Category: Culture
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A Man of the Soil
It is hard to grow plants here. In the summer, it is a constant battle against the heat. At this time of year, it is lack of light. What little light makes it through the smog of the megacity is further diluted by the many-storied buildings on every side. Some weeks you under-water, others, you…
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Let an Unpolluted Heav’n and Nature Sing
Multiple times in the week, I am asked what I enjoy about the area in which we now live. I have many answers, from the taste of delicious South Asian dishes, the bustling bazars with their dozens of varieties of fish, fruit and veg, and the friendliness of locals, to the golden rice fields, the…
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What I Do Have I Give To You
Living here in South Asia places a huge burden on the heart, that does not exist to the same extent in Ireland/the West. Poverty. Now of course, we have poor people in Ireland, and we try to help them as we can. Yes, there are those on the streets looking for money, sad scenes of…
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The Son of Man Came Not To Be Served, But…
Christians are a servant-hearted bunch. At least, we ought to be! And usually we are, to one degree or another. We love our King who humbled himself, took on the form of a servant and died a humiliating death on a cross for us. This event has gripped our hearts, and we want to likewise…
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Teleported to Glory
In the next couple of weeks, we are going to have our first visitors from home, coming out to our adoptive country. Dee’s mother, brother, and sister-in-law-to-be, will be on their way back from a trip to Australia, and on the way to Ireland will stop off with us in South Asia for a week.…
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Leviticus and The Right Hand of Fellowship
My alarm went off. I rolled out of bed, threw on some clothes and plodded into the kitchen. Switching the kettle on, while rubbing my bleary eyes, I gathered the necessary coffee-making implements and waited patiently for the water to boil. After preparing my locally-produced coffee, and waiting the perfect 3 minutes (no arguing!) for…
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Leviticus and the Butchery of Eid
The animals streamed into the capital in the days preceding Kurbani Eid. The basement of every apartment block became home to half a dozen or so offerings-to-be; mostly bulls, the occasional heifer and even a goat or two. Out in the streets pick-up trucks loaded with these same animals drove back and forth, delivering them…
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The Longings of the Human Heart
I didn’t expect this to happen. If you’d asked me 7 months ago what I would be involved with in South Asia, I could have given you a plethora of important answers, and many an idea springing from a (admittedly sometimes overactive) holy imagination. But amongst all those options that my uninitiated brain could formulate,…
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Chickens, Elephants, and the Illusion of Freedom
Recently I was visiting a poor rickshaw driver’s family in their home. Our teammates have befriended this rickshaw driver, and treated him well, witnessing to him in word and deed. They live in a field behind a large mosque, with a handful of other small one-room dwellings. Their entire living space is about 7ft by…
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The Blessedness of Kind Mother-in-laws
Mother-in-laws (MILs) can be the recipients of some bad stereotyping in the West. I’ll say it clearly at the start for the record: My Mother-in-law is great! And for a lot of people in the Western world, the stereotype doesn’t have as much bearing as perhaps it did at some point in time. Recently, we’ve…
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The Bridling of Death
Why are we, in the West, so uncomfortable with death? Last year Dee and I took a short break in Portugal. It was outside of tourist season, so it was easy to relax. In this Atlantic coastal area, there was plenty to do and see. One day we hiked along the cliffs, as the sun…
Imitators of Those 