Hosting visitors to India is an eye-opening experience. One quickly rediscovers the sights and experiences that time and the repeated sense of being overwhelmed have long since hewn to size. If one takes the same steps, follows the eyes, looks and hears through the freshman’s body and soul something magical begins to occur. All the jargon and clich?s that people use to describe the unfamiliar is thrown into the air with only the proof of experience remaining after the wind of experiences passes.
Each cycle of the experience is a fresh opportunity to rediscover the joy, excitement, awe, fear, and wonder that comes in everyone’s India journey. The opportunity to gain the proof that veterans talk about is not always taken by those who have been here before. I am not sure what causes some to capture the first experience again and again while others close their minds. It is as if the experience is something to be denied, blocked, and ignored even as the evidence is all around and the invitation remains open.
The first time I went through this fresh sight I thought that it could not be repeated. My conclusion was a natural extension of the skepticism that pervades society anytime things cannot be bottled and exploited. The second experience caused me to pause and by now I am a complete convert.
My observation follows these lines.
Everyone is, in their own logic and space, confronted by the jargon of others. As one opens one’s self to fresh experiences, possible answers to quests, one finds the opportunity to experience proof.
The logic isn’t new. Some were on a quest to discover God. When one experienced the Christ the story unfolded.
“Philip went and found Nathanael and told him, “We've found the One Moses wrote of in the Law, the One preached by the prophets. It's Jesus, Joseph's son, the one from Nazareth!”
Nathanael said, “Nazareth? You've got to be kidding.”
But Philip said, “Come, see for yourself.”” (John 1.45, 46)
You and I have opportunities today – Divinity’s invitation to experiential proof.
