Christ is born again. The miracle of all miracles! That one can die and be reborn and that such a huge mass of people all over the world waits for the birth to take place.
I listen to Handel’s Hallelujah that should be part of every civilised person’s musical repertoire in the twenty first century: “The Lord is Christ and we shall wait for ever and ever…”
Even though the “born again” Christian’s idea of a single Truth is so exclusivist, how beautiful is the idea of the suffering Christ, who takes upon himself all the pain and suffering of humankind. So much pain that even he has to exclaim when he is nailed on to the cross, “My Father, why hast thou forsaken me?” How many of us feel like that time and again. The Jews did so when they underwent the Holocaust. Yes, there is no other conception of the divine in any other religion in these terms, though Rama also suffers as he goes through the pain of banishment and of separation from his life’s partner.
X-mas brings back many memories. I was jogging in Lodhi Gardens the other afternoon to catch the few hours of sunlight in Delhi’s fog/smog-weary winter weeks. The sounds of a sprightly “Dance the Christmas polka,” suddenly drifted over the trees. In the vicinity a vibrant group had collected and were carolling. A childhood returned. The many evenings of Christmas when my mother would organise potluck dinners on the campus of Rajasthan University with the van Aalsts (the Christian-Jewish couple) and other Canadian and Indian families and we’d be carolling. My mom was like so many European Christians a non-Church goer. We spent a winter once in Arizona with my grandmother’s cousin, Aunt Luretta. Being in the desert this was no white Christmas, but my sister and I were shown the sights, Midnight Mass and the nativity scene. We drank the relevant flavours, such as punch and egg nog (ugh!). As you both grew up, we ensured a miniature multiculturality. Went to greet all our Muslim friends on Bakr Id that included a wonderful range of friends and celebrated X-mas in Cheryl’s Church, the CNI. That would have been my mother’s church also, had she been a participant in its life.
We discussed the idea of karma at Ramu Gandhi’s seminar. But, my question remains, how does one explain the random, the fact that the innocent and the loving become victims of life and the corrupt and selfish thrive? Through the weekend I asked myself this question again and again. Our neighbours’ maid’s son was run down by a garbage-disposal truck on Friday evening. The thirteen year-old died almost immediately. Through the next day I heard the sounds of the mother’s laments. The sister who witnessed it had receded into a traumatised silence. Whose karmik choices explained this premature death? The parents? His own from a previous life? What explains the scale of human suffering entailed in the Asian Tsunami just one year ago? Or is the answer a Jewish conception of an angry, vengeful God as Yahweh? Or is this why Christ has to embody the suffering of mankind? Do all religions give us what are maybe only partial answers?
The contrast to all this, seems a life fully-lived despite all its suffering. Sumantra’s, yours….