“You dear doctor people have something to answer for sometimes, I think, when you shut that shining door, or at least don’t give it even the gentlest push open.”
The mother of the Family was not the only shut-in in Dohnavur. Others began to feel increasingly shut in and isolated. Perhaps those on whom leadership responsibility had fallen were unconsciously protecting the place from outside contamination in order to preserve the status quo at least as long as Amma was with them. All decisions were referred to her, but full information on which to base her advice was not always made available to her, sometimes because people wanted to spare her such distress.
For many years no outside missionary or Indian Christian ever addressed the Family. One who spent ten years in Dohnavur remembers only three exceptions to this rule: a Chinese woman escaped from Singapore, and two members of the China Inland Mission, one of whom was Bishop Frank Houghton, author of the first Carmichael biography in English (Thyaharaj, one of the Family, had written one in Tamil).
Some of the younger members tired of breathing the rarified Christian atmosphere, unrelieved by any non-Christian breezes. When one of them mentioned this feeling to Amy, her imagination instantly latched on to a remedy. “Do you mean to tell me, said Amma, with mischief in her eyes, “that you’d really like to see one of the sitties drunk?”
Mrs. Webb-Peploe, mother of Murray and Godfrey, had a house in the hills to which Dohnavur people sometimes went for rest and refreshment, “but,” says one, “you had to be insulated there from other missionary ideas and certainly from the rest of the European community. At the time of King George V s Jubilee we were invited to the Club to listen to the wireless description of the celebrations, but it was considered undesirable to go.”
Both English and Tamil newspapers were available to the Dohnavur Family, as well as magazines such as The Illustrated London News. They listened to the broadcasts of the BBC, and Amy regularly read a newsletter called “The Essence of Politics. Because there were some German Sisters of Friedenshort in the Family, she was exceedingly circumspect in commenting on Hitler’s activities in Europe. She thought him a “mad dog” and a “devil incarnate,” while one of the Sisters thought him “perfection.” The rest of the Family had to be cautious and tactful in mealtime conversations touching on war news. While this could not but add to the feeling of isolation and stricture, it is a testimony to the power of love in the place that unity could be maintained at all with such a wide spectrum of nationalities (Indian, English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, Dutch, German, Swiss—though not all of these were represented all the time), and ecclesiastical connections (Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Plymouth Brethren).
Bee was Amy’s confidante, a sort of safety valve to whom she could let off steam in private. Although she apparently wrote to everyone in the Family, and to some of them hundreds of times, it is difficult to see how anyone could have held a more important place in her thoughts, prayers, and correspondence than the beloved Bee. It was a mother-child relationship, very different from her relationship with her contemporaries in age or her near peers in experience. She allowed herself greater vulnerability with Bee.
“For some time I have been wanting you to have a room within reach; have been trying to get one for you. O Child of my Bonds, I love you very much. Your own Motherling.” Often the time scheduled for Bee’s visit had to be preempted for the sake of someone else. When this happened Amy trusted her to understand. “I wanted you tonight, but then Sittie proposed a ‘new one.’ You are not a new one now, but, my child, deep in, and so ownest that others can be put first.” Again, “I have so many others I must see before I see you that I want you to have just a little love-note to bridge the gap.”
In 1938 Amy speculated that Hitler, having got all he wanted in Europe by the “stand and deliver” method, might say, “Now for the colonies.” “But I am breaking all my own rules in writing so. After all, no one yet knows much about anything.” She was not sure it was right to pray for Hitler since God forbade His people to pray for one under His curse. The apostle Paul’s injunction to pray for rulers applied when justice ruled, Amy noted, and John never said to pray for Nero or Domitian.
As we have seen, she was not a pacifist. She had gone to battle many a time for the sake of a child. Was not the same principle at stake in war? “What would you do if you saw a child tortured to death by a brute? Stand still and let him carry on? Swords may be required so much that coats must be sold to buy them,” she wrote, with reference to Jesus’ instructions to His disciples.1 She did not find world peace in the Bible’s list of signs of the last days.
When England went to war the DF again had reason to thank God for His leading them to settle in such an out-of-the-way place as Dohnavur. “This is a particularly safe part of India. We are just off the line of aeroplanes (I have never even heard, much less seen one!) and if there should
