With just 9 days to go, our return to India is drawing near, and our minds are turning toward the places and people we have left there. I want to share a few paintings that have been inspired by that fascinating country and her people over the past year and a half.

          We’re writing about this because it seems that beyond the peripheral vision of many Americans, a quiet and ghastly drama is unfolding. For those who are there, of course, the chaos and horror are anything but quiet.  But it’s not being talked about much in the news, in churches, or anywhere else, for that matter– but it’s something that has been on our hearts for a long time.

We firmly believe that this is an issue that everyone should be able to agree on, regardless of our political or religious persuasions. Both political parties have supported (and expanded) the drone program, but the implications of it are so anti-human that this continuing phenomenon demands the attention– and the resistance– of people of compassion. With that goal of stirring compassionate people (and especially followers of Jesus) to action, A. and T. have co-authored this post to look into the human cost of drones, as well as to examine the question of whether this “anti-terrorism” strategy might actually be increasing the risk of terrorism in the United States and around the world.

A couple of months ago, we read an interesting Kindle Single called Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon (download it for free here) about some of the struggles US soldiers face as they come back from either Afghanistan or Iraq.  It talks about the effects of two conditions: post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) and mild traumatic brain injury.  Aftershock follows the lives of one platoon that experienced a rocket attack while they were in their barracks at a main base in Iraq.  The rocket barely missed their building, and fortunately, only one of the men experienced minor physical injuries from shrapnel.  Unfortunately, all of the men experienced some psychological injuries from the distress of a near-death experience and from the blast waves emanating from the rocket.  Research is showing that the explosions of these bombs, land mines, and rockets can rattle the brain so much that the end result is like a concussion. Concussions are dangerous enough for football players or other people who suffer accidental head trauma, but the Army’s researchers are finding that concussions are even more severe for soldiers since usually the concussions are sustained in the middle of combat when a flood of chemicals like adrenaline are surging through the brain.

Concussions are strange and unpredictable injuries: some people experience no long-term effects from them at all, while others experience headaches, memory loss and other life-altering symptoms. When these brain-altering injuries occur during traumatic events– like losing friends and fighting for your life in battle– they can be compounded by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Over the past few years, the combination of those two conditions has manifested in many (but certainly not all) returning war veterans as an inability to adjust to civilian life, irrationally violent behavior, and suicide (the VA estimates that 18 U.S. war veterans commit suicide every day).

         While the effects of bombs on soldiers is concerning enough, it’s even scarier to think about the effects of collective PTSD and serious brain injury on the millions of civilians in these war zones. Under Obama’s administration (the same Obama who won a Nobel PEACE prize), the number of drone attacks in Pakistan and Middle Eastern countries like Yemen has sky rocketed: both the CIA and military both are using these un-manned aircraft to kill whomever they wish from a safe distance.

          Five years ago, A. and I came to Thailand for the first time. We hardly knew each other when we arrived, but by the time we left, we had become close friends. A few months later, we would fall in love with each other.  But by the end of our semester abroad, we had already fallen in love with Asia, and especially with the simplicity of village life we had discovered while living with the Karen hill tribe.

          We’ve stayed in touch with many of the friends we met in Thailand back then, and this week, we were able to fulfill a long-standing hope: we returned to that village with one of our best friends from university to attend our Karen friend’s wedding!  It was amazing to see the whole village and extended family come together to cook and decorate the church with fresh flowers from the market. Everyone brought rice wrapped in little banana leaf packets to contribute to the ongoing feast (it was hard to distinguish one meal from the next since there was always food around!), and everyone took home leftovers at the end. Without being told what to do, everyone seemed to naturally flow into potato peeling or flower arranging or whatever it was that needed to be done at the moment. We also appreciated how casual and low-key everything was—the priority was spending time together with family and friends rather than putting on a show for the guests, so the schedule for the wedding day wasn’t even decided until the day before, and nearly everyone who was invited had also contributed to the preparations beforehand.  Even during the ceremony, various small groups of people sang songs to the couple while kids played on the floor in the middle of everything. And just a few hours afterward, a bunch of us went with the bride and groom to play in a nearby waterfall.

          Five years ago, it was 2008. That year marked the beginning of our life together, and the beginning of a long searching that has continued ever since—the pursuit of simplicity, of community, of justice for small, beautiful communities all over the world whose existence is threatened by prejudice, indifference, power, and greed. 

          In the last five years, a lot has changed in Thailand. The city where we lived has gone a lot more “upscale”, looking less distinctively Thai and more like sterile shopping districts plastered with the same multinational brands that you see all over the world.  There are more touristy bars and gimmicks than we remember. Even in some of the village areas that seemed so remote when we first visited, there are now paved roads and even high-speed internet! At the wedding, too, we saw signs of change: young hipsters who have moved from the villages to the city for work wandered around taking pictures with smart phones while older members of the tribe slaughtered animals and prepared food in ways that this youngest generation may have never learned. Most of them were wearing bits and pieces of their traditional tribal clothing over skinny jeans and t-shirts.

          In the last five years, a lot has changed for us personally, too.  W­­­­­­e dated, got engaged, got married, and moved to Asia. We’ve collected more stamps in our passports; we’ve collected more battle scars, more hopes and dreams, and more questions than answers. So much has changed since 2008.  But in many ways, our slum community in India is just another village that has invited us in as part of the tribe.

          Two days ago, I was sitting at the train station, watching monkeys fight and frolic in the rafters and lope along the empty railway tracks where our train should have been two hours before. Earlier that day we walked out of our community for the last time until June, and we began the long journey that will take us to Thailand, various parts of the U.S. and back to India again over the next three months. On this last day, something exciting happened. We’ve helped a handful of neighbors open bank accounts over the past few months, which has often been a challenge since most of them are unable to read or write and since the bank staff often have little patience to help them. But this last week several events culminated in the staff of a local non-profit being authorized by that same bank to come into our slum and help people fill out forms and open new bank accounts on the spot! It was wonderful to see people coming en masse to the small bamboo and plastic house of the shopkeeper who had agreed to host the event in our community, and to see neighbors becoming experts, explaining the required documents to each other, and spreading the word to more and more people.  It was also exciting to see the NGO staff treating our neighbors with respect. People were suspicious of these outsiders at first—especially because in the past people have sometimes entered the slum posing as bank representatives, collected people’s money, and run!—but because we were able to give them a personal introduction, people decided to give them a fair chance. And unlike many of the other well-meaning but disconnected social workers who venture into the community, these guys are starting to earn the respect of our neighbors by treating them as equals, telling people to call them by the colloquial bhai, or “brother”, rather than “big sir”. All of this was still in progress by the time we left, but if all goes well, then these bank accounts will enable people to save money in a secure place and make them eligible to apply for much-needed widow’s pensions, government scholarships for their children to attend school, and other financial assistance.

          However, while some neighbors were opening bank accounts in one alley, others were beginning to build new homes on the far side of the sewage canal because the government informed them yesterday that a public works project is going to start on the land where they currently live, meaning that their shanties will be destroyed.  Both of these things reminded me that a lot could change for better and for worse while we’re away. Such is the tenuous life of the poor.

It felt strange to say goodbye to the neighbors and friends that we’ve gotten used to seeing every day (some of them multiple times per day): a mixture of sadness and anticipation and plain old relief. The truth is that I’m tired. I’m tired of seeing so much suffering and pain, tired of struggling so much against unjust systems that have no heart and no mind; of being drawn into the chaos of other people’s lives, often able to offer no real solutions or help other than to be along for the ride with them. I’m looking forward to some silence and some open space and some rest.

          But of course I know it won’t be long before I’m feeling restless and subconsciously beginning to wish for the adorable kids next door to walk into my room and do cute things like show me their lost tooth or the dance they learned from a new Bollywood movie. I’ll miss all the noise and activity, and I’ll probably feel bored with all the peace and quiet and loneliness of car windows and insulated walls and big, grassy lawns. I’ll wander down quiet streets and wonder, where are all the pedestrians?—and not just the people, but the vegetable sellers, the herds of goats, and the Brahmin cows?

But that time is not yet. For now I’m enjoying the relief of some time away from all of the noise and activity to be refreshed and to reflect on all that’s happened and all that is ahead. To relax in the knowledge that it is God who brings justice and transformation, and not me. To remind myself that God is still at work in my absence, just as He was before my arrival.

It’s been a rainy week in our city. Some of the dirt alleyways have turned to treacherous mud, and the open sewage trench that runs in front of our door has overflowed its banks and drained down the slope to the poorest homes in our neighborhood, right next to the big sewage canal. A new family has moved into one of the other small rooms in our landlady’s house this month. Three small kids and another one on the way, they have little to furnish their room besides some blankets on the floor, and they cook over an open fire in the small courtyard where all thirteen of us (landlady’s family included) hang up our laundry to dry. This week there’s been very little laundry because of the rain, but as we realized a couple of days ago, there’s also been very little cooking for this new family either. One morning we realized on our way to the outhouse that they hadn’t made anything for breakfast and had them over for chai and bread in our room. But that was just one day—we eat breakfast every day, and they go without food so much of the time, rain or shine, because they often don’t have the money on hand to buy anything to cook.

This week I went to visit two young friends I had met at a women’s literacy class in our community. They’re sisters, aged fifteen and eleven, and their parents have both died over the last few years, so they live with two older brothers who work to support the family. When I arrived at their home, they offered me a piece of a samosa. In the course of the conversation afterwards, I learned that because of the rain their brothers hadn’t been able to work for the past couple of days, and so this one salty pastry split between the three of us was all they had for lunch! They were waiting for their brothers to come home that evening with enough money to buy something to cook for dinner. This was sobering enough, but then one of the girls took me over to her cousin’s house just a few alleys away and left before her relatives fed me more samosas, along with chai and sweets. It is frustrating that I was treated to this hospitality while just a few yards away the girls were going hungry. Upon reflection, the disturbing thought occurred to me that my friend may have intentionally taken me to her cousin’s house thinking that was the best way to treat her guest the hospitality she herself was unable to provide. It’s humbling (and yes, disturbing) to think that the poor are feeding me instead of feeding themselves.

A lot of people go hungry in our neighborhood on a regular basis. Especially with the rain interrupting so many people’s livelihoods recently, we’re coming into a deeper awareness of that. But the fact remains that in all kinds of weather, families are living on the edge and often skip meals. Stunted children and skinny babies are the most visible reminders of that. Living within a few meters of these families, we never go hungry and make our decisions about meals based on our tastes rather than on whether or not there is cash on hand to cook a meal.

Of course there are all the complexities of an unjust global system that has kept me and most other Americans well-fed for our entire lives at the cost of keeping others hungry—but my friend has done a compelling job of explaining all of that in his blog post (which I highly, highly recommend), so I won’t go into that here.

Right now, I’m living next door to hungry people, so there is this pressing question of how to genuinely love my neighbors when they are hungry and I am fed. What is in my power to do, and am I doing that? But actually, in this age of global food chains and international connectedness, I suppose that my question is no different from the question we should all be asking—because whether we live in Los Angeles, Houston, India, or anywhere else on earth, our neighbors are hungry while we are fed.