Tihar

So, does anyone out there remember the sitcom, "The Office"? You probably remember Kelly and her on again off again relationship with Ryan right? Do you remember the episode where they go and celebrate Diwali and Ryan has the awkward meeting with Kelly's parents, and Michael sings the Diwali song? ...The Office at its best. 

BJ Novak and Mindy Kaling at an event of some kind for people from the office.

Well, I have to confess that at the time that episode aired I really thought that Diwali was something made up for the show. It was not til a while later that I discovered Diwali is an actual celebration in Hinduism. Well it is Diwali festival time here in Nepal and I am experiencing it first hand. Many people know it as Diwali but the hardcore Nepali people will tell you that here in Nepal it is the Tihar Festival.

This festival of lights is typically celebrated between mid-October and mid-November. It is the second biggest festival in Nepal after Dashain. This festival lasts for five days and people worship Lakshmi – the goddess of wealth. 

Businesses will put up strings of lights as a means of inviting Lakshmi to bring wealth and prosperity. These are the outside of buildings lit up in Kathmandu.

All the houses and businesses are cleaned and decorated with the belief that goddess Lakshmi will enter the house that is the cleanest and bring blessing. (Kind of like Santa but without the presents.) People light candles, oil lamps and other lights and the homes and even entire neighborhoods light up like an American Christmas. 

During the five days, crows, dogs and cows are honored for their roles in the life of a Hindu family with vermilion, (the red dot on the forehead) garlands and festive food for what they have done in the lives of their human benefactors. Crows are regarded as the messenger that brought news even during times when there were no postmen and no postal services. 

This dog was very honored on Dog day of Tihar (Tuesday). The red is a symbol of blessing on him for watching over the home or business of his owners.

Dogs are considered obedient animals and they watch over the homes as true guardians. Cows are also a symbol of wealth in Hinduism and they are also the national animal of Nepal. The festival ends with Bhai Tika – brothers’ day, when sisters honor their brothers and pray for a long and healthy life and brothers pray to safeguard the lives of his sisters.

If Nothing else Hindus are very mindful of the members of their family. It is a trend I have noticed in Eastern cultures whether it is Hundu, Buddhist or Muslim. Americans think that have it all figured out except we can't seem to get family dynamics figured out. In the East, family is much more important. I think we could use a little more of that in the West.

Just a Meandering Thought...

SELECTED

You remember fourth grade kickball right?! You wanted to play but you also wanted to be picked first, or at least be among the first picked. You definitly did not want to be the last one picked becuase at that point the captain did not pick you, he was stuck with you. It was not about being picked last it was about being wanted least. Speaking of being picked I had jury duty recently.

As I walked to the main entrance of the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse in South Boston I noticed a few news cameras set up outside waiting for some news worthy people to walk in or out. No one moved when I walked by.  I spent some of the day in a large room in the courthouse waiting to see if we would be need to serve our fellow citizens as a juror. I won't go into the details of the of the cases that were seating juries, but sufice to say at least one carried national attention.

The jury room is a bit different from the fourth grade kickball court. Not only do you want to be picked last but you would be happy to not be picked at all. Now, I did talk with a few people who actually wanted to sit on the jury just to see what it was like but for the most part you could tell by the expression on the peoples faces that being on a jury was the last thing they wanted to do.

I think playing kickball was about being wanted - being seen as valuable. Jury duty is about just that, duty - something you have to do not something you get to do. People want to be seen as valuable and the way you do that is by asking them to help the team. Asking people to give of themselves and recieve nothing in return (other than the satisfaction of serving their country and their fellow citizens in serving justice) seems like it is asking a lot from people in our individualistic, and task driven culture. Serving in this way inhibits us from accomplishing the tasks we would rather be doing. 

 

I have to admit I am one who is too busy, my excuse is family and full time grad school, professors who won't hold off lectures just for me. I remember enjoying being picked in the first couple of rounds for kickball but I was relieved when I was told I could not serve on this session's jury.

We want to be selected becuase someone sees value in us, not becuase everyone elses excuse was better.

What does it take to be selected for who we are and not  for the service we could potentially provide?

Just a Meandering Thought...

OCCUPIED

So I walked around Boston today getting some footage for a video project I am working on.  Part of my afternoon was spent walking along the Greenway which curves around the length of where the rt93 tunnel. I saw a large group at the end of the greenway, I decided to check it out. Turns out it was forty or fifty tents and a couple hundred people all part of Occupy Boston. The Occupy America movement is a fascinating sociological event with a branch in our backyard. People (mostly students) staying in tents, with signs for various political, socioeconomic and other issues, and regardless of Republican or Democrat everyone seemed to be getting along. I took in a group meeting to discuss the greatness of Marxist philosophy, there was a veterans for peace tent, I saw a tent where clothing was being given away, they even have a library. Folk music was being played for everyone's enjoyment and it was actually pretty good.

As I walked through the encampment I got the sense that this was a place for the free exchange of ideas and life philosophy (well, I did not see any representatives from corporate America there). I am pretty sure that there was even a small group freely sharing some ganja; they seemed really happy.

This gathering of people in Dewey Square and the hundreds of people who show up for the scheduled General Assemblies tells me a few things about people in general and Boston in particular. First, there is an undercurrent in Boston (and probably every city in America for that matter) of discontentment with "the system". The system is the conglomeration of impersonal regulations, guidelines, parameters, etc. that seem to be arbitrarily superimposed on society and dictate how a person should live their life and spend their money if they are going to be successful. Discontentment has spurred Americans on to technological innovation for generations, it has spurred community organizers on to bring change to their neighborhoods, it has even spurred corporate executives to make shady deals behind closed doors. People from all walks of life experience some degree of discontentment. We all wrestle with a lack of contentment at some point. Discontentment must simmer for a while before it motivates us to try and bring change to something. What is your simmering discontentment?

The second is that people are desperate to be heard, young and old. Everyone has an opinion, but a cause like "Occupy America" gives people a chance to put a megaphone to their ideals and opinions and be heard much more so than if they stood alone. The need to be heard is what many people from North African nations are fighting for right now. When you are heard you are validated; your station in life has legitimacy. All people long for validation, they long to be heard. People want to be heard. Who listens to you??

Third, I discovered that not everyone there was there for the stated purposes of the movement. Some where there because their friends were there and they wanted to support their friends. Some were there because it is where the attention is and they simply want to be a part; they want to belong. Everyone wants to be part of something big, a cause to fight for. It gives us a sense of identity. In some places in the world the cause is your family; you stand for your family and they give you identity. Here in America it is often your ideals. Your ideals give you something to fight for and give you an identity. When you don't have either of these you long for them, you look for them in anything. Many a high school student and college student has gone through this "looking to belong" stage. From what do you derive your sense of identity??? Is it enough? Are you fulfilled?

In some ways these are the longings of every person who has ever drawn breath on planet earth; they make us human. Being discontent, the desire to be heard, and our sense of identity will shape us and define us. We will be healthy people depending on what our source is for these three aspects of our soul. You may be looking for money, or love. You may be motivated by greed or loneliness. The longings of your soul says something about who you are. How you fulfill those longings says something about who you are willing to be and who you are becoming.

Just a Meandering Thought...

NEXT

Since April, much of my writing has been devoted to India, the people, the culture, the history, the religion, and how all these facets fit together and affect everyday life for the people, even how it affected me while there this summer. For the next few months I am going to spend some time writing and reflecting on those same topics but from an American perspective, Boston in particular. The are certainly some things that are unique to India but there is at least one common thread between the two... people.

I am structuring a class around the impact of modern media on the social consciousness of Americans in general but the people of Boston in particular. I mention this to ask for a favor of you who read my "Meandering Thoughts". I would really like some feedback from you over the next few months, until the end of December, the good the bad and the ugly. If you agree with what I am writing tell me; if you disagree, tell me. If you think I am being a narrow minded, self centered, egotistical, ethnocentric, piously tunnel visioned, whatever... tell me.

My hope is that in the coming months, my reflections and musings on culture, religion, the arts, and personal devotion to a life cause will strike a cord with you somewhere deep in your soul. Besides, the more people I can get "talking" about the things I am thinking about, the better it will look to my supervising professor.

I need to be thought provoking and personally challenging so I will keep the posts short and to the point. I  am looking to touch on the experiences of life that are most common and perhaps bring some refreshing perspective. We shall see.

Ultimately I am looking for the intersection of everyday life, art (in various forms), and the deepest longings of the soul. How does one express the other, where do they overlap and how do we become more complete and globally compassionate people as result. That may be a bit lofty but you have to start somewhere.

Thanks for coming along for the ride...

 

LAST

So this will be my last official post on India even though the memories and the impact continue to rattle my soul. Here are a few closing thoughts on my time in India:

There were some things that I knew about before going to this diverse and complex country. These things included:

• Huge population and population density
• Major issues with poverty
• Very religious people who take pride in their religion
•  The Ganges river is very important to their religious practices and beliefs.

There were somethings I thought I knew and understood about the Indian people and their culture that turned out to only be partially true. 

• They like Americans but hate American culture
• Cricket is the big game in India not soccer (football)
• People who are "outcastes"were not considered Hindu's until recently 
• Christianity is a minority religion of about 2.8% of the population. It recently surpassed Islam which is about 2.4%

There were somethings that I was totally wrong about and really had no clue about:

• Despite being being mostly polytheists and very open and accepting of gods, they really do not like Christianity and Islam. They do like Jesus and Muhammad.
• Many people think of the Indian people as being warm and welcoming to everybody, but they do not want westerners influencing or changing their culture and traditions. Some will fight over it.
• There is garbage everywhere because Hindu's believe that everything (including garbage) is Brahman (supreme spiritual entity). So it means nothing to throw Brahman out the window on to Brahman.
• The beliefs of the Hindus are strongly influenced by their mythology. If you know their mythology you will better understand their customes and beliefs.



Here I am standing on the grounds of Indira Ghandi's grave. This was in a park dedicated to the Ghandi family. Mahatmah Ghandi's grave is located off to my right. This was the last place I stopped before heading to the airport to fly home.



THREE

So I have about three weeks left before leaving for India. There is one piece left that still need to nail down before I can leave. I will be on a non stop flight from Newark to Deli, but I need to get to Newark. So either today or tomorrow I need to book that flight. Going from the Boston area to Newark is not going to be too bad, but being on a plane for almost fifteen hours is going to be brutal. The upside is that there is a much less chance of losing my bags.

I am not worried about culture shock when I arrive or even after being there for a couple of weeks. If you know me you know I am pretty adaptable. Culture shock will really hit me when I get home in mid August. I will be returning to a place of privilege and cleanliness where I eat with utensils, where there are flush toilets, where I simply go to a grocery store when I want food, clean water form the faucet. These are all things that we take for granted that at some point I will not have access to.

After building relationships with people who have so little and somehow seem happy I will question what I consider to be true happiness. I will question what I really need in order to live a fulfilling life. I may even get frustrated at God for being born in America where if I work hard enough I can have just about anything, compared to those who work like slaves and still barely have enough to survive.

I know this is coming and yet I go because to not go is to keep myself ignorant. It is to pretend that I know anything about sacrifice, or poverty. Even after I come back I will still only be an observer of it and not a participant in it.

Just a Meandering Thought...

JUSTICE Part 1 of 2

Most of us would say that justice is a good thing; it is one of the values that make America, America. We want justice to be served. When we are wronged or a crime is committed what we want is justice. We want someone to be responsible for the wrongs, the injustices. Then we fight for justice. That is who we are as Americans.

When the towers fell on September 11th, 2001, the entire nation reeled at the massive injustice that had been brought to our soil. We grieved, we searched, we pulled away rubble, we sifted through ashes. Even if we did not personally know someone who died, we still somehow felt the gaping hole. In the days following we learned who was responsible and soon we were in the fight - for justice.

The last ten years will likely go down in the history books as a decade that America sought closure and justice. For the lives that were taken from us, we wanted justice; for the hearts that were broken for their loss, we wanted justice; for the nation that was attacked, we wanted justice; for the memories that were seared into our souls of two towers burning and collapsing, we wanted justice. On May 1st, 2011 justice was served with an American bullet (66 years to the day after Hitler died from his own bullet).

It has been said that justice is about giving a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves. To the 2992 people who died in the attacks (minus the perpetrators) our voice on your behalf has been heard. We never forgot you. We all wanted justice for those who lost their lives. Yet if we were to receive justice ourselves for even the little things we have done we might think twice. Justice is a liberating event when you are the one wronged.

2000 years ago justice of a different kind was served with a cross and some nails. But you and I don't get justice, instead we get mercy. We don't get what we deserve, we get what He paid for. Because God never forgot or abandoned us. He hears the voice of those who call to him. I know this for sure, God is present in the places where injustice happens - to comfort those who have to walk that road. He sticks around to see that justice happens. Whether it is justice he accomplishes on our behalf, or just his presence in the stairwells of collapsing towers, God does not leave us but gives a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves.

Just a Meandering Thought...

FOUNDATIONS part 2

The people who inhabited the Indus River Valley in North Western India 5000 years ago created one of the great ancient civilizations. The Indus River Civilization existed for 1500 years beginning around 3000 b.c. At its peak (c.2400-1700b.c.) it covered more square miles than any other ancient civilization including Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. Archeologists have unearthed over 1,000 villages and cities connected with this great civilization.

By 1500b.c. Aryan tribes from the steppes of Western Asia had filtered onto the Indian subcontinent; their merger with the earlier, darker skinned, Dravidian inhabitants created a classical Indian culture. The Aryans composed hymns to nature and celebrated life exuberantly and referred to themselves as Aryas meaning 'noble'. There is much evidence to suggest that Hinduism was born form the influence of the Aryans settling in the region. As the two people groups merged hostility between the Aryans and the Dravidian people resulted in the subsequent migration of the darker skinned Dravidian people to the south.

***(side note)*** The Aryan's also migrated westward into Europe. The fair skinned, light haired "Indo-Europeans" were later identified by Julius Caesar in his, "Conquest of Gaul" as two people groups called the Celtea and the Belgae or as we know them, the Celts. The religion of the Celts bares many similarities to early Hinduism (more on that in a later post).

The Indus Valley Civilization existed in between 3000-1500 BC; the classical culture that emerged with the Aryans lasted for a few hundred years, but the results of this migration can still be seen and felt in India today. It is generally acknowledged that the darker your skin, the farther south you are from and if you have lighter skin you must live in the north. Also, if you have light skin generally you are of a higher social status than darker skinned people. The racial divide is the residual effect of this ancient migration of people. The Caste system reinforces this as well. Brahmans (the highest caste) have light skin and are revered and respected by most as a priestly caste which is closest to Brahma, the ultimate.

The events of the Indus River Civilization laid the foundation for a culturally reinforced racism that has held hundreds of millions of people in poverty for centuries. If you are a poor beggar on the side of the road riddled with disease and malnutrition it is understood that you are there because of your actions in previous lives. In essence you are doing penance or purifying your Dharma. If you are of a higher caste and not in such dire straights and you see someone in this condition you cannot help them. First of all getting too close to them could make you unclean and taint your own Dharma, secondly you would be interfering with that persons work to purify themselves, and pay for their own sins.

Thousands of years and hundreds of smaller empires have come and gone since the ancient Indo-Aryan migration, but these racially divisive cultural perspectives are still held to throughout modern day India. Much of Indian culture today has its foundation in this migration of people from the third century b.c.

INDIA

To all of my family, friends and acquaintances,

This summer I have the opportunity to travel to Northern India for about six weeks as part of my Master’s program. I will be helping in schools churches and orphanages doing things like teaching English, tutoring in Greek, sharing about American culture, and experiencing the culture of Northern India for myself.

In the next week or so I will be sending out letters to many of you to give you some more details about the trip as well as to ask for your support. Many of you are the church going type and if all you can do to support me is to pray for me I gratefully accept your prayers on my behalf. Many of you are not church goers so you should know that I also accept happy thoughts and positive energy. For those who have the means to contribute financially the total cost of the trip is $3,200 so obviously money is important too. Your tax deductible gift will be handled by the school and they will issue you a receipt.

If you received a Christmas card from us this year, then I have your address, if not then there is a good chance that I do not have it. So if I likely don’t have your address and you would like more info on how to help me get to India you can send me your mailing address through facebook or email or twitter. You are probably reading this through one of those mediums. Also, I will be utilizing social media a lot to keep my supporters up to date on how the prep for my trip is going as well as updates of my experiences while in India, (as often as internet is available).


You can keep up with me on:

• Twitter: CDGiguere
• friend me on facebook
• check out my blog updates: vagabondragamuffin.blogspot.com
• email: caleb.giguere@gmail.com

Culture

I had a conversation with a pastor recently talking about the role of the church in culture and society. The point he was making was that if the culture that the church is in is not a biblical culture then part of the church's responsibility is to counteract and change the culture. Mind you that this conversation was had in the context of using elements of culture like T.V shows, movies and video clips from the internet and other things in a message to help illustrate or make a point. His perspective was that in using clips and video's from the media we are endorsing the t.v. show or movie and supporting the depravity of the culture.
I was thinking about this conversation recently and wondering how does a church go about changing culture, for that matter, how does any organization or initiative go about changing culture? For hundreds of years the church was the center of culture. Some how the culture drifted away from the church and the church rather than try to reinvent culture, or impact it somehow, decided to simply become critical of culture, and for the much of the 20th century was content to criticize culture. Since the seventies and eighties the church has done a lot of copying culture (just take a look at Christian t-shirts and hats and even some music) but the church has not quite stepped back into the role of creating culture. In the last five to ten years there has been conversations about creating culture.
So for better or worse the culture is what it is. The church has not played a part in creating it, we left that to MTV, MySpace, Facebook and Abercrombie, therefore the church has three options, criticize it, copy it, or assimilate it and use the current culture to speak to the people who live in it. The only other option is to create its own culture in the hopes that there will be some component of that culture that would appeal to those outside of it, which would in turn draw them in and begin transformation of the culture.
I really don't know which way is best. It just seems to me that the church at large does not have the best track record with creating culture or being the center of culture. We would rather sit back and warn people of the evils of culture, and what happens to your faith if you get too close to it, rather than rather than hold it in our hands and see it as a tool for relevance and life application.
Just a meandering thought...