The path to unity
Kanyakumari was never on our travel itinerary. We only decided to go there after talking to Santosh Tom, who owns the Vasco Homestay in Cochin. He is an Indian Catholic living in a strongly Catholic city and state that has a history of Christianity reaching back to the 52 AD, even before Christianity arrived in most of Europe. Yet, the glow on his face as he described worshiping God came not as he was talking about church, but about bathing in the sea at the tip of the country, where the Bay of Bengal meets the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. It is a place of pilgrimage for Hindus, where they bathe in the sea as the sun rises. Santosh explained that this is a way of giving thanks to God for a new day and for all the new days we are blessed with throughout our lives.
We were convinced. It had nothing to do with his words and everything to do with the enthusiastic devotion on his face and in his voice. And so it was that five days later Mary and I found ourselves standing ankle deep in the confluence of three seas, surrounded by four thousand Indian pilgrims, all of us watching as the sunrise painted the sky pink. We were the only westerners but there were enough nuns in the crowd to make me think that this group was strongly ecumenical.
Women came down periodically to anoint their heads with the water and then touch their face in a pattern that is still a mystery to me. But mostly there was just a lot of splashing and laughing and waiting, until everything became very still as the halo of the sun began to peek from behind a mountain of clouds piled at the horizon. Four thousand people becoming still and silent is a very loud sound. And at the moment the sun emerged, everyone pressed the palms of their hands together in prayer. Ahhhhhh. Light, warmth, love – all the greatest things we have to be thankful for – flowed through that moment of silent prayer offered simultaneously by thousands of people of different classes, nationalities and religions.
This is what I was looking for in India. Hinduism, besides not recognizing a separation or duality between Creator and created (which is one thing that made the moment of worship so powerful), is very inclusive. I’ve been getting increasingly interested in inter-religious exchange, and especially of the ways that people can value and retain their own traditions while worshiping together with people of other traditions. It seems to me that if the world is getting smaller and therefore more volatile as we’re clashing through misunderstanding and the fear it creates, maybe the best way to resolve conflicts is through faith sharing. Simply put: people who worship together understand each other in a deep way and are going to look out for each other.
Anyway, I’ve learned a lot so far, by participating in my own tradition as interpreted by another culture (like how in Kanyakumari, there are no pews so everyone sits cross-legged on the floor at mass – it’s so great!), and by worshiping together in different ways with people of other traditions, whether that was hours of singing and chanting at the ashram temple or one concentrated burst of loving prayer on the beach.
Tags: Kanyakumari
sandyo
that sounds really intense.
it looks like your having a good time
You write so well and captivating! I still think you should have written my paper – which, by the way, is 98% done: fuggin’ FINALLY!