They say you see what you look for. Seek and you will find. Some of my co-travelers looked for dirt and depravity and paganism, and went home satisfied. I was looking in another direction.
God has been known to appear in many forms. I saw God in holy cows, dozens of them, trailing through the kaleidoscopic streets of India. My childhood acquaintance with cattle in my path through the pasture on the way to the school bus reduced my shock at walking beside those bony, humble-looking Asian creatures. Still the Indian scenes struck me funny--cattle resting in hotel doorways and wandering through narrow market streets, sniffing at fresh fruit, and leaving their deposits behind them.
Startling junior-high social studies class questions came to mind: "If those people in India are starving, why don't they eat the cattle instead of worshiping them?" It is a bit strange, from beefeaters' eyes. But God has been revealed countless times in a foolishness that puts the sophisticated to shame: manger, loaves and fishes, bread and wine. Besides, cattle are not worshiped in India; at least I saw none being genuflected at or receiving offerings or being sprinkled with holy water. They are respected, though.
I suspect cattle are honored not only because they could be someone's reincarnated relative, but also because they are humble and so ugly (like a newborn baby) that they are charming, and because many of them give milk for food and dung for fuel and hides for clothing. Not to mention bearing heavy yokes to pull arduous burdens. Versatile animals. Not God themselves, but certainly they give us glimpses of the divine in flesh.
Talk of incarnation: Meditate on a dung hill. No sanitary pooper-scoopers in India. Folks there do it with their hands. Granted, it is not a highly sought-after duty, but I never saw the women and children who gathered the manure in baskets, carried it home on their heads, patted it into thin discs, and plastered it on walls and the ground to dry for fuel--I never saw them turn up their noses. Maybe the non-verbal cues get lost in the translation, but they seemed to almost enjoy it.
While I do not want to glorify dung handling as a new vocation for aspiring saints (or to imply that Indians would either), I must confess that I am moved by the ritual of taking into one's hands what the world considers filth and using it to cook food and sustain life. Despite the health hazards, even the open-air latrines and children squatting on the sidewalks in early morning speak a refreshing, pungent wisdom: Bodies and even their wastes are good. The earth is holy. Who are we to count unclean what God counts clean?
What would Jesus do if a leper approached him with a rusty can and pleading eyes? Twisted limbs and shriveled faces reflected the outcast carpenter to me. To the least of these, to me. The destitute in India relentlessly reminded me of how we in the United States keep most of our sick people out of sight; are we trying to avoid the possibility that their eyes may reflect back to us our own brokenness?
Beggars were hard to look at, even harder to look away from once their request had met my eye. I had no language to say "Go to the Rama Krishna Society for food," no way to explain that if I gave to one I'd have to give to all, and that I didn't have any small change and had to save my rupees for souvenirs. God grabbed me in their raw hands.
"You want to study Indian religions? Go to the temples," said the tour guides. "You will find God there." Over tea one hot January afternoon an enlightened Hindu brother let us in on a secret to the contrary: "When you go into a temple, God flies out the window."
Tea time, particularly with religious folks, must give God the giggles. Leaders of various Indian religious groups, on a number of occasions, gathered to tell us the essence of their faiths. They always ended up arguing, but Hindu tolerance pervaded. The quiet, spunky Gandhi types gently reminded their colleagues that "nonviolence is not talking too much." Finally the revelation would come not through the content of the speeches, but in the medium: non-apologetic believers each giving their witness while sharing a communion cup of tea.
God in the everyday. In the mundane. God in the magnificent. Sunrise on the Bay of Bengal. No zealous beachcombers or surfers there; just us awe-inspired visitors flirting with the waves, watching dozens of fishermen assembling their ancient boats, spiritedly discussing their launching plans, then pushing off--stripped to loincloths--into the vast waters. So near to life and death. Two of my playful co-travelers almost drowned there. Fisherfolk have a more mature respect for the sea. Images of sunbaked faces on the shores of Galilee merged with the salty sights and sounds of those Madras net-casters so vulnerable before the sun, gathering a meager living from the rhythmic currents that mingle with the waters of my home.
God in the magnificent. In the unspeakable. God in the mundane. In the smelly. In India, they say God is one and without form; all life is worship. Seeking, I found.
Mary Jo Bowman was a peace advocate for the Mid-Atlantic district of the Church of the Brethren when this article appeared.
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