I wait

For you alone, O God, my soul waits in the silence, for my hope is in you. Psalm 62.5
Those who wait for God, shall renew their strength. Isaiah 40:31
Happy are those whose hearts do not condemn them, who have not given up hope. Ecclesiates 14.2

"All that you give can sometimes rob my innocence"
-Delirious

there is not this easy path to hope
hardwork, hard hard labor of waiting
not for lightening bolts but flickering light under the door
my broken heart condemns me sometimes
rather than hope i blame God
for taking my oblivion
sins of omission that steal my joy
i let them
i wait, i wait
i sleep it off
I wait
i cry
I rage
I hate
I wrestle
I am defeated
I wait
I see light flicker
I wait
I hope
Compassion grows
before becoming fatigued
i wait
for God.

November 2010 Reflection

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Lewis Carroll

Sometimes, I get confused. I have my head down, avoiding eye contact, wanting to avoid the pain I might see as I wend my way through Songacchi on my way to work. I am overwhelmed by the suffering—I can only focus on the filthy pathways contrasted again the painted toe nails and impossibly high heeled shoes that that line the lanes in front of me. My mind is full of the suffering of people I love, the women and men that we have lost and the heroes at Sari Bari who continue to face problems at home. I begin to believe that this suffering, this broken reality is all there is, and hopelessness takes hold my heart.

I have recently been reflecting on Jesus on the cross and the scripture that stands out most clearly is Jesus words directed at the Father, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” I have never reflected deeply on this verse but recently at a conference as I listened to author and activist Peter Rollins reflect on the cross I was struck with the similarity of what I feel, to what Jesus himself, felt on the cross. Jesus felt the absence of God’s presence as he took on the sins of the world and he cried out—God where are you? Why have you left me alone?

I feel this way when I walk into the suffering of the women at Sari Bari and their counterparts who remain trapped in the sex trade. My God, my god, why have your forsaken us? This is the part of me that is looking down, grasping only the worldly realities, the broken people and experiences that have framed the reality of life in Kolkata, India. My question is God, where are you?

God did not create suffering. God created perfection, a garden of beauty in which we could have dwelt. Humanity chose destruction. We choose to live in a forsaken reality. I choose to let my own sin separate me from God. The most profound experience of God is to understand it pains God deeply that we choose destruction and that we choose to separate but He allowed us to do so anyway. And then God pursues us, the beloved, into the depths of darkness. Jesus was God, allowing himself to understand humanity, to enter into a reality of separation. It must be nonsenscial for God to understand why we continue to choose destruction over perfection. Jesus, as God, tasted destruction and then embraced it on the cross. When Jesus cried out “my God, my God, why have your forsaken me?”, he was at that moment enveloped in the darkness of the sins of humanity, and though I am sure God the father was present, Jesus could not see or feel the presence of the Father. Our sin isolated Jesus from the experience of God, a part of himself. In a sense, God rejected himself for us and took on the one thing that He could not stand to embrace, our sin—the thing that brings us destruction. God bridged a path into things that He did not create or intend for humanity.

Why do I feel the absence of God in the presence of those who suffer? Maybe it is because God did not create suffering. It is creative endeavor of destruction that I as a human being embrace in both large and small ways. If we question whether God is good, maybe we are asking the wrong question. The question is are we good, do we do good? Where is God in suffering? God is present though we may not feel it, but we cannot know what God must experience when He enters into destruction with us, and how that impacts our ability to understand who God is, in the reality of suffering and the wrenching He must feel as a parent and creator, when humanity chooses against God. Humans create suffering for other humans. People buy and sell other people. Men and women lie, cheat, steal and objectify. God created a garden. We have created hell, a reality of separation between what God intended and what we experience.

So when I stop being confused once in a great while and I cry out in less a powerful way, where are you God? Why did you leave?

God answers, I am here among you making the impossible possible. More than 7 years ago, before Freeset (www.freesetglobal.com), before Word Made Flesh and Sari Bari, there was a reality of impossibility. Women were not leaving the trade; there was no place for them to go. God was waiting for the beloved, those who call on Him, to be hands and feet, voices of hope and encouragement, to respond.

I think God sent Pornima to be with us Sari Bari, so that she would know His face, when she entered into His presence. God did not prevent her death but created an opportunity for her to receive love, hope and the gift of eternity.

Sari Bari started with 3 women in 2006 and as we enter 2011, have seen more than 70 women have freedom…this is the impossible becoming possible.

Sari Bari itself was not a creation of person but the collaborative effort of many from the beginning, no one person can take credit for anything that has happened. Kristin Keen, had the idea. I was able to contribute tactical, administrative, creative energy. Upendra Prasad Saha and Gita Mondal have been such foundation leaders and visionaries that we know we would not have seen what we have seen without their presence and unique gifts. Others along the way, Beth Waterman, the entirety of WMF staffers who came before, Kyle Scott and most profoundly the women of Sari Bari themselves are the intricate parts of an impossible reality, a reality in which we can only give thanks to a God who has not forsaken us.

I hope enter into the next year with a full heart ready to look up and see what God is doing, where God will enter into suffering, and where God will make the impossible, possible. And when I feel forsaken or wonder why God has not intervened in yet another broken reality, I hope to remember the miracle of the past that has created a fertile ground for my weak faith to grow.

With HOPE,

Sarah

Work Equals Freedom

Wrote an article earlier this year for Geez Magazine which you can now read online:


http://www.geezmagazine.org/magazine/article/work-equals-freedom/

This is not a movie...

if i ever get accustomed to what i see in sonagacchi and do not find that it breaks my heart and destroys me, that is the day i should leave here. Spent some time tonight with my friends in the gach over tea and sodas and snacks. Walking from one friends room, where i just encountered 3 new girls under the age of 18, i was so discouraged. But the brokenness of what we encounter the lanes of the red light area did not end...walking down the lane their were more little girls standing the line, new faces, i have not seen, men crowding the lanes, looking the women and girls up and down, making their choice from among the many who do not have choices.

I do not want to get used to what i see here. plain and simple, injustice upon injustice, exploitation upon exploitation. I still find it all very shocking and dumb founding. I once had a team member tell me that it was not a big deal visiting one of the harshest, saddest rooms we visit. She said she has seen it before on tv and in movies. I was dumbfounded, this is not the movies, these are real girls with real stories being exploited before our eyes. God forgive us if think having seen it before it should not move us to our knees, break our hardened hearts and cause us to take action. I have been living a long time and though i have seen it over and over, I still find it appalling and so devastating...because it is real and a true reality for so so many women and girls around the world.

The friends i was visiting were from Sari Bari. Beautiful markers of HOPE in the midst of devastating injustice, they give me hope and reason to continue, to not let my heart hardened and say i have seen it all before. I live in the tension of two realities, the freedom and hope that sari bari acts as the medium to achieve in the lives of the women and the horrifying injustice and the reality of the blatant bondage in which so so many remain. This is the tension that all of us in kolkata work, marking the hope of Jesus our redeemer, risen, alive, transforming people and culture and remembering the suffering of the Christ, the who is with us, with each and every one of the devastated destroyed little girls who stand the line on sonagacchi tonight.

may the prayers of the saints be heard tonight on behalf of these children newly traded and these many forgotten women who lost their childhoods many years ago . Jesus have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Video Introductions to Sari Bari Prevention Unit

Translation of the last conversation: What is the purpose of work at Sari Bari? The answer freedom. Why do we work for freedom? Because the lives of the women have so much value!



Hopeful to end trafficking...that's what i said!

Waiting for Justice

I don’t know what to do sometimes…my reality as an observer to the reality of the red light district is painful. I see things I do not want to see and know things I do not what to know. The responsibility is tremendous and far too much for even a community to carry. My spiritual director asked me this week what I thought God was trying to tell me. Because I had told her that I am having a hard time listening. The circumstances of the last weeks and month, tell me that I am not in control, they I never was in control, that I cannot prevent pain and its affects, that I am not alone but sometimes I feel that way, they tell me that I must endure injustice because cannot stop it, they tell me that I am helpless in the face of most things. If this is what the circumstances tell me, then maybe God is at work in those circumstances…telling me that I am helpless in the face of most things.

Yesterday, only one of the many days in this week that affirmed this truth, was particularly devastating. I currently have little or no emotional margin. Sickness, death, injustice and HEAT have made recovery through intentionality difficult. I am basically trudging, with love on good days and impatience on bad days through this season in Kolkata. As I was saying, yesterday was confounding, wrenching and horrific and I still don’t know what to feel about it because it affirms and destroys me.

As I was leaving Sari Bari on very late lunch break I encountered something I have never encountered in progress in the Gach: A girl being sold on the street. There was a big crowd, mostly men surrounding the girl so I could not see her. I saw the man selling her, well dressed (slimy, wretched man—my thoughts), and I thought why? I knew what was happening because a woman walking the opposite direction told me. The men were fighting…I did not stick around to find out the details. I keep asking myself if I should go in there and grab her or if I needed to protect the 50 plus women who work at Sari Bari by doing nothing. I did nothing. You can and should judge me for this…I am judging myself. It all happened so fast and I was so stunned that I could not think clearing what to do really. I think I was not really thinking about myself but in the aftermath, I wonder if I was…confronting this huge injustice would have meant the end of my time India (because the powers that control the red light area would have made it impossible for me to stay), maybe the end of Sari Bari because in the aftermath the red light community would have ceased to trust our community. The reality is that I walk this lane through the red light area every day, from my home to Sari Bari and back. The lane is infamous…big scary madams sit outside buildings, that we are not welcome to enter as they protect their financial investment and prostitute little girls. I smile at these ladies but I am afraid of what would happen if crossed them. I actually love these ladies and want to see their freedom and the freedom of those little girls but I am not foolish enough to believe their own woundedness and anger is not powerful enough to destroy me. It is darkness powerful enough to destroy me and Sari Bari and the freedom it provides, as it is certainly destroying life after life within the walls of those brothels.

I came home last night and I tell my friend Ranjana what I saw and how powerless I felt and she says, I have seen it many times and also did nothing…your hands are tied, there was nothing you could do...those men would have killed you. So I asked Rajana to tell me her story again. (Rajana began staying with me this week until we find her a room near us). Her story breaks my heart, sold as a little girl when her hair was still short, by little girls who worked alongside her washing floors in a rich man’s house. She was sold by her friends for a mere 100 USD. She was held against her will for weeks before being raped by a fat old man (her description) drenching the bed with her blood and innocence. She says that from that moment forward she became a bad woman. As she told her story, I wanted to hold her and tell her she was anything but bad, that she was beautiful and beloved. But she kept sharing more and more horrible and sad details about being held against her will, never receiving any money for the work she was forced to do on an ongoing bases for customer after customer, being sold many times over as virgin because her own small childish frame betrayed her. After she told me her story, I was numb with sadness and I hugged her and told her I was sorry and I went to bed and then woke up thinking about it.

I woke up thinking about the girl who was sold and all the ways I could have helped her. I woke up thinking that her reality was about become Ranjana’s…a story, that if I told you everything would make you gasp with unbelief as you thought of your daughter or sister or friend. Questioning, I ask myself why I did not risk my life and everything I have and love, for her life. And then I came to my mind this morning, why didn’t I go back to the office and get enough rupees to buy her freedom myself—I could have bought her freedom, saved her from Ranjana’s fate and the fate of pretty much everyone women and girl we know. I am deeply ashamed of my helplessness, deeply ashamed that I was paralyzed. I am appalled at the grotesque ability of men and women to commit evil against one another and at the same ability to not respond when we witness injustice—literally women being sold into slavery before our very eyes….my very eyes. I am crying and have been crying much harder and telling God to forgive me.

There are things that I see and know, that I know I would not understand if I had not seen them myself. Talking to Beth, I know this is true…you cannot know unless you have seen it and experienced it. Just like I cannot know what it is like to sold as a sex slave and live a life beyond that trauma…I will never know. The tears I cry and that I can’t cry for these women will never compare to the tears that they have cried and the flood of tears that they still hold inside. There are stories and situations that compel me to choose other than what I have been raised to believe…to say yes to people and relationships, rather than reason and law. Sometimes, my law abiding nature, causes me to feel ashamed but I will do the wrong thing for the right reason because I love someone. I feel like I did the wrong thing yesterday. Because I love the Sari Bari ladies deeply with my whole being and I would give my life a thousand times over in order to see what has happened to them never have happened, I chose them. I chose them yesterday but I also walked by a little girl being sold into the sex trade…oh dear Jesus please forgive me. This day destroyed me and probably will destroy me in the months and years to come.

Yesterday, my only hope came from a conversation with Gita. She is our Director of New Programs and will be the founding Manager of our prevention unit in Canning, West Bengal. She shared a conversation that she had yesterday with young girl who will come to work for us next week when we open the prevention unit. The girl asked why it has taken so long to start; Gita has been visiting for almost 3 months. The girl said “while they have been waiting for us many girls have left for Kolkata looking for work and many girls have been sold into the sex trade…why didn’t you start sooner.” Gita said, “I am sorry we did not start sooner. But we are starting now and we are going end the trafficking of girls from Canning.” Gita said WE ARE GOING TO END THE TRAFFICKING OF GIRLS FROM CANNING. Gita, beautiful, passionate, strong, 22 year girl, woman, hero, is going to bring LIGHT into the darkness and HOPE to what has truly been a hopeless circumstance of the young poor girls of canning. And she is bringing with her another HERO; a woman has gained freedom from the sex trade and will do anything to see that it does not happen to other girls. Gita, my friend, sister, and tiny Bengali hero will be doing what I could not do yesterday, she will be actively preventing girls from being sold into the sex trade by giving her love and providing employment that will literally save girls from this horrible fate. This gives affirmation of all that we hope for by starting a prevention unit.

These things all happened on the same day, Friday, June 4, 2010. A dark horrible day, a little girl was sold into the sex trade and her future is uncertain. A day of continued promise because of Gita and Shaleha, many, many girls will never face this reality. And a day where I again question, God what are you saying, are you saying from these circumstances I am helpless, that the world is dark and evil and i am not in control,because I sure feel that way…and as I acknowledge my broken state, I ask God so what are you going to do about this? Will you please make this injustice right? Will save that girl? Please… And I wait.

31 Days till Summer

I am a little late to this endeavor but I am still going to do the 31 Days till Summer Challenge

1. Eat when I am hungry and understand why I want to eat when I am not hungry
2. Eat fruit everyday
3. Drink more water less coffee and soda
4. Listen to my body when it tells to me to rest
5. Take my medicine like a good girl
6. Be patient with India
7. Be Patient with myself
8. Take care of my feet
9. Do one creative activity every week
10. Exercise every morning...my body, my mind or my heart in some way
11. Make my own yogurt at least once
12. Trade my old books in for new ones
13. Plant my much delayed herb garden
14. Paint my other room a pretty color
15. Breath deeply and slowly for one minute everyday
16. Practice gratitude
17. Practice hospitality
18. Dance when I feel like it no matter who is watching
19. Run with my community twice a week
20. Be open to new friendships
21. Seek to understand my emotions before I act on them.
22. Go get a head massage
23. Roll my yarn into balls so I can make something beautiful
24. Read Break Free from Emotional Eating by Geenen Roth
25. Read For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts Taylor, W. David
26. Call my Baba
27. Cook something new and special for my community
28. Be my best self at Sari Bari, when I am not, take a deep breath and take the time I need to become my best self for the day!
29. Listen to at least one sermon every week
30. Sew myself a new dress
31. Choose to let my heart stay open and shed the shackles of self protection!

Plan to do this through the end of June since I am starting a little late. A list like this deserves the time and space to allow everything on it to become a reality.

Pilgrimage of a soul

Phileena Heuertz new book was released today! You can buy it here. Here is one the images I did for the book...a little teaser and one i especially like...

More details on the prevention unit

Dear Friends of Sari Bari-

We recently invited you to participate in helping us raise the funds we need for our new prevention unit opening up in June. We know $10,000.00 is big number so we wanted to break down into parts that make sense and smaller numbers that are workable for every budget. If you want to donate $1.50 you can buy a brick or two or three—bricks are important because we use them to keep tension on the blankets as we are sewing. For $20.00 you can pay for the literacy and materials for one woman. For $90.00 you can support one woman with a stipend we offer during training. For $250.00 you can sponsor clean drinking water with the purchase of the water filter. We welcome your participation, large and small. All of it will be a part of creating a space where young women at risk will be able to find safety and opportunity that will give them freedom from the future that could await them.
We love the support you offer us already and are so thankful to have your purchasing power on the side of freedom for all the women at Sari Bari.

For Freedom,
Sarah

Sari Bari Prevention Unit Start up

Facilities
Rent for one year $1,800.00
Security Deposit $ 700.00
Kitchen Set up $ 250.00
Onsite Manager Housing Set up $ 150.00
Secure Closet $ 150.00
Washer (used) $ 125.00
Dryer (new) $ 400.00
Water Pump with Labor $ 100.00
Paint with Labor $ 400.00
Fans and Electrical with labor $ 340.00
Furniture $ 100.00
Fire extinguishers $ 700.00
Clean Drinking water Electronic Filter $ 250.00




Training for 20 women Total Cost Per Woman
Training Salary for Three months $ 750.00 $ 90.00
Heath check $ 800.00 $ 40.00
Salary Assistance for Management staff $1,275.00 $ 63.75
3 meals per week for trainees for three months $ 818.00 $ 41.00
3 months of Sewing Materials $ 465.00 $ 24.00
Literacy, Math and general training materials $ 400.00 $ 20.00
Bricks for tension on blankets $ 30.00 $ 1.50

Art

 

Well, I guess the next couple weeks will make it official. i am a published artist. I did the above T-shirt design for Freeset UK and have another really edgy one in the works for Sari Bari.

And I did the interior art for PILGRIMAGE OF A SOUL by my friend and coworker Phileena Heuertz. I would encourage you to journey with Phileena and order an advance copy so you can get it as soon as it releases! I will share the interior images but not till after the release date!

The Other side of rejection

I have experience with rejection. We probably all do...at some point someone told us we were not good enough or smart enough or too sinful to be around. This caused pain and fear about the next time it might happen. if this has not happened to you, I'm glad, if it has happened, i truly sorry.

In my early twenties, i had a very good friend, who decided in the midst of very difficult season in my life that I was too much. My tongue piercing, a relapse of my eating disorder, and the choice of the wrong man to spend time with, made me too much. I still have dreams about the loss of this friendship. It has colored my ability to trust and believe that in seasons of darkness in my own life that someone will tell me again that i am too much and that they do not want to be around me.

The other side of rejection is being the one who rejects. It is easy to forget that you have been rejected when someone, an especially broken person, comes across your path and you want to reject them because ultimately they will reveal your brokenness and sin.

this week, one of our ladies husband's died of HIV. We have known him and been his friend for years, but honestly we have not been good friends to this man. He is one who I know I have rejected at different times for reasons that i could legitimize but will not. About a year ago, I finally recognized his humanity...I FINALLY SAW HIM, his heart, his personhood, I saw Jesus in him waiting for our community to respond with love. In recognizing his humanity, i found that i could no longer reject but only be broken over the sin in my life and see that it was his brokeness that brought him to the place that he was and the reasons for why he was where he was and acted the way that he acted. His humanness and my recognition of his humanity lead me to repentance and a place where i could no longer reject him but felt the need instead to embrace him. the embrace was not easy and has remained mostly tentative, trying to forgive him and forgive myself for not loving him as Jesus. He counted himself part of our community because of the connection through his wife and i am thankful that he called on us and asked for help even when should have been the ones to offer before he had to ask. In the wake of his death, all of the women at Sari Bari came to his funeral and mourned his loss. the ripples of love in community extend when we let them to those we would rather cast aside. I am thankful for those ripples that touched Nareem and that he knew he cared for him before he died. But I remain sorry that i did not extend love more fully and more completely to this man that God created and called his child.

I keep thinking of Jesus words: they that have been forgiven much, love much and they that have been forgiven little, love little. i think that it is not so much a matter of the difference in how much we sin but how much we are willing to acknowledge before God and others of our brokenness and how much we are willing to receive the forgiveness that has been offered to us.

I struggle to be broken before others and sometimes that means that brokenness in others in hard to handle. in my own struggle, i do not confess my sin before God and others and struggle to allow it to be taken from me in order to receive forgiveness for myself so i can love better, more freely. I would rather be angry then tell some one that i am sad and that they have disappointed me or that they have hurt someone i love and that it breaks my heart, i would rather self protect and reject than fall apart and lay my soul bare for all to see. I have much to learn and my friend Nareem has given me a harsh lesson in humility and i hope that God in his great mercy has received Nareem into the ARMS of love and that Nareem and Jesus will forgive me for not loving Nareem as if he was Jesus himself. His brokenness revealed my own and it shames me, as it should. i am broken and asking for forgiveness that i may be one who has been forgiven much so that i can let God love much through me.

May God have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Sari Bari Prevention Unit--Opportunity to help

Dear Friends, family and supporters of Sari Bari-

Sari Bari has been working the red light areas of Kolkata for more than 4 years offering freedom and hope to women trapped the sex trade. Even after opening our second unit last year to create more spaces and opportunities for freedom, we are now busting at the seams and ready for more space with more than 50 women working at Kalighat and Songacchi Sari Bari units. Hope is being restored and is bringing new life in our midst. And we are very, very hope full!

Sadly, the majority of women who work for us were trafficked at a young age and found themselves trapped in the sex trade. They were vulnerable because of poverty and lack of choices for young women in the villages where they lived. Kyle Scott, WMF staff member, wrote a song called “35 once 13” that speaks profoundly of the losses that these women, our friends, have lost in the “in between”. Knowing these losses intimately because of our friendship and the life we share in community among these women we want to take a new step and prevent this cycle from repeating.

One of the important steps we took when we opened the second Sari Bari unit in Songacchi was to invite young women at risk, primarily daughters of sex workers, within the red light areas to work with us. We reserved 20 percent of our space in Sonagacchi for these young women and we are so encouraged to see this making a difference in their lives and have seen how their current employment has literally saved them from being forced to work in the sex trade. We see new girls working in Sonagacchi every day and this exploitation can be stopped before it has started. Helping to prevent new girls from being trafficked into the sex trade is the most effective way to combat sexual slavery. We hope to offer more high-risk girls an opportunity to life-giving education and work that will protect them from ever entering the sex trade.

Sari Bari is ready to open one of its first sites dedicated to prevention in the next month, in a village that is a high trafficking area on the border of Bangladesh and India. We hope to employ young women ages 17-25 and living in poverty as a means of preventing them from being trafficked into the city of Kolkata as sex workers. As we have prepared for this new step our outreach, we have been visiting and connecting with the young women from the village. Gita (WMF Staff member) and Shaleha (New Production Manager--some of you probably have one of her blankets!) for the Prevention unit have been engaging the women and their mothers in conversations. And we have sadly found as we feared, that we are not the first visitors but one among many visitors to these impoverished areas. The girls have described many, many visitors who have sought to bring them to Kolkata for a job and ultimately to be sold into the sex trade in Songacchi or trafficked even further to Mumbai or the Middle East. Our encounters have confirmed the need for a response in this village to create a space for opportunity through employment so that these young women will not have to take the risk of trusting a stranger and ending up in sexual slavery.

We would like to offer you the opportunity to partner with us in the start up expenses for the building, the initial setup and the training costs for employing 20 young women. We are seeking to raise $10,000.00 by the end of June to cover these expenses and we hope that you will join with us. You can donate though WMF (www.wordmadeflesh.org) and click on the donate link or you can go to https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=26156 to make a donation online.

For Freedom,
Sarah, Beth, Kyle, Gita, Upendra, Radha, Shela, Shaleha and all the Sari Bari Ladies

Dude...I'm angry

So this week i think denial has moved to anger as i process Pornima's loss and probably the fact that it touches on all the other injustices that I encounter daily. I have walked past the place where she used to stand multiple times this week looking for her, hoping that I would see her and all that has happened would have only been a nightmare. This anger has compelled me forward so hard that I am accomplishing alot (negative energy producing hopefully positive things) and thankfully not hurting anyone in the process...because basically i am not angry at anyone but at systems of injustice, at fatalism in the culture that surrounds me and at my own powerless to stop it. I am angry that Pornima's son will not be going to school--if you pray, please pray that this changes, i am angry to be away from my sister when she is hurting, i am angry that i helpless to change anything much.

This afternoon i crashed and just felt weary and tired and almost all the anger left. I think and hope this is God's grace. I feel pretty confident that I want these feelings to leave and love to replace it....to shed that hard protect wall that has been keeping me sane and let God love me so that love can flow better to others. Because as they say...love can cover a multitude of sins. Goodness knows i need my sins covered and forgiven. I guess when i feel this spent the only place I can turn with my emptiness is Jesus. He seems to have been taking the heat with some of my sadness and anger and hurt over so much injustice and suffering. I hopeful for His continued embrace in the coming days until all this anger is gone and love and mercy find their way back.

Jesus have mercy on me and on the world!

Sabbatical Planning

So i am taking a few days break to plan my Sabbatical in 2011...this means I will be taking a 6 month time of reflection and rest after 10 years with WMF. I have been looking forward to this opportunity and priviledge for a couple years but have never really made the time to think about it let alone plan for it. So today when I really sat down and wrote everything out, i started to cry. I started to cry because the thought of leaving my friends and sisters at Sari Bari for 6 months seems like too long, maybe even too selfish a thing to consider. My spiritual director has been encouragin me over the last year to remember that I need to take care of myself in order to offer my best to these friends and sisters. This is what i am trying to keep in mind because i know this to be the truth. In 2009, I took a 3 month leave of absence becausei was so burnt out--i had to leave because i was not taking care of myself and i do not want to see that happen again in the next ten years. So i am trying to look at this as an opportunity--something that can be both a gift for myself and my community. I would love to have your prayers as I plan and dream and prepare the SB community for this temporary departure. Pray that God would be preparign my heart and an acutal way for it to happen (there are alot of details to be worked out!) So i am back to dreaming and planning and maybe that pain in my heart with subside--but maybe it is not supposed to...

May 2010 Prayer letter

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Matthew 5:4

We lost a friend recently. She was killed in her room by a customer. The why’s and how’s are still uncertain but what is certain is that she is gone from us. Her name is Pornima and she was our sister, our friend and a part of the Sari Bari Family.

She began her journey to freedom with us at Sari Bari three months ago was still in the middle of her period of training. (During training the women are given 6 months to transition out of the trade. This is an important part of allowing them to make the choice for freedom. They can bring closure to the past and break ties with old customers while gaining confidence and an understanding of their value which ultimately gives them the strength and courage to leave completely. We have seen about 90 percent of our ladies leave the trade permanently.) She had only begun to the take first steps toward the ownership of her own freedom. And her ability to have it fully through her own hard work in the midst of a safe and loving community. The day before she died was particularly important as she poured herself into completing her first blanket and completed more than she had in day than she had the weeks prior. She even surprised herself and was talking about how amazed she was at what she had accomplished. Pornima was cremated with her almost completed blanket as sign of the freedom that she experienced in this lifetime and the hope of freedom in the next.

Her loss is deeply impactful for our community and each person within it. We mourned for her together the day of her death, each coming to pay their respects at the uncomfortably open crime scene. Afterward, we all returned to Sari Bari to pray and share and listen to stories of Pornima and the personal stories of loss, hurt and hope from many of the other women. Sari Bari remained closed for the rest of the day as we pursued the details of laying our friend to rest as quickly as possible ( a process complicated by the circumstances and the police, red light area and family politics that played themselves out in the aftermath of the loss our beloved sister.) We continue to mourn in the days following and I am sure we feel the loss and mourn our friend in the months and years to come.

There is nothing good about Pornima’s death or how she died or even how her life was spent up to that point. Her life was a long legacy of suffering and strife that led her to the brothels of Songacchi. But as I reflect, I find comfort and hope for Pornima because now her suffering is finished. Three months at Sari Bari brought her a taste of the goodness of a loving God. She celebrated Easter with us in the days before her death and came to know that the Redeemer of the world was on her side. No more sacrifice or offering needed to be made for her sins because the God of the Universe has offered up His Son as the final sacrifice. Though she was not able to experience the fullness of freedom in this lifetime we trust that she is experiencing true freedom in the presence of Jesus at this very moment.

Pornima is gone and we are left to mourn her loss and figure out what to do in world without her presence and her cocked smile when she greeted us on the street before joining us at Sari Bari. I will miss her shy approach as she called out “Didi (big sister), is it okay if ….?” As we have mourned, we have been comforted, by one another, by the new enthusiasm and drive that we see in the women who lost their dear friend, to make sure freedom does not slip from their grasp. We have been comforted by simple cultural acts of purification as we all went for a swim in the Ganges right after the funeral (you can read more about this on my blog www.princesslightbringer.blogspot.com) and we have been comforted by many of you in our extended community who have poured our your prayers and encouragements. We have been comforted by Psalm 34:18 The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit and Psalm 142. Ultimately, we have been comforted in these days since the marking of the death and resurrection of our Redeemer by the spirit that prays with us and for us, encourages us and upholds us.

For Pornima True freedom has been granted earlier than we expected. And the rest of us will continue the fight for freedom with fervor and compassion for those who remain in bondage and alongside us we find more than 50 women who believe in the cause of freedom not only for themselves but for their sisters still trapped in bondage.



From one who has been comforted,

Sarah

Let there beauty for these ashes...

Pornima's body was cremated today and we know in our hearts that she has been given her True freedom and entry into the promised land earlier than we expected. Her Body was accompanied by her Sari Bari and Freeset families as well as her mother and son. One of the girls commented, that Pornima would have been so encouraged to know how very well loved she was by so many people. Pornima was wrapped in her Sari Bari blanket, it was a marker of hope and the freedom that Pornima has received in the welcome embrace of Jesus. We ended the time with prayers and the rememberance that one day we will see pornima again, whole and restored. We hope, believe and pray for beauty out these ashes in our loss of Pornima...for each woman at Sari Bari, their children and their families.

We all wept and cried together and then we followed the bengali tradition of taking a bath in the Ganga (Ganges). I have never taken a bath in the ganga before but i have to say there is something pretty healing about jumping in the water with other mourners, sisters and friends, washing away the tears and starting anew. It is like after experiencing the death of a loved one, you have the opportunity once again to be reborn, to be refreshed in the water (even very dirty water that makes you wonder whether you should take a z-pac as a preventative measure.). There is alot of religious rituals connected to this practice but i have to say, i celebrated the bath with the Sari Bari women as something that heals, remembering that Jesus makes us new, washes us clean and restores life.

What violence has beset us this day

What violence has beset us this day
Of all days, this day was most unexpected
Most vile, violent and cruel
Because it is the day after hope still lingered in one woman heart
Yet is lingers no longer with her end
Today is everyday and the today no one wanted
Today is for weeping over violence
Weeping for freedom lost
Where no freedom can found
Powerless, fearful silent
Offenders protected
Shame for such injustice is heavy on us all.
Three months of freedom tossed like her body
Aside.
What violence has beset us this day.
We all are her. She was us.
Part of us left with her.
The violence committed, indignity
Against her, against us all.
She flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone
This sister gone.
Her fight for freedom was violently wrenched from her grasp,
We will fight on remembering.

For Pornima. Completed three months of training at Sari bari.
Died: Today

Sari Bari Bags are on Sale

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Remembering

I was going some of my stuff yesterday and I found this reflection that I wrote just two weeks after the start of Sari Bari in 2006. Pretty cool after celebrating Easter on friday with more than 50 ladies who now have freedom!

The new life of three women has begun with the advent of Sari Bari. Three women now have freedom to begin a new life that was never before possible. Now it is more than possible…it is a reality. We celebrated the beginning of the new lives of these three women with birthday cake on Saturday. This is something that started with celebrating the life of one girl in Sonagacchi who left the trade and now will become the beautifully regular celebration of every new women employed by Sari Bari.

It was exciting and beautiful to be with them as we sang happy birthday for them and with them as they celebrated not only their own freedom but the start of freedom of the other 2 women working alongside them. It was a sweet celebration of new life on the floor of what is now Sari Bari in Kalighat.

These first two weeks have been full of new and good experiences. The ladies are amazing and they are working so hard…it was hard to get them to stop for the informal education we hope to have built into all our training sessions. We want to make sure that they have basic literary, nutrition education, budgeting and team building games to round out their training but they just want to keep working on their blankets. Most of the time it just feels normal and maybe like I might be in a little over my head but so good.

I also started learning how to make a Sari Blanket and if you know me at all you will know I wanted my Sari Blanket, even though it is my first one, to be perfect and beautiful. I thought I had picked beautiful and fun sari’s to make the perfect blanket. But as my work progressed I realized that my Sari had all these holes and that I would need to patch them. Hey no problem, the patches add to the coolness I thought, but then there was not left over fabric to match my sari so I had to patch with another color that did not quite match…I was tempted to think that now my Sari blanket was ruined. And then I started to think about it…this sari blanket that I was working on is very much like me and in fact very much like all the ladies I am working alongside. It has the appearance of something good and the potential for great beauty but there are holes and the holes while they make it imperfect they do not make it any less beautiful. The holes which require patching, even patching with a color that does not quite match, make the Sari Blanket even more unique and beautiful. I just realized that I want my life to be perfect but it is not…I imagine the ladies we work with feel the same way…they want beauty and wholeness for themselves and their families but this has not been something available or even attainable. But the fact of the matter is just because there are holes, brokenness and imperfection in our lives does not mean that these things can not be patched, healed and redeemed to make something even more beautiful. That is the kind God we serve, one who patches our holes and calls us beautiful…a God who will heal my brokenness and the brokenness of these ladies and make something new.

This is our vision for Sari Bari that God would take the lives of these women just as they take these old thrown away Sari’s and make something new. We started making Sari Blankets in a business that we call Sari Bari but this week God started making things new in the lives of three women. He started the redemption process and I believe we can trust the end result will be beautiful.

I was able to pay them yesterday for the first two weeks of training and it was so beautiful to see their faces and see their responses as it was again affirmed for them that a new life is started and that there really will be freedom for them. They had their first budgeting class yesterday taught by Kiran and it was a really rough go…it is really the first time that they have been asked to intentionally figure out their money and consider how they can pay their debts and even save some money. It was not easy for them to consider how they could actually make something like a budget work but I believe and hope that they can be successful at managing their money and living on the money they make without taking additional loans. They do not yet know that we will be paying off their loans (they can pay us back at no interest—some of them are paying the equivalent of 120 percent a year) and I am so looking forward to the day when I can tell them their debt will be paid and they will be free from it’s burden in the not too far off future.

Please keep these women in your prayers. They have a long, hard and most certainly amazing road ahead them. Freedom will require a fight that they will not have to fight alone but still it will not be easy. They need you to fight on their behalf in prayer.

So thanks for praying for us and for them. We feel it and we most certainly need it!

STONE SOUP

Do you know the story of stone soup? The one where the guy starts with stone and invites everyone to contribute thus making something that was nothing into a delightful meal, a community event and celebration over the miracle of soup made from a stone.

Yesterday, at Sari Bari Kalighat we had Jhal Muri (puffed rice, lots of veggies, chilies etc. mixed in) for a snack…it was stone soup Indian style. The women started with nothing but the idea of a good snack and an invitation to participate. Everyone brought something, a few rupees each, a little cost to create an abundant meal, shared, enjoyed and very tasty!

Sari Bari has been a stone soup of sorts. We started with nothing…only an idea and a little hope. Everyone involved from the beginning until now has brought something to the pot. Kristin Keen gave her dream for freedom and a lot of laughter, I offered my system building skills, creative energy and passion for the dream and the women who could find freedom within the dream, Upendra and Gita offered their sewing talents and their labor of love, each and every woman has offered her hopes, dreams and a good deal of hard work, Melinda Snader got us started in the states by advocating, marketing and dreaming with us, Kat McRitchie keeps us going by doing the same, Beth Waterman offered her support and partnership from our beginnings, Kyle Schroeder offered his sweet design skills, tons of interns and team members offered encouragement and partnership, thousands of people in the US and UK bought our beautiful handmade products, the folks at Freeset who cheered us on and offered wisdom, The One Million Can Campaign gave us the funds to offer freedom to so many more women, Chris Heuertz advocated for our success, Word Made Flesh gave us a foundation, Kyle Scott offered his sweet admin skills and heart for freedom and four years later, 2 production units and working on a third prevention unit, we have the benefit of sharing in a very unique and special soup. This soup from began with just a stone and an invitation to join us for a meal at the table. Now more 60 friends, staff, partners and freedom fighters are sharing in the nourishing and abundant meal in Kolkata, India.

This is the miracle of stone soup! Starting with nothing but a stone and an invitation, in the end we are all beneficiaries of the meal. The women who began with us in the first years are becoming our leaders and partners in the work of freedom, they are our trainers, our assistant managers, our missionaries and the founders of the new projects that have started and will start in the years to come. We who began by offering that the stone could in fact create a delicious meal are in awe of the goodness of the blessing we have received by those who have accepted the invitation. We overwhelmed at the friends, family and freedom that come out of a simple offering, a starting point.
The invitation to join us is still open. We want to receive from the new women who will come through our doors and find a new life, from the interns, staff and friends who keep freedom possible through their purchasing power! The soup is already pretty darn good but hope remains for more, for a more extravagant meal to be shared by all!

Thankful today to be at this table with these beautiful women, partners and friends! Wish you all could have had some Jhal Muri yesterday it was amazing!

Taste and see that God is GOOD!