Vanakkam! (Tamil for hello)
Yesterday was quite the day. We started out with two lectures by TTS faculty. The first was on ecological issues in India. The second was on pastoral care and counseling in India. I must admit, the later lecture captured my attention and imagination. In traditional Indian family systems, all generations live together and all generations raise the children. Within the family is where most counseling took place, and it was a very directive style. The grandmother told from her experience what the grandchildren should do in a situation. Today, people move out of that type of family system, causing a loss of support and a growth in the need for counseling. Counseling is a relatively new discipline in India, and most counselors are under trained, so they counsel in the way their grandparents did instead of in the way we would learn in school. For this reason, TTS has a new and strong counseling diploma.
In the afternoon, we went in to the market in Madurai. Most of us bought outfits there. The main thing I bought was a tunic/pants/scarf outfit. I am wearing it today, and I can’t wait to show it off at home. It is so comfortable that I plan to go buy another one.
After buying clothes, we did some wandering through the market around the temple in Madurai. It reminded me of the market in Turkey, except less crowded with less pushy salespeople. That is not to say that the sales people weren’t pushy, though! It was nice to walk with men, because usually the salespeople approached the male. A little girl who was about six and a baby approached the women on the group to ask for money. We were warned not to give to beggars because people will actually mutilate babies to get pity from Westerners. To give is to support the baby mutilation industry. It was still hard to say no.
In the evening, we went to an Interreligious Christmas service. We heard some speeches about the meaning of Christmas to Muslims, Christians, and Hindus. There were presentations, and then celebrations. As our part of the celebration, we stood and sang Silent Night, Joy to the World, and Oh Holy Night, while Nick played on the guitar. Some Indians even started to clap to Joy to the World. After the presentations, we went outside for fireworks. Then we were all handed small birthday cake candles. We passed the light around and sang “We Shall Overcome” in English and in Tamil. They do that every Friday, but they did it Thursday this week for the Christmas celebration. The candles were all collected for the Friday service on peace, but we still have one among our group. A woman went to get one and handed it to Laura saying that it is a candle of peace for us to take back. Laura was quite touched.
It was quite the long day, and we woke very early this morning to head to Thomas’s village for the day. Tune in tomorrow to hear about it!
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