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St. Mary's Orphanage, I would like to describe to you an incident which occurred while I was in Calcutta India some 3 years ago, and to thank the members of the congregation who encouraged me to tell this little story. The Christian Brothers were an Irish order set up to educate the poor of Ireland in the nineteenth century. They grew into a powerful influence in Irish education. They also spread to other parts of the British empire. However by the end of the 20th century they were almost extinct in Ireland as well as severely tainted with scandals of criminality towards children. Not all brothers were criminals indeed the vast majority were well meaning teachers, I myself was educated by them and can honestly say that I owe some of my Unitarian soul to those brothers who educated for truth, wherever it would lead. A few years ago the leadership of the congregation decided to introduce an immersion programme which would allow young Irish secondary school students to go abroad for short periods to live and work with brothers in places like India and Africa. My school is linked with St. Mary's orphanage in Dum Dum, Calcutta. I lead the second School trip to Calcutta. At first I was a little apprehensive, I worried that we would be immersed in proselytising. However I went to India with 4 students and a young assistant teacher. We were made very welcome, settling in to the monastery easily. Then came the first morning of our work, essentially we would do some basic English math geography games etc., with a mixture of children aged around 11, 12, 13 years. By the way all the Irish boys raised their own air fares and collected money that they would give directly to charities in Calcutta. We would also visit other projects in Calcutta and give some of the monies we had collected to them, for instance a school run by The Friends of Calcutta, a Dublin based voluntary organisation. The children we would work with were in some cases orphans, in others children whose parents were living on the street or by a railway line under plastic sheeting, in general destitute. Some parents may have had drug or alcohol problems, I think Indian pride would not allow us the full knowledge of their predicament. So we were brought to meet our charges, some 14 young boys who all had good spoken English I should add. As I looked around me I wondered how to begin, here we were six Irishmen who incidentally appeared as giants beside the diminutive Indian boys. "How to start" I said half aloud. Immediately a precocious little Indian lad whose name I learned later was Mark Mondal, spoke up, "I know how to start sir" he said. "Why not" I thought. As we stood there in a circle Mark solemnly began to recite the prayer of Jesus, we all joined in and as we prayed I saw that Mark was wearing around his neck what appeared to be a rosary beads. He finished and I made a gesture as if to speak. Mark spoke up again "Sorry sir I am not finished" "Oh no I thought, not the rosary please," Had I made a mistake was I in some fundamentalist situation, you know all the thoughts that race through your head in moments like that. However Mark's next words were the most significant I heard in all my time in India. He simply turned to the group and said "let each of us now pray to his own gods" I had met my first Unitarian Indian Joe McDermott |