A Chance to Die

by Elisabeth Elliot

  For that a little emptier

  My house on earth, what rich reward

  That guerdon were.

  And by the borders of my day

  The river of Thy pleasure flows,

  The flowers thai: blossom by the way

  Who loves Thee knows.

  1. Katharine Makower, Follow My Leader, p. 127.

  2. Ibid, p. 128.

  3. 1 Corinthians 7 (PHILLIPS).

  Chapter 37

  Place of Healing and House of Prayer

  One day in 1900 Amy had been asked to help nurse a boy with pneumonia. She went, and did what they asked her to do, but the treatment was appallingly primitive, and it was then she “looked up and asked for a trained nurse.” So it was that in a little crowded house in the village of Dohnavur the medical work—spiritually speaking—began. Then there was the prayer of 1921, on the evening when she and her comrades had looked out over the plains at sunset, thinking of all the suffering shut up in the little shut-up towns. The vision of the Place of Healing came, a place “served by a company something like the early Franciscans in the gaiety of their spirit. They were lovers of their Lord and servants of His sick.”

  When Murray Webb-Peploe came, he named his first hospital ward Buckingham Palace. It was nothing but an old hen house. This was expanded by the addition of four mat huts and then an Indian house which was called the Door of Health. The first installment on the purchase of land for a hospital was paid in February 1928. In the following year Amy believed God wanted them all to trust Him for a specific amount for the building—the staggering sum of ten thousand pounds. They agreed, and settled their faith on these words: “This is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”1 Taking the promise quite literally as meant for them in this particular instance (as nearly always, Amma’s conviction that it was according to His will was accepted by all), they assumed the money was “received.” Four months later to the day came a gift of one thousand pounds, and eventually the rest followed.

  Medical work was the first “mission field” for the Dohnavur Family. The children were being trained to do everything, anything, however menial, measuring it not by hours or by rupees but by love. They were to learn to be grains of wheat, falling into the ground and dying, and what better field for that “dying” than a hospital where they could give themselves to people from whom they would receive no benefits in return?

  It is a high calling, one that appeals strongly—in theory—to more than a few. It looks, from a distance, rather glorious. Living out that calling, one day at a time, in the same old place, with the same old co-workers, doing the same old humdrum jobs, is another matter altogether. Those who tried to offer this selfless service for the love of God found themselves daily open to challenge. Was it really worth it? Would it prove in the end to be really gold, silver, precious stones? They were powerfully tempted by “subtle love of softening things, easy choices, weakenings.”2 Bribes were sometimes offered, jewels or anything that could be turned into money, with the hope of obtaining “first-quality medicine” or whatever might not be given without a bribe. It took time for word to spread that bribes at Dohnavur got the briber nowhere.

  The Door of Health, and later the Place of Heavenly Healing, provided private kitchens for each patient’s family—minute cooking cells where Hindu or Muslim might have to smell another’s fish cooking, but would not be defiled by contact with him. The Indian instinct for privacy was respected, and people were made to feel as much at home as possible. Live poultry in the sickrooms, however, was a bit much. The people had to learn that chickens were not welcomed, even if tied up tidily in a corner or under a bed.

  The smaller children sometimes went to the hospital in the evenings, carrying colored lanterns, and, standing outside, sang the patients to sleep. This was an “Avenue of Gratitude,” an early opportunity for them to practice the lessons of unselfish service which their accals and sitties were daily trying to teach them by precept and example.

  The devil does not care how many hospitals we build, any more than he cares how many schools and colleges we put up, if only he can pull our ideals down, and sidetrack us on to anything of any sort except the living of holy, loving, humble lives, and the bringing of men, women, and children to know our Lord Jesus Christ not only as Savior but as Sovereign Lord.

  Every work undertaken in obedience to a divine command, whether the work be that form of conflict with the powers of darkness that we call prayer, or whether it be the action that follows, leads sooner or later to a new demand on personal devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ.

  Murray Webb-Peploe expressed the purpose of the hospital: “a place where people may come, not to be preached at, dosed, and dealt with as cases, but to feel at home, to watch, to thaw, to allow those who take their names, and wash their bandages, and dress their wounds, to share with them what the Lord Jesus Christ has done and can do for them.”

  The House of Prayer.

  When they were praying about building a hospital, the thought had come of having a House of Prayer. An old carpenter, the only Christian in his village, had given two months’ pay for “a temple for our God.” It seemed to him indefensible that every smallest village had its shrines, every town its walled temple, while the Christian Family of Dohnavur had no building for worship. Amy received some birthday money—small change and a few gold pieces—and asked the Lord how He wanted it spent. The answer seemed to be for a House of Prayer.

  “But Lord Jesus, what about the hospital?”

  “When My House of Prayer is finished, I will provide for a hospital.”

  They prayed, then, for the money. They did more than pray. The children sent notes to Amma:

  “1. We wont waste soap, and put the soap to desolve in the water and sun.

  “2. We wont put our seelies (saris) to the white ants, and we will try to keep our seelies without tearing.

  “3. We will keep our lantern chimney without breaking, and we wont put our lantern on the floor.

  “4. We wont give our food to the crows and dogs and we wont spill milk.

  “5. We will try not to spill oil.

  “6. We will try to keep our buckets carefully and not bang our buckets and crack them.

  “7. We will try to keep our pumps without breaking, and try to pump carefully.”3

  They did coolie work. They dug, they carried lime and sand. Prayers were answered. Money came.

  “Each gift has its story,” Amy wrote.

  Here is one of the last: On the morning of Monday, May 3, 1927, Alec Arnot and I pondered over the problem which in India is pressing, how to keep birds, bats, and squirrels out of the House. Birds (sparrows, chiefly) make such a noise in some churches that the speaker’s voice is drowned and the quietness, so much valued here, is quite impossible. Squirrels chirrup in piercing tones—they are inimical to peace. Bats are dirty beyond belief. A domed roof does not encourage such creatures, but ours has rafters. There is no glass in any window, and four of the doors are open spaces. What could we do?4

  All the money they had been given for the House had been spent. But surely God would want the House properly finished? Alec figured up the cost of the needed screening—about two hundred sixty rupees. Then the mail arrived. A letter from the States, dated March 26, said, “Something had impelled me to send you this further small sum with the word that it is to finish something Enclosed was a draft for one hundred dollars, worth two hundred seventy rupees.

  The House was finished, a beautiful building standing in the middle of the compound, covered with flowering vines. The architect who designed it took its style from an old palace in Travancore, a city where the influence of Chinese carpenters had been felt from ancient times. There was hesitation about one feature of its architecture, lest it be a mere luxury, an unjustifiable spending of money sacrificially given, but a speci
ally marked gift came for that very thing—a prayer tower. On its roof are two pointed shafts, symbol of the unity of spiritual and secular in the life of holiness—the men and women of Dohnavur lived a common life, but they lived it with God for others. In the tower are tubular bells, “things we should never have thought of buying.” Morning and evening a hymn is played on the bells, and each hour they ring for a moment of stillness for prayer and recollection.

  The tower windows look four ways over the compound—nurseries, schoolrooms, medical buildings, farm, moon gates (another feature of Dohnavur architecture, borrowed from China), the Path of Quietness—to the plains and mountains. Around the four sides of the room in the tower runs a hand-painted frieze with four stanzas of an old hymn by Edwin Hatch which begins with the words:

  Breathe on me, Breath of God,

  Fill me with life anew. . . .

  Heavy carved and brass-studded doors lead inside, where there are pillared arches and a smooth, polished red tile floor without furniture, except for a few chairs for the decrepit (the sick and the elderly, as well as foreigners, otherwise perfectly healthy, who have no idea how to sit on the floor without a backrest). A small raised platform at the east end has banks of flowers and a blue Persian carpet.

  The visitor today is awed by the hush and order of what takes place in the House of Prayer. The children file in silently and sit crosslegged in rows according to age, the youngest nearest the platform, wearing bright flowered dresses. The next age group wears skirts and blouses, the next, skirts, blouses, and half-saris, the oldest, saris—crimson and cardinal, blue, purple, mauve. In their oiled hair they wear flowers which match the colors of their dresses.

  Amy did not believe in keeping little children “stretched out like a rubber band.” It was hard for them to sit still with nothing to do, especially if they were too young to know the words to hymns and prayers. So she gave them colored flags, and during the singing of certain songs, to this day, they stand and wave their flags while older ones accompany the singing with maracas, bells, cymbals, tambourines, brass bowls struck with a knitting needle, and drums (big narrow-necked clay pots with a leather flap which is thumped over the mouth). When they pray they kneel.

  Sometimes the sick are carried into the House. Amy wrote of one little boy whose wounds had been mishandled at home. He lay in the services for many Sundays fastened to a frame on a cot. “He used to watch eagerly for the moment when a psalm or lyric set to an Indian tune was given out, and the band played and there was a flutter of flags all over the House; for in the flutter he would join with a happy triumph. In his hand, clasped tight all through the service, was his own blue flag.”5

  On Sundays there were three services, one English and two Tamil, led by the annachies, Indian and English. There were special services, New Year’s, for example, when toys for sick children in the hospital were collected in baskets. Today there are often special thanksgivings in the House of Prayer—a pause when the leader thanks God for the birds, so that the “dear birds’’ may be heard; thanksgiving when a girl “graduates” from the skirt and half-sari to the full sari; thanksgiving for needs met, people brought home safely, children saved (the child is carried by its accal to the platform so that all can see it).

  The communion service is “an hour full of silence, broken only by the voice of our Tamil pastor, and by versicles of adoration and worship, sung kneeling. The House is white then, and the whiteness of the Indian garments and the stillness, and the very gentle movement and the singing, have a ministry of their own, and often there is a sense of a Presence manifest and all but visible.” This service closed always with the same hymn, “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts,” followed only by the soft whisper of the bare feet as they left the House.

  1. 1 John 5:14, 15.

  2. Toward Jerusalem, p. 94.

  3. Amy Carmichael, Meal in a Barrel, p. 40.

  4. Ibid, pp. 47, 48.

  5. Gold Cord, p. 297.

  Chapter 38

  The Road Less Traveled

  Great-grandmothers are said to have pursed their lips a century ago at the sight of an exposed table leg. Queen Victoria once remarked to a maid-of-honor that when she came to the throne young ladies did not have legs. They still hadn’t, so far as Amy Carmichael was concerned. Amy was offended by the English word leg but not by the Tamil word kaal, so even the doctors found themselves inserting kaal into an English sentence when it was necessary to refer to the unspeakable limb.

  Amy was appalled at the idea of missionaries playing tennis, and it seems that at one time games for the older Dohnavur girls were absolutely forbidden. Admittedly a sari makes less than satisfactory sportswear, but the possibility that an ankle might be glimpsed was probably the primary reason for the prohibition. While nothing in Indian culture forbade the showing of an ankle, Amy’s idea of a lady’s modesty did. The custom has been conscientiously perpetuated as the Dohnavur women walk around the compound. Even in the rain it is rare to see the hem of a sari lifted.

  Games have been part of life in Dohnavur for many years now. Older girls play rounders, netball, and a species of hockey. All swim and dive. Those so inclined climb trees. With Amma’s approval they began country dancing, “most energetically.” In all of these activities plenty of ankle is revealed.

  Amy usually wore beautiful voile saris—creamy yellow, white, lavender—with blouses of coordinating colors. While Indian widows and the poorest women wore only the sari without a blouse, the women of the Dohnavur Family wore not only blouses (with a prescribed sleeve length) with their saris, but underneath them tight breast-binders and petticoats. Amma would have nothing loose and transparent on her girls. When four visitors came dressed in Western style in the mid-twenties—“short-frocked Paganism”—Godfrey and Alec refused to allow them into the boys’ compound. Amma borrowed some clothes, dressed them up decently, and prepared herself for a “whole new crop of stories” to be told about what a strange place Dohnavur was.

  Amy earnestly tried to eliminate anything which might stir up sexual desire. While village boys wore only shorts, Dohnavur boys wore shorts and shirts, as Amma believed it helped toward purity. The men of the Family wore veshtis, the standard long Indian skirt which could be tucked up for greater mobility, and shirts of Indian design, collarless because of the heat. Amy, of course, found a Scripture verse to corroborate the shirt style: “There shall be an hole in the top of it, in the midst thereof: it shall have a binding of woven work round about the hole of it.”1 Colors were always significant to Amy—blue for love, purple for service, so the doctors were decked out (“can you imagine it!” one of them said) in violet veshtis with mauve tops. Dohnavur people could hardly be anonymous in a crowd. This, Amy felt, was not by any means a disadvantage.

  As we have seen, the program for the Family had nothing approaching sex education except a few discreet references to the birds and the bees. If the many dogs in the compound ever engaged in any instructive performances, the lesson was apparently lost on most of the girls. The boys were initiated by having access to the cattle farm.

  When a girl reached puberty, she was given a supply of blue and white cloths, but no explanation was offered as to exactly what the process was all about. Indeed, the accals themselves who mothered them had no idea. It was simply something women put up with. Although sex plays a central part in the life of Indian villagers and in their religion (the villages are full of phallic symbols), a girl in a strict Indian home might know no more than a Dohnavur girl. One who was married at the age of twelve later asked her mother why she had not prepared her. “It is the husband’s duty to teach his wife” was the answer.

  And all these babies who appeared from time to time? Where, exactly, did they come from? “We thought the Lord laid them in the mother’s bed,” one of the “Old Girls” told me. Their ignorance is not quite so incredible as it may sound, since Dohnavur women seldom went out where they might have seen a pregnant woman.

  It was not until the hospital was
built and the accals began to care for patients that they were initiated into the astonishing truth. Since it was not a matter to be discussed among themselves, many bizarre distortions were believed. When one of the accals married an annachie, she was so poorly prepared for what he expected that she felt she was sinning grievously. It was not until the 1940s that sex education was introduced, and that only because younger missionaries insisted on it and were willing to teach it. Someone sent a book for children about how babies are made. Amy gave permission to one of the Indian women to show it to another, if her sittie consented.

  “I shall never forget the first time I saw the pictures of a little baby in the [Tamil word for cradle] God makes for it—the first cradle, I mean,” wrote Amy. “It helps one to understand what the words mean, ‘He humbled Himself.’ ”

  As late as 1946, according to one of the doctors, the ignorance was extraordinary. She spoke to Amma about it, suggesting that even the married couples led a monastic life. She listened, admitted failure, and promised to try to make amends.

  There were some strange separations. Not only did Amy Carmichael condone the separation of husband and wife, she was at least partly responsible for arranging it when she felt the work required it. She moved one Indian couple, who had been with her in the work for years, away from their own children to Muppanthal, the place where the retarded were cared for. There was no adequate housing for them, and the wife finally returned to Dohnavur while the husband went off to live in the forest with a ranger. They were never all together as a family again. A Syrian Christian man lived and worked in Dohnavur, visiting his wife, who lived in Kerala, only once a year. One couple who left Hinduism to join them was kept separate for a time. When allowed to be together again, they produced more children than Arnma thought fitting. Contraceptives were unknown to her, but why not practice continence? Long walks, the husband found, did not always “cool him off.” When one of the sitties married, she was separated not from her husband but from the girls she had been caring for—marriage was “too exciting” for them. Amy preferred that they not hear things which might arouse desire.