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A Religious Jamboree

24/2/2019

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For the past 48 days Hindus have been flocking to Allahabad in Northern India.  It’s the time of the Kumbh Mela Festival, the largest gathering of people in the world. It takes place in Allahabad and lasts for 55 days. It began on 15th January and will end on 4th March and takes place only every 12 years. During the 55 days of the festival 120 million people are expected to come and bathe at the point where the sacred rivers Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Sarasvati merge.
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The Sangam (the point of confluence of the three rivers) is a particularly holy spot associated with one of the many myths of the Hindu faith. The story comes from the Vedic scriptures and tells of the time when angels and demons churned up the ocean, seeking the nectar of immortality. Not surprising conflict ensued and a deadly poison began to emerge from the water, which was swallowed by the god Shiva before it could destroy the world.  Many gifts were then given to the world including the nectar of immortality (amrit) contained in a large jar called a Kumbh. There was the possibility of the demons taking possession of it until one of the devas, transformed into a large bird known as  Jayanta, took the pitcher up to paradise and on his way he stopped in four places where a drop of nectar fell into the river. Each of these places has become a holy place of pilgrimage and a Kumbh Mela takes place in each of them on a rotational basis. But every 12 years the Kumbh  Mela takes place in Allahabad, considered to the be the most sacred of the four pilgrimage locations. And every 144 years a Great Kumbh Mela takes place. At the last one in 2013, 120 million people attended and it’s estimated that as many as that will attend the present one.  
 
The organisation for such an event is immense. A city of tents has been set up, spread over 12 square miles; hundreds of new roads have been laid and 120,000 toilets erected.  15 lost-and-found camps have also been set up. And the pilgrims will come in their millions. The first to bathe in the sacred rivers are members of religious orders and the holy men, the sadhus, who have abandoned their former life to commit themselves totally to prayer and asceticism. The sadhus are often completely naked with ash-smeared bodies and they come from all over India to join in a great procession in which some are riding on elephants, camels and horses, there are brass bands and drummers, religious leaders on several vehicles throwing marigolds to thousands of devotees and impromptu entertainment along the way.  It is a jamboree and until 6 years ago was limited to men but now women ascetics are allowed to bathe on the auspicious first day. It’s only after these holy men and women have rushed into the sacred river and been cleansed that ordinary pilgrims are allowed to bathe, believing that they can somehow participate in the holiness of the saintly who have bathed in the waters before them.

The whole atmosphere at the Kumbh Mela is that of a medieval faith but for the individual pilgrim it’s a religious experience. I haven’t been to a Kumbh Mela but I have been to Allahabad. It was a long time ago, in 1986, and while the Kumbh Mela had taken place in Hardwar that year there had been a Magh  Mela, a much smaller annual pilgrimage in Allahabad. My memory is that there was a sense of the emptiness about the pilgrimage area, of the night after the party, a presence more palpable in its absence than anything else, a spirit of a party that had been, the ghostly lingering of an  energy now gone. And there were pilgrims there though not in their thousands.

 I was with two Hindu friends, a husband and a wife who was anxious to bathe at the Sangam. We hired a boat and were rowed out to the point where the rivers merged. Unbelievable as it seems, there is a point where the rivers Ganges and Yamuna meet and you can actually see the different colours of the two rivers. The third river, the Saraswati, is underground and mythical but there is a sense of sacredness about the spot, I can recall, though, will all things religious, there is also the opposite. As we reached the sacred spot a boat came alongside ours containing an ornate shrine attended by a priest who performed a puja to the goddess Saraswati. My friends were encouraged to make a donation for a coconut that was then offered to the river. I was the observer in this act of devotion so the only one that saw another boat collect the coconuts, no doubt to sell them on to other pilgrims. I can’t remember if I was a bit shocked at this but I would now be much more tolerant and even amused at religious idiosyncrasies such as this. What I do remember, however, and it has had a lasting effect on me, was my friend bathing at that sacred spot and her emotion as she experienced the joy of believing her sins had been forgiven and that she had touched even for a moment the liberation of that nectar of immortality.
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It’s this that’s at the heart of the Kumbh Mela and reveals its true meaning. As with all religions it’s important to look beyond the razzmatazz and externals to see the beauty of the truth hidden deep within them. I’m grateful I had such an experience at Allhahabad.  

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The Ark of Fraternity

9/2/2019

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Last week, Pope Francis made a historic visit to Abu Dhabi, the first Pope to visit the Arabian Peninsula and by all accounts the visit seems to have been a success. At the Interreligious Gathering the Pope acknowledged that he was following in the footsteps of St Francis of Assisi who had met the Sultan al-Malik al Kamil 800 years ago during the Fifth Crusade, a meeting during which each recognised the other as men who knew and loved God. It’s said that for twenty days they conversed with one another about the ways of God.  Like his namesake, Pope Francis came to Abu Dhabi as a pilgrim of peace, stating “I have welcomed the opportunity to come here as a believer thirsting for peace, as a brother seeking peace with the brethren. We are here to desire peace, to promote peace, to be instruments of peace”.  He called those present at the Interreligious Gathering at which he spoke to a new way of being together, “we too in the name of God, in order to safeguard peace, need to enter together as one family into an ark which can sail the stormy seas of the world: the ark of fraternity”
 
What a wonderful image - the ark of fraternity! So often the ark has been used as a bulwark against those who are different, protecting communities from the enemy, the only place that is secure and safe in a troubling world. Noah’s ark, to which the Pope refers, saved Noah and his family from the destruction of the rest of the population who were living a sinful life. The ark  was a place of  justice and goodness and only within it was one safe. This image was transferred to Christianity where Jesus was seen as the Ark of Salvation. Only within the confines of a relationship with Jesus could people be saved and protected from the forces of evil that raged not just in the world but in other faiths too. For the Catholic Church this ark came to be associated with the Catholic Church so that membership of that Church alone could guarantee salvation. Thank God this attitude has changed though many religions are still suspicious and fearful of religious proselytization and conversion which reflects a little of that mind-set.
 
Now we have the image of the ark extended and expanded to include all those who desire peace and recognise the common humanity of all.  We are quite literally in the same boat, members of the same species, interconnected with one another, facing the same hopes and joys, concerned about and vulnerable to the future of our planet and our world. As the Pope said, echoing his two predecessors, “There is no alternative: we will either build the future together or there will not be a future.”   
 
In his speech the Pope set out a full agenda for humanity if we are to establish this ark of fraternity and truly recognise one another as brothers and sisters. This includes an appreciation of plurality and recognition of difference, a sense of our own identity, while respecting the identity of others, a protection of the rights and freedoms of others especially religious freedom. What the Pope wants for all of us is an open identity that doesn’t in any way compromise who we are or closes itself off from others but is enriched by our relationships.

Dialogue of course plays a part in all of this. Religions, the Pope says, “cannot renounce the urgent task of building bridges between peoples and cultures. The time has come when religions should more actively exert themselves, with courage and audacity, and without pretence, to help the human family deepen the capacity for reconciliation, the vision of hope and the concrete paths of peace”.   And something not often mentioned in interreligious dialogue, but mentioned by the Pope, is prayer “as for the future of interreligious dialogue, the first thing we have to do is pray, and pray for one another: we are brothers and sisters!”  
 
During his stay in Abu Dhabi the Pope signed a document with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb. Its title is: On Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together. It’s easy to dismiss these kind of initiatives. Often documents and statements are assigned to the bookshelf if not history and readily forgotten but the fact that two very prominent leaders from Christianity and Islam have signed such a document is significant and it’s always on hand to be used as reference for the best intentions of the two faiths, even if we, their members, don’t always live up to the ideal. So what do we do with it? Hopefully we Christians and Muslims, with others, will dialogue about it. Hopefully, we will take it seriously and begin to think in terms of an ark of fraternity and, as the document suggests, the document itself will become the object of research and reflection in all schools, universities and institutes of formation". Now wouldn’t that be something?

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    I am  a Catholic nun, involved in interfaith relations for many decades.  For me this has been an exciting and sacred journey which I would like to share with others.

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