The Innards of Spirituality

When a huge concrete cross was being shattered with a demolition hammer, I laughed rather raucously. I was watching the breakfast news on TV as usual. Most of the time, breakfast news is depressing with news about drug addicts, rapists, murderers, and politicians. This video of a cross being brought down in a very unceremonious ritual officiated by revenue mandarins was unique in a country of people whose religious sentiments are more brittle than dry leaves in an Indian summer.

Maggie was not amused at all by my laughter because she misunderstood that I was laughing at a religious leaf being crushed with a political hammer.

“This is the same cross in front of which our X (I named a very close relative of ours) fell prostrate a couple of months back during their picnic to Parumthumpara,” I explained.

“She is a very spiritual person and so she respected the cross, that’s all.” Maggie’s spirituality is more like a leaf in a storm: I am the satanic storm and she is the tenacious leaf that will withstand any evil like Father Lankester Merrin of the movie, The Exorcist.

I chose to chew on my cheese-and-honey sandwich because a blog post is a better solution for a lot of samasyas* [one of the few Hindi words that I’m in love with – and this one means problems] than a live discussion with people.

The cross at Parumthumpara was not my samasya at all, notwithstanding the rebars of the cross that appeared on my TV screen like the ribs of ravaged divinity.

The cross, like too many other religious images, has been misused by the religious and the irreligious alike, particularly in India. Some idol like Ayodhya’s Ram Lalla or image like the Shiva linga will be planted somewhere and then all sorts of claims will be made. The cross was used with similar effects in Kerala too occasionally. Parumthumpara is the latest episode.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am reading the autobiography of Pope Francis these days. I’m reading it slowly like a meditation book because that’s how it reads like. It moves me to a lot of spiritual reflection. What I read this morning is the Pope’s citing of Lanza del Vasto, “a polymath writer, Christian thinker, and nonviolent campaigner against war and nuclear armament, an artisan of peace.” The worst lie, according to Vasto, the greatest and most dangerous lie, is “truth minus one.” Pope Francis explains it thus: “Not truth, but its contrived appearance, its comic or dramatic distortion: an attitude that makes falsity credible, error acceptable, that makes the inept arrogant, the ignorant wise, the incompetent powerful.”

I stopped reading the book just there. My meditation started.

Aren’t our religions the worst lies? I’m sorry my meditation went in that direction. I’m a fan of Khalil Gibran’s counsel: “If you accept, then express it bluntly. Do not mask it. If you refuse, then be clear about it.” Honesty, clarity, authenticity, and courage are the values I cherish the most, though I fail them many times.

I love Pope Francis, but I detest his religion. Similarly, I can love a lot of saints and sadhus and mullahs irrespective of their religion, but their religion is my problem.

Individuals may possess authenticity. Religions are meaningful only because of the individuals who put it into practise. I hardly find authentic religious people. A visit to a church or a temple or a mosque or any such place leaves me feeling nauseated all too often.

I started with X’s religion and my laughter. Let me end with X too. She is very religious. She spends every first Saturday night in meditation at a retreat centre. She attends every Sunday morning Mass. She prays every evening at home: rosary and a whole lot of catechism prayers. She is very religious. But she is one of the silliest creatures, most off-putting ones, I have ever known. Her spirituality is like the philosophy of a balmy socialite. Her religion gives her a community with a sense of belonging, roots in a desert, and aspirin when a headache strikes.

She prays a lot. But the prayer doesn’t seem to touch her heart, let alone her thinking. A concrete structure that resembles a cross can bring her to her knees. But she will choose to be blind if you point out the exploitation or injustice being perpetrated by the erector of that cross. She loves her God. But she hates a lot of her God’s creatures because their truths differ from hers.

Her cross is made of concrete whose innards look ghostly when it is struck with a demolition hammer.

* I fell in love with the word ‘samasya’ merely because it was used frequently by one of my colleagues in Delhi whose hobby was to create samasyas for others and enjoy the outcomes just as most of our religions do.