Dried Oregano and a Clay Pot

It's a small thing, I know. Just bit of dried oregano stored in a small clay pot on my kitchen counter. Yet, it lifts my focus from the privilege and wealth of the Western life to the suffering of others.

Visiting Jean on Wednesday night, I enviously eyed the herbs drying on a cloth on her counter, "Oh, look at all your herbs!"
"It's oregano out of the garden. Do you want some?"
Do I ever - fresh organic oregano - what's to say no to?

In the last light of the day, Jean and I picked oregano from the small plants hugging the soil in her garden. I was surprised that these little plants could supply such a bounty. Back in the kitchen, I rinsed the herbs multiple times. "Get rid of all those critters," Jean counselled.

Back home, after an evening of tea and talk, I lay the oregano out to dry for two days. When the time came to pull the dried oregano off the stalks I found just the right bowl for it - my small clay pot. A pot I got at MissionsFest to remember to pray for the Dalit people.

The Dalits, the lowest caste in India, are called the 'Untouchables'. They are so untouchable, they are below animals in status. Cows are treated better in India than Dalits. According to the caste system, they are relegated to live a life of abject poverty and dehumanization as the slumdogs of their society.

Quite a life for some 250 million people, nearly a quarter of Indian society, who have been relegated to doing untouchable work: butchering, removal of rubbish, animal carcasses, and waste, cleaning streets, latrines, and sewers. Fifty years of apartheid seem inconsequential in human right travesties once measured against the centuries of discrimination and enslavement the Dalits have endured.

This modest little pot, looking at home as a herb pot, represents so much more and is a reminder to me that our Western lifestyle is not how most of the world lives. It reminds me to pray for those suffering in this world. When I see it on my counter the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson echo in my kitchen:

'More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice,
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?'