Happy Christmas in advance, dear readers. For someone trapped in the English language as I was in my formative years, the Bible contained wonderful calls to faith, such as, ‘For God is not a God of confusion but of peace’, Corinthians 14:33. I also loved what Jesus said in Matthew 11:30, ‘For my yoke is easy and my burden is light’, which is the concluding part of a passage where Jesus invited those who were weary and burdened to come to him for rest.
I felt such verses applied to me, too, as a Hindu, and they reinforced my own, then mute, attachment to Sanatana Dharma. At that stage, I used the Bible to light my path to my own home as a Hindu, realising that Hindus didn’t have one holy book; they had a library. Except that our books were somehow inaccessible when I was growing up, whereas the Bible came so easily to me in English, satisfying my inchoate inner yearning for a God-connection.
While I knew I would stay loyal to my Hindu identity, I also felt, “What’s not to love about Jesus?” As a little girl, I wept reading about the Stations of the Cross, and fiercely wished that I could have given Jesus a drink of water on his last, sorrowful journey. It still affects me deeply. When I grew older, I became greatly attached to four books in the Old Testament. They were Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Proverbs and The Song of Solomon. Ecclesiastes seemed like an Upanishad to me in its wisdom. Psalms were raw emotion and deep faith. Proverbs gave me social and emotional direction while The Song of Solomon seemed like Jayadeva’s lyrical Gita Govindam in its intense bhakti bhava.
However, I was uncomfortable with conversion agendas. I realised, reading about the mediaeval Church’s violent history, that Christ and Christianity were not always the same. And it seemed rude in modern India to be told, “My faith is better than yours, leave yours, join mine.” My quiet response was, “I find meaning and beauty in my faith. May I not peacefully continue being ‘myself’ while respecting and appreciating your faith as a parallel path to God? Ecclesiastes 1:7 says, ‘All the rivers run into the sea’.” Because I celebrate Christmas every year and I regularly went to Midnight Mass with Christian friends until they themselves stopped, to sing the carols and hymns I learned as a child.
Regarding this, let me tell you a little story about a Christmas party in Chennai. It was at the home of the Hindu friends with whom I usually stay when in town. He is from North India, and she is from the South. They are a sweet, open-minded couple who celebrate both Diwali and Christmas, as many Hindus do across India. As I said, what’s not to love about Jesus, who preached ‘God is Love’? For one, it resonates with ‘Anbe Sivam’, which means ‘Love is God’ in Tamil.
Anyhow, not only do my friends unfailingly put up a Christmas tree at home, but they also invite a close circle of friends to a Christmas party, with all the traditional treats that mark the festival, especially plum cake. That year, their friends included several Christians, some nice, open-minded Muslims and me. The host couple and I chanced to be the only Hindus.
One of the Christian guests had brought printouts of carols so that everyone could sing together. We all had liberal, urban upbringings, and those who were unfamiliar with carols could at least look at the words. Then, we came to the great old carol ‘We three kings of Orient are’. But a verse was missing from the printout. Guess which two people knew that verse by heart and sang it while the others, even the Christians, fell silent because they didn’t know? My Hindu hostess and I, that’s who. In fact, we were the only two singing every carol from memory without glancing even once at the printouts. This is not to imply that we were extra clever. It’s just that for both of us, carols and hymns were part of our unforgotten personal storehouse of songs.
I should probably also share what my father did in New York in the nineties while visiting my sister. My mother’s shraadh date occurred then. My father, though a naastik for the most part, observed her death anniversary with the traditional puja. But he didn’t like to trouble my deracinated sister to find a pujari in a foreign land.
Instead, he went to St Patrick’s Church, knelt in a back pew, and murmured from the beautiful Twenty-third Psalm, which begins, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’. When he told me about it, I thought he’d done well, for a personal prayer is a genuine thing. I loved St Patrick’s myself, and made a beeline for the shrine of St Jude, the patron saint of lost or desperate causes. He symbolised hope and perseverance through difficult times, and I liked what he stood for. My prayer as I lit a candle and knelt to him was the universal wish, “Sarve jana sukhino bhavantu, ma kaschid dukh bhag bhavet”, meaning, ‘May everyone be well, may no one suffer.’
In that spirit, I would like to share these encouraging thoughts from the Bible. From Hebrews 11.1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” And from Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me”, meaning faith can steady us through every storm.
Renuka Narayanan | FAITHLINE | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
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