At the same time, some things are heating up. Since Levi and I are leaving for Hyderabad and Mumbai soon, there are plenty of preparations still to be made. Finding hotels is a difficult thing when you're working solely online and you know nothing about the cities you're travelling to. I'm sure I'll be happy when I'm there, and I am sure glad I am not doing this alone, but right now I feel quite anxious. I wonder how I will feel the day before I leave.
Anyway, not surprisingly, a number of things have happened since last I posted. I guess I am winding down in that sense as well ... the Blog. It is unlikely that I will post while I am travelling with Levi. I might, but that will not be a priority. I will definitely post when I get back and put all my pictures online! Yay! So, things... I am not working with the 7th grade math teacher like I thought. Insead, I am spending that time with the kids in Cresh (or Kresh?) and lower kindergarten. So that means that I am now working with 3- to 5-year-olds, 2nd graders, 4th graders, 5th graders (I am now regularly helping in a 5th grade math class) and 8th graders. What a range! It is all so fun. I am really hitting my stride in all of the classes, just in time to leave ) :
I finally went inside the Matrimandir on Sunday with Ron (from New Hampshire, who is also staying at Roy's). It was unlike almost anything I have seen before. In fact, it is unlike any one think I have ever seen before. When I walked inside, it first reminded me of the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library. Very odd, beautiful architecture with this amazing red glow. As I proceeded up to the pillar room, there was a section that had a large amount of concrete. That reminded me of being inside one of the many dams in Washington State. That actually made me want to visit a dam when I get home. Man, I have had the most random cravings while I've been here in India. Finally, the pillar room - which probably takes up the top half of the structure - was the most unique part of the whole structure. It was definitely unlike anything I have ever seen ... and yet. It did somewhat remind me of a planetarium. A really big planetarium. Let me describe the whole process in a bit more detail:
FIrst, Ron and I waited for a half and hour to get into a tour group. We had someone important reserve a spot for us, but as is usually the case for things like this, our name wasn't on the list. In the end, they fit us in anyway. We had a tour guide who walked us to within a few hundred meters (or should I say, "metres?") of the Matrimandir. It is both an incredibly impressive structure and quite reminiscent of a great big, golden golf-ball at the same time. It is "the soul" of Auroville. The word Matrimandir is a Sanskrit word meaning, "House of the Mother." The Mother has been more and more mysterious to me in these past couple of weeks. I will never quite understand just who she was and is. That is, I'll never quite understand who she thought she was and who her followers think she is.
Getting on with the story, the tour guide told us some impressive facts about the Matrimandir, mostly about the construction of it. It has taken 37 years to fully complete, and they haven't even started with the gardens on the outside yet! After talking to us for about 20 minutes, he led us inside. While we were coming closer to the structure, the ground began to slope away until, at its lowest point, it met a stairwell that ascended up into the Matrimandir. As usual, we left our chappals (sandals) outside at the bottom of the stairs, then, we headed up. When we got inside, we could see through windows below our feet at the lotus pond below. We were not to make a noise and we were not to lean against any of the marble. The whole interior was lined with white marble. Of course, I have no pictures as you cannot get near the Matrimandir with cameras or cell-phones. You'll have to make due with the external pictures I took on my "Tour with Jean."
Once we got inside, we put white socks on, and then went up a small, white, marble stariwell into the lower chaimber. There was a light red glow eminating from the interior walls. Two small streams of water were cascading down the insides of the sloping sides. There were two candles lit. Something was written in Golden Devanagri characters on the wall. Thanks to the fact that I took Hindi a few years ago, I could stumble through and read them. I recognized them as one of the prayers the 2nd grade students say to/about the Mother every morning. We then ascended a spiral, carpeted ramp with marble handrails and class sides. It was all somewhat ethereal. Then, we entered the pillar room.
Inside was like nothing I have ever experienced. There were 12 huge, white marble pillars which did not quite touch the ceiling. The whole room was so white and yet so extremely dimly lit that it felt like there was a fine mist suspended in the room until my eyes adjusted. In the center of the room was a perfect, sphere, glass crystal, probably a meter in diameter. It rested on four golden Sri-Aurobindo symbols (kind of like a flattened Star of David with a design in the middle), and the ground below it was the symbol of the Mother. There was a single beam of sunlight that shot through the roof directly into the crystal. In fact, that light went down through the entire lower room as well. I have never quite seen a beam of light like that.
For 15 minutes, we sat in complete silence, meditating, concentrating. We were told that this was not to be a religious place, but a place for concentration. For me, it was a place of intense concentration for one big reason. My stomache, as of about 5 minutes before we began the tour, was not feeling so well. In fact, it felt like it had been building to some incredible climax that would end in what my Father would elegantly describe as a "gaseous anomaly." For about the last 10 minutes of the 15 we were sitting there in some of the most deafening silence I have ever known, my mind bounced back and forth between, "Wow, this is amazing!" and "Uh oh, I'm gonna fart!" In the end, it never came out. I kind of wish it had; that would have been one of my best stories from India. Oh well, I'll make due with what I got.
Other events: I went to a Tamil wedding on Saturday night, or at least a piece of one. There are pictures and videos up online; the links are at the end of this Blog. Apparently a wedding is a multiple day ordeal. In my opinion, this was probably one of the less impressive days. It was a quick ceremony at the temple (a second ceremony was going on in the same temple about 15 feet away - you'll get a sense of it in my video) followed by a cafeteria style "feast" served to us on a banana leaf. I wish we had banana leaves at home; they make much more interesting disposable plates than Styrofoam (is that one of those brand names that you have to capitalize?).
Last night, Ramalingum and I went to Pondicherry to purchase the final train tickets for Levi and my trip. We may not know where we're sleeping, but least we know we're going. We also saw a huge shopping district in Pondy that Ramalingum said was world famous. It was so strange in the middle of the city. That city seems so poor and dirty to me. Maybe I'm mixing up overcrowding with poverty. We also visited his Mother-in-Law's house to see his wife and child, Auro. He is only a few days old now. I wish I had brought my camera to take pictures of him. We also visited his Brother and Sister-in-Law just like I'll be doing in about four weeks ( : They lived in a tiny, concrete, three-room apartment with no bathroom and no clean water source. When I got there, Ramalingum's brother was bringing pales of water up the stairs. I was served food and tea in both houses I visited. That is a wonderful custom here. I have not been in any house for more than 5 minutes before being served food and tea. Their houses are tiny and their hospitality is huge!
Finally, Ramalingum and I visited the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. This may have been a life changing experience for me. This is the place where the Mother studied under Sri Aurobindo and oversaw the creation of Auroville. We went to a sort of alter for both of them which was just a flat stone table filled with flower heads of every kind in simply beautiful designs. Along with a continuously flowing group of people (at least 100 moved through in the short time I was there), Ramalingum and I took some incense, lit it, and placed it in a large stand (with hundreds of other sticks of incense) near the altar. I didn't know what I was doing; I was just following Ramalingum's. At the same time, I knew exactly what was happening. From what I could tell, a way to pay repect to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had turned into a place to worship them. People were bowed before the altar, touching the flowers. At first glance, I thought to myself that I would avoid that at all costs, yet I found myself in the line to do the same anyway, and I did - to some extent. I put my incense in the holder, followed Ramalingum to a place beside the altar, knelt down, closed my eyes, and prayed. I didn't, however, pray to any Mother (not that that's what these people were doing; I honestly am not sure what they were doing in their minds - I only saw what they were physically doing). Here, where people seemed to pay more respect and act in more reverence to a couple of people than they do to any of their Hindu gods, here I committed my life to something that I do not quite understand yet.
I believe God called me in that moment to commit my life to loving, serving and being a witness of Jesus Christ to "Those People." I will forever have a difficult time defining "Those People," but the best I can do is to say that God has called me to witness to the Hindus, the Aurovillians, the post-modernists of this world. As Pastor Craig from Northview Bible in Spokane would put it, God has called me to witness to the people with a jam-packed God-slate. In other words, He has told me that it is my mission to tell people about the Absolute Truth of Christ who are convinced that all truth is relative and that there are many different ways to the Father/Mother/Divine/Perfect Path. I think God wants me to love and serve the spiritual, philisophical people of this age, those have actively rejected the Absolute message of Christ in favor of a more broad, more accepting perspective. I have no idea how I will ever be able to do this, nor how this fits in with my passion to work with the Youth of Spokane (and beyond) both as a Youth Leader at church and as a Teacher. I know that God understands perfectly how those go together, and I'm excited to find it out as I continue to seek after Him. I am so thankful that Jesus has given me clear passions and goals in life!
I think that's enough for now. Here are links to the pictures and videos I have taken in the past week:
New "Extras" pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/magicalmatt/Extras
New "New Creation Bilingual School" pictures (these are great!): http://picasaweb.google.com/magicalmatt/NewCreationBilingualSchool#
Tamil Wedding pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/magicalmatt/TamilWedding#
Video of Lower Kindergarten at New Creation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayPSt1kDZXM
Video of Tailoring Classroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYxD34Iutac
Macro Video of Tailoring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3x0A6xtPXA
Tamil Wedding Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZuYM702AnQ
Enjoy!
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