I wonder...

Must life's terrain always possess hills and valleys? Why is it never flat?

Blessed Assurance

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine
Oh what a fore-taste, of glory divine
Heir of salvation, purchase of God
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood

This is my story,
This is my song
Praising my Savior
All the day long

This is my story,
This is my song
Praising my Savior
All the day long...

It was a dreary, overcast Tuesday evening when I decided to make the fifty-nine mile trek south of Macon into Crisp County where I had planned an organizational meeting with local church goers. I cruised down I-75 South, humming along with India Arie and Alicia Keys, trying to stay awake for what was proving to be a rather uneventful drive. When I finally entered Cordele, I noticed that it was a decent sized country town, though quite unlike anything I was accustomed to back home. "Church's Chicken" shacks and "Fish Fil-A" houses occupied almost every other block.

I crossed over a set of train tracks that seemed to usher both me and my mini, hunter-green, 1997 Volkswagen Golf (which I've nicknamed "Ruby") into another time and place. Dilapidated houses, dirty streets, and littered sidewalks filled up the frame before me. Dusk was fast approaching and I noticed a group of men sitting outside of a convenience store, staring intently at a checkers board where two of their comrades were engaged in what appeared to be an intense match. The town, the people, the atmosphere reminded me of a scene from a 1950's flick.

Travoris met me at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church where Nika, one of our volunteers, waited for us outside. The enormous white church towered ominously above the surrounding houses, as if reigning down judgment upon the neighborhood. Though we had both spent most of the past four days on the phones building for this meeting, neither Travoris nor I knew how many people would show up. "Lord, please let people come," I quietly prayed to myself.

Travoris and I entered the sanctuary where we noticed that everything from the carpet, the pew cushions, and the pulpit, to the hymnals and the offering plates were laden with red velvet. "To reh-mind folks uh da blood uh Je-sus!" Deacon Durham said, grinning broadly. He was a short, portly man in his late fifties and had a shiny bald head. He wore gold bifocals that matched the coating on four of his front teeth. After about thirty minutes, five people sat in the pews before us and we decided to commence with the meeting. Deacon Durham stood at the alter and said, "I'd like to thank these heah young folk fo' comin to be wit us heah to-day!" He gestured towards Travoris and me and continued. "They work wit de O-ba-ma campaign and gon' tell us what we got ta do." I made a move to stand up, but noticing that Deacon Durham was far from finished, reclaimed my seat.

"Take out yo' hymnals and turn to page two-seventy-five'" he instructed, wiping the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief. Travoris and I stared at one another puzzled. Was the meeting going to take place after the service? Neither of us knew for certain.

"BLE-SSED A-SSUUUUUURANCE!" Deacon Durham belted out flatly. His voice resonated throughout the sanctuary.

"Je-sus is miiiiine," I started sining along. "Oh what a foooooore-taste, of glory di-viiiiine." I closed my eyes and sang, allowing the words of the song to caress me like a gentle wave, rocking me back and forth in the pew.

This is my story, This is my song...

I could feel my eyes beginning to fill up with tears as I thought about God's faithfulness. As often as my experiences here in Georgia threatened to plunge me into the depths of a despair that I heretofore never knew, I remembered God's promise to never leave me, nor forsake me...even though nearly everyone else had.

Praising my Savior, all the say long...

Deacon Durham closed his hymnal and took a seat, signaling to Travoris and me that it was time to begin. I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my dark-blue hoodie and turned around to face a room now filled with about twenty-five people. "BAY-beh!" Travoris said, staring at me affably through his rectangular black glasses, "let's do this!"

Ramón and the Swimming Pool

Two months after we purchased a white fifteen passenger van, Ramón bought one too. I can't say that I ever really liked Ramón. He struck me as an aloof, unpleasant sort of person and as a child, I found great amusement from observing the way his skinny legs stuck out from underneath his large belly in a manner that very much reminded me of an olive on a toothpick. Stray patches of salt-and-pepper hair formed a semi-circle around a shiny bald spot in the center of Ramón's head. He worked at the local laundromat and scarcely said one word to anyone unless it was to ask them to borrow something. No on on Bishop Street knew very much about Ramón and he preferred it that way.

Ramón had two daughters. Yaseña and Dezerae would wait for the bus every morning even though Gary Elementary School stood no more than two blocks from where they lived. They were both around my age and had tight, rosy skin. They wore their hair in a long, straight plait that reached down their backs and past their dimpled knees.

"Me fadder won' lemme cut my hkair," Yaseña would habitually boast through the grating of the rickety fence that separated our backyards.

"He da only one who can cut my hkair when it get too long." Finding much more amusement in terrorizing our senile shitzu than in listening to Yaseña, I ignored her. "He keep it in a box for when I get married" she grinned.

"How...interesting" I replied, half glancing in her direction. I never became friends with Yaseña and Dezarae for they all-too often viewed themselves far above any company they kept. They preferred to sit on the front steps of their house loudly sucking paletas all day, causing the juice to run down the sticks and onto their clothes and hands.

Ramón's wife rarely left their house, but from time to time I would see her in their backyard hanging clothes on the line. Everyone on the street simply referred to her as "Ramón's wife" and she looked like a larger version of her two persnickety daughters. Her calves resembled newly baked loaves of bread and were so large, they kissed even when she stood with her feet shoulder-width apart. When she wasn't screaming at her children in Spanish, she usually grunted to everyone else.

One afternoon, Ramón began to build a new fence. He worked on it day and night for about a week. Standing seven feet high, Ramón decided to paint the fence neon-orange. Ramón began to make all sorts of changes to his house. He landscaped the front lawn and repaved his driveway. The next thing we knew, Ramón would come home from the laundromat with his fifteen passenger van filled with wood which quickly disappeared into his backyard. Ramón could be heard hammering, sawing, and shuffling around his backyard during all hours of the day or night.

"Them Mex-ee-cans sure know how to use a g--d d---n hammer" Mr. Minter would say to anyone who cared to listen. As a kid, Mr. Minter scared me for he looked exactly like Popeye from the cartoons. He was a staunch racist and could cuss more than anyone I knew. To this day, I am convinced that the only words in his vocabulary were racial slurs and expletives. Scott, Mr. Minter's best friend and neighbor of forty years, lived across the street. He was tall and thin and looked very much like the Spirit of Famine. I don't think his wife ever cooked for him. Mr. Minter liked to sit on his porch and smoke. Oftentimes I'd hear him ranting and raving to Scott about how "All of g--d d---n Mex-ee-co is movin' into West Ch-ee-ca-go!" Usually Scott stood there and listened, offering his two cents now and again.

None of the neighbors on the block could figure out what Ramón built so secretively in his backyard. "Lawd!" Mrs. Edith would say to Sarah, Andrew, and me whenever we went over to her house to mow her lawn. "I hope he know what he doin!"

A couple of weeks later, Ramón threw a party. One could hear bachata and merengue blasting from all the way down the block, almost as if Ramón wanted to let all of Bishop Steet know that they were not invited. My curiosity having gotten the better of me, I climbed one of the apple trees behind my house so that I could look over Ramón's fence, which more closely resembled a construction sign, and into his yard. To my great surprise, I observed that a massive swimming pool stood where Ramón's backyard had once been. A group of people stood huddled together on a tiny deck that spanned the four feet from the back door of Ramón's house to the edge of the swimming pool.

Not long afterwards, Ramón hung a large, obnoxious sign above his driveway that said, "La Casa de la Famila Hernandez." A couple of days later, a big, yellow "for lease" sign appeared in
Ramón's front yard. Ramón and his family had disappeared overnight. None of the neighbors knew exactly what became of them or why they left in the first place. It was rumored that Ramón's wife had been deported.

"They don' finally gone back to Mex-ee-co" Mr. Minter would tell people who asked. After a while, people stopped asking.

About Plaque

Catherine walked into my room where I sat at my desk intently writing out analytical proofs. Her curly hair was stuffed beneath a multicolored hat that Rachel knitted last Christmas. The hat, along with her black turtleneck, framed her face in a manner that highlighted the roundness and rosiness of her cheeks. She carried her science book under one arm and gripped a packet of gum in her other hand.

"Hey Manda" she said. Catherine walked up to where I sat and rested her chin on my right shoulder.

"Hey Pooks!" I said, wrapping my arm around her waist and pulling her into my lap. I grabbed her snuggly and placed a long kiss upon a soft spot between her cheekbone and her ear. Catherine's cheeks were still warm. I saw Catherine wince as I released her with a loud, "Mwah!"

"You hate it when I do that, huh?" I said, smiling as she grinned. "No, I don't mind" she said. "If I had a little sister with cheeks like mine, I'd probably kiss them too." Her empathy amused me. She hopped off of my lap and pointed to her science book, which by now had found a comfortable spot upon the floor beside my desk.

"Um, I'm learning about plaque" she said. Her dark eyes grew wide as she stared at me expectantly. I loved Catherine's eyes. They resembled deep, black pools of ink that appeared as if they had been dropped into her eyes by a wet, black, paintbrush.

"Ooo," I replied. "So you can tell me how to take care of my teeth?" I had given Catherine the cue to begin telling me all that she knew on the subject.

"Well," she began, reaching far down into her diaphragm for breath. "Plaque doesn't just start forming when you eat candy or sugar. You really should brush your teeth after every meal."

"Really?" I asked, genuinely interested.

"Uh huh." She replied. "Even though you brush your teeth hard for two mintes or something, that doesn't mean that you got all of the bacteria out of your mouth. Some of it gets trapped between your teeth."

I winced. "That sounds gross" I said.

"That's why you should floss" she continued. "But there's a certain way that you have to floss or else you could cut your gums and food will get in there and infect them."

Provided with a gross visual, I could feel my nose starting to itch. Ever since I can remember, my nose would begin to itch whenever I encountered something gross or even remotely creepy.

Catherine continued, amused by my discomfort. "Your teeth could start to fall out. If your gums bleed easily when you brush your teeth or floss, if they get puffy, if your teeth start to hurt, or if you have bad breath, you probably have gum disease."

"So how do my teeth look?" I asked, throwing my head back and opening my mouth wide for her to inspect. She pulled my head back farther so that she could get a better look and made her assessment. "Um, you don't have any cavities" she said. "And you're chewing gum, so your breath smells like spearmint." I chuckled, causing myself to nearly choke on my gum.

"But you should floss after every meal" she advised, "or else you'll get plaque and it'll start to eat away at your teeth until they fall out." She sauntered out of the room and down the hallway. I heard her walk into my parent's room where Sophia sat on their bed reading.

"Hey Sophia," I heard Catherine say. "You wanna know about plaque?"

Pieces of a Fragmented Identity

They say that my great-great-great grandfather was born in a gaw* somewhere in India's northern coastal plains. The exact location of his birth has long been forgotten. Some people say that he came from Delhi. Others speculate that he came from Calcutta or Madras. No one really knows for sure. His name was Samuel. Samuel Seuneurayan.** Born to Fazaal and Maharani Seuneurayan around the year 1860, my great-great-great grandfather was the youngest of their four children. His granddaughter, my great aunt, Auntie Bettie, turned eighty five this past April. She is currently the oldest surviving relative on my mother's side of the family and spends her days as a cleaning woman in Grenville, Grenada. Some of the details of Samuel's life story have been preserved in her memory; it is through her that a few remnants of my great-great-great grandfather's experience lives on.

People says that the Seuneurayans descended from Seikhs who occupied the upper tiers of India's kajat. Samuel's father and brothers were agricultural farmers who made their living by harvesting ground nuts, peas, and rice. As a child running around in little more than a doti, Samuel often found himself having to run carts of pumpkin to the local towns where they were sold during the planting season. His two eldest brothers, Moolian and Bharath, owned farms of their own in Kharagpur while his eldest sister, Vashti, married a subsistence farmer from Bhatpara at the tender age of fifteen.

Samuel entered the local village school at twelve years old, shortly after his mother's death. Stationed along the town periphery, the village school sat about two hundred yards from where the sand met the foaming waters of the Laccadive Sea. The village children feared the schoolmaster, a middle aged Brahman, who commanded lessons with a whip that added to the austerity of his appearance. As was the case with all the other children, Samuel's fear of licks drove him to write his lessons out daily in the sand. At such times, his schoolmaster would hover over his shoulder wielding a switch that seemed all-too eager to acquaint itself with his backside.

"Mark it out! Again! Mark it on the sand!" his instructor would shout whenever he found Samuel's lessons less than satisfactory. "Ra-tap!" went the whip against the tender limbs and backs of children who scurried away to escape the sting of the lash. Samuel's father desired for his youngest son, a life that would lead him away from the back-breaking labor of the fields. Little did he know that this was the very place for which Samuel was destined.

As the story goes, Samuel was kidnapped in 1880 while playing football along the shores of an unknown coastal village. He and his friends caught the attention of white arkatees who demanded that they help load cargo onto ships for export. The whites' demands were not aberrations, for foreign shipping companies oftentimes forced India's natives to comply with various pre-imposed labor demands. The boys complied with the whites, who were despised by India's natives for exploiting her land, her labor, and her people.

**

"All e young fellar 'bout twenty a dem come hyar to make money. Dem fellar fool me. Bring me dis country e say e ha plenty money, e fool me" -East Indian indentured worker in Trinidad

**

The men from the beach fettered Samuel, placing him in the bowels of a ship that harbored hundreds of other East Indians bound for what would become a lifetime of gruelling labor. Most of the people aboard the ship were men who had contracted themselves as indentured laborers. Like Samuel, those who were kidnapped were chained together in coffles beneath the ship's hold. Laaka, the young man to who Samuel was chained, was dragged out of his father's house by white arkatees. Neither he nor Samuel would ever see India again.

Upon arriving in Trinidad, Samuel was sold to Mr. Saxon, a British colonist who owned a large and prosperous sugar plantation outside of San Fernando. After three years of service, Samuel had fully assimilated into the plantation's kurme. His workday began with the sound of the bell horn that echoed across the vast plantation just before dawn. The overseers, who were people of African and European descent, herded Samuel and the other slaves and indentured laborers to the cane fields where they planted, weeded, tended, and harvested cane until midday. Samuel's master stratified his workers in the same way that many planters created divisions between their former African slaves. Versus exploiting color hierarchies, Mr. Saxon took full advantage of kajat in order to negate solidarity among his workers. Samuel often witnessed cruelties towards Brahmans and simultaneously loathed the occasional extra portions he would receive for being Seikh.

**

"All a dem livin' but Brahman. E ha village one side da chamar. If I want oak must oak. If a Brahman if a animan comin', must oak" -East Indian indentured worker in Trinidad

**

In India, Brahmans were members of a high ranking priestly caste whose position prevented them from participating in strenuous forms of manual labor. This kajat restriction exacerbated the difficulties that many Brahman's faced on Mr. Saxon's plantation. He would often assign Brahmans the most demeaning tasks and took painstaking measures to degrade them. The were treated as chamar, or members of an untouchable caste.

**

"One a de barrick have six room. I could hear if you farting dem could hear just like livin' in de bush dat is all" -East Indian indentured worker in Trinidad

**

Samuel was housed in what used to be the former barracks for African slaves and shared a single room that was barely large enough for three people, with seven other indentured workers. Mr. Saxon gave his field hands weekly food rations which generally consisted of alloo, roti, kukunee, makai, and sohari. Maida was a luxury of which only the plantation elite partook.

Throughout the time of their indenture, contracted workers could neither change employers nor could they refuse to perform any task to which they were assigned. They were denied the right to protest their pay, which for many consisted of sara bara ana per day. Under the law, indentured workers possessed no rights that either employers or the colonial government were obliged to acknowledge. Many of the workers who contracted themselves quickly became disillusioned by life on the tappu and while most yearned to return to India, their labor contracts prohibited repatriation until the expiration of their indenture.

**

"We di want to go back India but which part e go. Go back which ship an who go gi we de ship?" -East Inidan indentured worker in Trinidad

**

British colonial law demanded that laborers completed five years of industrial service after which they were made to fulfill an additional five years of labor in order to receive a free return pass back to India. The law was crafted so as to guarantee that no one would ever return home.

As the story goes, one afternoon while working in Mr. Saxon's cane fields, Samuel caught the attention of a white missionary who happened to be visiting Mr. Saxon's plantation. Struck by Samuel's tall stature, dark-skin, and straight, jet-black hair, the missionary, a man known throughout San Fernando as Reverend MacDonald, approached Samuel and through discussion, learned that he could both read and write his language. Intrigued by Samuel's mental acumen, the Reverend purchased him in order to train him alongside another Indian, Frederick Budhladall, as a Presbyterian catechist at the Susamachar Presbyterian Church in San Fernando. Samuel spent a little over a decade in Trinidad before migrating to Grenada where he founded the island's first Presbyterian church. He became the first non-white missionary to the island and died there at the age of fifty. Almost eighty years after Samuel first set foot in Trinidad, my mom was born in San Fernando. Hers however, is quite another story...

*gaw: Hindi, meaning "village"
** Pronounced soo'-nah-rhine
Brahman: a member of India's priestly caste.
kajat: Hindi, meaning "caste"
doti: Hindi, meaning "loin cloth." This was the traditional dress for East Indian men and young chidren.
arkatee: Hindi, meaning "recruiters." These men were often sent into India's interior to procure young men to work as indentured servants throughout the British Caribbean.
aloo: Hindi, meaning "potato"
roti: A type of East Indian flat bread
kukunee: Hindi, meaning "fruit"
makai: Hindi, meaning "corn"
sohari: Hindi, meaning "fry bake"
maida: Hindi, meaning"sweet meat"
sara bara anna: Hindi, meaning "twenty-five cents"
tappu: Hindi, meaning "island"

The Road Less Traveled

This morning I sat at my kitchen table holding a hot cup of freshly brewed tea, with my bible open to Galatians chapter four where I had left off yesterday's devotions. The scripture through which I read came from Paul who preached about the freedom from death and from the Law that Christ freely gives to all who believe in Him. Paul's message to the church at Galatia was simple: "let love make you serve one another, for the whole Law is summed up in one commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself" (Galatians 5:13-14). Paul emphasized living the gospel, for when Jesus taught that faith without works is dead, He meant it (James 2:20).

Mom came into the kitchen and ran her fingers over my mass of hair. I rarely tied my hair back for I preferred to let it roam freely in all of its craziness. "You have a lot of hair my dear" she said, chuckling to herself as she reached for the carnation milk in the refrigerator behind me and began to pour herself a cup of tea. Dad walked in from outside where he had just finished shoveling the driveway. "Morning Manda!" he said, placing a frozen kiss on my forehead which sent a chill through my body. I took a sip of tea, relishing the comforting warmth that began at my lips and made its way down my throat. Dad mischievously walked over to mom who stood at the counter fixing her cup of tea, and placed his arms around her waist. "Good morning my love," Dad said as he placed his cold cheek against her neck. "Reggie, you're freezing!" my mom hollered as she playfully shooed him away, but not before giving him a cup of tea and a kiss.

"Pat, did I tell you about the couple that was turned away from the church?" Dad began. Mom shook her head and I paused my reading to listen. "Last night Mr. and Mrs. Caston told me about a friend of theirs who went to the church leadership for help because she and her husband faced foreclosure on their home." Dad continued, "Do you know what they said to her? They told her that they only help people with their spiritual needs."

"Whaaaaat?!" Mom said incredulously. I remained speechless for a moment, neither of us wanting to believe what we were hearing. "I wonder how they'd react if all of their members decided to pray instead of tithe because 'they only believed in helping with spiritual needs'" I replied. "Reggie, no" my mom said, still mortified. "Yeah, Pat. That's what they said" Dad replied shaking his head. "That's not the gospel" Mom protested.

I thought about what I had read, only moments before, concerning the early church.

"Suppose there are brothers or sisters who need clothes and don't have enough to eat. What good is there in your saying to them 'God bless you! Keep warm and eat well!' --if you don't give them the necessities of life? So it is with faith: if it is alone and includes no actions, then it is dead" (James 2: 15-17).

I thought about the church of Acts and how believers shared all that they possessed.

"The group of believers was one in mind and heart. No one said that any of his belongings was his own, but they all shared with one another everything they had. There was no one in the group who was in need. Those who owned fields or houses would sell them, bring the money received from the sale, and turn it over to the apostles; and the money was distributed to each one according to his need" (Acts 4: 32-35).

I have heard pastors, churches, and people who profess Christianity justify their greed and egocentrism in light of this scripture by calling it Communism. When I look at the state of today's Church, I am displeased by it for I have a hard time seeing Christ's image in it. I see celebrities, megachurches, Christian seminars, multi-million dollar ministries, church cruise lines, and I sometimes wonder where the gospel has gone? At what point did the love for wealth, for fame, and for things trample both our humanity and our compassion for others, especially those in need?

I am frustrated and grieved when I think about how difficult it remains for the world to see Christ amidst the mire of legalism, rhetoric, and avarice that characterize too many churches and the attitudes of too many Christians. The world remains antagonistic towards what they perceive to be the gospel of Christ and loathe us in the process. Christ never intended His message to remain confined within the four walls of the church or to become just another facet of one of the largest money-making institutions this world has ever seen. We are the Church. I often wonder what has happened to living the gospel, to putting feet to our words and action behind our faith?

The road which Christ calls us to traverse is certainly a difficult one; it is one that is oftentimes marked by suffering and the daily crucifixion of "self." And yet, God promises to remain faithful, even when we're not. I know Him to be a God of his word which, amidst my frustrations, anxieties, and the prospect of simply not knowing, gives me the strength to pick up my cross and follow Him.