India Week 2

This week we traveled to Kerala, one of India's southern most states. Kerala, affectionately deemed by the locals as "Gods own country" is everything you think India should be. Think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom meets the market place in Aladdin. Kerala is that majestic Jungle that Rudyard Kipling always wrote about. There are emerald green rivers that wind thorugh palm forests, and along them small huts and shacks dot through the greenery with their bright colored sarees drying out on the lines. Floating atop the calm water are large bowl shaped wicker boats that seem to saunter more than cruise and the trees swell with coconuts and pineapple. The air is sticky and warm and it always has a forboding sense of rain. It is elephant country as well, so naturally, we spent part of our day riding elephants. I elected to do it the Indiana Jones way: bareback, no seat belt, hands up like a roller coaster. The villages of Kerala are some of the most ancient in the country (and the people in them too-I met a man who was 102 today!) and the children are simply ecstatic to greet the visitors and take photos with them.
We spent most of our time in Kerala under the care of Mar Toma (or the church of St. Thomas). In the Acts of Thomas, an uncanonized but ancient religious text, the apostles draw lots to determine their destinations for evangelization. Thomas draws the short lot: India, and thus goes to hide in a cave to avoid his destiny. In the story, Jesus comes back down from heaven and sells Thomas into slavery, and he is thus sent to India. As a result, Thomas converts the Indian King of Kerala and plants an early form of Christianity in India. The church that exists here now clings to this tradition in an Eastern Orthodox way and currently Kerala holds one of the largest Christian populations in India. We visited some of their seminaries, met with their priests and bishops and even got to sit in on a few lectures. Later in the day we were taken to this fairly ritzy upper veranda room that over looked the River Bomba to meet what is known as the "Metropolitan of Mar Toma" which is essentially, for the St. Thomas Eastern Orthodox Church-the Pope. We all sat around him as he smiled his toothless, 93 year old smile, and told us what he wanted us to know about India and Christianity. Before we left he asked us where we thought that God was, and then he answered his own question with a giggle, "God is in the market place. We think that God is in the church, so we go there and simply find the priest. We mistake the priest for God. But God is in the market place, so go and buy bananas."

The love affair has begun. Thank you for all of your prayers and support so far.

Love and Light,
Britt/Muskaan