april 2009 newsletter...
let me sing of the love of God...
It seems I can't escape the theme of pilgrimage. With five British friends, our long Easter weekend wound along an ancient Hindu pilgrimage route through the Yamuna river valley back to the source at Yamnotri,. Easter Sunday found us careening around the narrow mountain roads in a school jeep, singing every Easter hymn we could think of - loudly. Maybe it was the perfect spring weather, maybe it was the sense of Christian community that feels rare here, but I felt exuberant.
Stopping for the night, we shared tea on the rooftop with a local guide, who told us the story of Ma Yamuna, whom people in the area simply refer to as the devi (the goddess). She was a much-neglected consort of the god Krishna. Helpless and grieved by how he chased the young milkmaids, Ma Yamuna begged only for permission to lay herself down at Krishna's feet. He recognized the true love in her request and honored her sacrifice by allowing the Yamuna River to flow past all the places where Krishna walked. I confess, I don't see how the story leaves Ma Yamuna with much dignity. Not much love, either.
The guide also told us we were early; the devi was still sleeping in the temple at the foot of the mountain. It's not until April 27 that she will be woken up from her winter sleep and carried in a "police procession" (he made a great point of this) to the shrine at the source, inaugurating the year's pilgrim season. Everywhere we looked, we saw signs of preparation. New plastic tarp tea stalls and cement slab hotels sprang up in the time it took us to walk to the top and back.
Hiking up from where the road ends, we crossed paths with some of the first pilgrims of the season, a group of construction workers from Delhi. They joined us for a few hours, curious about our reasons for walking this path. Here's an insight into Eastern culture: they told me that, while Christians will accept anybody (imagine a look of scorned disbelief), only a true India-born Indian can be Hindu (imagine a smile of pride). Shaking their heads sympathetically, they warned me that I'd have to wait till my next life to become Hindu. I smiled and said I was glad to be a Christian. I said I would be happy to accept them if they, too, became Christians right here in this life.
We smiled together at what seemed impossible. I almost stumbled when it hit me then that I was literally walking the title of this website. I was celebrating the resurrection of the living Christ while I walked among people searching for a glimpse of the divine. I spent the next hour a little distracted and confused, praying inside about what to say and what to leave unsaid. I wish I could report something miraculous, but we parted ways with the story of my God and his love unspoken and my heart aching with the burden of it.
God has his own ways of speaking his love, though. My ninth grade history class on Friday seemed charmed. It's beautiful, beautiful spring here, and the warm afternoon light streamed through the open windows with the breeze. Every few minutes, we smiled at the persistently melodious whistling thrush who has taken up residence a few feet outside my window. I sighed, trying to muster the energy to teach these students about the consequences of the Scientific Revolution. On Friday afternoon. On a perfect Friday afternoon. It took me twenty minutes to figure out that the kids were much more interested in the material than I was. Specifically, we were talking about how the emergence of the scientific method and rationalism changed the way the western world viewed the universe. I explained that scientists began to perceive the universe as a machine governed by laws that could not be overturned, even by God.
This is when things got interesting: a particularly insightful boy from Vietnam looked at me, a little perplexed, and said, 'Miss Seefeldt, but machines are made with a purpose. They're supposed to do something, right?" I nodded, watching the gears turning in his head, "...so what's the purpose of the universe?" Beaming with all the glee of a Westminster Catechism-loving Presbyterian, my internal voice was reciting, "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever." Then I paused, unsure of how to get my class from universe-as-a-machine to enjoying a personal, creative God forever.
I said, slowly, "Well, I guess that depends on how you want me to answer that question. As a Christian, I believe God made the whole universe to show what he is like. He wanted to express who he is. And that's the purpose of the universe." Silence. Then, "...but Miss Seefeldt, if God wanted to show himself, who was he showing himself to?" I could have cried at the naked sincerity of his question. Miraculously, I didn't and was able to use the ideas of Jonathan Edwards to help me explain that God made us humans simply to express the perfection and beauty of his love to us.
In his appropriately titled The End for Which God Created the Universe, Edwards says, "It is an extension of the glory of a perfectly good and loving being to communicate that love to other intelligent beings. God's joy and happiness and delight in divine perfections is expressed externally by communicating that happiness and delight to created beings. God's internal perfection or glory radiates externally like the light that radiates from the sun."
So we spent the last half-hour of our perfect and beautiful Friday afternoon, sunlight pouring in the windows, talking about how Christians believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love each other in such communion that God created an entire universe so that He could express this love to creatures who could choose to love him back. I saw the wonder on some of their faces at their first inclination that this miracle might be true. And creation is only the beginning of the miracle. Pray that my students will hear and know the full story of Redemption.
I've spent April rediscovering the promise of Resurrection and marveling at how God's Love radiates out to us through everything from rhododendrons to pilgrims to the whistling thrush who sings valiantly (if incessantly) outside my classroom, calling me to Life and Joy. I pray you hear the song, too.
Your fellow pilgrim,
Amy