First Day School Field Trip: Hinduism

The girls decided this year to study world religions. We originally thought we might piggyback onto the local UU's RE classes for this part of their religious education as the UU Church is sort of the expert at having teens study world religions, but it turned out that the local UU teens were studying UU traditions this past year, so we were on our own.

The girls decided to look at Hinduism first and we checked out a bunch of books from the library and tried to get a good overview. I had not thought that there was a Hindu temple in Corpus, but when I checked, I found that there is. I called and asked if we could visit their temple and learn a little bit about their religion and they were very welcoming. After having to re-arrange the date a few times when things came up on both sides, I was finally able to take our big girls to a ceremony celebrating the birthday of Hanuman, God of Travel, on Sunday.

The temple was beautiful. We learned to remove our shoes and wash our feet before entering and got to look at the shrines to different deities and listen to chanting for Hanuman. We got to watch as the priests, with the assistance of a sponsoring family, bathed Hanuman with water, milk, yogurt, honey and something else. They gave him beautiful new clothes and adorned him with flowers and bananas - it was amazingly beautiful. I felt very intrusive a lot of the time, as this ceremony was so special and a certain family was helping alone at first, without the rest of the congregaton, so I felt we shouldn't be there, even though we were invited. And we were rather obviously outsiders, so it was an amazing gift to be there. I do not belong to a religion in the mystic tradition for nothing - after awhile, I was very caught up in the ceremony. It was really beautiful...like being in a different world.

A few people showed us around and explained things to us. They would even have had us stay to eat with them if we could have - they were so welcoming. The nice person who arranged our visit talked to us a little bit about how the deities were really all aspects of one deity, the one we all worship...how all rivers flow to the sea, and we all experience God in our own way because God made us all to see Him differently...a gentle speech of tolerance. I told him that we feel that way as well.

I am so glad that our little First Day School was blessed with this beautiful experience.