The Elf

“He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and will gently lead those that have their young.” — Isaiah 40:11 (ASV)

Before there were nurseries at Dohnavur, there was one small girl who wouldn’t keep still. Amy nicknamed Pearl-eyes “the Elf” and wrote a whole chapter about her. It is the happiest chapter in Things as They Are.

The Elf hated her ten minutes of polishing the brass water-pots, until she made a discovery: “Satan doesn’t come very close to me if I sing all the time I’m rubbing the brasses. He runs away when he hears me sing, so I sing very loud, and that keeps him away. Satan doesn’t like hymns.” Every evening she said her prayers in Amy’s room, counting her sins on one hand and her blessings on the other. She had been cross with another girl, she confessed, but the other girl had been wrong too, “so it was only half a sin.”

The Elf and two other small girls argued theology with real energy. Orpah obeyed Naomi and went home, they decided, while Ruth was told to go and refused; yet God blessed Ruth more, because she loved. “So obedience is not so important as love.” Amy had spent the day before trying to teach them obedience. She wrote it down anyway, laughing at herself.

The Elf also asked a question that wasn’t childish at all. She had prayed to be good, and within an hour she had been naughty. “How was it I was naughty when I wanted to be good?” she asked. “So what is the use of praying?” It is Paul’s question in Romans 7. Amy didn’t pretend it was easy.

To Amy, the children were never cases or trophies. They were people, with their own wills, jokes and sins.

From about 1904 babies began to come, because the time to protect a girl was often before she could walk. Some were brought by mothers who couldn’t keep them and would rather they went to the Christians than to a temple. Babies needed wet nurses and constant care, and many of the early ones died. Amy grieved over every one. Simple nurseries were built, each with a group of small children and the women who cared for them. In 1909 she published Lotus Buds, about these children: the lotus grows up out of mud into a beautiful flower.

The children called her Amma, Tamil for “mother.” She wore a sari, and the household ate Indian food and spoke Tamil. Each child got a Tamil name chosen with care, often as a prayer for her life. Many mission orphanages of the time gave children English names and clothes, and they grew up strangers in their own country. Amy wanted Indian Christians, not Westernised Indians.

One custom she refused: caste. Children from high and low communities ate, played and slept together as sisters. To families outside, that was one of the most offensive things about Dohnavur, because a child who went there could never go back into her caste. Amy didn’t flinch. In Christ, she believed, there is neither high caste nor low.

Most of the daily care was done by Indian Christian women called accals, from the Tamil for “elder sister”: converts like Arulai, widows like Ponnammal, and later girls who had grown up there themselves.

Amy was also strict. She expected obedience and could be severe, and some adult workers found her exacting, a few overbearing. She didn’t always tell the difference between disagreeing with her and being disloyal to the work. Those were real faults. But by most accounts Dohnavur was a happy place. She laughed easily, invented games, wrote songs, and taught the children to love birds, butterflies and streams. By 1913 there were about a hundred and thirty children.

Isaiah pictures God as a shepherd strong enough to carry the lambs and gentle enough not to drive the mothers too hard. Amy had plenty of strength. Gentleness she kept learning.

One thing to do this week: spend real time with a younger child, a sibling, cousin or neighbour, and actually listen to their questions about God. You might learn something, the way Amy learned from the Elf.