Holy Envy

by Barbara Brown Taylor

  All of a sudden I saw everything through the students’ eyes and suffered a little panic attack. Were they ready for this, I wondered? Should I have prepared them better? That would have been difficult to do, since I had only been to one Hindu temple in my life, but still. Voluptuous deities carved from gray stone lined the walls, their arms and legs raised in sacred dance. The air was dense with the smells of softening fruit, burning sandalwood, hot oil, and fresh flowers. The students followed me a little way in and stopped in a clump behind me. Glancing around, I could easily see where the smells were coming from. Butter lamps and sticks of incense burned in front of alcoves containing deities whose necks were draped with garlands of red and yellow flowers. At their feet were mounds of ripening bananas and split coconuts along with bowls of almonds and flower petals. There was nothing anywhere that looked remotely like a church.

  When Dr. Acharya finally appeared, she led us over to the alcove of Padmavathi, a manifestation of the goddess Lakshmi. We were there for a weekly ritual in which priests bathe her, dress her in new clothes, and wreathe her with fresh flowers on behalf of her devotees. Simply to witness the ceremony confers blessing on those who watch, and there were quite a few people there to do that, though it was hardly the only thing going on in the main hall. At least seven deities held places of honor in the room, not counting the nine planetary gods represented by the tall stones on the table.

  For most Christians, including me, that many gods takes some getting used to. Never mind for a minute that Christians believe Jesus is one of three Persons in whom God comes to us (which would make perfect sense to a Hindu). The point is that we stop at three. The point is that we have had a lot of practice being around our three, so that they are no longer alarming to us. The fact that some Hindu deities have more than one set of arms and others have the heads of animals makes them appear even stranger to people used to worshipping someone who looks a lot like us.

  When I bring the image of Shiva to class on the first day, the students have no frame of reference for what they see. A few know he is the Hindu god of destruction, but that does not help. Why would anyone worship a god who destroys? He is dancing in a ring of fire on the back of a small creature that looks like a child or a dwarf. He has swinging dreadlocks and twice too many arms, some of which are holding things impossible to identify. A cobra uncurls from his top right arm, while another swirls around his waist. This is entirely too many snakes for someone raised on the Garden of Eden story.

  When we take the symbols one at a time, however, the image becomes less fearsome. The ring of fire is the eternal cycle of creation and destruction. Dancing inside of it, Shiva reminds the viewer that the god who presides over death clears the way for new life. The creature under his feet is not a child but a demon signifying the ignorance that trips people up and keeps them down. Shiva holds a drum in one of his hands, a flame in another. With his other two hands he makes ancient gestures that mean, “Seek refuge” and “Fear not.”

  The fact that we need so much help understanding what we are looking at is a lesson in itself. How often do we assume that we know what we are seeing when we see other people practicing their faith? Once, after I published a short essay on the way quantum entanglement (which Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”) illumined the concept of divine union, I received a curt letter from a theoretical physicist. “It is not enough for you to think you know what physicists mean when they say something,” he wrote. “You need to know what they think they mean when they say it.”

  I have never forgotten this cogent reprimand, which has served me in a great variety of situations. When I think I see a Buddhist worshipping a statue of the Buddha, I yield to the Buddhist when he tells me that he is not worshipping the Buddha but honoring the Buddha’s example. When I think I see a Muslim woman constrained by her headscarf, I listen when she tells me how hard she fought to wear it against her family’s wishes. As natural as it may be to try to translate everything into my own religious language, I miss a lot when I persist in reducing everything to my own frame of reference.

  At the same time, it seems possible that knowing my own language of faith in depth may help me recognize similar depths in other traditions. When I learn that the image of Shiva I have brought to class is called Shiva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, I cannot help but think of a Christian hymn by the same name. It was a favorite in the congregations I once served, with a first verse that goes like this:

  I danced in the morning

  When the world was begun,

  And I danced in the moon

  And the stars and the sun,

  And I came down from heaven

  And I danced on the earth,

  At Bethlehem

  I had my birth.1

  I doubt that the lyricist, an English songwriter named Sydney Carter, had read the apocryphal Acts of John. In that second-century manuscript, which was not on the short list for the New Testament, Jesus commanded his disciples to surround him on the night before he died. After they had circled round him, he danced inside the ring they made, singing a long mystical hymn to which they responded with a chorus of “Amens.”2

  Carter may or may not have known that, but as it turns out he did have a statue of Shiva Nataraja on his desk when he wrote the words to his song. For some Christian listeners, this explains why the first verse of his hymn sounds a little pagan to their ears, even after Carter set it to an old Shaker tune. For other Christians, including Carter himself, there is no contradiction. “I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us,” he wrote in 1974.

  He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. By Christ I mean not only Jesus: in other times and places, other planets, there may be other Lords of the Dance. But Jesus is the one I know of first and best. I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.3

  The Jesus of the New Testament never dances, I am sorry to say, but that does not stop countless Christians from dancing with him while they sing the refrain they know by heart.

  Dance, then, wherever you may be,

  I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,

  And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,

  and I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.4

  I hum the tune to myself when I am back in my office with the image of Shiva on my desk. The longer I look at it, the more I see in it. Though I understand the difference between reincarnation and resurrection, the pattern is familiar to me: there is no new life without destruction. One follows from the other, as both Lords of the Dance know full well.

  “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it,” Jesus said, “but those who lose their life will keep it.” Later he reminded his friends that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it will remain a single grain—but if it dies, it will bear much fruit. Looking at the statue of Shiva, I wonder if an image of the crucifixion would be any less repellant to someone who had not been initiated into the mystery it represents. Is a man hanging on a cross any less frightening than a man dancing in a ring of fire? I have never said this to a student, but I see what the two images have in common. There is no way around the cross or the fire for the faithful who stand in awe of them. Death is the door to new life. No one rises again without first being destroyed.

  When I examine the crouched figure under Shiva’s right foot, I realize that we all look that small when we are doing everything in our power to avoid being dismantled and made new—when we curl in on ourselves, trying to hang on to things the way they are. Shiva is not killing our too-small souls. He is dancing on us, leaving open the possibility that we might rise up and join the dance too.

  As the brass image starts to make sense to me like this, I have to wonder what is going on. Am I beginning to understand it, or am I projecting teachings from my own tradition onto it? At the very least, I am noticing how hard it is to cross the boundary from one set of religious images to another. Rings of fire, hooded cobras, and small
bent figures under heavy feet do not put me in a reverent mood. In my religious universe, skies full of angels, descending doves, and bent people standing upright work much better. Those are the symbols that power my sacred stories, or at least the ones that mean the most to me.

  But I am getting way ahead of myself here. Back at the temple, on my first field trip, it is time for Padmavathi’s bath. First the priests remove her old clothes, which they will give to her devotees. Then they bathe her with rosewater, yogurt, and ghee. The smells mingle as the leftovers fall into a basin at her feet. Her slick skin reflects the light above her head. I have never seen anything like this mix of the sensual and the sacred, with no fireproof ditch between the two. I wish Christians were this comfortable with bodies. The belief that Jesus was fully human does not seem to have reached the level of blessing flesh the way I am watching it being blessed right now. Finally the priests pull the curtain while they dress the goddess in this week’s new clothes and drape her neck with fresh flowers.

  This will take some time, Dr. Acharya tells me. If we were devotees of the goddess, we might sit in front of her alcove and chant mantras while we waited for her to reappear. Since we are not, we are free to look around. The students peel off in different directions. A freshman named Bryan goes over to get a closer look at the table of tall stones. Later he will tell me that when he drew near them, he felt such a rush of energy that he knew it was the presence of God. Three basketball players drift toward the statue of Ganesha. There they stand with their hands in their pockets, watching worshippers put burning sticks of incense in a dish of sand in front of the elephant-headed god.

  While I am watching them, I see a student named Mariah run past them on her way out the front door. She is a tense girl in her first year of college, with sharp features and a troubled countenance. Walking quickly after her, I catch up with her on the front porch of the temple, where she is standing in the twilight, crying so hard that she cannot answer me when I ask her what is wrong. Finally she catches her breath long enough to tell me.

  “They are all so lost, and they don’t even know it!” This brings on a fresh round of tears, after which she manages a few more words between tattered breaths. “It is just so sad to me,” she says, “seeing people worshipping statues when they could be worshipping Jesus instead.” One more sob, followed by one more deep breath. “It just breaks my heart.” My heart breaks for her too, but there is no way I can make this better for her, not now in any case. There are other students inside. Even if there were not, it might take hours to help Mariah make sense of what she is feeling and why. I might try to change her mind, which would be a mistake.

  “Why don’t you stay out here and pray?” I say. “It’s a beautiful night. We’ll be along soon.” I do not know what else to suggest. The Jesus she loves so much will surely look after her while the rest of us finish up inside.

  When I return, Padmavathi’s devotees are lining up to face each other in two rows, as if they are waiting for her to step out of her limo and walk the runway in her new clothes. When the priests finally open the curtains, the children in front gasp at the sight of her. Clothed like a queen, she is resplendent in a new red silk sari, with so many garlands of fresh flowers around her neck that her placid face floats above them like the moon.

  After the ritual is over, I start fishing in my pocketbook for the keys to the van, but when I look around for Dr. Acharya, she is standing in front of Balaji/Vishnu’s alcove saying something to a priest. She has already handed him something she has pulled out of her carryall. Later I will find out it was a yard of saffron silk for the dressing of other deities. When I catch her eye, she motions to me to join her deeper inside Vishnu’s shrine.

  I gather up all the students I can find, and they follow me inside. We are eager to get a better look at the very large, very imposing image of the deity, who is taller than the tallest basketball player in our group. The problem is that we have forgotten we are in a house of worship, not a wax museum. We are expecting the priest to tell us more about what the statue is made of, why it is black, and what the worship of Vishnu entails, but he does not explain anything. Instead, he begins a sonorous chant and starts tossing flower petals at the deity’s feet. A heat wave breaks over me as I realize that Dr. Acharya has asked him to perform a prayer ritual for our group, asking the Lord’s blessing on us and on our studies. We have unwittingly crossed over from observation to participation, and there appears to be no way out.

  The students and I stand in a semicircle before the deity with our hands clasped in front of us as though we are protecting our private parts. Then the chant ends, and the priest turns toward us with a lit lamp in his hands. None of us knows what to do. Dr. Acharya is at the end of the line where she cannot help us. We stand perfectly still, our faces lighting up one by one as the priest holds the lamp in front of us. When he gets to Dr. Acharya, she cups the flame with her hands and raises her palms to her face. It is a lovely gesture, though I have no idea what it means. Is this how a visitor to an Episcopal church feels watching someone genuflect before entering a pew? Reverence is easy to recognize, even when its meaning is unclear.

  The priest sets the lamp on a table, exchanging it for a bowl of liquid and a spoon. This constitutes a crisis, since holding still will no longer suffice. The liquid requires a response that none of us is religiously equipped to make. What started out as a heat wave inside me becomes something much more combustible. There is a colossal pileup on my mental highway, with cars crashing into each other on all sides. My mind careens from the first commandment in Exodus 20 (“You shall have no other gods before me”) to the apostle Paul’s teaching on idol worship in 1 Corinthians 8 (“For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols?”). All of my air bags have deployed. The students are looking at me for guidance. Should I stay in my car or get out and direct traffic? What would Jesus do?

  I decide to stay where I am, dropping my gaze so students will have one less thing to worry about while they decide what they will do. As I am waiting for the priest to arrive in front of me, my mind rewinds to a wedding celebration in rural Ethiopia. My husband Ed and I were not invited guests. We were tired hikers with trail dust up to our knees, trying to make ourselves invisible as we walked past the open tent full of happy people. Since we looked like beings from another planet, this turned out to be impossible. A tall smiling man had already separated himself from the wedding party and was walking toward us with two full glasses of a foaming brown beverage in his hands. When he held the glasses out to us, we could see bits of what looked like muddy straw floating in the sluggish bubbles on the surface of the liquid.

  Ed and I accepted the drinks with deep bows and profuse thanks, hoping the kind man would then go back to his party. That way we could find a quiet place to pour the liquid out. But no. He stood there still smiling, lifting his hand to his mouth to let us know that we should drink. So we drank. I heard Ed straining the straw out of his first sip with his front teeth while I tried to do the same thing without making as much noise. The drink was a kind of fermented mead. The gummy bubbles stuck to my upper lip. Ed had to swallow several times before he got his down. I opened my throat and let mine fall straight in. Then we thanked the man again, who looked very pleased with us and with himself as he turned back to the wedding party.

  When the Hindu priest reaches me with the bowl, I hold out my hands for the liquid. It is not my wedding, but I am still a guest. After I have drunk what seems to be plain water, I raise my eyebrows at Dr. Acharya. Is that it? Are we done? She shakes her head no. Not yet.

  On the priest’s next round he holds a shiny metal object that looks like a crown over each of our heads. He is careful never to let it touch anyone’s hair. He just holds it a couple of inches over one person’s head long enough for whatever blessing it holds to come down. Then he lifts it up again and moves on to th
e next person to do the same thing. Almost everyone is gazing down now. I am not, which is how I know how frozen they all look, as if they are being knighted into an order they never applied to join. Remembering Mariah (who is still out on the porch), I wonder how many of them are going to call their tuition-paying parents when they get home.

  After the crown, the priest starts around the circle with whole almonds in his bowl. Thanks to the textbook I recognize this as prasad—food that has been offered to the Lord, who is offering it back to us. The surroundings may be strange, but the pattern is familiar. This is what Christians do with bread and wine. We bring them to the altar along with our other offerings. The priest calls the Holy Spirit to be present in them, so that they become the body and blood of Christ for us. Then we take them into ourselves as holy food. I have never been offered almonds at an altar rail, but I know a sacrament when I see one.

  Bryan looks the priest in the eyes when he holds out his hands for the almonds, but the other students are disengaging fast. One of the basketball players shakes his head no, while another student steps behind her classmate’s back and drops her head. I imagine speech balloons over the priest’s head as his face fills with questions. “Why are you here if you do not want the Lord’s blessing? Why would anyone refuse Vishnu’s almonds?”

  When he gets to me, I hold out my hand for the prasad. I know I am standing with one foot in my tradition and the other on unfamiliar ground. There is an alarm going off in the primitive part of my brain, warning me that I am about to be struck by lightning, but I turn away from it toward the God just beyond my understanding. Right before I put the three tear-shaped nuts in my mouth, I thank the Lord for both the blessing of the food and the chance to pray in another tongue. Then the priest moves past me and returns to the altar with most of the almonds still in his bowl. Dr. Acharya is the first to leave the circle, which is how I know the service is over. I am still dazed, thinking back through all of the decisions I have just made and wondering how this will go down with the students.