Back to church this morning with Mom and Dad, and interestingly, it's Pentecost: the day the Holy Spirit rained down on everyone, and they could understand each other's languages. During the announcements, I was skimming over the program and found this note "Take a moment following the message to reflect on what God is asking of you."
When I see something like this, I always think of Big Love, where Bill Paxton will pray on things, and emerge fully convinced that he knows specifically where God is leading him, and what God wants him to do. Fascinating. How could a person ever separate some amorphous clues of supposed divine communication from one's own thoughts? This would require a kind of certainty that I've just never had.
This brief musing was interrupted by the call to stand for the opening hymn. Randomly opening my United Methodist Hymnal, the first thing I saw, in big bold letters at the top of the page, were the words "Jaya Ho."
What the? Yup, hymn #148, attributed to "Anon. Hindi." Translated by Katherine Rohrbough, 1958, with phonetic transcription by I-to Loh in 1988. The Hindi portion was mainly repeated in variations, but here were the words: "Tera sana mukh ham hain ate. Ham hain ate, cha ra no may hain. Shisha navate. Jaya jaya teri ham hain gate."
While I can't say for sure what a higher power might be asking of me, this is pretty good evidence that I'm on the right track. Also that no cosmic forces have taken offense at my mentally picturizing them on Rishi Kapoor.
2 comments:
Loved the surprise Hindi connection! :)
Oh my! This makes me want to visit my parents so I can leaf through their United Methodist Hymnals and look for it :-)
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