Taking the Polar Express to Alternative Spring Break

Written by Omar Mahmood on Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

There is a train called the Polar Express that only those who believe in Santa can see or hear or ride. Chris Van Allsburg tells in his book of little Billy, who boards that train to the North Pole.

When he finally meets Santa, Billy wants nothing fancy. So Santa gives him a sliver bell from his sleigh. Billy is honored, but ends up losing it as it slips out of his ripped pocket. After so many misadventures, Billy makes it home for Christmas morning. He is surprised to find the bell under his Christmas tree. When he rings it, his parents hear nothing. Only Billy and his little sister can hear the tinkling of the bell. Only those who believe, only those who listen, can hear it. By the end of Billy’s long life, he has still held onto his faith. His friends and his sister no longer can hear the bell. But he believes, and so he can hear it tinkle still.

I have been honored in the past few months to have been welcomed into the folds of St. Mary, no less as a Muslim student on campus. The climate here in Ann Arbor, at least among students, is overwhelmingly rebellious, disdainful of traditional institutions like religion. And yet here we strive for God. In everyone there is a holy spirit, the very breath of God, and we all breathe it.

As we prepare for ASB, I remind myself and my friends that we must listen too to those whom we help. They are helping us too, maybe more than we can ever help them. I have spent some time working with eye patients in impoverished parts of the world, with Unite for Sight. Their stories move me still, and remind me that I am nothing before God, and they break my heart in the best of ways. I share here one conversation with a lady in Honduras, that I wrote about in a blog I kept there:

I sat down with a thin woman of a smaller frame. She was 47, but I would have guessed her to be at least 60. She had never been to school. I felt that at some time long ago she must have been pretty. Her smile was soft, but gave way to a glint of silver on her right canine, as much of the women here kept a casing of sorts for dental fashion.

Her boyfriend had left her some years ago. I asked about her house. She explained that she had none, and that she would get by renting rooms day by day if she could. Her water came from the river. She washed clothes in that river, she said. I asked her what she had to eat yesterday. “Nothing,” she said in a soft tone that was blunt in its own way. I would have liked to think she was exaggerating, but she said it over and over again, softer each time. “Somos pobres.”

I could muster nothing but “Que Dios le ayude”.

To know our weakness is to know God’s greatness. In those moments of knowledge, of heartbreak, Billy’s bell rings still.

Questions for Reflection:
If you were in The Polar Express, would the bell still ring for you?
Do you ever feel that your religious identity is in conflict with the campus culture?  What is your response?

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 Syed Omar Mahmood
Omar is an alumnus of Detroit Country Day School. He wishes he lived two hundred years ago, although a log cabin in God’s Country does have its merits.  He is a junior studying Comparative Literature & Evolutionary Anthropology.
Email: syedom@umich.edu