40. Scrub-Land
Chapter 40
Scrub-Land
Early in 1931 Amy gathered the members of the Dohnavur Fellowship in God’s Garden and the decision was made to ask the Webb-Peploe brothers to be the leaders of the men’s side and May Powell of the women’s. Very likely the state of her own health helped Amy to see the importance of planning for others to take over. The headaches that had plagued her for years had become so troublesome that she occasionally took a glass of port mixed with quinine—port to help the headache, quinine “so that I won’t take the wine for its own sake!”
May Powell was called to bring forceps to the Forest one day when Amy had a toothache she did not want anyone else to know about. May arrived to find her in a semikneeling posture on her bed, in too much pain to kneel up, praying for some girls who had a special need.
The tricycle on which she used to careen around the compound had to be given up. She was sixty-three, overweight, less mobile, and needed more rest. She had, since the beginning of the children’s work, made a valiant effort, if not to kiss each child good-night, at least to see every face every day. One evening when she came past the dispensary on this mission May stopped her. “Amma, do go back to your room,” she begged. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” said Amma.
Her diet had been far from ideal. Protein, with the exception of milk, and elderly fowl, was hard to come by. The strains of thirty-eight years, the devastating bereavements, the terrific emotional demands of the fights for Muttammal and Raj, had taken a greater toll than anyone realized. Insomnia, heart trouble, hypertension, tic douloureux (for which she had surgery) and iritis, which fairly blinded one eye, were among other “adversaries’’ she was trying to fight.
The last thing that occurred to Amy was any slackening of missionary zeal. The greater her own weakness, the greater the opportunity to prove divine strength. She continued to pray for a wider outreach from Dohnavur, the collapse of the “walls of Jericho” which were Hindu and Muslim strongholds. In August she took the commands of Isaiah 54:2 as meant for the DF: “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.” Within a day’s drive there were 100,000 Muslims. Couldn’t they “lengthen the cords” to include them?
Mere business sense would have seen it as a poor time to advance. Funds were very scarce. In July there was a four-thousand rupee deficit. But when did Amy Carmichael ever operate on the basis of mere business sense? This, she declared, was “the very time to look for an advance!”
She liked to give picturesque names to places. Eruvadi, for example, she prettily translated “Song of the Plough.” The great hump of a mountain seen in some of the pictures in Dohnavur books was Tiruvanna Malai, which she called “The Holy Washerman,” mistakenly reading the Tamil word for washerman into a word which meant “holy elder brother.” Indians were too polite to call attention to her error, and foreigners adopted the name in ignorance, as they did the Village of Uncrowned King, which was actually the Village of Crowned King.
Kalakadu was a town a few miles from Dohnavur whose name meant scrub-land—not very auspicious, but, in Amy’s view, spiritually descriptive. “No faintest willingness was ever shown by anyone in that town to listen to the Gospel.” It seemed an impregnable town, therefore one for which they prayed mightily and hoped tenaciously. God willing, it would not remain a spiritual scrub-land. Amy gave it what she hoped was a prophetic name, Joyous City, with no idea of the irony that name would one day hold for her.
In 1926 she had gone to Kalakadu with a small group from Dohnavur to preach outside the huge temple fastnesses. Finding a drama company about to make a presentation nearby, Amy forthwith went to the manager and, to the amazement of her companions, made her first stage appearance. It was an opportunity not to be missed of telling the strange story the crowd had never heard before—of Jesus and His love. A week later back they went and this time found lurid magenta handbills being distributed to the crowds:
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!
From 9.00 to 9.30 this evening the respected Carunia Ammal and the respected Mr. Proctor of Dohnavur will lecture on the Great War in Mesopotamia and on the story of Raj the Brigand. Because of this definite feature tickets will be on sale. . . .
So Ronald and Amma stood in the blazing lights and told the announced stories, bringing them round to another Great War, the war they were fighting, and what it meant. While the actors were making up backstage, the manager did his best to persuade them to remain for the show. The answer was no, thank you.
Apparently there was no indication in Joyous City of “ears to hear,” nor would anyone think of renting a house to these Christians. But after five years there was a slight break. A house that had stood empty for three years was offered to them for rent. It was haunted. They were warned of the danger—something would happen, a curse would fall. They took the house for the dispensary two Dohnavur women wished to open.
Amy, to whom the special dates of her life were always fraught with deep significance, had no inkling on the morning of October 24, 1931, that this date would be another life-changer. She was visiting the Dohnavur dispensary in Song of the Plough that morning, and praying for guidance about money. For a long time she was silent. Then she prayed this: “Do anything, Lord, that will fit me to serve Thee and to help my beloveds.”
That afternoon she was driven to the “haunted” house in Joyous City to make sure that all was as she wanted it to be for the women who were to live there. At first the key could not be found, so it was twilight before they were able to open the door. Amy went to the newly built palm-leaf shed which was to serve as “The Place.” The coolies had dug the bore hole just inside the door instead of at the back where it belonged. In the darkness she fell across the opening of the narrow pit, broke her leg, dislocated an ankle, and twisted her spine.
Hadn’t she been warned? The curse of Allah was on any who would challenge Islam.
She was in much pain. The car went back the four miles to Dohnavur to bring May and two others in a lorry to act as ambulance. May put a splint on the kaal and, making her as comfortable as they could, they took her to the hospital at Neyoor. One of the women described it as a “cyclonic” night, wild and stormy, pelting with rain. They could not rule out: the possibility of demonic interference. Who knew what powers might have been released by that curse? Yet their confidence in the One who sets limits to those powers remained unaltered.
The lorry jerked and bumped its way for forty-six excruciating miles over gullies and washouts. A nurse named Mary Mills who was with Amma said she wished she could take the pain from her. “I knew that she meant to bear it herself instead of me. Then I heard myself answer, Your joy no man taketh from you. . . . a certain heavenly word given to me for whoever should want to do that loving thing.”1
The morphine May had administered was wearing off before they reached Neyoor, where they turned Amma over to her friend of many years, Dr. Howard Somervell.
1. Amy Carmichael, Rose From Brier, p. 18.