Hindu Temple, Continued

This is a continuation from the March 28 posting on my trip to the Hindu Temple of Florida.  Unfortunately, photography was not permitted within the temple, so I'll try to be clear but brief here. 
[*Note:  Not having interior shots is for the best, anyhow, because I'm having a difficult time importing photographs!  My only recourse is to procure the help of my more computer savvy son to help me -- and he's not here.  So, until I get brighter minds than mine in on this whole thing, we'll just use our imagination, shall we?]

Our guide who met us at the steps of the temple was a volunteer, a pediatric intensive care physician, and he was happy to answer all of our questions.  Luckily, the pager and cellphone on his belt remained quiet throughout the time he spent with us.  

After leaving our shoes in the special room down on the first level, we carefully walked barefoot across the damp patio, through the doors, and over the threshold  directly into the temple.  I saw first that the ceiling is not grand or higher than about 15 feet; its material is simple residential style and thus provides a more muffled and intimate space than I had imagined.  Two large fairly plain chandeliers are evenly spaced and centered in the room. The windows,unadorned squares of plate glass, line the two long sides of the space providing lots of daylight. 

White painted tiny footprints of (I believe) baby Brahma lead across the black tiled floor from the front door to the opposing side that looks most like an altar area, although a folding conference table standing on the floor in front looks utilitarian and incongruous.  Later, the guide explained that the footprints are recognized in a birthday festival with a decorated cradle, and he pointed toward the ceiling.  

At each of the room's corners are black marble-tiled niches, I'd guess about five feet deep, each with a god statue, draped in garlands of fresh flowers and fabric tucked around the figures, as saris.  The altar end of the room contains four niches, each with statues, either standing or seated.  I'm not sure about their material:  some were highly painted (perhaps plaster?), and some were detailed in finely wrought metal.  The only interior examples of Sanskrit I saw were engraved on the bases of the statues.  

Several other elements of worship are there as well -- trays and bowls of spices and other offerings.  At one point, our guide dipped his finger into a bowl of ash, and putting the ash-print between his eyes, said, "Ashes to ashes . . ."  and he smiled at us. He explained that the gods are simply manifestations of the one God -- the OM -- and just as the sun's rays spread out from but remain part of the sun, all are linked to the one God.  

While we were there, a few worshipers entered, and for a few quiet moments in the Namaste pose, honored Ganesh  (the elephant god who removes obstacles), before coming further inside.  Some brought gifts of food and laid them on the step of a niche.  I was interested in watching a priest outside of one of the temple windows;  bare-chested, and wearing a loose flowing garment and shawl, he was sitting at a small burning brazier, and was leading a ceremony with two women seated on small mats at each side.  He was chanting and dropping colored powder and waving a small twig brush through the smoke.  At one point he stood, stepped back a few paces, and the two sari-clad women slowly circled the fire as his chanting continued.  I learned later that the ceremony was intended to help the troubled marriage of the younger woman;  the second woman was her mother.  

At the conclusion of the tour, the guide encouraged us to take our time, and if we wished, to walk clockwise on the outside patio which encircles the temple.  Of the 27 in my group I believe that I was the only one to do this.  I enjoyed the solitude, absorbing the energy of the space as I passed three-dimensional carvings of gods, giving thanks and feeling honored for the experience.  

Finally, I  dried my feet, donned my shoes, joined the others on the bus, and we headed to an Indian restaurant for a lunch buffet before returning to St. Petersburg, a little tired, a lot full, and very happy.  

Hindu Temple of Tampa

A few days ago I posted a poem dedicated to my friends in an Artist's Way class I attended.  The purpose of this course is to teach techniques for freeing our creative spirit, guidance I certainly needed to regroup myself and return to that which I love:  writing.  One of several techniques is to take oneself on an "artist date," which can be anything from spending quiet time on a park bench, to rummaging around in antique stores, browsing in a museum or crafts store, buying crayons or paints, or whatever else calls out and sounds like a good idea.   One of my dates was taking a two-hour painting class (I'll tell you later about my "two-hour Monet").

But the one I want to share with you now is the group tour I took from St. Petersburg to Tampa, to visit the Hindu Temple of Florida  This opportunity was provided by a local chapter of OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute), a national organization which encourages members to explore interests, and to keep learning and stretching.  So, as a member, I selected this half-day trip as one of my "dates."

Early in the morning before leaving the house, I wrote down my expectations, having never been to India, or never before explored any Hindu temples elsewhere.  My experiences with large centers of worship include cathedrals in Europe and mosques in Istanbul, Turkey, but no interiors of synagogues, or any of Hindu or Buddhist temples.  

So, based on limited experience, I presumed that the word "temple" signifies a large structure, with a soaring ceiling, the whole space feeling cavernous and echoing -- and that I would feel  like a single small soul in a lofty space.  I also envisioned lots of Sanskrit and god carvings and statues of those I'm somewhat familiar with -- Shiva, and perhaps, Ganesh.  I imagined domes and Moorish- (or Islamic-) influenced  window styles. I knew beforehand from the OLLI description that we would enter the temple through the tallest Hindu tower in the United States, and I pictured a literal tower - something akin to the Washington Monument, only highly decorated, or maybe something similar to an Islamic minaret.   I also imagined fragrant and voluptuous gardens, with simple benches for meditation, here and there along soft paths; and water would be an important element, rounding out the sensory experience.

I rather missed the mark in almost all of this, to put it mildly.

As our bus approached the temple grounds, I could see that the temple did indeed look very large -- quite tall and ornate. Unfortunately, the temple's grounds are seeing new construction and are far different than what I had envisioned.  Instead of gardens of flowers and trimmed paths, the area is an expanse of sand and sparse grass.   A new "U"-shaped single-story block building sits across the yard, its open end facing the temple entrance.  Still unfinished, it is somewhat plain and austere, though it does have shaded porches.  

There was water, but it was outside the temple  grounds, an adjacent pond surrounded by tangled wild growth and blocked off by a chain link fence.  A fat white swan was nosing around in the weeds on the far shore, and he later startled our group when he took low flight and wing-slapped the pond's surface loudly before landing out of sight among the weeds on the bank closest to us.

The temple's tower is sloped and highly decorated, reminding me of Thai architecture.  An immense osprey nest adds even more height.  The first level (a few feet above ground)  interior is comprised of social and educational rooms, restrooms, a room for our shoes, and an elevator accessed from a covered porch.  I chose to take the front steps that lead through the tower and into the concrete patio area before the swinging glass front doors. 

Front steps lead through the tower to the worship space.

I saw that the temple was encircled by a covered concrete walkway.  Before entering the temple, our guide briefly described the statues of gods depicted in niches or presented on walls around and adjacent to the entrance, and answered questions about them. 

Representation of  three gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva

Shiva

This was a lot to take in even before entering the main worship space.

To Be Continued . . .

Musing the Mountains

Riding the crest of hills, as a ship caresses the waves, I'm drawn to my home.  I look out of the airplane window to take in the darkest green blanket folds, for I am a child of these mountains, of their cool dark hollows, their rivers that can be silent deep pools, or agitated whitewater, tumbling and crashing against ancient stones. I see, too, border-crossing roads, snaking in and out of the folds and side-winding to the isolated family farm, as well as the company house of a coal camp, or the river bank community that provides drugstore, bank, school, and church.  

From my window seat, I imagine the magic to run my open palm along the velvet treetops.  The chenille ridges from this vantage point are soft rivulets, gracefully synchronized, just as the ridges along the sandy bottom of the sea. My gaze skims the peaks and slides into the valleys.

To the children reared here, the mountains are the most enticing of playgrounds.  When I felt their pull, I would hear my mother warn:  "Don't leave the paths; the mountains here are honeycombed with miles of abandoned mine shafts, and flooded by years of rain runoff."  The top layer could easily give way beneath a child's weight, and send her tumbling down to be lost forever.  These warnings were hard to remember once the wild grape vines became impromptu swings, the mountain pools and shade wonderful respite from pre-air-conditioned summers' heat, the mountain paths passageways into Indian explorations, or to the best of hiding places.  

Being within the hollows of tightly ruched mountains, some folks from the flat lands can feel claustrophobic, cut off, just as the hollows squeeze the daylight, leaving us in extra shadow-hours until the dark of night descends.  However, many of us from these hills, given the expanse of the ocean or the prairie, feel exposed and vulnerable in such openness, and the unfiltered sunlight harsh in our eyes. 

Yes, from these hollows, to see the sun midday, I must look directly above or else through trees that line the hilltops.  An observation from a white-headed philosopher friend from long ago, his arm resting against the back of his front porch swing, and speaking in time with its rhythmic slow-motion squeak:  "If I didn't have these mountains to rest my gaze upon, my eyes would get tired." 

There's a softness and musical grace of evergreens, and of oak, elm, and maple, of whispered lyrics from the tall branches of her hills, no less fine than the towering monsters of the American West, which themselves are the cymbal crashes, the climactic outpouring to the solitude of the plains,  and also, very different from the staccato snares of the Sawtooths.  But here in my home,  the soft green mountains are the melody, the sweet song of my heart.  

The mountains and the  New River  from my West Virginia front yard.

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday.  Celebration of the return.  Bitter-sweet successes of meeting your challenge, your life's purpose, keeping your promises, facing darkness and knowing that behind it is the light.  Resurrection, renewal -- joining the cosmos or continuing within it.  "It" is here and now, permeating, suffusing, all. 

I am one with it.  I am it.  I join and have always been it . . . as we all are, as we all have been, so will we always be.  This is the day.  This is indeed and forever more the day, which is made up of light and dark, and light again.  Perhaps my soul will choose quickly or perhaps "quickly" has no meaning.  It is at it is.  But whatever, I will not cease the "I" within.  I contain I.  I sustain and maintain and remain.  This is all and everything.  We, you and I, will fly with angels.  

Namaste.

Sweetly Scented Yesterdays

     Remembrances wash through me unbeckoned but so welcomed, having been dormant, but very potent, memories.  They need but the simplest catalyst, such as a visit into an antique store that is jumbled and bulging with evidence of long-ago lives -- 100-year old sideboards and chairs, dining tables creaking under stacks of worn books, tarnished silver, chipped china, yellowed lace, and framed family portraits, eyes peering through time, their visage now resting in my hands.  All of these things suddenly transform my memories, call forth through the years and restore to me the musty basement of concrete floor and block walls, the foundation of the house my carpenter grandfather, Pop, built for his family.      
     Through the mists of time, down I go once more to the bottom of the steps, and just off to the left along the wall is Pop's silent workbench.  I detect the pungency of oil, and the perfume of freshly sawn pine.  To the right of the steps along the facing wall, are stout wooden shelves, heavy with canning jars full of long ago summers' tomatoes, beans, and peaches.  Oh, how I recall playing with my brother in my grandmother's, Mom's, backyard, zipping in and out of freshly laundered sheets on the line, my mouth watering with the splendid sweet aroma of peach-canning day, pure syrupy heaven wafting up the stairway and out through the screen door!  Mom's canning stove sits at the back wall of the basement, and in the sweltering end-of-summer days, the cool floor and walls down there make standing over the steaming redolent pots more bearable.

     But so many more memories swirl within that space.  To the left of the stove is Mom's dank zinc double wash tub with built-in scrub board, a rubber hose draped into one side from the adjacent ringer-washer, still sharp with bleach and 20-Mule Team detergent. The basement's center, including the mysterious space under the stairs, is a blur of slightly acrid stacked boxes with the stored paraphernalia of family life -- of Christmas ornaments and outdated clothes (too good to throw away) nestled among stinging mothballs.  Hanging from the rafters above the boxes is one of the most romantic remnants -- Mom's sidesaddle, its once-fragrant leather is now brittle with age.

     And in my mind, I've returned, circled once more back into the present, to discover that I'm standing in the antique store, caressing an ancient family photo, still resting in my hands.

Finding Our Way

I've been away from these pages for quite some time.  And many of my friends and family have asked me to return.  I'll let you know where my road has taken me, and how I've found my way back, but  I'll save my story for a later day, though, because I've promised some new friends, a marvelous group of artists from our class of "The Artist's Way" in St. Petersburg, Florida, that I would return   with this.  

The following is dedicated to you, my new friends, for your love, inspiration, and joy.  I hope that you see yourselves within these lines.  Because, together, we are . . . 

Finding Our Way        

One by one we make our way
slipping into our seat, timidly aware.
We've been told that this is the place to find
the answer to our secret prayer.

So we come from jobs in tall buildings,
or from studios, or classrooms, or gardens, 
Or homes, or work station shelves,
and by joining the circle, recalling
Once-forgotten promises to ourselves.

Each morning we write pages our intention to keep,
Streaming thoughts and emotions bubbling up from our sleep.
We make dates, and in our planners circling the day,
stretching our hearts back to find the joy of spirit at play.

Hands to hold horns, to balance paintbrushes, to stitch or weave,  
hands to cut silk into wishes, our body to breathe. 
For such love to share, the spark to create 
ignites almost everywhere.

We find our way here by moonglow of night sky,
starlight's glittering gems to string.
We hear the music of the heavens, 
and with our angels joyfully sing.

Yes, we must sing, or dance with scarves, or paint,
write, or sew, or beat on drums each day.
The rhythms in the tune, the story, the flower, 
on the canvas, or in the clay.

It is for all of these each time we should strive,
that we call forth our art to bless our lives.
Now standing in our circle, with our hands clasped tight,
thanking God for each other, before slipping back into the   night.