India Ink #3: Merry Christians

-- by Tom Phillips

Syrian cross in lotus

In a "A Passage to India," E.M. Forster describes a Hindu festival re-enacting the birth of Lord Krishna.  This includes a game in which the nobles of the state slide pats of butter down their noses, only to have them stolen and eaten by each other.  "By sacrificing good taste," he writes, Hindu worship "has achieved what Christianity has shirked: the inclusion of merriment."

Forster never mentions Indian Christianity, but here in the south Indian state of Kerala it is a prominent faith. Tradition holds that the Apostle Thomas sailed to Kerala in 51 CE and converted Hindus to the Way.  And to this day, many of these Christians have kept up their Hindu customs.

 This was the procession after Sunday's feast day  at St. Joseph's Syrian Catholic Church in Allapuzha -- even more colorful and noisy than the local Hindu festival.

Those umbrellas are not a sign or symbol, they're just for beauty and fun. Hindu tradition is full of these, and so is its Christian offshoot in India.

Praise God and pass the butter!

-- Copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips

The Walking Cure

 -- by Tom Phillips

                       “Sometimes I wonder what I’m a-gonna do,

                        But there ain’t no cure for the Summertime Blues.”

                                                                                    -- Eddie Cochran 

Ever since I was a teenager I have suffered from the Summertime Blues – the aimlessless, hopelessness, boredom and loneliness that result from long days of humid heat, and the collapse of the structures of ordinary time.  What are you going to do? 

This summer I stumbled on an answer.   Browsing in my favorite bookstore, the Labyrinth on 112^th Street, I came across a new work by a French philosopher, Frederic Gros, called “A Philosophy of Walking.”   I’ve always been a walker – for transportation, exercise, and mental hygiene – but I never thought of this humble activity as a way of life, as a meaningful act in itself. 

Gros treats it that way. “Walking is not a sport,” he begins.  He writes about famous thinkers and writers for whom it was the essential activity:  Rousseau walked to recover his original, uncorrupted humanity;  Rimbaud walked to escape, to move on, to exhaust his body and mind.  Wordsworth walked to feel the natural rhythms of poetry.  Thoreau walked through the woods to simplify his existence, Nietzsche climbed mountains to drive his thought to its peaks.  Kant walked for discipline, and to relieve his constipation.  Gandhi walked for independence, for peace and freedom.    

Inspired, I tried organizing my life around walking.  And I found that three walks a day can relieve aimlessness, hopelessness, boredom and loneliness, and yield great benefits beyond.