As you read this, my friend James-Michael Smith and I are in Bhubaneswar, India, preparing to work with two different pastoral networks.
Here are some reflections about "waking up in India" that I summarized on my second trip here back in 2012.
One of our hosts here in the city of Balasore — a man who has spent some time in the United States — explained to me the difference between waking up in the US and waking up in India.
“In America, you wake up to silence,” he said. “In India, we wake up to noise.”
As I woke up today (Thursday morning in India), I understood what he was talking about.
See, if you live in a typical subdivision in Steele Creek, Lake Wylie, or Fort Mill, whatever noise surrounds your morning ritual probably comes from inside your house: babies crying, children talking, coffee pouring, or TV talking heads pontificating.
Outside your house is a different story. With the exception of an occasional school bus or speeding car, the wee hours of the morning are as quiet as they are dark.
Not so here. When you wake up in India — or, more accurately, when you get woken up in India — it is to a cacophony of people, vehicles, and horns. Mostly horns.
Remember the vuvuzela horns from the World Cup Soccer matches in South Africa a couple of years ago? That’s what we have here. At 4 a.m. And 4:01 a.m. And 4:02 a.m. And on and on.
The sounds of life, struggle, survival, and ambition on the Indian streets every morning.
Most definitely not the sounds of silence.
I have never paid much attention to our 26th president but once I got started on these books, I simply could not put them down.
And here are five things about Roosevelt's era you might not have known before:
1. The Panama Canal was almost the Nicaragua Canal. The U.S. government was all set to do business with Nicaragua until Roosevelt was able to induce the province of Panama to declare its independence from Columbia. The resulting canal was much shorter through the Panamanian isthmus than it would have been up north in Nicaragua. Who knew?
2. The reason you call the stuffed bears on your children's beds "Teddy Bears" is . . . you guessed it. Teddy Roosevelt.
3. His mother and his first wife died on the same day. His wife died in child birth. In that era, it was unthinkable that a single dad would raise a newborn baby, so Roosevelt didn't. His sister did. Once Roosevelt re-married, the oldest daughter (Alice) returned to her father's house, where she became the older sister to five half-siblings.
4. He was a Republican who loved big government.
5. He gave away his niece at her wedding. You might have heard of her: Eleanor.
6. He had a tennis court built at the White House but refused to allow himself to be photographed while playing. I had no such opposition.
