Out at ICRISAT, where we run on Saturdays, there is a unique set up. There is a place out in the middle of a field where a Hindu Temple, a masjid and a Catholic church are assembled on a property. It is for the workers, I have run back there several times, and it has got me thinking.....
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The run was hard, we only had a chance to do it once a week, and it makes for a hard run when you don't do it often. Today I was running without Liam, alone.
I arrived at the edge of the road that lead back to the places of worship for the field workers at ICRISAT. I decided to walk down the road. As I did, two green parrots flew overhead. They were bright. They flew to the old stone building that sits along the edge of the road. Dozens of them were at the top of the building. a loud and vibrant splash of green against the dull grey stones and the expansive blue sky. This was the one place where you could go in Hyderabad and see a vast expanse of sky, due to the fact that three thousand acres had been set aide for crop research. ICRISAT was an interesting place, a UN-funded facility where countries as different as Ethiopia and Mongolia would send researchers to study how to grow crops efficiently in a place with little rain.
Beautiful grounds.
Beyond the stone building were three buildings. One was a small Hindu temple that was built around an old tree. The tree shot out of the temple into the sky. Beyond it was a very small masjid, where perhaps as many as ten people could assemble and face Mecca for prayer five times a day. Beyond that was the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi. I had seen them before, but I decided to get a bit closer to them today.
I walked up to the temple. It was a basic pile of bricks with a huge tree shooting out of its midst. In it was a small altar where flowers and colored dust were spread around. A small room existed right next to it, probably for a holy man who came to live there now and again. Today, it was completely empty. I walked onto the temple and peaked into the altar area. There was a small statues of a sitting god or goddess, and marigolds and colored dust strewn around the front of it. The Puranas said that there were 330 million gods, more than enough to occupy a searching soul. These gods and goddesses existed in ways curiously like humanity. They had marriages, mergers, spats and wars, and even played practical jokes on each other as well as humanity. They were born, grew up, moved in the other-realm, as well as amongst humanity. One thing that seemed to occupy the followers of these gods and goddesses was a desire to receive an elevated status on this planet. In the wink of an eye, the deities could change your fortune. Without a doubt the arrival of prosperity was a sign that they were smiling on you and your kin. An influx of wealth and good fortune were the benefits to be gained from them. An ascetic would sometimes drop out of the pursuit of material wealth on this earth, and they were revered by Hindus. But the reverence was not so much as a sign that those who eschewed the pleasures of this world "got it" more than the others, but because they were so exceptional, so odd.
Means and ends blended together here, the simultaneous attachment to this world mixed in with a profound deference to the deities from the other world.
If it did not work this time, there would always be next time. Next time, and next time. Ad infinitum. Rebirth would take away the sting of failure.
Offer, receive, benefit, watch the end and not the means......
I walked out and toward the masjid. Empty. Arabesque. I knew which way it faced. My love had an uncanny ability to know north, south, east and west. I needed this masjid to know where I was pointed. I had always had a poor sense of direction.
I walked into the masjid. I kept my running shoes on. I was one who followed the Trinitarian heresy, in the eyes of the Umma an infidel who would be crushed in the Final Day by the returning Issa, their Jesus whom I did not understand correctly. The shoes and the faith both prohibited me from legitimate entry, but there was no matawain to escort me out of the masjid, so I walked in. There was some Arabic script on the wall at the front. It almost surely declared the shahada, "la illaha ilallah, wa muhamadan rasul allah." Only allah is worthy of praise, and Mohammed is allah's prophet. A declaration of certainty that gave rise to strict laws of who was living in their sin, and what needed to be done with them. Find the behavioral cancer of sin and cut it out. Thief - take the hand. Adulterer - kill. Blasphemer - take the tongue.
Take what was heard in the whispers in Mohammed's ear and declare strict punishment for violation. As all dwelled in sin, ensure that the powerful had stones and could cast them first, and publicly.
Define and conquer. Place your face on the ground. Watch yourself, and know that you'll be watched.
I left the masjid and walked toward the Church of St. Francis. Pictures of the man on the front, surrounded by animals. The door was unlocked, the first time for that. I opened the door. The church could seat only about fifty people. Small. Light came through the window of colored glass and cast beautiful shades around the sanctuary. There was an altar at the front, covered with books and papers. They were in English. They stated what was to be said, by whom and when. The window at the front of the church had St. Francis. Perhaps he was to be prayed for when your pet was ill. There was another saint for times when you needed help to gain some benefit to your business. Another saint for help with love. And one for selling your house. One more for finding things you have lost.
What happened here was control by Rome. An edifice of unreal splendor, I had been there. The current Pope seemed to have a bright mind. The prior Pope was a good man, helped defeat communism. There were two Popes way back when, weren't there? They were fighting for the keys, a spat amongst the infallible. I think I learned that there were papal armies in centuries past. That had surprised me. Everyone else in the class did not utter a word, just reconciled to the fact that the Popes "were getting theirs" in this world.
Arrive here at the proscribed time, let the man in the front say something, you say something in return. Focus on This, speak to That. Salvation would follow, assuming you were obedient to the teachings of the Fathers.
Purgatory. What exactly was that, again? Whatever.....
Outside of the window I could see a field. Empty of any building. It seemed that i had seen everything the grounds had to offer. But i was being called to the field. i wanted to stand there with nothing for a bit.
I stepped off of the steps of the church and i walked out onto the grass. I turned away from the three buildings. The open field was colored with greens and yellows, grasses that were in various phases of growing and dying. As I walked over to the empty field, I remembered a verse from Psalm 90, "....You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning - though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered." The grass blew in the wind, shifting to the right, and then to the left. Pure submission to the wind and the sun. Water was provided graciously at certain times of the year, it was absent in others. With acres upon acres of canals built by human hands, here was a small field that flourished through being what it was asked to be - a field of grasses. I considered that perhaps we were to be like the grass - being what we are and receiving the benefits of pliable submission. We would have water when water was needed, we would have food when food was needed. "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?"
Why worry about the rest, i thought. I had been taught convincingly that whatever I declared I would not do, i did. The fact that i was here in India proved that i knew better than to plan for myself and my family from this time forward.
Wind, sun, water, grass. That was the only lesson i needed on this property. As the wind blows, bend. As the water is offered, drink. As the sun rises, take of what is given freely. The canals would be dug in my midst, but perhaps the greatest act of Submission i could give was to pull up my roots and move to the open fields. Or perhaps the digging around my roots by Another had been going on for the duration, gently unearthing me while I declared my autonomy. A Gentle Hand was digging with gentle requests for my consent. What is it that i read, "free will is a prerequisite of authentic love."? I am not sure that i can even understand that. When I first read it, I was sure I was now armed with a new point that would impress others in discussion and debate. Now it simply served to remind me of how i was being dug up, and that the Choice of the Field was before me.
I looked over my shoulder. Three buildings and three billion varied believers stood behind me. I had been in the place where I needed to be anchored by a tree, where the world shot up through my faith. I once needed to be held onto this earth, too. I also knew the impulse to have right and wrong defined, and work to ensure that I was held up as one of the Good. I could, from that place, judge others. Haughty enough to attempt humility, misguided enough to judge what was only God's to judge. I had also seen the church universal, filled with its proscriptions, controls, rituals, and hierarchies. I was from the protesting splinter. We often shared the Roman impulse for control.
Now they all sat behind me. i was faced with a living Field where the true example had been declared by something that could not utter a word to me, yet the grasses shouted Truth.
Love.
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal."
The true gift was found in an empty grave. It continues to be declared. Even grass would act as testimony to this. Silent, loud Fields of Grace.
Yes, dig me up.
Amen.
