Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Compassion (05/23/24)
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TITLE: An Outsider's Love | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
05/24/24 -
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“Cow-eater,” one of the idol-makers yelled. “Take your faith back where you belong.”
The tallest of the four young followers stepped in close to the woman, spouting off in Bengali. “Hello, Sister Mother, what are you bringing to the graveyard of beggars? I am now taller than you. We know you are not a cow-eater. What great things are you doing today?”
The sparkling eyes of the foreigner brightened the smile of the saint. “Harvinder, my boy, not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. We walk the path of God with joy.”
“What a strange god you serve,” he said. “He has no arms to hold you, no eyes to see you, no ears to hear you, and no mouth to speak to you.”
“Oh, but he does,” she replied. “His hands are my hands, his eyes are my eyes, his mouth is my mouth, and his heart is my heart. As I bring this rice to your eight brothers and sisters, so he brings this to you.”
The boy’s eyebrows knit together in one long furrow. “I have just come from the Hooghly River and my purity is completed. A Brahman priest beat me with sticks and tried to hold me under the water. There is no compassion among the mighty ones.”
The bent-over woman set a hand on her hip and stretched up another inch. “From the time I was your age, still in Macedonia, my God called me to follow him. I followed him to this place where the poorest of the poor struggle to survive one day at a time. My God tells me that those who are truly mighty are the servants of all.”
A younger boy ran ahead, “Momma, momma, the Sister Mother has come with a feast.”
A curtain over a ramshackle structure of twisted tin, plastic, and cardboard, moved aside. A figure looking more like an Egyptian mummy wrapped in rags, emerged, a little snotty-nosed bundle on her back. Flies crawled over eyes, nose, and mouth. “May the gods bless you for your thoughtfulness,” she said. She took the small bundle of rice and carefully poured out half on a piece of dirt-stained cardboard. Eight bodies closed around it, eyeing the white mound like starving vultures.
“That is all I have for today,” the foreigner said. “Are you saving half for later?”
The woman closed the bundle up tight. “No! My Muslim neighbors also have eight children who have not eaten in three days like us. It is a good thing for me to share what I have with them.”
“I can come back with more tomorrow.”
“We live from moment to moment. If you are able, remember them as well. If you are able to stay and share this meal with us, we will eat as soon as I return from giving this to my neighbor.”
The oldest boy stood protectively in front of the small white lump that would be the first food for his eight siblings in three days. “Sister Mother must choose what she will eat first,” he said.
The small woman slouched down onto a boulder nestled up against the shack. “Young man, watching your mother has made me full. You told me that the mighty showed no compassion but I have seen your mother and the compassion she has shown to a neighbor who believes differently than her tells me that she is truly among the mighty. If you judge people, you will have no time to love them. Don’t think that genuine compassion has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.”
“How can I show this compassion when I have nothing?”
“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for rice. Start here with your own family.”
The boy moved aside as his mother returned. “Mother, I am full and your other children need to know godly compassion. Give this to them.”
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