The Bethesda Prayer Center

Following our failed attempt to visit the waterfall outside Coimbatore, Mowgli and I stopped at a Christian prayer center we'd passed on the way out.

The Bethesda Prayer Center is part of the legacy of Dr. D.G.S. Dhinakaran, who had a conversion experience in 1955. He was on his way to the railroad tracks, intending to kill hemself by jumping in front of a train, but was stopped by his uncle, who introduced him to Jesus. According to his bio, the doctor "experienced a sudden wave of divine peace and hope, flood his heart. His mind was transformed and he returned home enlightened."

Following his conversion, he built schools, held massive prayer meetings focused on healing the sick, started a magazine called "Jesus Calls," and served as a conduit for the word of the Lord. One of the messages he received was to open a prayer center:

"On August 12, 1983, the Holy Spirit guided Dr. D.G.S.Dhinakaran to do something for those who are in need for prayer at any time of the day. Therefore Dr. D.G.S. Dhinakaran erected a 24 Hour Prayer Tower. Today the Prayer Tower is a full-fledged Prayer Centre equipped with modern facilities. Specially chosen and trained Prayer Warriors endowed with the compassion of Christ, attend to such calls round-the-clock."

When I tell people about visiting this place, I am invariably met with astonishment; Christianity in India strikes most people as an impossibility. And yet, it is widely believed that the Apostle Thomas traveled to and died in India; today, India has upwards of 20 million practicing Christians.

I admit, though, that the experience of finding a fervently faithful group of Christians in the middle of an Indian agricultural area was jarring, not least because when I said I was from the U.S., I was greeted with an enthusiastic, "praise the Lord, sister, praise the Lord." Never in a million years did I think I'd be in Tamil Nadu the first time someone said that to me.

Diwali

Last night at dinner, I was able to explain Diwali (pronounced “Divali,” and meaning “row of lamps”) to a tableful of people while my husband Mowgli (not his real name) was in another room. When he returned, he commented that I’m starting to know more about Hinduism than he does.

It’s not that I have the fervor of a convert; I don’t practice Hinduism, or any other religion, on a daily basis. But when he doesn’t know the answers to my questions, he’ll take down a book from a shelf, or go online, and then my love of research takes over.

So, though there’s a lot more to the holiday than this, here’s what I’ve learned about Diwali:

- The central theme is good triumphing over evil, and hence light over darkness. This springs from the festival being the anniversary of the death of a demon (see below) as well as a harvest festival.

- In Southern India, Diwali is celebrated as the death anniversary of the demon Narakasura, who had been terrorizing the earth and imprisoning women. There are two versions of how the demon was killed; one is that Krishna beheaded him with his discus, and the other is that his wife, Satyabhama, killed him when he knocked Krishna out. She was able to do this because the demon had received a boon from Brahma that he could only be killed by his mother – and Krishna’s wife happened to be a reincarnation of the demon’s mother.

- In Northern India, Diwali is celebrated as the homecoming of the god Rama following a 14-year exile and the defeat of the nasty king Ravana, who had kidnapped Rama’s wife, Sita. Clay lamps filled with oil are lit to welcome him.

- Lakshmi (goddess of wealth, light, prosperity, fertility and wisdom) is a central figure during Diwali; this has to do with the harvest aspect of the festival. To do a proper Diwali, you should clean your house thoroughly so that when Lakshmi visits, she will be pleased.

- Diwali is a time when you forgive transgressions and accept forgiveness. Accounts are settled, new accounts are opened, and people visit with each other and exchange sweets.

- Celebrations go on for days in India and vary according to religion (Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists also celebrate Diwali), and vary according to the region and individual traditions.

In our house, we poured water on the front walk and steps and lit sparklers, dabbed our heads with oil (probably related to Krishna taking an oil bath to cleanse himself of the demon’s blood), showered, put on new clothes, prayed in front of our house shrine, and then had some rock candy.

Mowgli might be right about my growing Hinduism knowledge in certain cases, but if there’s a pop quiz on gods and goddesses, he’ll beat me every time. And without his mother, we’d both be lost; Mowgli prepared the shrine and directed the ritual according to her directions.

Love Letter to a Lily Allen Song

For a singer-songwriter-musician, I don’t buy a lot of CDs. It’s weird, but there it is. When I get hold of one I like, I wear it out, and if there’s a track I take a particular shine to, I’ll put it on repeat in my car’s CD player for days at a stretch. For the last month or so, the album has been Lily Allen’s “It’s Not me, it’s You,” and the track has been “Him.”

It’s a song about God that borrows heavily in concept from Prince’s “One of Us.” It’s also a bit sexy, but that makes sense given that Allen has never been afraid to be anything, least of all sexy whilst singing about God.

Fellow blogger Richard Byrne has convincingly argued that Serge Gainsbourg’s “L’Hotel Particulier” is as perfect as pop sex gets; meanwhile, I don’t think I’ll ever hear a song about God that’s more sensous than this one.

In particular, I’m talking about the instrumental break (at 2:05 in the YouTube track below). It starts with a breathy “ah-ah” vocal – an extended version of the lead-in for the second verse – that’s soon joined by a walking bass line. Then it widens into a fattened-up version of the chorus’ musical bed. The synth violins are still there, only now it’s impossible not to notice that they sound as if they’re being played through a trumpet mute for a pulsing effect. They’re propelled along by driving snare-based drum work and an elegantly simple single-line guitar solo. I crank this section up every time it comes on, because I can’t resist the impulse to take a bath in its warm, thick, loungy vibe.



One of the best things about this album outside of Allen herself is the producer, Greg Kurstin, and one of the best things about him is his egalitarian approach to instrumentation – banjo, accordion, and pedal steel are just a few of the pleasant surprises on these tracks. He’s also skilled at quoting musical styles without parroting them. I’m still working out why “Are You Mine” reminds me of the Beatles, though I suspect it’s the piano and the deft employment of the “rule of three” – repeat something twice, then shift away.

Getting back to “Him,” the verses wander through a series of amusing questions such as whether the big man in the sky would drive without insurance, and speculates about his favorite band. But the chorus is where Allen shows us what she really believes:

Ever since he can remember
People have died in his good name
Long before that September
Long before hijacking planes
He’s lost the will
He can’t decide
He doesn’t know who’s right or wrong
But there’s one thing that he’s sure of
This has been going on too long

Finally. Someone wrote a song about God that I can not only believe in, but feel the truth of in my bones. It’s about time. Thank you, Lily Allen.

Ugadi

Last Friday morning, as soon as we got up, Mowgli told me to close my eyes and led me into our closet. His eyes were closed, too, which made for stumbly progress. Once there, he lit a tiny oil lamp and we looked into a mirror that he’d placed on the shrine that resides there. Here’s what we saw:

Two apples, two bananas, two lemons, and a small bunch of grapes. American and Indian money, placed on a piece of new clothing. A packet of nine pulses (legumes) and grains called navadhaniyam (literally: nine grains), and a container with nine colors of crystals, called navaratnam (literally: nine gems). The aforementioned lamp, a stick of incense, a small statue of Ganesh (the Hindu god that governs auspicious beginnings and good luck).

We prayed, fed and walked the dogs (not part of the ritual, but a necessary part of our morning routine), showered, and then Mowgli boiled some milk with sugar and cardamom. He brought this up to the shrine, and lit three things: the lamp (which had since gone out), a stick of incense, and a nub of camphor in a tiny silver dish. He took the camphor in his right hand, supported with his left, and moved it in a clockwise circle three times, trailing its black smoke. Then we drank the milk, finished getting dressed and went to work.

This is how we celebrate Ugadi (“oo-GA-dee”), or Telugu New Year. It’s a recognition of the day Brahma created the universe, and marks the first day of the Telugu lunar calendar. There’s also Tamil New Year and Kerala New Year and many others; the dates shift from year to year because they're based on the Hindu calendar. We celebrate Telugu New Year because it originated in the region that Mowgli’s parents are from. Each region’s ritual is slightly different, but all are a puja with the purpose of welcoming the new year.

You may be wondering, as I did before I asked my mother-in-law, what happens to the fruit once the ceremony is over. Her answer: You eat it. You may also be wondering what I think of all this.

I consider myself a religious dilettante: I’ve never been able to get myself to commit to a particular house of worship, maybe because I’m curious about different faiths. I believe that it doesn’t matter how you pay attention to your spiritual life, or what shape, form or name of creator or god you pray to. For me, the most important thing is to pay attention to something bigger than myself.

Religious curiosity aside, I also participate in Hindu rituals to get closer to my husband. There are thousands of years of cultural, religious and spiritual depth behind the rituals he’s been performing for over 30 years, and they play a sizeable role in who he is. The most effective, and perhaps only, way for me to get some of that inside my skin is to go through the same motions he does. Even though they sometimes feel awkward, it’s like any other skill. It becomes more natural as you practice, and after a while, it’s second nature.

I don’t know any Hindu prayers yet, and in terms of a structured religious life, I’m in praying kindergarten. When I pray, regardless of whether I'm in a temple or a church or my car, I tend to have a single word in my head: Please. Even with that one word, I’m sometimes moved to tears. When I think about why that might be, I’m reminded of one of my favorite lines in Catholic rituals: Let us proclaim the mystery of faith.

Adam, Eve, Snakes, Sumeria

Yesterday, I was having coffee with a friend, and we were talking about an art exhibition involving bugs, which led the conversation to fears of bugs, spiders and snakes. She’s deathly afraid of snakes, and so naturally we turned to the Bible story of Adam and Eve and the snake’s role in their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

I knew the general outline of the story, that the snake tricked Eve into going against God’s wishes that she not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and thus represents the Devil. What I didn’t know, and learned from my husband when I got home, is that the story may originate in Sumeria. (I may have learned something about this link in my 7th grade Western Civilization class, but those days are long gone.)

There is a Sumerian creation myth dating to roughly to the 18th century B.C. in which the main mother-goddess (Ninhursag) installs her lover (Enki) in an earthly paradise that has a lush garden feauring eight special plants. Enki gets curious about the plants in the garden, and has his assistant fetch them for him to sample. Ninhursag gets wind of this, becomes enraged, and causes Enki to fall ill in eight ways. Then the other gods persuade Ninhursag to save Enki, and she creates eight goddesses to heal the eight afflictions. The one she creates to help with his rib is called Ninti.

This name is significant because the original semetic form of Eve is "Hawah," meaning life. In Sumerian, "nin" means lady, and "ti" can mean either rib or life. So Ninti means either “lady of the rib” or “lady of life.”

Naturally, on the Internet, you can find sites that both support and refute the theory that Sumerian myths are the true origin of key Bible stories. To me, the parallels are striking, and it’s always made sense to me that early Christians would employ existing mythology to make their new recruits feel more at home in a new faith.

Here's the weird thing, though: I haven't been able to find any mention of a snake in the Sumerian version.