India Update #4

Dear Friends and Family,

For the better part of this past week, we have been sequested in the beauty, austere silence, and radical simplicity of the Ashram of Kurimasalu high in the Western Ghats of Kerala. Our retreat was with the community of monks who live in community at the ashram, on their large acreage which supports an active dairy farm. It is a fully sustainable farm, and most of what the monks subsist on comes from their own production. It was wonderful to see how, in this small microcosm, humans can live in close harmony with their natural surroundings. Living within a Bendictine rule, the monks are committed to a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but unlike my previous experiences in the States and Europe with "modern" monastic life, this was an introduction and immersion into something quite different, rigorous in its adherence to the simple life proclaimed in the Gospel. Jeannette and I stayed in separate quarters with the strict separation between the monks and nuns who live at Kurimusala. This segragation extended to our meals, which we ate sitting on the floor, side by side in a row, our prayers at the various offices and masses of the day, and at other times during the day of work, rest, and contemplation.

The diet was strictly vegetarian, simple but deliciously prepared, and consisted mostly of produce from the monk's extensive gardens, composted and fertilized by the dung of the cattle, toether with rice, that is the basis of the diet here.

What was extraordinary was the silence. Here in India, in the cacophony that marks so much of life, we were drawn into a quiet that was as startling as it is was blissful. The liturgy of the monks draws from the very ancient practices of the Syrian church, dating back to the time of the primiitve CHristian community. Combined with this, the liturgy integrated Hindu practices, such as meditation and the ubiquitous use of incense, candle ceremony, flower ceremony, and the like. Much of what we experienced was as strange to us as the Hindu practices we have seen in the local temples, but it was equally alluring in its exaltation of the creative power and wonder of the Creator of all that is. Indeed, in so much of what we experienced in Kerala, we have been impressed by the ways in which widely divergent faiths, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity, have melded into a common appreciation and worship of God.

We left Kurimasala deeply grateful and heartened by the simple witness and grace of this community, their vigilant attention to the care of the natrual world as part and parcel of their creed, and the gift of being welcomed into their fellowship to learn at a more basic and immediate level the kind of freedom and joy that comes from living simply.

Being away from the outside world, the news about Haiti, as I know it has been for all of you, was devestating to us. It struck me hard that in the Indian papers, the story found itself buried in the middle of the paper. But as we left for Tamil Nadu, and into the stark human condition that marks so much of life in India, as in Haiti, it became clearer why this is so. Witnessing the vast numbers that live so close to death here, in a population where on a daily basis well over 200,000 die, many in deplorable and tragic conditions, brings us closer to the world as it is, brimming with contradiction, where life and death, joy and sadness, beauty and blight, poverty and grace exist as a seamless garment.

The monks of Kurimasala reminded us that in this world, there is ample reason to entrust our hearts and purposes to the One who creates, restores, and sustains all things, and to measure our own existence by how well the least as well as the greatest of our fellow pilgrims journey through life.

Now it is on to Tamil Nadu, and even deeper into the heart of this strange, beautiful, maddening and enthralling land.

Blessings and Peace,

Steve