Solargraph. Credit: Gregg Kemp Date: June 23rd, 2009
A recent evening of star-gazing met inevitably with that age-old adage, “Do you believe in God?” This universal but slightly wearisome spiritual inquisition is usually countered through flippant admission to being a recovering Catholic. This time, posed by my Nepali host father, I tried to breach the language and cultural barrier by explaining my equally non-committal philosophy of God as a concept to explain the mysterious operations of energy forces in the universe. I imagine my buwaa was expecting more a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Afterwards, it left me to wonder if I’d have answered yes, would this automatically accompany membership of a faith? If I replied no, am I to be pigeonholed as a dogged atheist? Either way, faced with the vast night sky with its shouts of sheet lightening raging across it, I mysteriously didn’t have the energy to explain my belief in God.
When I was little my neighbor had this Irish blessing on the back of their front door:
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be forever at your back.
May the sun shine warm across your face, and until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
The simple prayer presented sensual thoughts of travel as a sentient thing; a route that represents and rallies for your safe passage while both protecting and preserving you. This God, once holding a little person (me) over the Earth in His oversized hands I now interpret as a narration, the fortunes or karma, and the intuitive energies we have carried in our cells from the beginning of the universe by virtue of us being here and alive to experience the present and carry it forward. We are created by who knows what? Give it a random name and call it God. How do we find ourselves in any moment we remember to stop and wonder thus? The anonymity of time remains mute. We all like to think ourselves important players in the personal histories we create; we are by virtue of their self-realization. Yet we fling ourselves along, barely conscious of the mysteries unfolding beneath our base perceptions. What tends to be ignored is our participation, known and unknown, in the wider connectivity of all things. I and all those I meet are but a blink of humanity. The animals from which we evolved and the myriad species that existed long before even them are all just a twinkle of a star in the infinity of the universe. Travel brings a closer vantage of these mysteries by constantly reminding me of being part of a bigger picture – if you want, give it a random name and call it history – unfolding.
The secrets of existence, neatly wrapped up in one succinct paragraph. Only problem is, how to translate this into Nepali?
A recent evening of star-gazing met inevitably with that age-old adage, “Do you believe in God?” This universal but slightly wearisome spiritual inquisition is usually countered through flippant admission to being a recovering Catholic. This time, posed by my Nepali host father, I tried to breach the language and cultural barrier by explaining my equally non-committal philosophy of God as a concept to explain the mysterious operations of energy forces in the universe. I imagine my buwaa was expecting more a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Afterwards, it left me to wonder if I’d have answered yes, would this automatically accompany membership of a faith? If I replied no, am I to be pigeonholed as a dogged atheist? Either way, faced with the vast night sky with its shouts of sheet lightening raging across it, I mysteriously didn’t have the energy to explain my belief in God.
When I was little my neighbor had this Irish blessing on the back of their front door:
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be forever at your back.
May the sun shine warm across your face, and until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
The simple prayer presented sensual thoughts of travel as a sentient thing; a route that represents and rallies for your safe passage while both protecting and preserving you. This God, once holding a little person (me) over the Earth in His oversized hands I now interpret as a narration, the fortunes or karma, and the intuitive energies we have carried in our cells from the beginning of the universe by virtue of us being here and alive to experience the present and carry it forward. We are created by who knows what? Give it a random name and call it God. How do we find ourselves in any moment we remember to stop and wonder thus? The anonymity of time remains mute. We all like to think ourselves important players in the personal histories we create; we are by virtue of their self-realization. Yet we fling ourselves along, barely conscious of the mysteries unfolding beneath our base perceptions. What tends to be ignored is our participation, known and unknown, in the wider connectivity of all things. I and all those I meet are but a blink of humanity. The animals from which we evolved and the myriad species that existed long before even them are all just a twinkle of a star in the infinity of the universe. Travel brings a closer vantage of these mysteries by constantly reminding me of being part of a bigger picture – if you want, give it a random name and call it history – unfolding.
The secrets of existence, neatly wrapped up in one succinct paragraph. Only problem is, how to translate this into Nepali?
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