God was there... (Faith Journey pt. 2)

 

Wow. It's been 20 months since I published part one.  Perhaps I can finish part three in a more timely manner. Or not. On with the show!

Nepal is a country in which Christians are a very small minority. In the early 90s, they made up less than one percent of the population. [All of my numbers on this come from the Nepali Census, the latest of which was in 2011.] Now it is approaching two percent (1.4%), but the vast majority of Nepalis are still Hindus (81.3%) with some Buddhists (9.0%) and Muslims (4.4%). During the two years that I lived in Nepal, I never went to an organized church service. I organized a few small ones myself, attended by maybe half a dozen fellow volunteers, but never set foot in a church building.

In our training, and in all the promotional materials for Peace Corps, it was strongly emphasized that we were not allowed to proselytize. The Peace Corps has to maintain a strictly secular image in order to be effective in countries where it is against the law to preach other religions. We did learn that it was acceptable to talk about our religion if asked, but that we shouldn't push it. So I didn't.

I know. To my Christian friends, this sounds like a spiritual desert, which in some ways it was.

But there was spirituality everywhere. I boarded with a Hindu family. I woke every morning to the smell of incense (to attract good spirits) and the jing-a-ling of a little bell (to scare away bad spirits). I know that some families acknowledge God every day though prayers, but this family offered a very multi-sensory appeal to their gods.*

*In the Old Testament there is a recipe for incense that is only to be used in the Temple at Jerusalem, which people are not to use in their homes, or anywhere else. I'm pretty sure this family bought theirs at the little store in the village.

The men in the family wear a Janai (holy thread) under their clothing, looped over one shoulder and under the opposite arm. It was a constant reminder of their faith, hidden from public view most of the time, but always there. And I'm ashamed to admit that I don't remember a lot of details about it, even though Ramesh, the father of the family I lived with, wore one and explained it a bit to me.

When I first met Ramesh, his head was shaved completely. He was nearing the end of a year of mourning the death of his father. Some of my scholarly Christian friends may argue that these death rituals are not acceptable to God, but one cannot deny the spirituality of his actions. Such a visible alteration to one's body for a year would be a reminder to oneself, and everyone who sees it, that life encompasses more than just the span that we witness. This daily physical act of removing part of one's body must have prompted him to ponder the loss of his closest teacher.

Ramesh's family rarely ate meat, because you couldn't just go to the store and buy meat: their village was too small for a regular butcher. Killing an animal for food was a process involving anointing the animal with milk, burning incense, and having it chanted over by a hired holy man.* I could not understand the words, but this was a religious service held in order to put meat on the menu! Most Americans consume meat without making any connection outside of their wallet. It is just food, like any other purchased from the grocery store (except that it tastes super delicious). From a Christian perspective, you can easily argue that God gave Man dominion over the animals, which frees us to not make that connection. But you could also argue that believers in Biblical times rarely ate meat without being aware of it on a personal level (being an animal that they had raised and tended), and often a directly spiritual level (if the animal was being offered as a sacrifice to God).

*An expensive process for sure. And sharing two pigeons among a family with nine children, three adults, and myself meant that no one actually consumed very much meat. By the time the dog finished gnawing on the heads, all that was left was a pile of feathers a pair of beaks, and a few chirps.

I even occasionally met Christian families who had their little home shrines set up with pictures of Jesus in them. Often just a nook in the wall, with incense, strings of flowers, brass lamps, and sometimes little offerings of food or coins.

This is large scale. Imagine a medicine cabinet sized version
with flat pictures, and maybe a couple of action figure-sized statues.

 

The pictures of Jesus are in the same style as the pictures of Shiva and Vishnu and the rest of the Hindu pantheon.

This is somewhat representative of the style of art seen in these shrines.

Sometimes alongside them.

I never saw this one in Nepal. Jesus usually had his own frame,
like the other gods. But Mom always told me that Jesus
wants us to share, so maybe he's setting an example here.

Whatever you may think of this mixing, you have to admit that it would be cool to go back and add "blue" to the song "Jesus Loves the Little Children."

     Scarlet, orange, green and blue,
          Jesus loves them, you should too!
     Jesus loves the little children of the world!

To return to my point (and not a moment too soon), Nepal was not so much a spiritual desert as an uncharted spiritual ocean, filled with a strange liquid that was not the water I was used to. If I had prayed every time I witnessed something with a spiritual connection, I would not have had time to do much of anything else.

Rather than drowning, I felt like I was scooting along on the surface, like a water bug. In hindsight, I could have attempted to "dive" into Hinduism, even with my meager language skills: I've met many westerners who have. But my curiosity about Hinduism (and Buddhism for that matter) never ran very deep. So in essence, I used my time in Nepal to practice Christianity without much influence from Christian institutions. Like a castaway. And that was good, because everyone needs opportunities to fail. Perhaps even to shipwreck.

I know, I know. It's time to scuttle this metaphor, before I start talking like a pirate.

Mistakes are important. I tell my students very regularly that I require them to make mistakes: it's my number two rule in class, right behind "Speak English." I tell them that mistakes are the best way to learn English, which is true. I also tell them that they should learn to not fear mistakes, in language and life both. I hope that my students to learn to accept themselves as worthy, mistakes and all. I suspect that some of them take it as a license to do the minimum work necessary to pass, but I consider it to be a worthy trade-off for the students who are freed by this directive.

In Nepal I made my share of mistakes, but the 26 months I spent there were not completely dry (Avast!). I read completely through my Bible for the first time in my life. I had read a great deal of it up until then, but never a cover-to-cover reading. So that was a good thing. And... again, without consulting my journals it is difficult to assess my spiritual journey during that time, but I suspect that it was stagnant. I was living without a church, and in a kind of long distance relationship with the capital-C Church. I don't remember any other faith landmarks.

My lifestyle alternated between long slogs of living in the village, and brief intervals with other volunteers. In the village, I had no contact with other foreigners. I did my job, engaged in the very limited conversations I was capable of (no doubt the roots of my "make mistakes rule"), and played lots of solitaire (with actual cards!). I read whatever books I could get my hands on, wrote almost weekly letters to my parents (which are the direct ancestors of the Roblog), and hiked to Phidim every week or two. It was very easy to focus on the difficulties.

Phidim, the district center: a four and a half hour trail hike to my village the first time. My record a year later was less than half that.* Phidim had electricity, was on a drivable road, and was full of people who I didn't see every day. Phidim is where I could get a cold beer or two, a little plate of chicken with my rice, and my mail from home. Phidim is where I learned to drink instant coffee mixed with whole buffalo milk and enough sugar to make the Starbucks mermaid blush. Phidim is where I could maybe get a phone call from home, if we had arranged it in letters previously and the phone gods weren't being vindictive. Phidim's appearance would have made you think "third world," even as that phrase was becoming less socially acceptable.** But at that time, for me, it was very easy to focus on the comforts.

*I believe that my record was around 90 minutes. I wish I knew how far it was and what the total elevation change was. Even with Google Maps it is impossible for me to trace that trail now.

** Third compared to what? By what metrics? Let me guess, a country run by white men who also decide the metrics.

On the rare occasion I got together with large groups of other volunteers, things got crazy. Weeks of tension from isolation were released in just a few days. Lots of drinking, a legendary party or two, once or twice waking up stoned, and the kind of conversations that help you to discover and solidify who you are, what is important to you, and what life is all about. With other volunteers, it was very easy to both have fun and to open up completely.

A quick aside, too large for a footnote: I know that my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers sound like a bunch of trouble makers, but many, if not most of them, were like me: they wanted to make a difference in the world. They wanted to experience the world in a way you couldn't in your home country. They were all college graduates, some with higher degrees. As a whole, they leaned very strongly liberal, somewhat atheist, and were one of the most likeable large groups of people I've ever met. Including church congregations. I have not seen most of them outside of Facebook since we were in Nepal together, and my life is poorer as a result. Shout-out to my RPCV peeps! Aside sockeyo!

Hardships. Comforts. Fun. And squeezed into the cracks, a myopic awareness of God. Maybe someday I will find a way to tell those stories with neither condescension nor glorification. The further in the past they recede, the more they seem like a story I read a long time ago.

Nepal wasn't rock bottom, just a kind of low point. I was turning the volume way down on God, but God was there. In part three I'll hit on another low point, and some high points. Just give me a few months to work it out.

END OF PART 2