Religion Smidgeon

MAY 26

We have finally settled in our new home for the next six weeks. For the last 36 hours we have constantly been on the move: visiting, greeting, celebrating, and exlporing. We left our two friends Sean and Jim at Pergacha, and we have moved into our room at Jalchatra. We will start teaching tomorrow which I know will be challenging. I am nervous, but this journal entry is dedicated to recapping the last 36 hours.

Our visit to Notre Dame College was marked by beautiful songs and dances (video posted of one of the dances) from the children at the literacy school, broken English speeches from the teachers, and a tour of the campus. We then joined the Fathers in their evening prayer. Praying with priests somehow reminded me of the exorcisms that you see in movies. When they recite a prayer they don’t just melodramatically rattle of the words or stumble aimlessly through the lines. When these priests prayed, it seemed as if they were commanding the words to rise off the page and take form. There was a certain power in their voice, a certain authority that made the prayer seem much more moving despite the actual lack of content and excessively flowery language.

Moments into the prayer, almost as if in response to heavenly declarations, the loud speaker from the mosques nearby began blaring out the evening call to prayer for the Muslim citizens. I felt my heart grow heavy like some type of gravity was pulling it all inward, crumpling my heart like a withering leaf. I felt the way you would, if you were watching two friends compete ferociously for some goal and you knew tragically that no matter what, they would really both be losing. This pain was not a pain for me, or even for a friend for that matter, but simply a pain for mankind in general. It seemed disheartening and actually ridiculous that there could exist so much dissension and so much hate between people of these two religions in the world when at that moment I was absolutely sure that we were all praying to the same God. Who cares about the means by which we do it? Spirituality is spirituality no matter what way you dress it up or what form it takes. We all worship. We all give thanks. We all seek to understand this higher Being. What does it matter what name we give it? “God is but one, known to man by many names” – Mahatma Ghandi

I coincidentally am reading the book Life of Pi about a young Hindu boy in which the author writes, “Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christains, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians in their devotion to God are hat wearing Muslims.”

The problem most certainly is ignorance. People fear what they do not understand. Fear breads dissension and dissension breads hate. It’s a vicious cycle broken only by learning, learning about others and their beliefs. Taking a giant leap over that gap of knowledge and hopefully outstretching a hand from the other side so others will follow. It seems disheartening and actually ridiculous, but for now all I can do is pray as I’m sure some young boy of another religion will do somewhere else in the world. Time for sleep.