Marriages within the Family, Indian or European, were few and far between. The Europeans, of course, had come to India forsaking all, which Amma took for granted in nearly all cases included the desire for marriage. As for the Indians, she had difficulty believing that her boys were good enough for her girls. It was often said that the men’s work was spiritually at a lower level than the women’s. “Men always are,” said an English doctor who worked there, “but the corollary was not drawn!”
An Indian who had come to Dohnavur as an adolescent was particularly close to Amma. She used to ask him his innermost thoughts. “Have you any girls in mind, my dear boy?” she said one day.
“Well, maybe so-and-so.”
“Oh no, she doesn’t fit into your life.”
He accepted her judgment. Later he chose another who had Amy’s approval, but the girl rejected his proposal.
“Wait until she agrees,” was Amy’s advice. People in Dohnavur usually agreed. He waited six months, during which he says no pressure was applied. When Amy asked again on his behalf, the girl consented.
A sittie in her early twenties longed to be married but did not dare to mention her feelings. Surely Amma had no such temptations, no idea of the torture of desire others experienced—how could one broach such a subject to her?
“Oh, but she would have understood,” said another, “although one would have hesitated to speak of it.” Why? “Well, because she was so . . . No, if a person felt it right to be married Amma would have accepted that.”
A young Englishman went to Dohnavur, leaving his fiancée, who had also been accepted, to follow him to India later. Health and family difficulties delayed her arrival for years. During this time Amma wrote to her as though she were the most beloved of daughters, “ownest own,” as she often called her, though of course they had not met. Never did a mother pour out tenderer sympathy and deeper understanding on a daughter than Amma poured on this girl on the other side of the world. “The Lord, who is your Dearest of all, can satisfy. He can, He will; but He understands, and I do, those fierce aches for J. I am quite sure that He has you both in His most tender hands, so I am not anxious.”
It would be unfair to attribute Amy Carmichael’s attitude toward sex and marriage to mere Victorianism or mere ignorance. That she was a Victorian is not open to question. Proof of the degree of her ignorance does not exist. It is clear that she took the “road less traveled by”—in this matter as in many others. And “that has made all the difference.”
People sometimes insisted that Englishmen might remain single but Indians could not. This Amy vehemently denied. Paul, she pointed out, was not a Western man. On his authority she defended her reasoning:
In our spiritual position towards our Lord and in His enabling power towards us, there is no difference (between East and West). See Galatians 3:28. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
So it follows that if for Christ’s sake and for the sake of souls for whom He died any one of us, man or woman, gives up what he or she would naturally desire, a home of our own, the resources of His power flow equally to each. To say there is a difference is to say His inspired word is not true, and that is a serious position to take.
This comes close home to us here. We know that unless many Carunias (the family surname given to all Dohnavur girls) are free to give themselves to the work of caring for the children, those children must go to destruction. This means that it is impossible to find wives from the best of the Carunias, for all Anandas (the Dohnavur Indian men). So we believe that to some Anandas love enough will be given to do without that which they would naturally desire. . . .
But is not such a life contrary to nature? Yes it is. But look at the plane. It is contrary to nature for tons of metal to rise above the earth and soar like a bird. What makes it possible? The presence of a Power within which enables it to fly “by its speed and pressure against the air.” So with us. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”2
Once, in an hour of need, these words helped me:
Across the will of nature
Leads on the path of God;
Not where the flesh delighteth
The feet of Jesus trod.
Do I regret now that for your sake I chose to do without that which nature desires, what was pressed upon me, so that I might serve “without distraction” as Paul puts it? No, indeed I do not. “You will never regret it,” an old missionary said to our Sisters of the Common Life. And to those who by God’s grace are, and to those who will be Brothers of the Common Life I say the same. You will go through hard days, but you will never regret it. You will never regret it.
1. Exodus 28:32.
2. Philippians 2:13.
Chapter 39
No Milk Biscuits
Bring to India a strong sense of humor and no sense of smell” was Amy’s advice to an accepted candidate, along with warnings of the temptations shipboard offered. She had known many prospective missionaries who were “wrecked on the first voyage and arrived quite useless so far as the kind of thing I look for is concerned.” She usually sent instructions for spending the time—exercise (“the time-honored way of walking hard”), prayer, witnessing, reading. She included passages of Scripture, especially the first three chapters of Ephesians, and book lists, but “keep off novels, even good ones.”
The apostle Paul described himself as “the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things.” The latter was a phrase Amy liked. “We want the offscouring sort.” It fit her idea of the scrap-heap that was Dohnavur. But she made it clear that she did not mean just any sort of offscouring or scrap. “We must have gentlefolk for reasons you will understand later. We want educated, thoughtful minds . . . refinement, character, an inborn loyalty.”
What she did not want was biscuits. “I don’t pray for milk biscuits for the DF, all cut to a pattern and stamped with a single decorous pretty stamp. So many places, to judge by the results, seem to be great biscuit manufacturers and they turn out tidy boxes of biscuits. I pray for soldiers, not biscuits!”
A new arrival might at first see only flowers and babies and bright faces, “and you will feel, I hope, a general sweetness and happiness. . . . Under the sweetness there is a real Cross.”
We follow a stripped and crucified Savior. Those words go very deep. They touch everything—motives, purposes, decisions, everything. Let them be with you as you prepare your spirit for the new life.
Dear, you are coming to a battlefield. You cannot spend too much time with Him alone. The keys of the powers of the world to come are not turned by careless fingers. So few are willing to pay the price of the knowledge of God. They play through life, even Christian life, even missionary life.
Here I have stopped. Am I asking far too much? Does it sound too stern, too earnest? I want to be sure you understand. The last group came out rather quickly, and I had not time to make all this plain.
I need not say anything about what people call “the other side”—the side of life that is full of joy and fun. We have any amount of that and I don’t call it the other side at all. It’s just part of the whole.
When a young woman doctor arrived in Dohnavur for the first time, she was taken to the bungalow to meet Amma in her room. “There was a lightness, brightness, and joy about her. She was loving, lovely, and warm. Not much over five feet, I suspect, with gray hair, wearing a blue sari. She had a twinkle, a gentle sense of humor.”
In the first few minutes of greeting another new one Amma nailed her with the question, “Do you know your Bible well?” No, was the answer, “and I thought to myself, ‘That’s it. Next ship back.’ But I was allowed to stay.”
Amma was an actress. She loved to imitate a Tamil bus conductor. One young missionary remembers her coming into a room bent over a stick, the end of her sari over her head like a shawl, mimicking in a conversation with one of the children t
he dialect of uneducated villagers.
It was a stimulating atmosphere Amy Carmichael created. “She had tremendous oomph. An English accent, yes, but not one of those plummy public school accents. She could talk on any subject to anyone. You could throw in any question at the supper table. Amma read like lightning,” read widely, and was able to “take the wheat and leave the chaff” of a book. She read George Herbert, George MacDonald, John Donne, William Cowper, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Tennyson. Her bookshelves held Trevelyan, Ruskin, a Kempis, Keble, Savonarola, Kingsley, Florence Nightingale, and Saint Augustine. She would bring things to the table to read. “Listen to this!” she would say.
When a newcomer needed help with a Tamil letter or short word, she would spill a little salt on the plain teak table and write with her finger. “Eating came last in her thinking at such times, and there would be a quiet word from someone, ‘Amma dear, do eat a little chicken!’” She encouraged them with tales of her own struggles in Tamil study when the Lord reminded her that He had once made an ass speak.
In the early days all workers, Indian and foreign, ate together. Then they separated. Accals and anandas ate according to Indian custom, from brass vessels and banana leaves, using their fingers, as they sat on the tiles in the bungalows with their children. The food was carried to them from central kitchens. The missionaries had tables and chairs, flowers and candles, crockery and flatware, and were served by people hired from the village. Of course the dichotomy was puzzling to outsiders, and among the insiders there were many wrestlings over this decision. One reason for it was obvious—the family grew. There was no room large enough for everybody. That was a minor reason. Amy explained the major one, the health of the foreigners, in her paper, Roots:
“It seemed wiser to do what would keep us well than to do as we wanted to do. After all, we are not here to please ourselves but to serve India in whatever way our Lord directs.” Foreigners did not seem able (though most were certainly willing) to subsist on curry and rice. They needed their tea and bread and butter. On feast days all ate outdoors together, and often the foreigners were invited to the cottages for a meal.
Nobody in Dohnavur ate beef. The reason was simple: “If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”1 If anyone had objected that this passage refers not to such as Hindus and Muslims but to weak Christians, Amy would have replied with Romans 14:15, “Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.” That covered everyone. The force of the Brahman taboo against beef eating can scarcely be overstated. At Dohnavur they felt they could eat lamb, goat, and chicken without offending, so the curries were not strictly vegetarian.
Why the hired servants? When Indian members of the family served the missionary table, they sometimes found that guests treated them as servants, which Amma would not tolerate. She tried to treat all members of the Family as equals. “She made us work very hard,” an Old Girl said, “We were all servants. Amma was a servant too, but we treated her as children treat their mother.”
“Never eat anything you’ve seen a fly on” was supposed to be one of Amma’s rules for new recruits, but they soon saw the impossibility of obeying that one and were exonerated when they found that “Amma didn’t go by that in the least herself!”
Amy Carmichael had no compunction about throwing a new arrival in at the deep end. May Powell told of going to evangelize a village with Amma, expecting to stay quietly in the background and watch the others in action. Amma sat her down on a verandah with a group of women, handed her the Wordless Book, and told her to give a testimony. May had never given a lesson in English, let alone Tamil.
Many so-called “faith” missions require members to raise their individual support. Amy wrote to a candidate for the DF: “For those who have no means we make provision as He enables us. But there never can be any promise even of that. Each one must lay hold on the promises, on God, rather, the Faithful One. . . . I like those who have a private income to keep it and use it (if it is over and above their own needs) as led, from time to time, rather than to join the capital to a common fund. I do this myself (the D.O.M. had provided Amy’s full support) and I think it is the better way. No one draws anything from any society.” That particular candidate had an inheritance which she was willing to turn over to the Fellowship. Amy advised her to keep the principal “to use for Him year by year.” Unhappily, Amy’s policy was not to the liking of all, and more than once foreign DFs probed the private financial status of certain Indian members, pressing them to donate to the Family. When they acceded, a glossy report was carried to Amma of the “willing offering” made. She rejoiced that one more disciple had learned the lesson of giving all. The thought that the gift might not be entirely voluntary never crossed her mind.
Once a year a notice was sent around giving food costs in rupees per month, and those who had private means were expected to pay their share.
Allowances were not given to the children during Amy’s lifetime. Some of them grew up without ever having handled money. Pin money was given automatically to workers when God provided it. When one man returned his allowance, Amma said, “Make sure it is not your pride which makes you refuse. God is not responsible for what He has not commissioned,” meaning, one would assume, that it would not do for him to expect God to supply his needs miraculously.
There was one very great luxury for DFs. “Above all luxuries a bathroom to yourself is to my mind the greatest,” was Amy’s comment. She saw to it that each missionary had her own small room with a large storage jar for water, a basin and dipper. A declivity in the floor with a drain provided a place to stand to pour water over oneself. There were both chamber pots and outhouses, the latter with a footboard on each side of a hole in the ground. Whatever served as latrine was given a polite name, “The Place.”
A life of poverty was the ideal Amy had longed for. “I wanted to have no possessions except what I could carry in a big handkerchief!” Her comrades in the Starry Cluster had understood the desire, giving up their jewelry and their money, living the simplest life as itinerants. But it was a different life that was required now because there was a family. Amy wanted to have things to give them—books and paintings, music and microscopes, the things that had made her own childhood so rich. So, like everything else that was hers, she laid down the desire to have nothing and took up family life and all that family life meant. She was a mother. She lived for her children.
The time came when there was a good deal of pressure to change the Pattern in the matter of payment for work done. While Amy acknowledged that it was indeed much easier to have everything settled by contract, such a system was wholly out of harmony with the principle of family life. The Dohnavur Fellowship was patterned after the traditional Indian family, which had nothing to do with wages or salaries. “There is much done every day in Dohnavur that no caste person would do for pay, however much was offered,” wrote Amy, who mentioned to one of her trainees that she had no doubt cut thousands of small toe-and fingernails—“I who said I would never do any work but ‘preach the gospel.’ It takes some of us years to learn what preaching the gospel means.”
The Pattern was a costly way of doing things. She never disguised the fact. “We ask far more than the usual of our boys and girls, and this way of working asks far more of us”
1. 1 Corinthians 8:13.
Chapter 40
Scrub-Land
Early in 1931 Amy gathered the members of the Dohnavur Fellowship in God’s Garden and the decision was made to ask the Webb-Peploe brothers to be the leaders of the men’s side and May Powell of the women’s. Very likely the state of her own health helped Amy to see the importance of planning for others to take over. The headaches that had plagued her for years had become so troublesome that she occasionally took a glass of port mixed with quinine—port to help the headache, quinine “so that I won’t take the wine for its own sake!”
May Powell was called to bring forceps t
o the Forest one day when Amy had a toothache she did not want anyone else to know about. May arrived to find her in a semikneeling posture on her bed, in too much pain to kneel up, praying for some girls who had a special need.
The tricycle on which she used to careen around the compound had to be given up. She was sixty-three, overweight, less mobile, and needed more rest. She had, since the beginning of the children’s work, made a valiant effort, if not to kiss each child good-night, at least to see every face every day. One evening when she came past the dispensary on this mission May stopped her. “Amma, do go back to your room,” she begged. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” said Amma.
Her diet had been far from ideal. Protein, with the exception of milk, and elderly fowl, was hard to come by. The strains of thirty-eight years, the devastating bereavements, the terrific emotional demands of the fights for Muttammal and Raj, had taken a greater toll than anyone realized. Insomnia, heart trouble, hypertension, tic douloureux (for which she had surgery) and iritis, which fairly blinded one eye, were among other “adversaries’’ she was trying to fight.
The last thing that occurred to Amy was any slackening of missionary zeal. The greater her own weakness, the greater the opportunity to prove divine strength. She continued to pray for a wider outreach from Dohnavur, the collapse of the “walls of Jericho” which were Hindu and Muslim strongholds. In August she took the commands of Isaiah 54:2 as meant for the DF: “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.” Within a day’s drive there were 100,000 Muslims. Couldn’t they “lengthen the cords” to include them?
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