Fr Cyrian

I remember the knickerbockerglory on my first date. The explosion of tastes and life in more abundance. It's nothing compared with haagan daaz or ben and jerry but I never got close with them. So he explained how Indian Xtian Theology in its understanding of creation, incarnation and the eschaton is neither pantheistic nor panentheistic. Mind blowing in a way I suspect great sex might be. Not for everyone. I doubt most in the room understood him. A few would have been interested educated enough to go for it but who knows. I know I was wowed. And as a Lancastrian put it so well when teach had said God is love in several languages, Le Dieu est Amour, Deus caritas est. It's beautiful in any language, like McDonalds. It doesn't attract me more that few care for it, but it doesn't attract me less.

It's simple enough. First Maya is real and unreal. It's not illusion. Real and unreal is a corrolary to the idea of Creaturely dependence. Creation's unreality is because only God is really real, only God has independent existence as part of God's being. However God can know and have things. God's knowing and having creation give it dependent reality which is also unreal. It's an alternative to the Platonic/Cartesian matter/spirit dichotomy, and doesn't work with western logic.

So God is composed of both being and not-being. The not-being is a potential within God for self-expression in Creation. Nothing can exist apart from God so this potential cried out for expression, the cry itself emanating from God, like Grace. The Vedas speak the prayer let my darkness become light my not-being being etc. It's a well famous passage really annoys those looking for heresy. Although most western theologians dismiss Indian Theology as not being good enough to produce even a decent heresy.

So God then as an act of sacrifice, creates and imbues creation with his spirit, his love, his knowledge, his life. It's not an emanation, not pantheistic or panentheistic. The Maya principle retains creaturely dependence. However it is Scotist (Duns Scotus). The purpose of this creative sacrificial act, Love yes, was to provide a means for God's self-expression. Thus the Word, Jesus is the purpose of all Creation. Creation follows this idea to its conclusion in the incarnation. The theology is like symbolic causality. God does not sit in heaven issuing commands for things to happen on earth in this theological model. Having created the world out of his negative potential. God's Word arises from the World naturally, it evolves through Creation. And at the end of Time all Creation will draw back into God whence it first emerged.

It's not even process theology. It's another way of looking at Theology that isn't Western. God is not Roman Catholic. God is not a Westerner. But people get worked up about Faith as if it is Religion. It's the chips we bring to the poker table so we can play with others and learn their tells, their stories. He didn't quite put it that way. Damn shame too because just as I begin to realize how fascinating all this Brahminical stuff is, those fat oppressors really knew their stuff, I feel a more urgent call to Dalitology. It'll be more what they call fast and dirty, but in a gypsy way and I am not sure if I am really going to lose out here boys.

He did get upset mind when some started chatting half way through the difficult section and said sometimes I think some priests and religious are sent here purely because there are no available jobs for them in community. They don't really want to learn anything apart from get another MA. We don't ask a true Yogi for his degrees. But priests are introduced all the time by their degrees.

The other thing that impressed me though in a different way was the Jain monk initiation. It's the same for a Jain Nun and we honoured to see some of it. It's usually done in private. I forget to mention it before. They pull out their hair. It sounds freaky but is a bit like a bikini wax, without the wax. What was interesting was that the man didn't flinch. I didn't see him flinch once. Now the Jains they aren't as incarnational as we are supposed to be. They have a ritual of fasting to dispose of the body when they are ready to ascend to their true spiritual home.

As for all the excitement back home. Once a Yogi was feared because his word could end worlds. But you have to develop Tapa for that. Tapa is the heat of the spirit. With it you can summon God or raise the Kundalini. It is generated by withdrawal. I gave one of the chappies a seven day deadline. So I figure I'll go back to Yahoo next week having generated Tapa. They also describe it as ascesis but it's too constrictive a term.

Either way I was just given a paradigmatic shift in theological understanding, he cancelled the afternoon session coz the gang asked because it's Onam today. He didn't seem that phased by the request. I tried to purchase his book and I found one priest there beating me to it. But it's in Malayalam. Be a while yet. I am working on Telugu script for this week. A Student will give me a dictation Friday. I hope to get a Syriac grammar soon if not I'll revert to Hebrew because I can get books for that easy enough. And next week some more Malayalam. The dancing nurses will be back from Kerala.

Oh and Fr Jose has agreed to be my Spiritual Director. Who knew. I sent him an email explaining it wasn't really for spiritual direction but to enable him to find a widow strange enough for me who wouldn't be disappointed during the courtship expecting a grown-up. So what if he says Oh after the first session. God has given me a most splendid gift in humiliation so that no matter how spiritual non-worldly and wonderful I act, I always retain humility. Which is also why i am purchasing that extra Kurti PJ for Our Lady's birthday, I thought i need something darker, blue and black, which is also the colour of Dalits, and people won't think that I am an ascetic. It's sort of like the maya real-unreal thing. The way to be ascetic and not attached to fashion is for me to buy another Kurti. As I said it doesn't work with simple western logic. That and Ollie's cogent argument of neo-Keynesian multiplying responding to the drought crisis up north. Rains here all the time mind, I should get an umbrella.