Pi's ponderings on Jesus

This is one of my most choice excerpts from Yann Martel’s novel, The Life of Pi. Twelve-year-old Piscine, or “Pi” for short, was raised Hindu by his mother, but also trained to have a skeptical mind by his atheist father. This sequence takes place while he and his family are on vacation in the northern part of India. His older brother dares him to enter a small Catholic cathedral…which no one in their family had ever done before.

I dared to enter the church.  My stomach was in knots.  I was terrified I would meet a Christian who would shout at me, “What are you doing here? How dare you enter this sacred place, you defiler!  Get out, right now!”

There was no one.  And little to be understood. I advanced and observed the inner sanctum.  There was a painting. Was this the murti? Something about a human sacrifice. An angry god who had to be appeased with blood.  Dazed women staring up in the air and fat babies with tiny wings flying about. A charismatic bird.  Which one was the god?  To the side of the sanctum was a painted wooden sculpture.  The victim again, bruised and bleeding in bold colors.  I stared at his knees.  They were badly scraped. The pink skin was peeled back and looked like the petals of a flower, revealing kneecaps that were fire-engine red.  It was hard to connect this torture with the peaceful priest I had seen from a distance in the rectory the day before.

Catholics have a reputation for severity, for judgment that comes down heavily. My experience with Father Martin was not like that. He was very kind.  He served me tea and biscuits in a tea set that tinkled and rattled at every touch; he treated me like a grown-up; and he told me a story.  Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story.

And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief.  What? Humanity sins but its God’s Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine Father saying to me, “Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas.  Yesterday another one killed a black buck.  Last week to of them ate the camel.  The week before it was painted storks and grey herons.  And who’s to say for sure who snacked on the golden agouti? The situation has become intolerable. Something must be done.  I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them.”

“Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do.  Give me a moment to wash up.”

“Hallelujah, my son.”

“Hallelujah, Father.”

What a downright weird story.  What a peculiar psychology.

I asked for another story, one that I might find more satisfying.  Surely this religion had more than one story in its bag—religions abound with stories.  But Father Martin made me understand that the stories that came before it—and there were many—were simply prologue to the Christians.  Their religion had one Story, and to it they came back again and again, over and over. It was story enough for them.

I was quiet that evening at the hotel.

That a god should put up with adversity, I could understand.  The gods of Hinduism face their fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnappers, and usurpers.  What is the Ramayana but the account of one long, bad day for Rama? Adversity, yes.  Reversals in fortune, yes. Treachery, yes. But humiliation? Death? I couldn’t imagine Lord Krishna consenting to being stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets, and, to top it off, crucified at the hands of mere humans, to boot. I’d never heard of a Hindu god dying. Brahman Revealed did not go for death. Devils and monsters did, as did mortals, by the thousands and millions—that’s what they were there for. Matter, too, fell away.  But divinity should not be blighted by death. It’s wrong…

Why would God wish this upon himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what was beautiful, spoil what is perfect?

Love.  That was Father Marin’s answer.

And what about this Son’s deportment?  Why did he give himself up? Hindu gods never did that. No spindly cross would’ve kept them down.  When push came to shove, they transcended any human frame with strength no man could have and weapons no man could handle.

That is God as God should be.  With shine and power and might. Such as can rescue and save and put down evil.

This Son, on the other hand, who goes hungry, who suffers from thirst, who gets tired, who is sad, who is anxious, who is heckled and harassed, who has to put up with followers who don’t get it and opponents who don’t respect Him—what kind of god is that? It’s a god on too human a scale, that’s what. There are miracles, yes mostly of a medical nature, a few to satisfy hungry stomachs; at best a storm is tempered, water is briefly walked upon…any Hindu god can do a hundred times better.

This Son is a god who spent most of his time telling stories, talking. This Son is a god who walked, a pedestrian god—and in a hot place, at that—with a stride like any human stride; and when he splurged on transportation, it was a regular donkey. This Son is a god who died in three hours, with moans, gasps, and laments.  What kind of god is that? What is there to inspire in this Son?

Love, said Father Martin.

And this Son appears only once, long ago, far away? Among some obscure tribe in a backwater strip of West Asia on in the confines of a long-vanished empire? Is done away with before He has a single grey hair on His head? Leaves not a single descendant, only scattered, partial testimony, His complete works doodles in the dirt? …What can justify such divine stinginess?

Love, repeated Father Martin.

I’ll stick to my Krishna, thank you very much.  I find his divinity utterly compelling.  You can keep your sweaty, chatty Son to yourself.  That was how I met that troublesome rabbi of long ago: with disbelief and annoyance.

I had tea with Father Martin three days in a row.  Each time, as teacup rattled against saucer, as spoon tinkled against edge of cup, I asked questions.

The answer was always the same.

He bothered me, this Son.  Every day I burned with greater indignation against Him, found more flaws to Him…but I couldn’t get Him out of my head.  Still can’t.  I spent three solid days thinking about Him.  The more He bothered me, the less I could forget Him.  And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave Him.

On our last day, a few hours before we were to leave Munnar, I hurried up the hill to the cathedral on more time…. short of breath I said, “Father, I would like to be a Christian, please.”

He smiled. “You already are, Piscine—in your heart.  Whoever meets Christ in good faith is a Christian. Here in Munnar you met Christ.”

He patted me on the head.  It was more of a thump, actually. I thought I would explode with joy.

“When you come back, we’ll have tea again, my son.”

“Yes, Father.”

It was a good smile he gave me. The smile of Christ.

I entered the sanctuary, without fear this time, for it was now my house too. I offered prayers to Christ, who is alive. 

(from Life of Pi by Yann Martel, 2001, Random House)

More letters about Embracing the Gray, Fall 2013 edition

My book, Embracing the Gray: A Wing a Prayer, and A Doubter’s Resolve, has elicited a slew of letters and e-mails.  Here are excerpts of some that have come in…

Just finished Embracing the Gray, and there were so many lessons. Thanks Mark for writing it down, I cried more than a couple of times. Great Book!

J.M.

Mark, I am about 1/4 of the way into it and I had to stop be cause my husband wanted to read it. So, we compromised... I started over and am reading it out loud to him. I can't wait till morning so I can pick up where i left off tonight! When you make this a movie... oh and yes you should!! Fantastic stuff Mark!

R.R.

My soul is being fed. Grateful. I finished your book tonight. Wow! There are so many things running through my head. It came at a very important and significant weekend for me. And even the process of getting your book into my hands (well, downloaded to my computer) was God given and ordained . . . and I don't say that lightly.

S.F.

Okay I just finished the book. Thanks for having the last chapter on how you are embracing the gray, it is helpful as I am spent and hurt all over. I think it will help a lot of people understand that they are not the only ones to question God and to suffer with confusion with God. Your words in the last chapter will comfort me, as I am sure I will read them often.

N.S.

Thank you for writing Embracing the Gray.  I downloaded it from your website because it sounded like it would address some problems I am having of understanding my son.  I really liked the last chapter and found it to be encouraging. The Psalms tell us that His Word is a lamp for our steps, a light for our path - not a floodlight to see ahead, but a light to see each step.  That's the encouragement I get from your book.  

B.F.

I have to say I am not sure how anyone can put your book down; maybe they didn't ever have to face the world. It is a tough life and I can relate to your brother and your friend who wanted to kill himself while he is drunk. I never reached that but I understand addiction. Your book is bringing me face to face with these demons and I pray and have been praying I can break away. I am close to 60 and not sure how much longer I will be here.

Your book is full of life-changing thought. A word I never use must be used in reflecting on it: profound. I will be loaning it to several others I know, and I am sure when it comes back to me it will be well worn. Right now a lady who wants to commit suicide will be reading it and I never felt a calling but when I thought about who I would share it with next; I was compelled to share the book. Other people are in mind but they are not suicidal but have faith so I put the books in the hand of the needy. If I never get it back, I will buy others because I believe this is something people should read. As much as I like Chuck Swindoll and Charles Stanley; I don't think they have the experiences to share because they were always surrounded by believers with issues rather than the sinners of the world. Excellent book, everyone should read it.

D.P.

Wow!  Next step is the movie!
D.C. 

I continue to be humbled by the response the book is generating.  If you have read it and wish to correspond with me, I always interact with any communiqués.   You can also read many reader reviews (97% are Five Stars) at:

http://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Gray-Doubters-Resolve-ebook/dp/B004L62CN2/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Embracing the Gray is still available for a limited time as a 99 cent Kindle download at that same link, or as a free PDF download at my website (donations accepted):

http://markahollingsworth.com/Node

"It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision," and other Helen Keller quotes

Helen Keller (1880-1968) became blind and deaf, most likely due to scarlet fever, when she was just seven months old.  Through valiant efforts of her family and a blind teacher, Anne Sullivan, young Helen was able to begin communicating with the world around her.  Breakthroughs and techniques were developed through their relationship that are still used to this day.

In 1904 Helen graduated from Radcliff College magna cum laude, and was the first deaf and blind person ever to graduate from a university anywhere in the world.

She went on to become a famous author and advocate for those with disabilities, as well as fighting for women’s rights, being an active pacifist, and a supporter of birth control. She ended up visiting many international leaders in thirty-nine different countries, and was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.

These are some of my favorite quotes from her.  Let me know which ones speak to you…. 

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.

The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves - and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!

College isn't the place to go for ideas.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

It gives me a deep comforting sense that "things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal."

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.

Thoughts?

"Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be." Part 2 of Henri Nouwen Quotes

Some more of my favorite quotes from Henri Nouwen. Let me know which ones resonate with you.

The real "work" of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me. To gently push aside and silence the many voices that question my goodness and to trust that I will hear the voice of blessing-- that demands real effort.

Emit gratitude as though it was done.

We fail to see the place of suffering in the broader scheme of things. We fail to see that suffering is an inevitable dimension of life. Because we have lost perspective, we fail to see that unless one is willing to accept suffering properly, he or she is really refusing to continue in the quest for maturity. To refuse suffering is to refuse personal growth.

Aren't you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: 'May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.' But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death.

Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your person, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched.

Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.

Peace is first of all the art of being.

Praying demands that you take to the road again and again, leaving your house and looking forward to a new land for yourself and your [fellow human]. This is why praying demands poverty, that is, the readiness to live a life in which you have nothing to lose so that you always begin afresh.

Somehwere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.

We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.

God, who is the Creator of the Universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness.

Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God.

A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.

In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us.

As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their "right" place.

It is tragic to see how the religious sentiment of the West has become so individualized that concepts such as "a contrite heart," have come to refer only to the personal experiences of guilt and willingness to do penance for it. The awareness of our impurity in thoughts, words and deeds can indeed put us in a remorseful mood and create in us the hope for a forgiving gesture. But if the catastrophical events of our days, the wars, mass murders, unbridled violence, crowded prisons, torture chambers, the hunger and the illness of millions of people and he unnamable misery of a major part of the human race is safely kept outside the solitude of our hearts, our contrition remains no more than a pious emotion.

Hope prevents us from clinging to what we have and frees us to move away from the safe place and enter unknown and fearful territory.

True hospitality is receiving the stranger on his terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who have found the center of their lives in their own hearts.

Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be.

For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair. Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.

Dear God,

I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!

Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?

Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?

Please help me to gradually open my hands

and to discover that I am not what I own,

but what you want to give me.

And what you want to give me is love,

unconditional, everlasting love.

Amen.

Thoughts on any of these?