Jesus with skin-on

I got this email from Katie Kuehn, a college student from CrossRoads who took a semester off school to fly to India to work with Mother Teresa's Sisters of Mercy. If you have a second, read the Matthew 25:31-46 and then Katie's email update.

Good morning!

Well, week one of being in Kolkata has come and gone. I feel like I have been here so much longer than that. The first couple days were hard, mainly the first one. When you are here, your senses are assaulted, literally. It is hard to maintain your composure as you are walking through the streets. The streets? Well, let’s see: buses, cars, taxies of all sorts; people eating, selling, yelling, talking, running, walking, hitting you, grabbing you, biking, bathing, going to the bathroom; cattle, sheep, goats; ditches filled with garbage, urine, vomit, cow heads, cockroaches; constant honking and ringing of rickshaw bells; Muslim prayer calls ALL THE TIME; smells that your brain needs to make a new category for, like spices I couldn’t began to name nor describe (at all), burning wood, garbage and leaves, marijuana, BO, rotting meat, feces and urine, cooking meat, incense EVERYWHERE and the quickly growing favorite: baking bread. The smells of the bakeries here are like whiffs of fresh air. Oh, and all this is ta

The rhythm of life here is slow and simple. The reality is that everything around is moving at hyper speed so we need to be intentional about slowness. The Sisters got it down because by noon you are exhausted in ways you didn’t know you could be. That was hard at first too as I have learned that I am gluttonous and over stimulated in other arenas of life. It’s hard for me to just be without a clear thing to do or purpose. I have learned that when I am stripped of everything I think I need, I find things that bring a new kind of life…more on that later.

We get up around five, the Catholics go to mass, I have a quiet time (I cannot go to work without doing this) and then we all eat a breakfast of white bread, banana and nasty chai tea. We pray and then head off to our specific homes to work. After work we share lunch, nap, go to internet, explore a little, shop, go to adoration and dinner and then are in bed and fast asleep no later than ten. I live in a awesome guest house right across from Mother House. I am sharing a room with a girl from Maine, Marie. Everyone I live with is wonderful and Catholic. It’s hard to have conversations about God with them because nothing I say is received by them. It’s hard, but God has given me a wonderful friend named Amy. Keep her in your prayers…God is moving her heart in big ways. Some mornings she comes over and we do a Bible study together. She thinks I’m a genius ?. It makes up for the Catholic girls thinking I’m crazy. I have yet to pin a nun down to talk about life and all the burning questions I have about Mother an

Work. I have been writing a lot since being here as I want to remember every revelation and moment. I work at Kalighat, the first home started. It is in the worst part of the city, adjacent to the Hindu temple dedicated to the goddess Kali. They do ceremonial body burning there (dead ones, of course) and still do live animal sacrifices. The people line up in the hot sun for hours and hours to get in there. When I walked into Kalighat the first time I felt as if I had stepped into a photograph. The things I see each day are things I have not even seen in movies or TV. I am shadowing two nurses right now. They are in dire need of medical volunteers which is why a Bible student is wrapping wounds and inserting catheters. I mean the things I am doing here I would never do in the States. We change wrappings and clean new patients for the first two and a half hours. Yesterday a woman came in with her shin entirely exposed. There’s about seven inches of bone open. I held her as maggots and worms were cleaned out of

After the wrappings are done, I get to do what I have grown to love: being with the women. I cannot describe the ways in which your heart can break when a woman is talking with you, pleading with you in a language you cannot understand or speak and all you want to do is communicate this deep, intense love you have in your heart. You learn to communicate and give this love in new ways. You also come to find that the love in your heart wasn’t there before or is something you are even capable of. Rather, this love is purely of God’s own heart. It’s the love you come to find when you have poured all of yourself out before someone else. It’s a love you realize is God’s way of beckoning you into a new fellowship with Him as He shares a part of His heart with you you had not previously known. I was holding a woman and waiting with her for her wound to be finished getting changed (everyone was at the mass held there) when it hit me that the intense love I was feeling in my heart was what God feels for her. This woma I communicate this love through giving my body, literally. My body becomes a pillar for those who cannot stand or sit on their own. My body is a source of warmth and presence when they cannot sense even their own. My body is a rag, used to wipe away tears, urine, blood and vomit. My body is clung to as flesh is cut away due to infection. My body brings food and water that cannot be obtained another way. My body offers rest when they are tired of being alone. My body is a reassurance that they are not alone as they leave this world. My body is a broken, flawed clay jar that contains imperishable goods these woman need to encounter. My body becomes a shelter for women who are scared. My body is not my own. 

In giving my body, surrendering my schedule and time, I am finding the Everlasting treasures that offer real life: contentment, joy and peace. Through living here, I have found that this new fellowship with God is showing me how to touch eternity through loving other people and agreeing with God’s own heart. I am finding the sweetest joy I have ever known. There is joy and sweet goodness in the most mundane of tasks. Nothing is small. As I do everything fully, intentionally and with great attentiveness, I pour myself out. As I pour myself out, I find a love that is so great and so big. I have never felt more love in my life. I feel so blessed.

Thank you all for praying and believing me here. I love you so much and I am so thankful I get to share my life with you. I have a family in God that I find great security and reassurance in. I love my roots. You are all here with me.

I will write more soon. I could go on and on about life here. I put some pictures on facebook ?. Miss you all. Everyone kiss Carter for me!

Much love,
Your Katie

Comments

[Linda]

Katie has written a profoundly moving description of her experiences. I'm speechless.

[Maddie]

I have tears running down my face at this very moment . . . thanks for posting this Brad!

[Humble Pie]

Thanks for forwarding the letter.

Amazing!

[desperation meets me here]

Jesus makes me cry.

[Reagan]

Wow! My heart hurts yet is also full of wonder. Katie will be in my prayers every day. I can't wait to hear more about her experiences and how she is learning what it really means to love like Jesus.

[VICIT]

So cool... it sounds like a new Katie, the same very sweet girl (woman, whatever) but with this exponential new level of profundity!

How many times have we read that passage and thought, wow, such powerful words, gimme' a latte', I think I'll buy guitar hero III, what's for dinner?

After 4 decades and 7 years of post high school theological education, I read that passage for the 1000th time (BUT ACTUALLY THE FIRST TIME!) and thought:
1. OH MY GOD! -literally not slang-
2. Jesus ACTUALLY said that... and
3. What if He means what he says!? HELLO!

I'va always taken the words of Christ as absolutely those spoken by God, yet for some reason the "scales fell off my eyes" that "1,000 and 1th" time. Yeah, Katie looks pretty sheep-like.

[dmapp]

As I was moved reading her e-mails, it sounds so much like pregnancy, child birth, nursing and raising these gifts from God.