon. They come and then they go, to be replaced by fresh arrivals from some distant village. Life and Death, Life and Death…. The riots came to our street a number of years ago. Angry mobs swarm up the street only to be rushed by police and then later by patrolling soldiers menacingly motioning us off the balcony, and shots ring out in the night. A body is dumpedon the street right in front of the church. A burned-out taxi, a Hindu driver who mistakenly made a wrong turn stays in the middle of the street for over a week. Life and Death, Life and Death…. Al eper sits for years at our gate, cheerfully greeting us with a wave of his stub. He becomes a talisman for all the earth’s suffering.He never asks us for money. One day Charlie, as we called him, lies motionless on the sidewalk, on his mat and someone has put a cup out as he is near his end. A rupee of thanks goes in and a prayer of gratitude is said for Life and Death and Life and Death. We have been blessed to live before life as it is, reality everyday,sometimes in its rawest forms. For twenty-two years we rehearsed the Daily Office every time we walked out the door. Effulgence is there,to fill us, and to remind us of Life and Death and Life and Death.We will miss that.



Jack & Judy Gilles are leaving India after 22 years and are taking up their new assignment in our Litibu community in Mexico.