10. Finding Greatheart
10.
FINDING GREATHEART
Weeks of bantering began between Muttammal’s uncle and the Christians at Dohnavur. Meanwhile, the uncle coerced the mother to change sides. Now she demanded that the girl live with her uncle. Hooligans hired by the uncle threatened Amy once but did not harm her. Amy, who rarely had a moment to spare, was absorbed with the problem. Her writing was the activity that had to be put aside. Two more of her books had been published: Beginning of a Story in 1908 and Lotus Buds in 1909.
“But it may be a good long time before I find time to write again,” she admitted.
She sought the help of the highest British official in the district, the collector. He expressed his sympathy but insisted that the uncle had every legal right to take custody of the girl. Amy traveled to several towns trying to enlist a powerful lawyer. All shunned the case. The uncle had every right to the girl! Finally she tried a lawyer who had just returned from England. He was both Tamil and Christian. Amy begged him to save the girl.
“Can we pray together?” she asked the surprised lawyer. And they knelt.
Miraculously the lawyer accepted the case and negotiated a settlement. Muttammal could remain at Dohnavur, but she must not break caste or be baptized before she came of age. Amy was delighted, even though not breaking caste meant the girl had to have her own food prepared, a very real inconvenience to Dohnavur. Her denial of baptism was inconvenient, too. Yet there was hope.
“My prayer was answered!” cried Muttammal.
But when Amy told Muttammal she would have to prepare her own food, she sulked. She came from a wealthy background. High-caste girls like her did not cook! So Amy asked Muttammal to tell her what was meant in John 21:12–13: “Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise.” Muttammal read it over and over.
“I see now,” sighed Muttammal. “The Lord cooked the fish. Forgive me, Amma.”
Muttammal gloried in Dohnavur. Discipline was hard, but she enjoyed the wonderful games the children enjoyed, as well as adopting one of the pesky macaque monkeys for her own. Tumbie was his name.
Despite the intervention by the Christian lawyer, Muttammal’s uncle continued his efforts to gain custody of her. Besides fending off constant legal assaults, Amy had to make sure Muttammal was watched at all times. Finally the uncle found a willing judge. On March 27, 1911, the judge decreed that Amy must not only return Muttammal to the uncle within one week but pay all court costs as well. All previous agreements were void.
Amy went to Mabel Beath, a woman from England who was visiting her missionary sister, Frances, at Dohnavur. “Are you willing to help Muttammal even at the risk of a prison sentence?”
Mabel was stunned. Finally she said, “Yes.”
That very night, Muttammal disappeared.
The authorities were furious, especially the superintendent of police. Police and their spies watched Amy and Thomas Walker night and day. Thomas was especially suspect when he had to take his wife to England again. Finally they started watching Mabel Beath, too. After she returned to London, an Indian showed up at her house in a very transparent attempt to find Muttammal. Of course, Muttammal wasn’t there. Mabel had merely taken the first step of many in the actual escape plan. Amy had anticipated what great wealth could do in tracking Muttammal. So Mabel had disguised Muttammal as a Muslim boy and spirited her to a waiting wagon. From there Muttammal passed from willing hands to willing hands. Eventually she ended up in Ceylon! But even that was not the end of the escape plan. Amy had approached a missionary named Handley Bird. She scarcely knew him, but she told him everything.
“Won’t you help Muttammal take the next steps?”
“But what are they?”
“Pray that God will tell you.”
Handley Bird sighed. “Well, then, I’m off to Ceylon.”
It would be many years before Amy learned Muttammal’s fate. She would always think of Handley Bird as the magnificent “Greatheart” of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. For it was Greatheart who guided the pilgrims on the Way to the Celestial City. Yes, it was Greatheart whom the giant Maul—a servant of Satan—confronted on the Way: “Kidnapper, thou gatherest up women and children, and carriest them into a strange country, to the weakening of my master’s kingdom.” It was Greatheart who replied, “I am a servant of the God of Heaven…I am commanded to do my endeavour to turn men, women and children from Darkness to Light, and from the power of Satan to God.…”
SHE WOULD ALWAYS THINK OF HANDLEY BIRD AS THE MAGNIFICENT “GREATHEART” OF BUNYAN’S THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS.
“God go with you, Greatheart,” Amy prayed.
And how like evil to cast the good as the villain! Hadn’t it just happened to her? No charges were pressed against Amy for the disappearance of Muttammal, though not for lack of effort on the uncle’s part. There was no evidence. His lawyers advised him he could just as easily be accused of being the kidnapper as Amy. But Amy nevertheless was responsible for court costs, which were sizable. She had no funds for the debt. Would she go to prison on that account? British officials of the district were very angry with her now. Then one day the exact amount of the court costs showed up in the mail in a check from a publisher. The publisher insisted he knew nothing of her legal problems, although he had had an overwhelming compulsion to send her the money!
In 1911, Amy brooded over boys, too. Why were she and her helpers not saving boy babies? They knew boys were also sold to the temples. She put the matter before Thomas Walker. He was troubled, too, but advised her not to take boys unless it was absolutely necessary. Her efforts were spread thin as it was. And mixing boys and girls in a facility as limited in size as theirs was inviting trouble. Unhappily, Amy tried to set aside her desire to save boys.
In August 1912, a five-year-old child named Lulla was dying in the nursery. Her labored breathing, growing worse every second, disturbed Amy so much she could not bear to watch. She went outside into the night and prayed for the Lord to take the child. Her suffering must stop.
“Amy, come into the nursery, quick,” whispered Mabel Wade into the darkness.
Amy entered to see the child smiling and holding her arms out to someone no one else could see. The child clapped her hands in glee! Then she passed away. Amy was stunned. She had witnessed a Christian passing into the Lord’s glory! That miracle helped Amy cope with the rest of that tragic August.
First, Mrs. Hopwood of Ooty died. Oh, how Amy had enjoyed Mrs. Hopwood pointing out the “Delectable Mountains” and “Beulah Land” in the distant heights, for Mrs. Hopwood, too, loved The Pilgrim’s Progress. Amy had often thought that Mrs. Hopwood’s counterpart in The Pilgrim’s Progress was “Discretion,” of the House Beautiful atop the Hill of Difficulty. For surely Mrs. Hopwood had been a saint to all tired travelers on the Way to Salvation.
But Amy had no such consoling thoughts on August 24, when she read a telegram from the village of Masulipatam. It just wasn’t possible! “Thomas Walker is dead!”
Thomas was only about fifty years old when he died. Unfair! What had happened? It was so incredibly swift. Snakebite? Food poisoning? But what did it matter? He was dead. And Amy fought using her own grief as a form of self-pity. Yes, it would be very difficult to continue on in Dohnavur without the wisdom and strength of Thomas Walker holding her up. And Ponnammal would be heartbroken. She had been so close to Mr. Walker that she had virtually considered him her father. He was Ponnammal’s D.O.M. Mrs. Walker was still back in England. She would be the most devastated of all. Amy forced herself to be strong. Even though her own heart was breaking, she would have to comfort these grieving souls, assuring them again and again that Thomas was in the lap of the Lord.
“Well, if I never write anything else again, I will write the story of Thomas Walker of Tinnevelly,” sobbed Amy.
She had Mr. Walker as much in mind as herself when she wrote a poem called “The Calm Community of the Criticized” for Made in the Pans, a book she was already working on:
If, though all unawares, and not of ill intent,
Thou steppest one inch outside the beaten track;
If thou in deed or word or preference
Depart from the Accustomed, or ransack
The unexplored, bright treasure-mines of life
And drawing forth their jewels make the House
Religious, as men call it, a glad place—
O then hide thy face.…1
Learning that Thomas Walker had died of food poisoning helped her not at all. She didn’t indulge in the hapless “if only he had not done this or if only he had done that” lament. A person of faith could not do that. God was the Master of history.
Over the next few weeks, aided by an exchange of letters with Mrs. Walker, Amy emerged stronger. She was, just as Mrs. Walker wrote, driven closer to God. Every man falls and every woman falls—“as grass: as a flower of the field”—but God is always. And other missionaries of southern India rallied around her. Mr. Carr came from Palamcottah and played the organ every evening. Amy’s grief was salved by joyous hymns sung by her little songbirds. Agnes and Edith Naish, two teaching missionaries, arrived almost immediately to take over the teaching for Amy. It was the first time the children really had professional tutors. Arul Dasan arrived to help with the management of Dohnavur. It was no small operation, now nourishing in body and spirit well over one hundred Christians.
EVERY MAN FALLS AND EVERY WOMAN FALLS—BUT GOD IS ALWAYS.
The year 1913 held no relief for Amy. Ponnammal became very sick and had to be taken to the Salvation Army Hospital in the large city of Nagercoil near Neyyoor. The diagnosis was a virtual death sentence: cancer. There was a chance the cancer might be surgically removed. So Ponnammal endured surgery, then after that attempt had to suffer it a second time. Meanwhile, Amy got the shocking news that on July 14 her mother had died. Her mother had traveled to Canada to visit Amy’s brother Alfred and had only recently written encouragement to Amy that Ponnammal would recover in “God’s mighty protecting Arms of love and care.”2
“How is it possible?” grieved Amy. She forced herself to recite her mother’s favorite verse, “The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble.”
Mother had comforted Amy with it when her father died in 1885. Amy could also take comfort in what her mother had done. After all, mother was nearly seventy, the Bible’s allotted “threescore years and ten.” Mrs. Carmichael had been far more to Amy than simply a loving mother. She had served Amy as her main representative in England, which entailed some publicizing of the good work in Dohnavur. Otherwise, how could Amy have received one day in 1912 a letter of encouragement from the queen? Yes, Queen Mary, wife of King George VI, wrote Amy. Thanks to her books and her mother, Amy was no obscure missionary.
By October, Mrs. Irene Streeter, wife of Canon Streeter of Oxford, became Amy’s main representative in England. Mrs. Streeter had visited Dohnavur twice. “Except for my mother,” said Amy, “Mrs. Streeter is the dearest friend in England that our work could ever have.”
Poems of comfort often just came to Amy. She could be suffering a midnight headache or bumping along in a stuffy bullock cart. Once she scribbled a poem on the brown wrapper of a medicine bottle she was bringing from Nagercoil:
I have no word,
But neither hath the bird,
And it is heard;
My heart is singing, singing all day long,
In quiet joy to Thee Who art my song.
For as Thy majesty
So is Thy mercy,
So is Thy mercy.
My Lord and my God.3
Life rushed on for Amy. The next episode in her life involved the beautiful curly-headed child called Kohila. Kohila arrived at Dohnavur in December 1913. Her first day became her “Coming Day.” This day would be celebrated every year like a birthday. An arrival’s actual birthday was rarely known. On the Sunday preceding the Coming Day, the child’s room was festooned with flowers. She was given a special card with a small gift like scented soap. At the evening hymn singing, the child was garlanded with flowers.
But Kohila’s peace was short-lived. Like Muttammal’s relatives, her family members threatened to bring a lawsuit against Amy if the child was not returned. And once again Amy had to find her Greatheart. This time it was Arul Dasan who spirited the child away. For weeks, Amy wondered whether she would be arrested for her defiance. When Arul returned, she was even more apprehensive. But nothing happened. Was Amy tolerated by British officials now like some incorrigible pest too clever to catch and too popular to harass?
FOR WEEKS, AMY WONDERED WHETHER SHE WOULD BE ARRESTED FOR HER DEFIANCE.
In August 1914, all attention was diverted by the beginning of a colossal war in Europe. Some British missionaries said the war began as a local skirmish between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. But convoluted alliances mushroomed the skirmish first into a European war, then into a world war, the first in mankind’s bloody history.
“At least Britain did not start this abomination,” said one missionary with little satisfaction.
“Will war come to India?” asked many of the children.
“No,” answered Amy, “there are no colonies of the warring factions adjacent to each other.”
But that was not true of Africa. War raged between Britain’s Nigeria and Germany’s Cameroon. And Amy did not bother to tell the children that it was likely that Indian soldiers would be sent to the war. In fact, both Hindus and Muslims rallied to the British cause. The native drive toward nationalism had been dormant, especially since, as the British had hoped, the Muslims had founded the Muslim League and thus fragmented the native effort. If the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League ever united, who knew what might happen to the British in India?
“There’s a Hindu lawyer up in Bombay who might emerge as the real leader of India someday,” said one missionary in Madras. “I heard him speak here not long ago. He made quite an impact in South Africa—especially advancing the lot of the Tamil-speaking Indians working there. He’s pushing swaraji, or ‘India for the Indians’. He was educated in London, yet wears nothing but a dhoti. He endorses a simple native diet and cottage industries. He is honest. Many Indians already regard him as holy.”
“Holy?” said a startled Amy. “Who is he?”
“Mohandas Gandhi.”
Amy had her own struggles. Ponnammal was dying of cancer and was in agony. The wasting away of Amy’s dear friend was doubly painful because of Ponnammal’s constant regret that she was deserting Amy. “You must bear the burden alone,” lamented Ponnammal. Once when she seemed in unendurable pain, she told Amy, “If the pain does not get any greater than this, I can stay and help you.” Such devotion ripped at Amy’s heart. Finally the pain was so bad, Ponnammal was virtually comatose from doses of morphine. Yet she lingered on. She had suffered for over two years. The shadow of the valley of death took on new meaning for Amy. It was so much longer, so much denser, a thousand times more dreadful than she had known. Why, God, why? But Your will be done. On August 26, 1915, the Lord took Ponnammal.
“Praise God for His mercy.”
It had been eighteen years since Ponnammal joined Amy’s Starry Cluster. What a great foundation she had been. The first and the brightest. Pure gold. Amy had to wonder at herself. She was forty-seven years old now, and any thoughts of marriage—other than to Christ—were long gone. Moreover, she was “Amma,” the mother of dozens of girls and boys.
Arulai returned from Ooty with Bright’s disease, or nephritis. The sweet child had already survived typhoid and a mild attack of tuberculosis. Now this. By December Arulai was “at the Gates.” She heard celestial music just as Ponnammal had. She even saw Thomas Walker and Ponnammal waiting to greet her. Amy wired friends of Arulai that she was dying.
“Must You take her too, Lord?” Amy cried out angrily. “First Walker, then my mother, then Ponnammal, now Arulai. Why? Why? Why?”
A friend from Palamcottah rumbled his wagon over the rough roads all night to reach Dohnavur. His only wish was to see the love in Arulai’s warm brown eyes just one more time. He feared he would only see her buried. But on the morning of December 7, he witnessed a miracle. Arulai had improved.
“Recovery is so rare in the tropics,” reflected Amy. “And death is so common.”
It was such a blessing when things turned out well. Another blessing soon followed. Kohila appeared, hoping that, after many months of exile, she had been forgotten by her relatives. Would Muttammal return someday also? Arulai had long prayed that not only would Muttammal return one day but marry her cousin Arul Dasan! Amazingly, Amy later dreamed the same thing, specifically that Muttammal and Arul Dasan would marry in a church in Ceylon. By this time, Amy knew that Handley Bird had taken Muttammal to China. Back in 1911, her “Greatheart” had gone all the way to Nanning in the province of Kwangsi. There he left Muttammal with Dr. Lechmere Clift and his wife. So Muttammal had been safe with a good Christian family all those years.
Now in 1915 Arulai and Amy talked to Arul Dasan. He agreed to let them arrange a marriage!
“We’ll write at once,” said Amy.
Who knew how Muttammal might feel about it? Or the Clifts? But Amy soon knew her dream had come from above. Muttammal and the Clifts were in complete agreement. But when and how? Letters flew back and forth.
By 1916 Amy had received her finished life of Thomas Walker, titled simply Walker of Tinnevelly. The story seemed almost petty, the cover blurb by Eugene Stock gratuitous, when hundreds of thousands of soldiers were being slaughtered in the soggy trenches of Europe. And Walker would not have approved of a book about himself at all. Yes, destroy the self. Realize one’s own littleness. God’s mightiness. Amy felt enormous shame on seeing the finished book. Had she done no more than glorify herself?
“I need spiritual partners,” she admitted.
Eleanor McDougall, principal of the Women’s Christian College in Madras, became one such partner. When Amy first met her, she visualized Eleanor as the embodiment of a Tamil proverb: “Better to plow deep than plow wide.” Eleanor plowed deep. She knew many of the mystical writers Amy knew. Together they spent many hours in prayer and discussion of the great mystics. But Eleanor, spiritually helpful as she was, could visit Amy only occasionally. So on March 18, 1916, Amy started a group of spiritual sisters. She was inspired by The Imitation of Christ, the small classic of holy life. Thomas à Kempis drew much of his inspiration from the other holy brothers in his own order, a lay group with no vows. The brothers strived to imitate the lives of Christ and the apostles and lived in a community that shared food and shelter. They were not to live apart from the world like monks. They worked as common men during the day, consequently their name: “Brothers of the Common Life.”
“Thus today we launch the ‘Sisters of the Common Life,’” Amy explained to the seven women she had invited.
“THUS TODAY WE LAUNCH THE ‘SISTERS OF THE COMMON LIFE,’” AMY EXPLAINED.
The sisters included Arulai and Preena. All, like Amy, had decided they wanted to live in Christ without the distraction of marriage. Every Saturday, they met in a wooded area to discuss God and holiness. Amy indulged this meeting in English. It was justified because that way she could share her favorite writers with the sisters without the exhaustion of trying to translate every word. Only the Bible and The Pilgrim’s Progress were available in Tamil. Energy would be conserved and spent in God’s glory. She shared her favorite passages from Thomas à Kempis, of course, but also other ancient worthies like Brother Lawrence, Richard Rolle, Raymond Lully, and Julian of Norwich. Samuel Rutherford and the inexhaustible John Bunyan were very dear to her, too. Her more modern favorites included the missionaries Josephine Butler of India and Bishop Moule of China.
“The Cross is the attraction,”4 the sisters constantly reminded themselves. They had a creed of sorts:
My Vow:
Whatsoever Thou sayest unto me, by Thy grace I will do it.
My Constraint:
Thy love, O Christ, my Lord.
My Confidence:
Thou art able to keep that which I have committed unto Thee.
My Joy:
To do Thy will, O God.
My Discipline:
That which I would not choose, but which Thy love appoints.
My Prayer:
Conform my will to thine.
My Motto:
Love to live; live to love.
My Portion:
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance.5
Prayer was essential. And it was deep, practiced prayer. For many years Amy could feel the presence of a distraction in group prayer. Time had not dulled her sensitivity. Was one of the girls thinking about something else? She would stop the prayer and demand that love be restored. Girls! “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.”
Service was essential, too. The sisters took on jobs no one else wanted to do. But they did it with joy. Joy was vital. After all, joy was one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. If it was lacking, it signaled a spiritual lack, perhaps a lack of desire to do the Lord’s will. Sometimes when Amy was alone, she reflected on Walker, Ponnammal, and her mother. If she had feelings of sadness, she became very upset with herself.
“I must remind myself to live in the joy of those gone, not grovel in the sense of my loss.”
She angrily scribbled that into her diary October 10, 1916. For although the outside world and even those close by Amy perceived her as a busy, busy woman, Amy was constantly seeking holiness. Even so, occasionally she was prey to attacks that no one can prevent.