Manali Missives 46/2014 Good Friday

Good Friday

Well, we’ve finished the journey through Lent and reached Good Friday. What was it like to celebrate this vital day of the Christian calendar in a setting in which Christianity is very much in a minority?

In some ways there was very little difference from home. We live in a “Christian compound” in Manali. Today Lena was off work (as much as she ever can be while in the compound!). Day Star School had today as a holiday too, though because students and other young people roamed the playground all day I guess that many parents were still at work.

The Manali Masihi Mandali Church of North India congregation that worships in a church building in the compound held its Good Friday service between 12md and 3pm. After half an hour of chorus, guitar-led singing, with a group from the Dar ul-Fazl Children’s Home we got down to business: 7 talks, each of 15 minutes’ duration and by different people, on each of the 7 sayings of Jesus on the cross.

It looked like a marathon to me! After about 90 minutes of a marathon the body has exhausted its energy food supply and starts to convert body tissue into energy. That’s often called “hitting the wall”. Good marathon runners have to work out ways of “running through the wall”. After 90 minutes this afternoon, first the children started fidgeting and walking out, then one or two of the men crawled to a different place in the room to get more comfortable, then…You can imagine.

I was second last speaker, so I had everyone stand up, stretch and turn around, and I used the data projector to show pictures. Not very spiritual, but I think I managed to keep the attention of most people!

After the service we accompanied a new friend Thomas to a Bengali restaurant for lunch. Then back to our flat where we relaxed skyped (two of) our children and had a really good talk over evening devotions. I really value that daily time of reading a devotional, praying and talking with Lena.

Manali Missives 45/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Extras

An Indian journey through Lent, Extras

A Celebration of the Seder

Dr Anna Alexander, the American wife of Lady Willingdon Hospital’s Superintendent Dr Philip, has a deep interest in the unity of the Bible’s message despite it having been written over more than 1500 years by many different authors, in several different languages and in multiple contexts. Another way of  putting this might be the late Francis Schaeffer’s book title: “Christianity is Jewish”.

Over the past two years Anna has expressed this interest on Maundy Thursday (the day, specifically the evening, before Good Friday) by preparing and hosting a Messianic (ie. Christian) Jewish version of the “Seder” or Passover.

Last night’s was Lena’s and my first, and Anna honoured us by having me act as chief liturgist and Lena as assistant narrator to Anna herself. To describe the event properly would take many words. It included 15 basic sections, of which the meal itself and the communal recounting of Israel’s Exodus history were the main parts. The whole evening took several hours.

It struck me afterwards that, just as the annual Passover meal was powerfully community forming for Jews in exile and minorities of various sorts over thousands of years, so was this particular version for the Christian house group that held it. Last night about 18 people attended from a number of background. Indians were of course the most numerous, but most of these were internal immigrants who came from various non-Hindi speaking states of the country. Americans were the next most numerous, but although as we know the U.S. is almost as diverse and dynamic as India, they at least have the English language in common.  The American Christians of Manali are a highly diverse group. There were, for example, two newly arrived Korean-Americans. There were also a couple of Australians (one of whom is an Indian-born Swede!).

Set in overwhelmingly Hindu, and also local Christian contexts this disparate group of expatriate Christians needs a communal identity. That was both expressed and fulfilled in this excellent event, and in the enthusiastic chorus singing that followed naturally at its conclusion.

Thank you Anna Alexander!

Manali Missives 44/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Wednesday in Holy Week

**An Indian Journey through Lent, Wednesday in Holy Week**

Jesus is Betrayed

Today's Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9
“The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,
    to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
    wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears;
    I have not been rebellious,
    I have not turned away.
I offered my back to those who beat me,
    my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
    from mocking and spitting.
Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
    I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
    and I know I will not be put to shame.
He who vindicates me is near.
    Who then will bring charges against me?
    Let us face each other!
Who is my accuser?
    Let him confront me!
It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.
    Who will condemn me?
They will all wear out like a garment;
    the moths will eat them up.”

Today’s New Testament Reading: John 13:21-35

“After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”

His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”

Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”

Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.

So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.

When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.””

Manali Missives 43/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Extra Resources for Holy Week

An Indian Journey through Lent, Extra Resources for Holy Week

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Why-Believe-in-the-Resurrection-of-Jesus.html

Manali Missives 42/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 40

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 40

Ecotheology and Resurrection: A new Heavens and a new Earth or Creation Re-Newed?

Welcome to the 40th and last diary entry in this Indian Journey through Lent. Thank you for journeying with me, for all or some of the way, as I’ve ranged far and wide, prompted by what I’ve experienced over this period. This year Lent has been a little strange. There are usually 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Holy Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. This year there will be 46, inclusive. I don’t understand why that is so, but no matter. I may put out some readings for each day in Holy Week.

It feels good and right to conclude this series by considering the relationship between ecotheology (my speciality) and resurrection (the climax of the Lent and Easter seasons. My father and I share much in outlook, including a pessimism about the future of the world. Neither of us can see how humanity, left to ourselves and given our selfishness, rapid increase in population and vast power over nature can actually survive, at least without great trauma. The difference between us is that I believe that there is a good God who created this world and who has been working for thousands of years not only to save it from extinction but to restore it.

There are questions that immediately challenge this stance. The first is usually cast in terms of evolutionary theory these days; I think it can be simplified to “Is what is, right, simply by virtue of being? Or is there something fundamentally wrong with the way this world is that a good God is working to set right?” As a trained scientist I’ve had to think long and hard about evolutionary theory. To be honest I still don’t know how to hold it together with my Christian faith. In fact, I think it presents huge problems for any attempts to develop morals and ethics. AND VICE VERSA! Yet as a scientist I am committed to honouring truth, wherever that might lead me. So I just let them sit there, uncomfortably side by side.

The resurrection of Christ from death presents an enormous challenge to evolutionary theory, but only if we use the word in the sense that the Greek word it translates, “anastasia” actually meant. For this next section I’m indebted to N T Wright, one of the world’s greatest and most prolific church historians, theologians and bible expositors. I’ll work from his commentary on The Acts of the Apostles, titled “Acts for Everyone”, Chapter 13, vv. 44-52 because I happened to read it this morning, but Wright writes on this subject a great deal. His best academic treatment (a veritable doorstop!) is “The Resurrection of the Son of God” and the best easily readable treatment is “Surprised by Hope”.

Wright argues that at the beginning of Church history the word “anastasia” clearly and unambiguously referred to someone being bodily alive again after being bodily dead. But centuries of imprecision have meant that many people today, when they say ‘resurrection’, actually think ‘disembodied immortality’. Once again, shades of Plato’s Forms.

Something very similar to this, and for the same reason, has happened to the phrase ‘eternal life’, says Wright. What do you think of at once when you hear that phrase? Chances are, if you are part of a church within, or influenced by, the Western church of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, you will think of a final state which is beyond space and time: an ‘eternity’ in which, as one hymn puts it, ‘time shall be no more’, and space and matter as well.

But the phrase which has so often been translated ‘eternal life’ actually means ‘the life of the age’. Jews of Paul’s day and many other times would know exactly what was meant. For them, there were two ‘ages’, or ‘periods of world history’, the present age and the age to come. And the ‘life’ of the ‘age to come’ is the state to which all devout Jews would aspire. Nobody, thinking within the framework of thought which this phrase reflects, imagined that this ‘age’ would be ‘eternal’ in our sense – timeless, spaceless, matterless. It will be a whole new period of history, when everything will be put right at last. It will be the ‘great restoration’. Everything will be different; but it will still be a world like ours, only much, much more so, more solid, more throbbing with life and energy, because the curse of corruption and death itself will have been banished, making it ‘eternal’ in that sense but not in our usual ones. It is our inability, in the Western thought of recent centuries, to conceive of such a world (is it actually inability? or is it unwillingness?) that has made it so hard to speak of some of the foundational beliefs of the early Christians.

When Paul and the others spoke of ‘eternal life’, they didn’t mean something (as we say) ‘purely spiritual’. **The life of the coming age had already begun when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning, and will be complete when God does for the whole world what he did for Jesus that day.** And all those who share in that Easter life in the present are assured of a full share in it in the future. That is what it means to be part of ‘the life of the coming age’ now, and on that great day.

That, my friends, is what sustains my ecotheological hope. I believe that just as the resurrected Christ was radically different from but continuous with the crucified Jesus, so the re-newed heaven and earth (which, by the way, Wright understands to be the two complementary parts of God’s creation) will be continuous with, affected by but radically different from the old. That’s why every act of protest against the abuse of asylum seekers and women; every tree-planting ceremony arranged by an Indian school, every decommissioning of a coal-powered station in because of increases in efficiencies and the sheer weight of installation of solar panels, every extra dollar our government and we the citizens give in overseas aid…and so on…will not only make our current world a better place but will be reflected in ways we do not yet understand in God’s resurrected, restored world.

Have a blessed Holy Week and may the risen Christ be with you this Easter.

Manali Missives 41/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 39

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 39

Ecotheology and the Goal of the Gospel

In yesterday’s entry I introduced my specialty, ecotheology, and started to address the most common challenge to its validity: what does it have to do with the Gospel, that is, the central Christian message? I concluded by remarking that I have several problems with the way that central Christian message is often understood within the evangelical tradition in which I grew up. The first is that I can no longer accept that God’s entire interest on earth is with human beings. I quoted two of the Bible’s most famous texts as indicative of my revised stance.

The second problem I have is with the Goal of the Gospel. As a young evangelical I was taught that the goal is to escape earth and get to heaven. I don’t remember being told what heaven was like, except that it was perfect, and we wouldn’t have to suffer or be sad. It was more implied than stated that heaven was somewhere up there, as in the exclamation “Heavens above!”, and the fact that the very word heaven did service  to describe the locations both of the afterlife and of the sky.

These days I have two problems with all of that. One is that it sounds very like Plato’s theory of forms rather than being “biblical” or “Christian”. Half a millennium before Christ the great Greek philosopher Plato argued that somewhere “way beyond the blue” was a world in which the perfect, eternal forms of everything that existed materially and imperfectly here on earth was located. Early Christianity, as it broke out of its Jewish confines into the Greek-speaking, Roman-ruled Mediterranean world started reading Jewish-founded belief through this lens of Greek philosophy. We still do today. As the twentieth century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead put it, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” That means, secondly and in consequence, that in the dualistic western tradition we have tended  to prioritise heaven over earth, even as we cheerfully utilised (and despoiled) earth for our earthly purposes.

So what is the Goal of the Gospel, and what does that have to do with Ecotheology? The best place to look for answers to those questions is actually in the Resurrection of Jesus. And what better time to look at the Resurrection than at Easter time? Tomorrow I shall conclude these 40 days of diary entries and move into Holy Week by doing just that.

Manali Missives 40/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 38

An Indian Jo Roger-Dibbenurney through Lent, Day 38

Is Ecotheology of the Gospel? 1

In my first placement during the late 1980s I had an Anglican colleague of evangelical persuasion who once warned me that if you add anything to the Gospel you actually detract from it. The Gospel for him means that by dying on the cross Jesus Christ provided a perfect sacrifice that paid for human wrongdoing. By being raised from death He won the victory over death. By putting one’s faith and trust in Jesus Christ, acknowledging that He is Lord and asking for pardon for one’s sins one avails oneself of Jesus’ sacrifice, and one goes to heaven and enjoys eternal life when one dies.

I grew up on that belief. So did many of my friends and acquaintances in different parts of the world. There was, for example, Agne, the excellent Swedish farmer and devout evangelical Christian who, when he heard that I was studying ecotheology, asked, “What does that have to do with Christianity?” There was the young woman of the Reformed tradition who, just as puzzled, asked what the use of ecotheology was: “Isn’t this world going to burn?” There was Prasad, my friend from my years in the leprosy hospital in south India who thought that ecotheology smelt of syncretism, a very common fear for Indian Christians. In a way, though, Malcolm, the grand old Presbyterian, then Uniting Church minister shared Prasad’s concern. “The ‘eco’ tail will inevitably wag the theological dog,” he intoned solemnly.

I know and respect all of that. It’s where I’ve come from, and these are all fine people for whom I have great respect. The thing is…well there are several things actually. One is that I can’t accept anymore that God’s entire interest on earth is with human beings. That strikes me as being very selfish (anthropocentric is the long, Greek-derived word they use in theological discussions.) All of this is debated endlessly by theologians, but a couple of important bible verses will do me this evening. John 3.16, often called “the little bible”, because it is said to summarise the Bible’s meaning, says “For God so loved…wait for it…THE WORLD that He sent His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” It doesn’t remove the dire warning of humanity’s peril, but God’s motivation was love for the world God made.

Then there is an amazing passage in paul’s letter to the church in Rome, chapter 8:
“18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved.”

That’s quite enough for one night. Tomorrow I’ll continue to explain why my understanding of “the Gospel” has changed, largely through my study of ecotheology.

Manali Missives 39/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 37

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 37

Ecotheology and Lent

In yesterday’s diary/blog entry I covered the last week of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa’s Carbon Fast. It’s been a terrific program, I think, very practical in the way that it calls us all to simpler, more eco-friendly lifestyles. But it doesn’t start with “praxis” (practice), and neither it should. Any Christian activity should always start with God, that is, with theology. So it strikes me that I should write something about “ecotheology”, the academic discipline in which I have become a specialist and which I have made the journey to India to communicate.

My friend professor Barry Leal described ecotheology thus:
“Ecological theology, or ecotheology as it is called these days, arises from an attempt to explore the relationships between the academic disciplines of ecology and theology.”

In the discipline of systematic theology there is a doctrine of creation, but in recent centuries, and particularly in protestant circles, this has received rather less attention than it once did. Ecotheology was stimulated by the worsening ecological crisis.

“Ecology” is itself a compound word, coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel from the Greek words oikos, meaning “house” and logos, meaning “word” or “study”. Therefore, ecology’s most basic meaning is the study of one’s house or home, when these words are interpreted broadly as one’s habitat or environment. However, it has taken on the more specialized meaning of
“the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.”

Theology is literally the study of theos, God. The medieval theologian Anselm gave the classic definition of theology:
“Faith seeking understanding.”

Gordon Dicker has expanded this to:
“the activity of a person of faith in seeking to understand that faith and its implication for his or her life.”

More recently David Tracy has further refined the praxis (practical) element of theology. His definition is:
“the attempt to establish mutually critical correlations between an interpretation of the Christian tradition and an interpretation of the contemporary situation.”

This definition includes the task of theology, which one might say more prosaically is to help people to live Christianly. Using Tracy’s definition of theology, the task of ecotheology is to establish mutually critical correlations between an interpretation of the Christian tradition and an interpretation, or reading, of ecology. **In simpler terms it is to help people to live Christianly in relation with the rest of creation. **

Manali Missives 38/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 36

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 36

The Anglican Communion’s Carbon Fast
WEEK #5 REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE... AND FIX!
“The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt.”         Isaiah 24:4-6

MEAT-FREE Monday, 7 April LEARN:
“There is no such thing as 'away'. When we throw anything away, it must go SOMEWHERE.”                                                             Annie Leonard
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/ story-of-stuff/

Tuesday, 8 April AT HOME:
Compost. Put nutrients from your food waste back into the soil, not into methane-emitting landfill. If you don't have a garden, investigate other options like wormeries.

Wednesday, 9 April IN COMMUNITY:
At work, get your office to go 'paper-free'. Join the 21st century—use email or apps to manage projects and communicate at the office. Ask suppliers and service providers to send statements and other documentation via email rather than post/print out.

Thursday, 10 April SHARE:
Share with friends and family and with us on Facebook what you’ve learnt this week (and throughout the Carbon Fast), and how you have changed your thinking and habits to better steward our God-given home.

FISH FRIDAY, 11 April LOCAL:
Prevention is better than cure. Rather than recycling more, buy less packaging and other disposable items. Choose products with little or no packaging, and ask a supermarket chain near you to reduce the amount of plastic they use.

Saturday, 12 April GLOBAL:
Ponder this: Where does everything go? And what impact does it have on the planet and our health? The methane that leaks from landfills, the waste that is produced during the manufacturing of our new purchases... Can we make informed choices that are better for our health and the planet?

PALM SUNDAY, 13 April
Plan not to buy anything today. Spend time with people instead. Think about making this a Sunday ritual.

And that is that. During Holy Week the Church focuses upon the events of Holy Week. I hope you’ve found the idea of a Carbon Fast, and the variety of activities that flow from it helpful. 

Manali Missives 37/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 35

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 35

Markers on a Spiralling Way

Like many couples Lena and I have developed our own rituals, special days and mutual understandings. These things that we hold in common function as “binding agents” (Sorry for the term borrowed from chemistry!) and markers along the way of our journey through life together. They help make our relationship special to us.

One of the days is April 8th. It was on this day in 1982 that we first met, at Visakhapatnam Airport in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. We’ve told the story of how we met and what we did many times; I won’t repeat it here. What interests me is the way in which over the past 32 years our journey has not so much completed a full circle as traced a spiral. Lena went to Bhutan as a nurse-midwife; she returned to India as a doctor. I was a scientific officer; now I’m an ecotheologian. She worked in the Himalayas, but in another country - Bhutan. I lived on the coastal plain of the same country I’m now in, though in terms of language and culture south India could easily be another country. We both lived in hospital compounds then, and we live in a different hospital compound now. I don’t know what has happened to the Bhutanese hospitals Lena lived in, but the south Indian one has been thoroughly modernised and, with the decline of leprosy as a threat to public health, has been converted into a community hospital. Though Lady Willingdon Hospital was inaugurated as a clinic in 1935 it is the years since 1982 that have seen tremendous growth on the compound. In particular, the 500 student DayStar School was built in the 1980s in the hospital grounds. Visakhapatnam Airport symbolises the great technological strides India has made over these years. When I met Lena there she walked across the tarmac to a tiny terminal; today “Vizag” has a huge, new terminal, one of many such being built at the airports of India’s major centres, replete with mobile enclosed walkways that stretch out to parked aircraft.

Even religiously things are changing, but remain as they were. India remains pre-eminently a religious country. These two days in Manali feature a festival to the goddess Durga/Kali in which vast amounts of food are cooked for her then, because for obvious reasons she doesn’t eat it, is handed out freely to anyone humans who wants it. In some ways India is thoroughly modern, and in others it reminds me of the situation that the first Christians met, as described in the Book of Acts.

Manali Missives 36/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 34

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 34

Diversity & Contrast II

After returning from Church on Sunday morning Lena and I left Shimla a little before midday, on the 7 hour trip back to Manali. We decided to travel by a back route because it seemed to be significantly shorter than via the highway, sections of which, due to heavy rain and traffic, had been badly damaged. Our trip turned into a minor epic! We did not know that it included crossing the 3,120 metre high Jalori Pass, which is featured among India’s most dangerous roads!
(http://www.dangerousroads.org/india/887-jalori-pass-india.html)

The trip took us to some really remote places, climbing repeatedly from narrow river valleys to precipitous peaks. Well, it seemed remote, until around the next bend would be a village. At one point our way along the one lane Highway 11 (That means one lane in total, not in each direction! Imagine passing a bus or truck going in the opposite direction with sheer rock face on one side a precipice on the other!) was blocked by several thoroughly modern misses accompanied by a young man. There was a moment of hilarity as the girl on her inevitable mobile phone, being dragged in opposite directions off the road by her friends, realised that it was two “angrez” (Europeans) who were bearing down on her!

Although Jalori Pass has now been opened after winter there is still at least a metre of snow beside the road which is inevitably muddy, slushy and slippery. Having been forced into first gear by the steep ascent for many kilometres leading up to the pass I then had to use first gear as a brake for many kilometres downwards. It started snowing, then raining as we descended, and the windscreen wipers worked overtime. Yet even here was a moment of hilarity. Various parties of Indians drove (bravely or foolhardily) to the summit in their sedans to experience snow. One group - a couple of young men and a young woman - were gambolling around, throwing snowballs. “No, no, no, don’t you dare!” I called out through the open window. But the young woman, not a bit demure, certainly dared!

Eventually we reached lower terrain, and a road we had travelled before. We had been following Google Maps and, to be fair, that had enabled Lena to give me correct advice a number of times. However, at this point, nearly as the end of our adventure, Ms Google Maps led us awfully astray. Just as, once before she had led me through Chandigarh’s industrial estate to a freeway that is still under construction, she now led us onto a decommissioned road. Some years ago the river valley we were now driving along had been dammed. Suddenly a landslide forced me to stop, which was just as well, because behind that I could see the road disappearing underwater! I turned Shadowfax II around (It couldn’t have been more than a 12 point turn!), drove back to the main road and resorted to the traditional Indian direction-finding method. Stopping beside the first people we saw I called out “Bhaiya! Kerhan Kullu hai?” (Brother, where’s [the town of] Kullu?) Lena put the question in more refined terms, and when the 2 men got over their shock at being addressed in Hindi by two Angrez we discovered that we were very nearly correct. Ms Google Maps had just wanted us to travel up the old highway, on the wrong side of the river. How was she to know that it was now underwater and the new highway now disappeared into a tunnel?

The rest of the journey was a doddle really…except for the fellow who decided to try and force us off the road while we were overtaking him, the many who refused to turn off their hi-beams as we approached, the section of highway that has been turned into a washboard by a flood a few years ago… But Shadowfax II was, once again, magnificent, an adjective we can use to describe the terrain through which we were blessed to pass safely yesterday. It was truly a day filled with diversity and contrast.

Manali Missives 35/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 33

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 33

Diversity & Contrast I

Though it’s almost a commonplace to say that India is a country of mind-boggling diversity examples keep…well…boggling my mind.

Over thirty years ago I attended a Republic Day parade in Delhi in the limousine of the ambassador of the small south American state of Guyana. That evening I caught a train back to my home and workplace about 2000 kilometres south, with an unreserved ticket. I shared a third class, 3 tiered carriage built for 75 people with about 200 others, and spent two nights straddling 2 of the uppermost bunks in a compartment, about two metres above the floor. When I left the train at about 1am on the second night I hitched a ride back to my hospital on the back of a lorry. Oh to be young again!

But yesterday’s events outdid the contrast even of my means of transport all those years ago. Over the next two blogs I’ll describe Sunday, 6th April, a most amazing day, filled with diversity and contrast.

Early in the morning I participated in Christ Church’s English service. You will recall that Christ Church was the Church of England Church that the highest officials of the British Raj attended during the summer months when they resided in Shimla. Rev Mushtaq Malk had me sit in the first pew, but it was only about halfway through the service that I noticed a plaque in front of me inscribed with H.E. THE VICEROY. Being chauffeured in an ambassadorial vehicle of a former colony was one thing; sitting where the first representatives of the King Emperor in the jewel of the Empire had warmed the pews for nearly 100 years (1858 - 1947) was entirely another matter!

It gave me insights into the cool, deist, enlightenment form of Christian religion adopted by the British establishment. Though much has changed and is still changing since the British left, I understand that the whole order of service during the time of the British Raj followed a form closely designed and approved by humans. There was some room for change and spontaneity, but that was entirely at the discretion of the priest who in his turn performed these rites under the watchful eye of the Viceroy. His Excellency The Viceroy  sat about 15 metres from where the priest administered the ritual of Holy Communion - far enough away to discourage informality and spontaneity, but close enough to know instantly if the priest was transgressing his boundaries!

Steeply sloping Shimla exists because of its elaborate system of huge retaining walls. On the way back from church I passed one that was especially large, and buttressed. Each of the buttresses, though painted, had a dark stain about 1.5 metres above ground level. I noticed person after person interrupting their walk to touch their foreheads against one or other buttress in a gesture of respect. Above the retaining wall stood a Hindu temple. It reminded me that in our hotel that morning the staff had coordinated their own private worship with the Hindu worship offered on Indian TV. While the priest on TV purified (?) an idol with burning incense to the tolling of bells they  burnt incense at the hotel’s counter to several images of the Hindu elephant god Ganesh.

I don’t think there could be two modes of worship more different from each other than the highly organised, formalised, corporate worship to a distant, deist deity offered by the imperial Church of England, and the simple, informal, individual acts of piety offered by Hindus passing by and under the temple as they went about their daily business. The two ways offer up *so* many contrasts; you can surely think of some yourself. I’ll just say that since Hinduism has for nearly a millennium resisted the best efforts of Islam to convert it out of existence it’s not at all surprising that deist Christianity has not succeeded. It’s *because* I’m a passionate Christian that I appreciate the personal relationship with God one finds in Hindu writings. At the heart of my religious belief is a personal, loving relationship with God, whom I understand through Jesus of Nazareth. Although the growing evangelical movement (which in recent years seems to have been all too often carried by its own internal logic to strange, even cruel places) provided a welcome counterpoint, I see little evidence of that personal, loving relationship with God in the deist Christianity of Empire.

Manali Missives 34/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 32

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 32

The Toy Railway

This holiday/R & R in Shimla is nearly at an end. Lena’s cough is still troubling her, and walking up Shimla’s numerous steep hills leaves her breathless, but in a way that has been good. She has been forced to slow down; her enforced Lenten fast has been from work! Today we celebrated 32 years since we met with an excellent lunch in a fine hotel.

After lunch I did a little research for my parents’, brother’s and sister-in-law’s visit to Shimla later this year. Between 1847 and 1903 the British built a railway between Shimla and and Kalka, not far from Chandigarh. In October my family will ride on this stupendous feat of engineering, called the “Toy Railway” because of its narrow gauge. Just under a hundred kilometres long, with over 100 hundred tunnels, twisting and rising, the railway is a feat of engineering extraordinary even amongst the many that the British achieved in India.

Indians still feel ambiguous about the British heritage. Coming first to trade the Brits used the empire-builders’ old tactic of “divide and rule” ruthlessly to increase their power across the patchwork of competing states and kingdoms that made up the subcontinent. Then they consolidated their power so that from Afghanistan to Burma, and Kashmir to Kanyakumari the sub-continent became the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. A photo I saw a couple of days ago in the “Viceroy’s Lodge” of one of the late nineteenth century Viceroys and his senior staff showed clearly the arrogance of empire in their expressions and demeanour. Of course the Indians didn’t like being ruled by foreigners! No one does, especially when the rulers helped themselves to the great wealth of the sub-continent, and showed often and clearly that they thought themselves to be superior to the “natives”.

Yet Indians still acknowledge the good qualities of the British - the rule of law, education, the sense of justice, the brilliant feats of engineering. I don’t know how many times Indians have told me that India’s network of railways unified the country. And Christian Indians would say that the British enabled the good news of Christ to be shared across the country too.

Life’s complicated, isn’t it!

Manali Missives 33/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 31

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 31

From Scandal Point to House Service

Yesterday (the day evidently exhausted me so much that I fell asleep without writing my blog) I was invited to a meeting at the salaciously named “Scandal Point”. Not surprisingly, as it turned out, I took a while to work out that Scandal Point is situated where The Ridge and The Mall (road) converge. There is definitely no point at Scandal point, but it is associated with a scandalous story.

The story goes that in 1892 Bhupinder Singh, the then Maharaja (ruler) of Patiala, eloped with the daughter of the British Viceroy from the junction of The Mall and The Ridge, making that the point at which the scandal initiated. This led to the Maharaja being banned by the British authorities from entering Shimla. He countered the move by building himself a new summer capital - the now famous hill resort of Chail, 45 km from Shimla.

Now Bhupinder Singh was apparently a womaniser (as were many of India’s rulers), but Chandigarh based author Manju Jaidka argues that it was unlikely that he was the culprit, since he was only one year old at the time! She argues that instead it was Bhupinder’s father Rajindra Singh who did the deed. Evidently, even in restrained Victorian times the English found it difficult to prevent cross-cultural liaisons with Indians!

Anyway, my purpose at Scandal Point was much more prosaic (though to be frank, at Scandal Point, as everywhere else in India, many pretty young women are to be found!). I met Rev Mushtaq Malk and his wife and son, and together we climbed down the precipitous mountainside to a taxi stand, where we took a ride to a private house, the venue for a prayer service and a 61st birthday party. We sang Christian hymns (I played guitar while Mushtaq played drums and his son Arvind played harmonium), prayed and Mushtaq preached. It was like many a house service in which I’ve participated in Australia and Sweden over the past 25+ years.

Only afterwards did Mushtaq and his wife Neera tell me that over half the people present were Hindus! Hmmm…that made me particularly glad that in a conversation with the house owner, whose birthday was being celebrated, about the suitability of geothermal energy for this region of India, I did NOT try to argue that temples that have been erected wherever thermal springs are found be replaced by geothermal power units! That would be a distinctly western approach.

And I’m so glad for the various forms of cross-cultural liaisons that go on in this most complex of lands.

Manali Missives 32/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 30

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 30

Today I’ll return to Week 4 of the Anglican Church of southern Africa’s Carbon Fast for Lent.

WEEK #4 FOOD PRODUCTION:
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” - 1 Corinthians 10:31

MEAT-FREE MONDAY, 31st March LEARN:
Start, or transform, your own veggie patch by learning about gardening organically. Organic food is food which is produced using environmentally friendly methods and recognises the direct connection between our health and how the food we eat is produced.

Tuesday, 1st April AT HOME:
Prepare and enjoy a simple meal with local and seasonal food. Why not plan each meal this week around seasonal ingredients – maybe even try a new ingredient or recipe. (Be sure to find out which fish species are endangered.)

Wednesday, 2nd April IN COMMUNITY:
Organise an organic, seasonal, local, fresh produce market at your church once-off or start a monthly market. Invite local farmers and producers to engage with churchgoers and the larger community.

Thursday, 3rd April SHARE:
Tell friends, family and acquaintances that you are participating in Meat-Free Mondays... If you are a vegetarian, make Mondays dairy-free!
http://meatfreemondays.com/

FISH FRIDAY, 4th April LOCAL:
Don't poison the environment. In your own garden, stop using weed killers that contaminate the soil and groundwater with harmful chemicals. Don't pour oils, paints and detergents down storm-water drains. This pollutes the rivers and other fresh water sources.

Saturday, 5th April GLOBAL:
Cut air miles. Don't buy any food that you know has been imported by plane (apart from fair trade products). If labelling is unclear, ask. Instead, support local producers and choose seasonal fruits and vegetables.

Sunday, 6th April SABBATH:
Find ways to garden in or with your church or community. Resurrect a forgotten wasteland or help weed a neighbour’s garden. Grow things you can all eat and enjoy.


Manali Missives 31/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 29

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 29
Monkey Business

Like other Indian towns Shimla harbours a far wider variety and greater numbers of fauna than most western towns. In a typical Indian town you are likely to encounter cows which, since Hinduism gives them the status of gods, are allowed to roam everywhere (though they can be treated quite abruptly by humans if they stand in the way for too long); donkeys, horses (both of which can be used as beasts of burden), crows, kites, and in drier areas camels. Manali even has its own yak which can often be seen wending its way down to the town’s mall.

Then there are what I call India’s dominant species, dogs and monkeys (In India the contest between cats and dogs has been decided!). Packs of dogs roam and lounge in every Indian town. Generally this is not a problem. The dogs are usually good-natured. I’m often barked at and chased when I ride my German mountain bike in Manali, but that’s because I’m an unusual sight (and smell), and the dogs peel off without having done anything when I reach the edge of their territory. Only when a dog contracts rabies is there panic among dogs and humans alike.

The dogs rule at ground level. They are mobile, their teeth are good weapons and they hunt in packs. But everywhere else, and even on the ground, monkeys roam free. I often hear them clambering over the roof at Johnson’s Café, one of Manali’s more prestigious water holes.

Monkeys simply climb and jump to avoid dogs, but they and humans have a tense relationship. Monkeys are so superbly athletic that they are very rarely caught. Although they are much smaller than humans they are very strong, and their bite is dangerous. Humans are more numerous, cunning, and we have guns. But if a troupe of monkeys appears humans tend to keep out of their way. Dr Paul, the medical superintendent of the CNI’s Maple Leaf Hospital in forested grounds at Kangra told me that he has been attacked and knocked to the ground by four monkeys, and Rajni Bala, a new presbyter who lives in a girls’ hostel there says that she and the young girls live in fear of being attacked.

This strange ménage à trois does, however, produce its humorous  moments. This afternoon as I passed the Cecil Oberoi, one of Shimla’s most luxurious hotels, I noticed a monkey clambering over its portico, nursing its injured front paw. It had clearly been on an expedition higher up in the multi-storeyed hotel, and was trying to get away. The tree it wanted to climb down had a large trunk and no branches, and with its injured paw the monkey had to be careful. Just then a dog passed by on the other side of the road. The monkey let out an alarm, but the dog ignored it, so the monkey made its way to ground level and loped off carefully in the opposite direction. Just then a very human, female, loud alarm call (We call it a scream!) sounded from behind an open window several floors up in the luxury hotel. In a flash of orange-brown a second monkey streaked down the building to ground level and off in the same direction as the first. The Indian who had been watching this little drama unfold with me turned to me and said, between chuckles, “If you don’t want to let the monkey in, close the window!”

Manali Missives 30/2014 An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 28

An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 28
Afternoon Tea at the Vicarage

Today Lena and I had the great good fortune of having high tea at the Shimla vicarage. I must explain and update the terminology. The Vicar, now called the Presbyter-in-Charge, is the Rev Mushtaq Malk. He and his wife Neera - who is also a Presbyter - and their two children Arvind and Rhythm rattle around in a huge converted school that may still be called the Vicarage. The Reverends Malk now minister within the Church of North India which, like the Uniting Church in Australia is a union denomination made up of several antecedent denominations brought together in the 1970s.

Christ Church in Shimla is the second oldest church in south Asia. It was the church the British leadership in India - Viceroys and their entourage - attended during the “unbearable” Indian summers when the apparatus of government retreated to the cool of Shimla, more than 2,000 metres above sea level. Christ Church is very English. It is large, built stolidly of stone, dominates The Ridge that overlooks Shimla, and has the obligatory Anglican Norman tower. Inside, the pulpit stands a metre or two above contradiction, and the altar, cut off by the communion rail from the rest of the church, is at least 20 metres from the nearest pew. The set of organ pipes is Asia’s largest. Just to tune them costs 40,000 rupees every few years. Most of the available wall space is covered with plaques commemorating dead English dignitaries. The building now used as the Vicarage was a school for the children of said dignitaries.

Lena and I had a most interesting conversation with the Malks about how in the name of all that is cross-cultural one could expect a congregation that uses these edifices to foreign conquerors of a bygone age to prosper.

On the one hand they are frustrated by issues of property maintenance that dwarf those that most congregations in Australia face.

More difficult yet, there are still elderly Indian Christians who occupy positions of power in congregations and who hanker after the old ways of the Church of England. Young people are refused permission by organ-and-hymn-loving “gate keeper(s)” to use guitars, drums, etc. in worship, let alone authentically Indian instruments like the sitar and the tabla. Arvind, young, a preacher’s son and a musician, waxed eloquent on this subject, then began playing and singing Indian music. This congregational argument sounded like “western worship wars” compounded by cultural collision.

But perhaps the most difficult obstacle the sheer presence of the church places in the way of Christian outreach today is the sense in which it, by standing so prominently on The Ridge, overtopped only recently by a huge statue of the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman, is still a symbol of the British Raj and Religion. Although British rule ended nearly three score years and ten ago the memory of being under the colonial rule of those of a foreign faith is still a huge irritant for many patriotic Indians and devout Hindus.

On the other hand, by virtue of its high visibility and accessibility, and its historical significance Christ Church attracts many tourists. This gives rise to many opportunities for contact with people. Instead of having to reach out to people, Mushtaq’s experience is that many people who would not normally come to a church come to Christ Church, not just as tourists but as spiritual seekers. In a country where overt religiosity is the norm he routinely spends at least an hour after services praying for people who request it.

This experience of paradoxical acceptance was confirmed by one of my own the previous day at the writers’ seminar. Having endured one academic harshly criticising Australia and its Christian religion for its racist treatment of aborigines without appearing to know too much about the facts or context I was very touched, having told another academic about myself, to be invited on the spot to come and talk about the Christian church in the town in which he lives. Christianity is part of the fabric of Indian society, he reasoned, and we Hindus need to know more about it from someone who can explain it from the inside, as it were. This was famous Hindu tolerance at its best. I can only hope and pray that some of my fellow Christians would be equally generous towards those of differing convictions.

My further reflection is that in Mushtaq’s and Neera’s struggles with how best to use property and tradition in the quest for congregational renewal they and the Church of North India are far from alone. The Uniting Church has such problems in these matters that one of its former Moderators provocatively suggested selling all property and giving the proceeds to the poor! In England these issues are perhaps even more acute. Some years ago I accompanied said former Moderator and others from the Uniting Church on a tour of “fresh expressions of church” in southern England, and came home relieved that at least we did’t have 1,000 year old buildings and traditions to move into the 21st century! But to have to deal with the problems posed by property maintenance and staid conservatism in a context which is overwhelmingly other-religious, in which one’s own faith is still associated, rightly or wrongly, with the hated colonial ruler - that is a difficult place to be. I left afternoon tea at the Vicarage with a fresh appreciation and admiration for my sisters and brothers of the Church of North India.