The sanctuary in the desert (part 1 of 3)

Chapter 13

The sanctuary in the desert

Abounding love

God sows his servants often in useless places according to the judgement of the world. Why send Amy to this desert-like place far down in the south of India? There, where he had placed her, she would glorify God, and we are not at all to judge where that is. In his sovereignty, he sacrifices his servants as he likes and they go where he sends them. Amy understood that God wanted her in Dohnavur. In the words of Oswald Chambers:

Our Lord in one of His parables reveals that God sows His saints in the places that are most useless according to the judgment of the world; He puts them where He likes. Where God is being glorified is where He puts His saints, and we are no judges of where that is.1213 Dohnavur, this desolate terrain, far from cities, this barren place, was a kind of place of exile. Amy resembled her very distant ancestors, who went into the desert to start their communities. In retrospect, we can say it has to do with her making the Cross of Christ paramount. In following Jesus, she followed the one, who went ‘outside the camp’,1214 carrying his cross. The scandal of the cross became the hallmark of the early Christians.1215 In Dohnavur the association with the desert fathers and mothers is not far away. They chose their places in the desert because its values matched their own. In the Bible, the desert is the place where people often met God and often God sent his people into the desert to meet him there. Since Christ suffered (cf. 1 Pt 2:21), he left us an example. To live in the midst of an isolated place, indicates one is open to hear God’s voice and is prepared to do his will. Here in the ‘desert’, and led ‘outside the gate’ the Lord met and talked with Amy:

Jesus died outside the gate, and in so doing changed the place of salvation and clarified the meaning of mission, No longer can I see God’s grace as an individual benefit, a privileged possession or a religious whitewash that

1213. In ‘So I Send You’, in The Complete Works, 1325.

1214. Cf. Hebrews 13:12–14.

1215. Carla Brewington brought me to the idea of Dohnavur as a ‘place of exile’. Cf. Brewington, The Sacred Place of Exile, chapter 4, p. 34.

How to cite: Kommers, J. (Hans), 2017, ‘The sanctuary in the desert’, in Triumphant Love: The contextual, creative and strategic missionary work of Amy Beatrice Carmichael in south India, pp. 299–341, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2017.tl41.13 enables me to feel good and continue to live the old way because my bad conscience has been soothed and my guilty feelings washed away. On the contrary, because salvation is saved by grace in Him is to experience transformation that makes me a ‘debtor’ to the world (Rom 1:14) and calls me forth to share in His suffering by serving, especially the lowest representatives: the poor and the oppressed.1216 It is interesting that ages before, in the time of the early church, there were women who chose to live in the desert:

We are discovering, often through painstaking, detailed examination of primary texts […] that women played an essential role in the early years of Christian faith. […] They were seeking to live out the faith in Christ crucified, resurrected, and living in ways that were authentic and true to the gospel. They were spiritual guides. They were teachers. They were leaders of their monastic communities. And some of them, as Christianity became an official religion of the Roman Empire, became what are known as the ‘desert mothers’ or ‘ammas’. 1217 She, as the outsider, initiated a change and, with some other women, came to a commitment and strategy because they believed that a great need had to be met and this banded them together. This grew into the DF as it gained momentum. They embraced the call, misunderstood by many, but they believed they were strongly called for this by God. The hour had come for the rescue of many children in danger and it required action. Led by the Holy Spirit they never regretted having to stand in the gap, ready to be used by God to start this history of love, saving, healing and giving a future to those who would have otherwise ended in a life of shame and ultimately of death. Christ’s love gave them love for others to serve focussing on Him who went before. Dohnavur was for them a safe haven where they dwelt with those who were misused in name of the religion around them. It was here they sought the union with God and found his very presence.1218 In Amy’s life exile played an important role; even though she did not use the word exile, the idea was there. Amy too was called Amma, a Tamil word meaning mother.

The reason for the desert fathers and mothers in the first centuries of Christianity to go ‘outside the gate’ had to do with the fact, especially after 321 when the church became controlled by state and culture, that it would be forfeiting its prophetic role; the church had become domesticated, tamed and controlled. Hunger for holiness amid a culture of compromise drove women and men into the desert. The desert women and men chose to go into the wilderness and live there with other like-minded women and men or else live solitary lives in the desert. There they lived their pious lives and often became mentors for others. In Amy’s DF, history repeated itself; although the Fellowship was not a replica, it looked like a monastic-missionary community. Here a movement grew energised by the love and mercy of God and here Amy became part of women’s public missiological agenda. Any work for God that had less than a passion for Jesus Christ as its motive would end in crushing heartbreak and discouragement.

‘I am here on business for my King’, Amy wrote on 30 August 1917.1219 The first purpose she saw for herself was evangelistic. There, where the Lord had placed her, she had to work out the sanctified life. Missionary enterprise on the line of education, healing and social amelioration was magnificent, but secondary for Amy. She never gave it priority. ‘The missionary must be a sacramental personality, one through whom the presence of God comes to others.’1220 There was joy in just obeying:

1216. O.E. Costas, Christ Outside the Gate, 194 (quoted in Brewington, The Sacred Place of Exile, 37). 1217. M.C. Earle, The Desert Mothers: Spiritual Practices from the Women of the Wilderness (New York: Moorehouse Publishing, 2007), 1–2 (in Brewington, The Sacred Place of Exile, 46–47).

1218. Cf. Hosea 3:14. Here the desert is a place of repentance, restoration and of intimacy.
1219. Words written by Amy on the inside of the cover page of Fullerton, At the Sixtieth Milestone.
1220. In ‘So I Send You’, in Chambers, The Complete Works, 1335.

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He said ‘Go, tell’, and we had come and were telling, and we meet Him as we ‘go and tell’. […] Our aim is great – It is India for Christ! Before the gods in possessions here, we sing songs unto Him.1221 What began with a few children, the DF would grow during Amy’s life up to 900:

A work was beginning which in the purpose of our God was to grow beyond our thoughts for it, and during those first years, we were feeling our way back through innumerable obstacles to the simplicity of New Testament Christianity, to an ideal which has for its very special central word, Sacrifice.1222 What made Dr Barnhouse say in 1938, that Dohnavur was ‘perhaps the most beautiful mission station in the whole world’?1223 If you asked Amy, her answer was short. The overall motto of the DF was – and still is – love. The Bible portion for family prayers every Monday morning was 1 Corinthians 13 – Paul’s ode to love, which ends, ‘Love never faileth’:

From the beginning we have had one chief word: Love Never Faileth’.1224
‘What called you together? Love; Divine Love.
What holds you together? That same Love.
What will hold you in the future? Again and only, that Love.
What is most attacked in your Fellowship life?

Love and the kind of prayer that means traffic with Heaven hindered access to the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ.1225 Atharavu, one of the girls who from a baby was brought up in Dohnavur, writes: ‘Dohnavur was the place where the love of God was showered upon me’.1226 Amy called love ‘our tap-root which is vital to our Fellowship life’.1227 Love required in her eyes resolution and the Biblical appeal to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ is the fundamental Fellowship principle. Amy knew that believing this was one thing, but to live it out was different. To illustrate what could happen when missionaries lived together, she had a small poem:

To dwell above, with saints in love, is full of grace and glory.

To dwell below, with saints we know – Ah, what a different story!1228 Workers who were wholly the Lord’s did the work. Because it was work whose needs were supplied by the Lord himself, it was necessary that all were aware that the work, even the hidden work of management, was open to the eye of God. What was achieved was an answer to prayers based upon the Word of God, ‘upon which He has caused us to hope’. ‘This was the pattern which was shown us in the Mount; Lord grant us grace to remember it and follow it.’1229

Amy’s life’s work, known to us as the DF, is based in a small village on the plain east of the Cardamom Hills, some 30 miles from the southernmost tip of India. Entering the premises of Dohnavur through the moon gate there is an eruption of a sense of sincere surprise. Going through the stone moon gate (Figure 24)

1221. In Things As They Are, 24.

1222. From the Forest, 72.

1223. See Dr Barnhouse’s message at the 1938 Keswick Convention (in Stevenson, ‘The Day-By-Day Christian Life’, in Keswick’s Authentic Voice, 380).

1224. The Starry Cluster, 19.
1225. The Starry Cluster, 21.
1226. In A Century of Answered Prayers, 18.
1227. Roots, 3.
1228. In Roots, 2.
1229. Roots, 3.

Source: © J. (Hans) Kommers.

FIGURE 24: The cross at the end of the 200 foot long Path of Quietness.

there is the experience that Dohnavur is a place where you can touch heaven from your feet. Going through the gate, we read in Tamil characters the word Salvation written up high without, and on the other side Praise within.1230 The whole setup of the compound where Amy and the children lived is ‘Indian in feeling’:

Most of the buildings have the deep-eaved Travancorian roofs, and some have the curly corners that the Chinese carpenters brought to the west coast of India, and all, even the moon-arches are pure China, find themselves at home with one another: and, like our composite family, drawn from a score of different races, communities, and castes, are very comfortable together’.1231 All the buildings were built in Indian style and the children are housed in ‘family’ units. Each house takes care of eight to ten children with a ‘mother’ living with them and supervising them. The girls and the boys sections are separated by some distance. Part of the boys ministry is nowadays used for other purposes. Here hundreds of children during the past 100 years have found love, care, education and, as was the first aim, Christ. ‘The story of the children is the story of answered prayer.’1232 Dohnavur, the place where children could ‘blossom’, but also literally a desert area that was transformed into a real garden with an abundance of flowering trees and plants. Amy loved nature and always had an open eye for God’s wondrous world. We thank God that she never lost the intense joy in life and beauty, or ceased to stop and recognise it.1233 One can ask, ‘Why are they here in Dohnavur?’ Let Amy herself give us the answer:

1230. Nor Scrip, 1.
1231. Windows, 105–106.
1232. Lotus Buds, 91.

1233. Even in 2013 during a visit to Dohnavur I saw that on 09 November, Amy’s coming to India was remembered and all over the place there were flowers, in the church as well as on the tables in the houses.

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To please our Lord in everything.
To lead as many as we can to Him.
To prove by our peaceful life together that it is possible truly to be one in Him.

To prepare to be a company of people who will be ready to welcome our Lord, and serve during the Thousand Years – and afterwards.1234 She was so eager to save the lives of young girls and boys that she did everything to make it known what was happening in the temples. ‘You cannot photograph the child’s soul that is being slowly murdered. You cannot even describe it in words. They would burn the paper if you tried.’1235 This is what Godfrey Webb-Peploe experienced and saw:

A big happy family of boys and girls, saved, for the most part in infancy, from a peril far greater than any danger that can happen to the body. It is God’s family, Indian and European, living as brothers and sisters, and it works out in harmony, for India understands such relationships. Out of the family we are training a fighting force in the greatest of all wars, under the Captain who goes forth conquering and to conquer’.1236 The Fellowship lives in an area of about 400 acres with a hospital, 16 nurseries and other compounds. The Dohnavur nurseries are quite different from other places. They live in small communities more like a large family. The whole residential area is built as small cottages (nurseries). Each cottage has a mother, elder sisters and younger ones and together they live like a family. Each cottage gets its own share of food, clothes and other provisions. The mother shares it and takes care of all the needs of her children. Amy brought in this concept of a family living together.

As the Fellowship grew many called it Utopian. Never could they continue and be one family and all of one mind, people said. But, would God make an impossible pattern? All was in God’s hands and the objections of many people were met with a smile; but behind the smile was a prayer: ‘not Utopia the place that is not, but Eutopia, the Happy Place – make us that at all costs, keep us that, O Lord’.1237 Amy was well aware that within a community such as the DF a terrible strain was placed upon the loyalty of its members. In the margin of Temple’s commentary, she wrote about this issue:

Just as in a community. This failure of one tests the loyalty of all. Thanks God when there is not a scattering – but that is what the devil is out to effect. (Proved 1928 and 1937 and though in another way in 1946–7).1238 For Amy this pattern was God’s and the responsibility was his. It was pioneering work but God’s pioneers were preparing the way for the coming of the Lord of hosts. In the Fellowship there were times of silent retreat:

The early morning hour of each day is kept sacred for quiet alone with Him. Other times during the months are set aside for quiet. And once a year there is an opportunity for each one who values it, to be alone with Him whom His soul loveth in the silence of the Forest. But we also believe that continual communication is possible. Do you mean that you are always thinking about God? No; for a Christian must often give his whole mind to his work, but deep within him is, as it were, a secret call, where the Spirit dwells. And though hands and feet and brain may be busy, the spirit may be upon its knees in adoration, unceasing and undisturbed.

1234. In Whispers of His Power, 18 December, 265.

1235. Nor Scrip, 105.

1236. In Webb-Peploe, Brothers of the Lotus Buds, 14. In 1929, the Fellowship consisted of nearly 700 persons. See Windows, 3.

1237. Windows, 12.

1238. In W. Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel (London: Macmillan, 1940), 215.

Do you mean that though you are not always consciously loving and worshipping, yet you are always in love with your Lord? Yes, that is just what we mean. A mother is not always consciously loving her child, but she is always in love with her child. Never for a moment is she out of love. Where the Holy God is the beloved One, love and worship mingle and rise like incense in the quiet air.1239 Amy was a Bible student. She used various translations and commentaries to get a good overview of what was really written in the Bible. She valued Westcott’s notes on the New Testament and in one of these notes – on John 17:22, ‘That they may be one, even as we are one’ – she saw the way the DF had to live as a unity to the end:

There is so to speak, an interchange of the energy of the divine Life (Thou in me, and I in Thee), which finds a counterpart in the harmonious relations of the members of the Church. The true unity of believers, like the Unity of persons in the Holy Trinity with which it is compared, is offered as something far more than a mere moral unity of purpose, feeling, affection; it is, in some mysterious mode which we cannot distinctly apprehend, a vital unity (Rom 12:5; Eph 4:4). In this sense it is the symbol of a higher type of life, in which each constituent being is a conscious element in the being of a vast whole. In ‘the life’, and in the ‘life only’, each individual life is able to attain to its perfection. Such a conception, however imperfectly it may be grasped, meets many of the difficulties which beset the conception of an abiding continuance of our present individual separation.1240 Amy’s note on these words is, ‘This is what we trust Him to cause the Dohnavur Fellowship to be to the end’.

Amy believed the Lord had linked them in a ‘vital unity’. She could talk and rejoice in the reality of having ‘such loyal comrades’ or ‘crystal quality of loyalty’. From where did the DF’s pattern come? The Fellowship had a Biblical foundation, but Amy was also familiar with some English and French mystics, even with some from the Middle Ages. Here she discovered that in her shaping of the Fellowship, she was walking along a path already well-trodden by others. In her readings she was confirmed by the experience of holy women and men of former ages of the pattern she saw before her. Even a near contemporary like Père Didon influenced her with his spiritual letters.1241 The Lord himself was the unseen leader of the Fellowship, and all the orders had to come from him. So first Amy and the others listened to his Word, sought his guidance and they got the assurance to receive according to his will. Young Samuel’s word was theirs: ‘Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth’.1242 This method of prayer, and this assurance that she might expect the Spirit to teach them what to pray for, had become axiomatic for the Fellowship.1243 Everything that they did, built or decided, all was according to God’s will and because the DF was his work, ultimately he would take care of his work for the children there in Dohnavur. Nobody received a salary and all needs were met in answer to prayer.

Until the end of her life, Amy was the undisputed leader of the Fellowship. However, she was a leader who leaned on the love of the others and on their loyalty. Amy had a nice gift, namely to develop

1239. In The Starry Cluster, 16.

1240. Westcott on John 17:22.

1241. Amy had a copy of H.D. Nash, The Spiritual Letters of Père Didon (London: Kegan, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd, 1906). 1242. 1 Samuel 3:10.

1243. Years later Amy read in the works of Lady Julian of Norwich: ‘I am the ground of Thy beseeching: first it is My will that thou have it; and after, I make thee to will it; and after, I make thee to beseech it and thou beseechest it. How should it then be that thou shouldst not have thy beseeching’ – in Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ed. G. Warrack (London: Methuen, 1949).

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the gifts of others, and it was not difficult for her to give others the credit for what had been done. She continued her work, to the dismay of the Hindu priests. They often, especially in the initial years of the Fellowship, pressed charges against her.

During our visit in 2013, we found the house Amy lived in still in good repair. It is typical of the colonial-day housing. With its large, open doors and windows, it is very comfortable. The main central room is the dining room. It was here Amy had her meals until she was bed-bound by her injury in 1931. Off the dining room was her private bedroom, very spacious as well. The walls are nearly all lined with shelves, and I was astonished and wondered at the wealth of the fabulous missionary library. There are several smaller rooms (Figure 25) off this bedroom.

One room with a table was her study; her Bible was still open on the desk (Figure 26). The staff members could wheel her bed to the veranda, so she could greet, meet and speak with the children and the other women who lived in the houses surrounding the bungalow. Surrounding Amy’s house were and are lovely gardens. As she was fond of birds, she had a number of birdbaths and feeders in the garden.

India was familiar with missionary workers. Usually they were paid agents of mission societies. It was observed that the question of the amount of their pay was of far more interest to their listeners than their message. There was also the wandering sunnyasi fed by the faithful, who revered their holiness, or feared their wickedness. Amy writes in Gold Cord:

India needs another type, at present all too rare and we want try it to show it to her – men and women trained to a glad readiness for all manner of service, with their hearts set, not upon pay, but upon pleasing God, and able, as was St. Paul, to support themselves by service of work other than that called religious.

Source: © J. (Hans) Kommers.

FIGURE 25: Inside Amy’s living room in the bungalow on the northern side.

Source: © Dohnavur Fellowship. Permission to reproduce was obtained from Jeremiah Rajanesan. Photographer unknown. FIGURE 26: Amy at her writing desk.

Such a life did not attract great crowds of willing workers. To have ‘faith in God’ those will experience ‘they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing’. In Dohnavur they have seen it:

To work on these lines is no impossible ideal, as the joyful devotion of many of our Indian comrades constantly reminds us. […] The girls and the boys are His, and we are His, and out of us all, united in a joyous harmony, we want it to be possible for God to form something for His glory; that here among all castes, both high and low (as India counts caste), in spite of the presence of a most triumphant Hinduism, He may draw unto Himself jewels for His crown. […] The workers had a willingness to do anything joyfully, which we wanted our boys to acquire, so we had to start in ourselves to show the way.

In all those Dohnavur years, Amy abided with all the Father’s children under the shadow of his wings. The Lord had proved that the darker the day the more illuminating were his words of delight:

You say that you stand for the hallowing of the common things; for what else do you stand? (1) For Pre-eminence of our Lord Jesus Christ in all things.

(2) For obedience to His lightest known wish –‘a wish is a command to one who loves’.

[Here Amy put in the margin Col 1:10 ‘unto all meeting of His wishes (Moule)’.]

(3) For the truth that the Unseen, the Eternal, is of far more importance than the Seen, the Temporal. (4) For the necessity to weigh everything in the scales of the Sanctuary, as even the gold that was brought for an offering was weighed in those scales. This means, not ever, ‘What man or woman say about this or that’? but ‘What saith the Lord’.

(5) For restful dependence upon all the promises of God. It follows that we have full assurance in the truth of His Book. […] Without that assurance this work could not continue for a day.

(6) For the conviction that those who bear the vessels of the Lord must be clean, that a sin un-confessed, cuts the nerve of prayer and of power to serve. By sin we mean anything that grieves the Heavenly father, anything unworthy of the honourable Name by which we are called, anything that clouds the spirit, anything that dims the Cross of Calvary. (7) For dependence upon God for grace, strength and guidance that we may do the things which He planned beforehand we should do.

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(8) For love, loyal love of one to the other.

(9) For the principle known as a vital unity. By this we mean that underlying unity of spirit which is not affected by race, name or sign. We have proved that this is possible for men and women, coming from different rooms of the Household of God, to live and work together in happiness and harmony. – all one in Christ Jesus. (10) For the truth taught by our Lord when He said: Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, bringeth forth much fruit.

Have you any motto?

From the beginning we have one chief word: Love never faileth. All this sounds very beautiful and very simple, but in practice do you not often find life difficult? Yes, life is often exceedingly difficult, but we do not see in difficulty a reason to doubt our lord’s Presence and Leading. Unless the difficulty be because of our own mistake it may be an assurance that we have not missed the way.1244

The House of Prayer

On the highest roof from the House of Prayer (Figure 27) two needles point to heaven. Tamil houses have one needle, the little pointed shaft that ends many a gabled roof in Tamil Nadu. Purposely Amy ordered the architect of the House of Prayer to fix two needles; they represent prayer and service, the two essentials of the Christian life and the essentials of the DF. The reason for these two needles Amy gives in Gold Cord,1245 where she explains the work of the Sisters of the Common Life in Dohnavur who meditate and work with their hands. They sit at the Master’s feet like Maria. ‘The Spirit can sit at the Master’s feet while the hands are filled with work for others.’ Never was Amy unmindful of the world Christ came to save. She says, ‘His is no cloistered love’.1246

The whole process for the House of Prayer is done in prayer. On 16 December 1924, Amy stood with her birthday presents in her hands and wondered what the Lord’s purpose would be for the small silver coins. To her surprise, she prayed it would be used for a House of Prayer. Already for some time she had been praying to have a hospital for the family for this would be a big evangelistic opportunity. Every time she thought of the hospital, the Lord intervened in these thoughts and showed her that she first had to build a place of worship.1247 The schoolroom where they had their Sunday meetings had long been crowded out, but she thought the sick must come first.

A Presbyterian herself, she never advocated for any one denomination. Those working with her from England and other countries were members from various denominations. She always wanted to practise as literally as possible whatever she found in the New Testament. She found no denominations there. To an Anglican priest who was thinking of joining her, she wrote:

We can do far more for the Kingdom by being as we are, loving all, belonging to all who love our Lord Jesus in sincerity. […] We have a welcome everywhere, all societies all over South India welcome anything we can give, for all know that we are not out to harm any.1248 Officially Amy never left the church of her youth, but the traditional church was not her spiritual home anymore. Going back to the basics of Christianity was not really a new thing for her. For her it

1244. Amy in The Starry Cluster, 19. Many sentences have Bible references: 1 Colossians 1:10; 4. Exodus 38:14; 5. Psalm 119:160; 6. Isaiah 52:11 and 1 John 1:9 and James 2:7; 7. Ephesians 2, 10; 10. John 12:24. 1245. See p. 159.

1246. In Ploughed Under, VIII.
1247. Gold Cord, 281.
1248. In Elliot, A Chance to Die, 237.

Source: © J. (Hans) Kommers.

FIGURE 27: The House of Prayer.

was the old true worship, the Christian life in its beauty and proper sense. So all the churches formed the Body of Christ and nothing existed independently. Due to her connections with Mr Wilson and the Keswick Convention the first lesson she had learned was:

[T]o drop labels, and to think only of the one true invisible Church, to which all who truly love the Lord belong. Suppose He came tomorrow, what would labels matter? I could almost see them dropping off as those who were waiting for their Lord rose in the spiritual home air to meet Him. They would never think of them then. Why think much of them now? […] I grew to value the quietness of the Friends’ way of worship, and also to care very much for the beauty of the Church of England’s ways.1249

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The birthday gifts brought in again the wish to have a House of Prayer:

These gifts seemed to point towards a House of Prayer, but till that birthday morning there had not been a decisive leading, the assurance without which we never can proceed, and to my inward question, ‘But Lord, what about the hospital’? The answer came back with clearness that settled doubt, ‘When My House of Prayer is finished, I will provide for the Hospital’.1250 The Lord provided the architect and constructor, Mr Dann and Mr Jackson, and the money to contract skilled carpenters from Kerala to build the House of Prayer. Both architect and engineer were Friends, ‘and so by nature and by training were prepared to understand the inward movements of the Spirit’.1251 In the Dohnavur Letter of May 1926, Amy mentioned that the foundation of the Prayer House was nearly ready.1252

Amy was very much encouraged by a letter from Miss Lilias Trotter from Algiers, in which she wrote that they had a place for prayer and were sending a gift for Dohnavur to build their House of Prayer.1253 Even today, one wonders at what was achieved nearly 100 years ago. Amy loved the style of Kerala and Travancore architecture – it is more ‘pretty’ – and a practical reason vindicated the use of building people from Kerala – they were cheaper than those from Tinnevelly.1254 She knew that the architect and the engineer who had directed the work of a chapel for the Women’s Christian College in Madras had put reverence and beauty into that building. It was in Indian style and feeling, ‘the kind of thing we should have chosen to have’.1255 Inaugurated on 16 November 1927, by Bishop Tubbs,1256 the House of Prayer is more than the Fellowship’s religious centre; it is also an architectural gem. To this day, it stands as the spiritual focus of the Fellowship. With no connection to any church denomination the Fellowship went on its own under the unseen leader. Amy wrote:

After a while it became clear that our God had another thought for us. And so, very quietly, it came to pass that we just belong to Him and to all who love His Name. An old CMS missionary put it very clearly: ‘You belong to all of us’, he said. He who leads our worship as a father would lead the worship of a family, may be one whom all recognise as having only the ordination of the Pierced Hand.

Living in a particular love among themselves, the Fellowship fought against the intrusion of the ‘I and mine’, or an over-emphasis on ‘my views’:

I am writing of this clearly, because no one would be happy with us unless he felt himself simply one of the Household of God, and so, quite simply, one with all who belonged to the great household. It seems to us that we have a wonderful opportunity to live the life of true unity, a unity far deeper and far more vital that any which depends on an outward ceremony. In other words we are trying to return to the very earliest days before labels were invented, and to be, as we surely shall be the moment our Lord appears, all one in Him, dividing lines utterly forgotten, utterly lost in the light of His presence.1257

1250. Meal in a Barrel, 30. Chapters VI and VII deal with the provisions God gave to get the amount of £1000 required to build the House of Prayer.

1251. Meal in a Barrel, 32.

1252. In ‘Dohnavur Letter, no. 8’, May 1926, 8: ‘The House of Prayer has been begun, the foundations are nearly finished.’ See also the Dohnavur Letter of January 1926, (no. 7, 2).

1253. Meal in a Barrel, 30–31.

1254. Tables in the Wilderness, 135. The crinkled roof of the House of Prayer is also Travancorean. 1255. Meal in a Barrel, 30. The architect who designed the House of Prayer took its style from an old palace in Travancore, a city where from ancient times Chinese carpenters had worked.

1256. Norman Henry Tubbs (1879–1965). In 1923 he was ordained to the Tinnevelly episcopate as the fourth bishop. 1257. See Wilkinson, At BBC Corner, 77.

Source: © Dohnavur Fellowship. Permission to reproduce was obtained from Jeremiah Rajanesan. Photographer unknown. FIGURE 28: Inside of the House of Prayer.

The doorposts have carvings of lotus flowers and on the lintel are carved in Tamil the words Come Unto Me. ‘Those words are to us all, and each time we cross the threshold of that House, our Lord says to each one – calling him and her by name – Come Unto Me.’1258 The tubular bells in the tower were given by a Dohnavur friend from Germany. At 6 a.m., 1 p.m. and 9 p.m. the bells ring out for prayer and for recollection, ‘God is my strong salvation’.1259 And when they ring a stillness falls wherever they are heard.

But effect of the minute’s stillness is so very helpful to the life of the place that none of us, I think, will wish to part with it when that campaign is over.1260 The House of Prayer is covered with flowers and greenery, blue thunbergia is climbing far up the tower, passion flowers (which open here at 9 a.m. the great hour of the Christians day) are looking in through the latticed windows and throwing tendrils down above the arches inside (Figure 28) the House, which they fill with their delicate fragrance, and the court leading back to the schoolhouse is a shadowy cool greenness of fern and moss, with blue water-lilies in a little water in the centre, and we thank our God for such a gift from His kind family.1261

The House of Prayer is the heart of the DF compound and the centre from which, since 1927, prayers have been sent up to the Lord. Above the House of Prayer the prayer tower gives the people an

1258. Edges of His Ways, 18 January, 9; Meal in a Barrel, 46.

1259. See Thou Givest … They Gather, 145.

1260. Meal in a Barrel, 43. In those quiet moments Amy had to think of Augustine: ‘But we, Lord, behold we are a little flock, possess us as Thine, stretch Thy wings over us, and let us fly under them. Be thou our glory; let us be loved for Thee, and Thy word feared in us’.

1261. Amy described the Anglican church with the usual gothic arches and pews in Ooty as ‘depressingly English’. See Elliot, A Chance to Die, 122; Meal in a Barrel, 47.

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opportunity to be there alone with God. The tower windows look in all directions over the compound. Standing in the room at the top of the tower, high above the compound, we can still read the words of an old hymn around the four sides of the room on a hand–painted frieze with four stanzas:

1. Breathe on me, breath of God, 2. Breathe on me, breath of God,
Fill me with life anew, Until my heart is pure,
That I may love what Thou dost love, Until with Thee I will one will,
And do what Thou wouldst do. To do and to endure.
3. Breathe on me, breath of God, 4. Breathe on me, breath of God,
Blend all my soul with Thine, So shall I never die,
Until this earthly part of me But live with Thee the perfect life
Glows with Thy fire divine. Of Thine eternity.1262

These words express the longing of the DF. We can take Hatch’s hymn simply as a prayer for the continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives as Christians. The hymn is based on John 20:22, which records how the Lord Jesus met with his disciples in the upper room after his resurrection, and ‘he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit”’. No further explanation is given. This may have been a special endowment of power in preparation for Pentecost a few days later. Pentecost is presented as a historical incident. There is no evidence that Christ’s action is ever repeated, or that it is something to be claimed by believers today. However, we know the indwelling Spirit of God works to produce the fruit of Christ-likeness in us.1263 This was also Amy’s prayer for the workers and the children in Dohnavur. Amy herself gives us the reason for the prayer tower:

Except the barn, there is not a two-storey building on the compound, and there is not a single room where one can be private without shutting all the windows, and when the windows are shut it is impossibly hot. In such a family there are often times when it matters very much to be quite alone with God. That Prayer Tower was worth much to the place. From the tower you see the nurseries, schoolrooms, medical compound, farm, boys’ houses seen through the trees (their school is not yet up). You see through the moon gate the end of the Walk of Quietness, and your heart goes out in the beautiful words of St Augustine as you stand by the bells and look down over it all: But we, Lord, behold we are Thy little flock, possess us as Thine, stretch Thy wings over us and let us fly under them. Be Thou our glory; let us be loved for Thee, and Thy word feared in us.

From Algiers her friend Lilias Trotter wrote about her experience at a mission conference in Jerusalem, relating to the prayer tower in Dohnavur:

God gave us such a beautiful seal on our new hope and such a promise for the future. I opened the Syriac version of the New Testament, and asked Him for some word, and He sent this, Acts XVI 13: ‘A House of Prayer was seen there’. We know this will be fulfilled. I wanted to tell you this to explain why I thought of your Prayer Room. May God be doing wonders for you, seen and unseen in all your work.1264 On Sundays there are three services, one English and two Tamil in the House of Prayer. Before the service starts, a song is played on the tubular bells (Figure 29); every day the same bells play, remembering the family of the sweet name of Jesus. The Sunday evening singing in the House of Prayer is one of the favourite meetings of the Fellowship. The House of Prayer is decorated with flowers in big bowls and

1262. By Edwin Hatch (1835–1889). The hymn is based on John 20:22. Hatch was that happy combination of great learning and simple faith. James Moffatt said of him, ‘profound as his learning was, his published sermons show that his piety was as simple and unaffected as a child’s’. Dr Hatch was professor of classics at Trinity College in Toronto for a time, then rector of Quebec High School. He returned to England and to Oxford University in 1867, coincidentally the year of the birth of the Dominion of Canada. 1263. See 2 Corinthians 3:18 and Galatians 5:22–23.

1264. Meal in a Barrel, 35, 43 and 44.

Source: © J. (Hans) Kommers.

FIGURE 29: The tubular bells in the tower of the House of Prayer.

vases. Children clean the floor on Saturdays while they sing. On Sundays often during thanksgiving, the one who is leading also gives thanks for the flowers and the birds and that they may hear the dear birds sing. Until about 1950, during Christmas time the Christmas tree was decorated by the Friedenshort sisters; when they all left, the Accals took over this work. In the evening on Christmas Day the whole congregation moves toward the dairy farm with singing and music all along the way. There is a short service at the sheds. This is done by the Fellowship members to identify themselves with the poor and the downtrodden on this earth. Then Christmas Day is closed with a Tamil service in the House of Prayer. There is no abundant decoration with much colour; the elderly women make nice decorations at home from silver foil, which they save the whole year from biscuit packets, etcetera.

New Year’s Day is a special giving day. During the service in the church all the children line up, each affectionately clutching some cherished toy, which are put into two baskets for the sick children. Easter Day is an exalted day. Before dawn it begins with the singing from the tower, which is met with the glorious greeting ‘The Lord is risen’, and all say together ‘Alleluia’. Then they all go to God’s Garden. ‘We go there at sunrise and sing our Easter hymns.’ All church occasions, even burials, are performed with the eye on the risen Lord. ‘We try to make such occasions festival, not funeral in feeling.’ Never is the devil ‘off duty, souls lately plucked from their grasp are assailed and plots are formed for their undoing’.1265

Once a month Holy Communion is administered. Often one of the pastors of the village church gives the wine and the bread. Amy herself always kept a good relationship with the Anglican church, but the fact that only an official ordained person can administer Holy Communion was something she

1265. For descriptions of these celebrations, see ‘Exalted Days’, in Gold Cord, chapter XLIII, 295–300.

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could not believe. In Temple’s Readings in St. John’s Gospel, she put the words ‘of the priest’ in brackets: ‘Still by the words of the priest He takes the Bread which He calls His Body’. In the margin, Amy wrote ‘Where in the Scriptures is anything said about this?’1266 Amy agreed with Von Hügel who wrote that the future of Anglicanism seemed to him ‘very dark unless they can revive the sense of adoration’.1267 Adoration played an important part in the services in the House of Prayer. Amy had, according to Nesaruthina, associates from different churches working with her like the Brethren, the Church of South India (CSI), Mar Thoma Christians and people from other churches. She accepted both child and adult baptism, and in the House of Prayer the communion service was conducted both in CSI and Brethren patterns.1268 The Communion service always closes with the same hymn: ‘Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts’. Amy wrote that the Fellowship family saw themselves as members of the ‘Church which is His body – this is the church to which we belong. The household of God – this is the household of which we are members’.1269 Today even the very old people living in Dohnavur remember that since their youth the main entrance of the church and the tower has been decorated with leaves and beautiful flowers. In the church, a visitor will not find a cross or any pictures hanging anywhere. In the windows with their iron frames, an attentive visitor will see the shape of a cross. Elisabeth Elliot visited the Fellowship in Dohnavur in 1993 and here is her story about the House of Prayer:

The House of Prayer is a beautiful terra-cotta-coloured building with a red tile roof and a tower which hold the chimes that play a hymn at 6.00 A.M. and 9.00 P.M. There is no furniture inside except a few chairs for older ones and decrepit foreigners such as we aren’t used to sitting on the floor. Everyone filed in perfect silence, bare feet moving noiselessly over polished red tiled floors, and sat in rows according to age, the tiny ones up front, dressed in brightly coloured dresses. Behind them sat the next age group, girls in skirts and blouses; then came those in skirts, blouses, and half-saris; finally the Accal (older ones who look after the younger) in blue or purple or green saris. All had smoothly combed and oiled black hair, many of them with flowers in it. An Indian man played the little pump organ while they sang several traditional hymns in English, as well as songs written by ‘Amma’ (the Tamil term of respect, used for Amy Carmichael). There was Scripture reading, then a prayer of thanksgiving for the new child who had just come, a little girl of two whose mother could not keep her. Her new mother, an Accal, carried her to the platform and stood holding her while they prayed and then sang ‘Jesus loves Me’. […] The smallest children had been given coloured flags to wave in time to the music of certain songs, a custom instituted by Amma which I think should be adopted by every Sunday School and Church, for it enables the tiny ones to participate by doing something even when they are too young to know the words by heart’. Older ones played tambourines, triangle, and bells, while one drummed softly with a leather flap on the mouth of a clay pot.1270 One of Murray Webb-Peploe’s children, Michael, born 18 April 1935, later remembered Dohnavur’s House of Prayer:

As for Dohnavur, I remember the House of Prayer, very impressive in its simplicity; also the Easter celebration in the garden. My memories are of Easter being a very special day. We would get up before daylight and proceed with lanterns to ‘God’s Garden’, which was actually the burial ground. [Both Amma and Godfrey are buried there] There we would almost re-enact the first day of the resurrection and when you met another member of the Family you exchanged the traditional greeting, ‘Christ is risen’, to which the response was, ‘he is risen indeed’, then you both said ‘Hallelujah’ together. My uncle Godfrey I don’t remember well; he was a respected but

1266. W. Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel, 2nd series, (London: MacMillan, 1940), chapter 14. 1267. In G. Greene (ed.), Letters from Baron Vom Hügel to a Niece (London, Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1928), p. XXXIV. 1268. In Matthews, ‘The Theological Contributions of Amy Carmichael’, Appendix X.

1269. See Roots, 45.

1270. In E. Elliot, Keep a Quiet Heart (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 1995), 144. slightly remote figure. I do remember Jack Trehane, who once gave Hanmer [his brother] and me a welldeserved beating for being cheeky to one of the Indian annachies.1271 The House of Prayer was renovated in 2000 and to this day, many profess a sense of peace and happiness inside this beautiful building. Up in the tower of the House of Prayer, where the tubular bells are, I sat for a quiet moment on a Sunday afternoon and prayed the words which, since 1878,1272 have been for all who go the Walk of Quietness in this turbulent world.