Temples, Fishermen, and Children

Wednesday, 10 December 2008. Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. 10:35 p.m.

South India is home to numerous towns and cities with elaborate and intricately designed Hindu temples. Here one finds the best examples in the world of what is called Dravidian architecture, developed by the Palluva people who ruled here in the 800s A.D. Dravidian temples are crowded, “busy” to the Western eye, formations with detailed carvings everywhere. They usually have central shrines, but sometimes the carvings overwhelm everything else. I was chauffeured – along with the minister, a driver, and three elders – to Mahabalipuram, about 40 miles south of Chennai, on the Bay of Bengal. Here the famous Shore Temple includes important anaconic (non-human-representational) images of the sustaining god Shiva. Mahabalipuram is a treasure trove for art, architecture, and religious lore scholars, but I found the more simple relief carvings called “Arjuna’s Penance” the most to my liking. Here, among the elephant and other figures, stands the warrior Arjuna in a pose of repentance (balancing on one leg) while the great god Shiva stands over him.

These images provide an opportune time to speak about the way Hindu art tells the great stories of the gods and goddesses. For a large population of people who could not read or write, images portraying the stories on temple buildings and rock walls make the stories accessible, and they keep the stories alive for ever new generations. (In Christian medieval Europe, a similar approach is used to tell the biblical stories, through mosaics, frescoes, and sculptures in cathedrals.) But for the Hindus, it is not simply a matter of communication. As Huston Smith says, “In Hinduism art is religion, and religion is art.” Part of what he is saying, I think, is that Hindus embrace all of life – materially, culturally, socially, and spiritually – in their religion.

In Chennai, I have been a bit frustrated, for I wanted to see and experience “real Indian religion and life,” but I’m spending almost all of the time with Church of Christ evangelists while visiting area congregations. And yet, once again my presuppositions and assumptions have been exposed: my hosts are indeed living “real Indian religion and life,” as second and third generation Christians, largely independent of American influences. They are certainly conservative, seeing themselves as separate from the denominations, but they are living a faith on their own terms in their own culture.

I’ve also been disappointed that my hosts here seem uninterested in seeing varieties of Hindu temples, and that they seem not to know much about Hinduism. But then I realized that (a) having anything to do with Hinduism connotes to them participation with idolatry, and (b) that they know about as much about Hinduism as an average Texas evangelical Christian knows about Roman Catholic rituals and saints. This has been a major discovery for me, but it does highlight the long tradition of rich religious diversity in India.

Two moments with these Christians captured my heart today. First, Roy (the Chennai evangelist) introduced me to two fishermen who had been persecutors but now were Christians; they welcomed me with this huge flower thing that I’m now told is called a samandi. Then they took me to meet Mary, the first convert in Mahabaliparum, who then brought the fishermen to Christ. We shared drinks and prayer in Mary’s home (her husband was away fishing), which also serves as the church for 14 members.

Notice in the photo: this home/church is no more than a lean-to shelter, given to the couple after the tsunami took their earlier home away. The Chennai church provided Mary with a boat, which she and the other Christians use to provide for their basic needs, giving 25% back to the church.

Mary and her husband, after they realized that they could not take care of their children, gave them up to the Chennai church’s childrens home for orphans. Most of the children there have been picked up from the street, or left at the church’s doors. The little girl I’m holding was one of two left wrapped in paper at the church building in Chennai. Our visit to the childrens home was celebratory; the children all treated me like a king, sang songs and quoted verses, and held my hands. Notice in the photos how very basic this “home” is. Simple or not, the home has helped many children for the last ten years, including one young man I met at morning prayer who had just graduated from college.

By CPS standards in America, this home would be shut down certainly, and if it wasn’t, none of us would likely want to live there loving the children. And by American freedom standards, none of us would want to call Mary’s lean-to shack a home, and we’d certainly not want it taken over by the whole church at any given moment.

We have much to learn.
slp

With Christians

Wednesday 10 Dec 2008. Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. 5:30 a.m

Following an afternoon walk through this neighborhood in Northwestern Chennai, I gathered with the local elders for a greeting and soon found myself their honored guest. Through a translator, I answered doctrinal questions about commitments and fellowship – whom should one follow, family or brothers and sisters in Christ? – they honored me with a ceremonial shawl and welcomed me into their church. Then it was on to a weekly preachers gathering, where some 50 or so area evangelists met for worship and Bible study. Guess who was asked to preach? It was clear by then that the stay in Chennai will be different than anything else on this trip.

In the photo I am surrounded by the local leading evangelist, Roy, and his father, the early convert of A.C. Bailey. Roy’s father worked as an engineer while preaching out of his house, now the church building behind us in the photo. When he retired, he was offered a pension or a flat. He took the flat, which he still has to rent, at about $250 a month for twenty years, before it is his property. But this two-family apartment is located exactly across from his earlier home, now the church building, and the flat makes a perfect guest house for traveling evangelists, local elders, and foreign tourists.

Roy has baptized more than 1700 persons in India since he began preaching 12 years ago. He is always on the go, to villages nearby and far, and increasingly he and his rural brothers have become objects of persecution. Seeing scars on the faces of these men, and hearing them sing in full voice with vibrancy, can only humble my Western Christian complacency.

The persecutors are apparently tied to a broad political/religious movement in India, the Hindutva Movement. This group, says economist Amartya Sen (in The Argumentative Indian) is trying to recast contemporary India in the ways of the Vedic Hindu culture. They argue that only the old Hindu ways of caste and honoring certain gods is correct, and they are essentially trying to keep india Hindu, or conservative Hindu. But as Sen and many, many others note, India has always been a pluralistic culture – it was dominantly Buddhist for a thousand years, even – and India’s strength is tied to its democratic governance and tolerant people. There is in the Hindutva Movement a similar kind of idealistic restorationism that recurs around the world. In the United States, many long for a view of Christian America that never was; in the Arab world, large numbers seek an Islamic caliphate that only once existed in a small part of the Muslim world; in Turkey the conservative movement works for the end to secular democracy and the return to an Islamic state. And they are not new – the biblical Pharisees were a similar restorationism. No doubt there are sincere motives in all such movements: a betrayal of faith and purity signals immorality, idolatry, and national collapse, they see. But in the end, all of these groups fail to realize that life’s contexts change, that social and economic progress bring about modernization, that even in the oldest stories and models of “pure” societies, innovations were always challenging and forcing adaption.

(By the way, I suspect that the renaming of so many towns – Madras to Chennai, for example – is partly connected to this conservative movement’s influence. Probably more so, however, it is due to a national pride that wants to redefine the new India as separate from its British colonial image.)
As I write now, at 6:15, I hear the early morning songs. But this time, they are of the Christian men, just a few steps from my bedroom window. I shall join them shortly, and no doubt be asked to provide a word, and a prayer.

Christianity is in fact a part of older – if not the oldest – India. The Christians here, whatever their particular denominational flavor, all claim a certain pride in the apostle Thomas. A long tradition holds that Thomas came here soon after the resurrection of Jesus, and that he established the church here in South India, but by the 400s it had for the most part disappeared. Roman Catholics came as missionaries in the late middle ages / early Reformation, but it was the British who imported Christianity in large measure during the nineteenth century. As far as I know, the Church of Christ efforts here began with J.C. Bailey and his wife, and today the Sunset Church in Lubbock maintains substantial works in areas around Bangalore. What impresses me most about Roy and the churches in the Chennai area is the truly indigenous, autonomous congregations. They seem to have been influenced only in limited ways by American mission efforts, at least in the last 20 or so years.

Away to morning prayers….
slp

9 December 2008, 3:25 p.m., Chennai
My arrival in Chennai was met with a cheerful Indian minister, Roy Knight, and three of the local congregation’s elders. The photo shows me with Roy, wearing the welcome lei that was made by his brothers and sister. This family lives together in a comfortable largish home that is something like a small condominium, Indian style – simple with marble floors and a central living area. I was given the missionary’s room, for guests who come to visit or help with the churches here. It is comfortable, very clean, and humid. Mosquitoes are amidst, but I have a room air conditioner should I decide to give in to customary American habits. Roy is a second generation Christian, born in 1979. His parents were baptized by J.C. Bailey, famous Canadian missionary to India from the 1960s or so. Roy became the evangelist here, with a congregation that now has two services on Sundays – one in Tamil (the regional language) for about 140, and one in English for about 70. Roy also evangelizes throughout the area, and has established or helped to establish congregations from Chennai to Delhi. He goes out often, on week-long trips, to encourage and help the congregations. On some of his travels, he himself is persecuted often, and he showed me the marks of beatings, burnings, and a nailing in his leg, all by Hindu priests who are not happy with an Indian trying to convert people to Christianity. He assured me that the area around Chennai is safe, and in fact the local authorities protect the church. So I will be with the Knight family for three nights, looking around at some of the Christian ministries, as well as exploring more Indian religion and culture.
I hesitate to mention Hindu persecution of Christians, for it reinforces the stereotypes that are all too common, that “all of the pagans” and “unbelievers” are out to get Christians, and (though not synonymous) Americans. In fact, there are radical Muslims and radical Hindus, radical Buddhists and yes radical Christians. Extremists in every culture and religion use their insecurities to justify plays of power and control, and even persecution and terrorism. But if one thing has become clearer to me on this trip, it is that most Indians – be they Hindus, Buddhist, Sikhs, Jains, Muslims, Christians, or atheists – are just trying to make their way in a complex and sometimes difficult world, and most want the same things that we want – family, health, peace, food, shelter, and joy.
I hope to have more to say on this later. slp

Homelessness, Love, and More

Monday, 8 December 2008, 8:45 p.m. Kolkata, West Bengal, India.

“You remember yesterday I saw you and asked for milk for my child, and you did not help?” So spoke the tearful woman, walking up to a young Western couple on Sudder Street as I passed by. I heard her well, for earlier in the evening she had said the same words to me. And because she was not asking for money, and had a good story, and milk is difficult to deny, I helped her buy the $4 box of powdered milk. I doubted at the time, but gave the money and watched her get the milk. And then later, my doubts are confirmed: she is part of an elaborate begging business in Kolkata. But don’t single out Kolkata; beggars make a living with creative schemes all over this country. I’ve struggled with the beggars – usually young children about 5 or 6, taking along and reaching for pockets, clinging to arms and risking life to keep up with me as a I maneuver through taxis, buses, rickshaws, and people; or women, with or without babies or children, insisting that they need money to eat and live. Sometimes they are the boys, or men, with stub arms and/or legs, moving along on roller carts, or dragging themselves through traffic and cattle, or just sitting or lying down, mumbling or crying out as I pass by. They are everywhere – beyond the glitter of special streets of course – and they are persistent.

How should I feel? How must I respond? My Kolkata host, Rupa, met me for dinner, and among our conversation topics, she confirmed my understandings. Begging is an industry here, and many clearly hungry looking people are working in elaborate systems of sympathy catchers. But indeed poverty and homelessness is a real problem here, and many, many people need food, shelter, and a way out of despair. Rupa, a doctoral student studying women in nursing homes, and the daughter of wealthy Bengali parents, says that she will always buy food for them, but never give money, and that generally those who beg and/or cling are not “real beggars.” During my trip, so far I have given change to some people, but by and large I have walked past, or said “No!” quite firmly, and I have been troubled by this. So today I helped the woman with milk powder, and then I hear her sale again. But my deed was done sincerely, and her possible deception is no count.

Poverty and homelessness, disease and hunger, are not limited to India of course, but India has so much of it. Rupa confirmed other impressions: The situation cannot be blamed on religion – after all, what religion? Indian religion is so very complex and pluralistic – but on a combination of overpopulation and a general resistance to accept Western modernization. Changes are gradually happening, but the sheer numbers of people will make deter any quick end to begging, poverty, and hunger. As a Christian with great affinity for Indian culture, the whole matter is greatly troubling; I don’t like walking past obviously hurting people, I don’t like the firm “no”, I don’t like the self-imposed guilt, and I don’t like the view of India that is given.

I suppose Mother Teresa struggled with some of these feelings too. A special blessing of this trip was a visit to her “Motherhouse” today, where her body is entombed in a simple, white stone structure. There are at least three main buildings in Kolkata that are Missionaries of Charity sites: this Motherhouse, where some of the nuns live and where she lived; a house for the dying, where those who have not hope and no home are given hospice during their last days; and an orphanage, where children are nurtured and loved, whatever their needs. The house for the dying, interestingly, is located very near to the great Kali temple (see the earlier posting). I missed it, but I did find the orphanage, where a sister guided me through sections for babies, toddlers, and handicapped children. In the toddler section, I was surrounded by boys who hugged my legs and jumped to say hello. The entire place was bright, cheerful, clean, and happy. At one point, in a room where physically disabled children were playing, I watched a sister massaging a child’s leg and carefully twisting her ankle, much like the way Mother Teresa does in a film that is widely distributed. What if there were hundreds of similar Christian houses in Kolkata?

I continue to be amazed at the way women work hard here. Often I see men playing cards, or drinking chai, but then I see women doing heaving lifting, or sweeping endlessly the dirt in the streets. After visiting the orphanage, I met this woman who had just sat down her five-gallon-ish water bucket, which she was to carry to a pile of mud and cement, for mixing. She was sweating, and showing a sigh on her face. On impulse, or male Western pride, I grabbed the bucket and carried it for her. She could only laugh, and I feared that I had offended. But later, I saw her again walking down the road, and she looked out and me, our eyes met, and she smiled. Another nice moment.

On this second and last day in this grand city, I also wandered through the university section, College Street, where the book stalls never end. I took a few wrong turns getting there, finding a market complete with chicken and goat slaughtering/sales, fish selling and cleaning, cow selling, and every variety of fruit and vegetable imaginable. I also found trash, and people rummaging through trash, and more of the views of life in the older parts of Indian towns. Suffice it to say, I learned today that my impressions of Kolkata as a clean city were a bit misguided; Kolkata was the British capitol for many years, and several sections retain that flavor of stately colonial days, but Kolkata is every bit as complex and chaotic as any other Indian town.

It is certainly more religiously diverse than some cities, with a large Christian and Muslim population. I also met a man today who is Buddhist. Perhaps I have given a wrong impression regarding religion in general, and Hinduism in particular. As Rupa confirmed, while most people are Hindu (at least 85%), not all who are Hindu are active in practicing daily prayer/puja, or in going to a temple. Probably no more than 60% of Hindus, overall, are what we might call “active” Hindus. The terms and generalizations are unfair, but they do help to understand a common global phenomenon: while nations claim a certain religious identity/heritage, not all citizens are active worshipping adherents. Even in India, however, the religious celebrations become national celebrations and family gatherings, and much the way we in America celebrate Thanksgiving as a semi-religious holiday, Indians honor special god celebrations as family and national identity and renewal.

So once again, similarities abound. Our daily lifestyles are quite different in many ways, but our need for community, spirituality, and identity are common.

And of course, so are are failings, our huddled hungry and homeless, our own powerlessness to heal, our own dependence on God.
slp

Worship on Sunday in Kolkata

Sunday, 7 December 2008. Kolkata. 5:47 p.m.

What a wonderful, pleasant end to an exhausting weekend in India. I had just finished an interesting visit to yet another Hindu temple, and I turned up famed Sudder Street to my hotel, when . . . yes, there was Christian singing. I then saw the Wesleyan Church building, a stately old wood structure, and realized that it was Sunday and they were worshipping. When I entered the building, a group of young adults with a guitar – a praise team, no doubt – was leading the introductory song: “Come let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our God, our maker . . . .” I joined in the singing, and I felt a sense of peace and comfort. It was a nice surprise.

Christianity in fact has a long history in India, after the tradition that Thomas first traveled here to evangelize. In Kolkata (Calcutta), the British brought substantial church culture with them, and it stayed. I’ve seen several large church buildings, but this was the first congregation I saw and heard. They were about 150, largely Indian, and mostly young.

I arrived in Kolkata about 12:00 noon, a full six hours later than the scheduled train arrival time. This was the last of a series of “adjustments” that I had to deal with over the two days. On Saturday morning, I left Varanasi for the train station to finalize the rest of my travel plans; this took about four hours. It seems that Indian business works at its own careful, slow, and thoroughly documented pace; every action, it appears, must be documented in some ledger. Then I returned to the train station for my night train departure, and waited more than five hours. Finally I had my bed for the night, the upper side berth in the AC2 car of the Chambai Express. Although the price is right – about $25 – express it is only in principle. But indeed I made it across North India with little problem, and I join many foreigners in praising the extensive and reasonable train system of India.

Upon arrival here I found my hotel, booked by a friend of a friend. It was my first really bad room experience – up three narrow dirty stairways, down one, up one, around a corner, and into my room, which was dark and, well, dirty, and to my spoiled Western nature, unacceptable. So I traded the $11 per night room for one down the street at $19, and it has hot water as well! What I’m finding repeatedly is that I am not as young as most of the backpackers here, who seem as to match their very meager rooms well, and who seem happy with it all.
Kolkata is often perceived in the West as the city of poverty, in part due to the publicity brought by the ministry of Mother Teresa. Poverty and disease there is, but not measurably more so than in other parts of India. Kolkata indeed is the center of the great intellectual institutions in India, and it also has a rich British heritage in terms of culture, architecture, and infrastructure. So far, I’m finding it quite different from any other place in India that I’ve been. There are more secular dressed women, more large businesses, less cows, less garbage. But certainly my impressions may be skewed by the few areas that I’ve seen today.

Kolkata is known for the goddess Kali, and there is a famous temple here that has a very old history. I visited the temple, where I found myself lined up behind four teenagers who were coming again to this holy place. We walked into a cubicle room that I can best describe as a large wellhouse-looking place, with steps down to a central image of Kali. We snaked around the image and waited for priestly permission to stand briefly in front of Kali before moving on. Often, through a side door, people literally fell down, and were caught, then offered special prayers and were equally blessed by the priest. I was amazed at the emotion that people brought here. They are moved because they do not see the image as an idol, but rather as a manifestation of the god within it. The photo is from a streetside shrine on the way to the temple; no photos were allowed inside the temple area.

After the temple, and then the special time in Christian worship, I walked back to the hotel, only to be met by the loud Muslim call to prayer. Somehow, it seemed a fitting end to a busy weekend.
slp

P.S. Photos are difficult to download on some internet cafe computers. will add later.

A Morning Meditation on Fire

Varanasi, 6 Dec.

It is easy to see how water is central to this special city. The great river embodies t he mother goddess for the Hindus, and all life revolves around her. But there is also fire, as an early morning ride to the river confirms. In the West fire is often associated with destruction -- wildfires, house fires, refinery explosions, eternal damnation -- and the closest many of us get to fire is with a gas-log "fire"-place in our homes. For Hindus, fire sustains life; it provides heat for cooking, and already the tea and milk is boiling at street corner vendors. Fire gives warmth, comforting the morning chill for families in make-shift houses and policemen awaiting the day's traffic. Fire cleans and purifies, as small piles of garbage, carefully swept, are lit and miraculously disappear. Fire praises the divine, through candles and small fires at puja shrines, in temples, and with the morning offerings of "respect" for the sun and the new day. And fire enlightens, literally, giving necessary glow for house work and reading.

Ancient Hindu philosophers contemplated on the nature of fire: What exactly is it, and does it reflect reality? Is there fire without fuel, or fuel without fire? How is it so powerful, and yet gone in a flash (no pun intended)? Perhaps modern physicists and other scientists can provide technically correct answers, but the mystery, and the beauty, remain.

slp

I was lost, and then found....

6 December 2008. Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India.

When I began planning this adventure, the one place that I knew I wanted to stay a while was Banares, now Varanasi. I had first been moved deeply about Hinduism about twelve years ago, when at a scholarly meeting I heard Diana Eck speak about religious pluralism in America. Her own story is told well in the book Encountering God: From Bozeman to Banares. Reading that book, about the Methodist from Montana who found herself studying in India, encouraged me about the ways Christians might learn from these Hindus. And this city is certainly the place. For many a Christian, it is like being in Rome, or Jerusalem, but the comparisons fail. Christians hold place dear, but they do not see land and water as more sacred in any one location. But for Hindus, Varanasi is the closest to heaven, or salvation, and most importantly, to God, that they can get. And yet for me, being here has been difficult; it is so overpowering, the river and the religion, even while the din of traffic and toil and trash compete. It is like being at the Grand Canyon and not being able to fully experience it, as worries about missing something, and calls for our dollars for souvenirs, and confusion over where to start, and how to find our way on the trails, all cloud the magnificence that is among us and before us. Here at the holiest sight for Hindus, I am lost in the canyons, and yet I am aware how richly blessed I am.

I did get lost today, literally. The walled streets of the old city remind me of house hallways, or old underground passageways, like those in some northern cities between buildings. After a few hours on the ghats, I climbed the stairs up to the streets, only to find myself going in circles, or squares and rectangles, to be clear. The streets are narrow, so much so that when meeting a cow -- which happens often -- you have to squeeze by. After a while, I admitted defeat and asked the first young man who came along how to get a rickshaw; that's one word that communicates when English is not an option. Within minutes I was on my merry way back to the comfort of a simple hotel room. The rickshaw drivers are amazing. They are young and old, and they work very hard, cycling up to 10 kilometers among the worst traffic I have ever seen, and they receive anywhere between 25 cents and about $1.50 for the trip. The photo is one of the drivers I had today.

Walking the Ganges ghats is always an adventure. Today I tried to look for varieties of activities, and the photos picture some of them -- kite flying, clothes washing, bathing, praying, relaxing, boat repairing, and exercising.

I continue to be impressed at the resiliency and simplicity of these people.

slp