Asheville to Argentina

Hindus have the best gods. Take Ganesh for example. There’s a few different myths about how he was born, but my favorite is that he came into being when his mom, Shiva (the destroyer and creator), laughed. What a great metaphor, and it gets better. She thought he was too alluring for this world, so she uglied him up a bit, giving him the head of an elephant, a few extra arms and a little pot belly. Best of all, this ancient Elephant Man-god gets around by riding on a mouses back. He’s depicted either reclining, dancing or threatening us with an ax – a party-boy till the hangover hits.

Guided by whim, your karma, and from my experience, a sardonic sense of humor, Ganesh deals in obstacles, either placing them in your path or removing them. I think I’m gonna make him my trip mascot. Get a little sticker for one of the side cases. I’ll have to balance him out with a Catholic saint though. The demoted St. Christopher is the obvious choice, but my family’s’ patron saint is St. Jude. He’s the forgotten saint and not much mentioned in the gospels. When I bring him up everyone thinks I’m talking about Judas, the MOST important saint, in my opinion, but thats a story for another day. But back to Jude – he’s the patron saint of hopeless causes and desperate cases, and thanks to Grandma Pomponio, he’s all ours.

Think about it for a minute. All our (Catholic) saints are remembered for their gruesome deaths. Getting their intestines wound up in the winch of a well, shot with arrows or skinned alive – where’s the fun in that? Wheres the joy and the celebration of life? Hindus have all these great tacky colors and smells, half man, half animal gods, and crazy myths about them. Their deities are playful and jealous, prude or promiscuous and they have epic stories to go with them. More than that, their devotion is part of their daily lives. They live their connection to the divine, its not a Sunday thing. For them, their gods live in the rocks, trees and rivers. Think about how that basic belief would effect the choices you make. How do you cut down a tree thats the physical manifestation of God, or pollute a divine river – and yeah, I know the Ganges is nasty. How much of that comes from millions of people “worshiping” in it and not understanding the bigger picture? Its being loved to death. There’s not an easy answer here, but it seems to me that you’d make very different choices if you believed the world around you was infused with living deities, instead of thinking that you’re the crown of creation and this life is a test to be endured with Heaven as the pay-off.

Don’t worry mom – I’m not turning Hindu any more than I’m returning to The One Holy and Apostolic church. I just really dig Ganesh, cherished pudgy elephant-headed boy.

My Shrine on the Mantle