By Barbara Falconer Newhall
Savitri Hari of Walnut Creek, California, teaches classical Indian dance and is a psychotherapist in Oakland, California. The following is a passage from the story she tells in my book-in-progress, Wrestling With God: True Stories of Religion and Spirituality in America.
“I grew up in a Hindu family in South India. In my village, Koru-Tadiparru, we children used to gather cow dung for a special holiday in January.
“We rolled the cow dung – it was heavy, like mud – into a ball and drew mandala designs on it with rice flour. Then we decorated it with flowers. We invoked the sacred energy into this menial thing and called it God Krishna.
“That’s how I grew up. For me, the sacred was nothing special. It was not up there somewhere, it was everywhere. It was in the cow dung as well as the beautiful sky, it was in everything. There was no distinction between God and regular day-to-day life.
“Many people have a hard time seeing the God in the menial, in the downtrodden. But that’s how I see the divine, in the lowly things.”
My favorite place to look for God is in people, especially people like Savitri Hari, who seems so alive and so full of gratitude for everything around her, even the small things.
I also find Holy in beauty. It’s everywhere, including way out in space, as captured by NASA’s amazing photo of the Helix Nebula.
When you’re looking for God, where do you look?