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Margot Anand

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PILGRIMAGE TO ASIA, continued

As I walked through the moat, I met a beggar woman. She was wrapped in yellow cloth, had a radiant, shiny face. She did not have a left forearm, nor a right leg. What a sight. Such beauty, cut up. I gave her dollars. My heart cried. The paradox of this exquisite culture, the glory of yesteryears, and the poignant, revolting immediacy of now: the mines, bodies cut up, legs missing; lives utterly destroyed.

As I was about to step through the last portico, out of the temple complex, my eyes were drawn to a dark corner in which a child was crouching.
Was this a human child? Or one of the demons of the temple? He too missed a leg and an arm? But his face? All scarred, skin taught, tight drawn over the eye lids, the dark, sad, eyes disappearing almost inside the head, the nose half cut, and the lips swollen so big they seemed turned inside out, and pulled up, the mouth permanently open, big swollen upper lip pulled to the side of a cheek.
My God. Except for the lepers in India, never did I see such a face. The poor, poor child. Condemned to beg. What a vision. I gave him money and practically ran out.

On the way back, I was so struck by this misery that I decided something must be done. But what? I found out an Italian mission near by has set up a rehabilitation center for the wounded to be retrained for a job. But many end up begging at the temples, they make more money that way. The average wage of a person working seven hours a day here is not even a dollar a day. Begging with a face like this you are bound to get more than that. Slowly over the 40 days of my journey across Asia, the following idea was born. The Church of SpiritWorks, true to its name, is going to offer a new program called "Helping at the Source".

©2003 Spiritworks Church