The God Inside Us - 10/23/17
Hello everybody! Maren here. It’s the beginning of our second academic week in India and hard to believe that we are halfway done with Global semester. The time is flying by, and next week we will also fly — from Hyderabad to Chennai — which means that we are starting to prepare for our final quizzes, speeches, lectures, and yoga sessions at the Henry Martyn Institute.
The atmosphere feels slightly chaotic. Not necessarily in a bad way, but simply because we are cramming one month’s worth of religious material and questions into fourteen days. In my mind, sorting out exactly what religion means right now to anyone, or even just me, feels almost impossible. At night, I’ll sit down and try to organize my thoughts only to find my mind racing, trying to grapple with all of the experiences, people, and religion that we have encountered.
Today in class, we talked about defining God. Not only from a Christian standpoint or a Hindu perspective, but in the eyes of diverse thought traditions. I had trouble coming up with any concrete answer, in part because I’ve seen how God means different things to everyone — at Sufi music performances and Indian women’s shelters. At children’s schools and make-shift medical centers. At mosques and temples and in the little Hindu shrines that line the asphalt roads.
Our lecturer said that God is in all of us. It’s our own potential.
This week was humid. Haze is threatening beyond the dark horizon, but there’s no more rain. My head is filled with everything that we have to do before next Tuesday — homework, quizzes, yoga lessons, final speeches. I am trying to remember everyone that we have met here, everything that we will see, then leave behind.
My mind is darting, spinning. My God is whirring. Like the overhead fans, currently switched on, splitting the deep, shadowed quality of the room.
The atmosphere feels slightly chaotic. Not necessarily in a bad way, but simply because we are cramming one month’s worth of religious material and questions into fourteen days. In my mind, sorting out exactly what religion means right now to anyone, or even just me, feels almost impossible. At night, I’ll sit down and try to organize my thoughts only to find my mind racing, trying to grapple with all of the experiences, people, and religion that we have encountered.
Today in class, we talked about defining God. Not only from a Christian standpoint or a Hindu perspective, but in the eyes of diverse thought traditions. I had trouble coming up with any concrete answer, in part because I’ve seen how God means different things to everyone — at Sufi music performances and Indian women’s shelters. At children’s schools and make-shift medical centers. At mosques and temples and in the little Hindu shrines that line the asphalt roads.
Our lecturer said that God is in all of us. It’s our own potential.
This week was humid. Haze is threatening beyond the dark horizon, but there’s no more rain. My head is filled with everything that we have to do before next Tuesday — homework, quizzes, yoga lessons, final speeches. I am trying to remember everyone that we have met here, everything that we will see, then leave behind.
My mind is darting, spinning. My God is whirring. Like the overhead fans, currently switched on, splitting the deep, shadowed quality of the room.
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