Namaste - HOLDING ON - Summary of Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life - Book Summary

Summary of Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life - Book Summary (2016)

Part IV. HOLDING ON

Chapter 34. Namaste

Why Not Be Polite?

Everyone

Is God speaking.

Why not be polite and

Listen to

Him?

—Hafiz

I love God, whoever he is, and I’d really like to get closer to him. I’ve been thinking about how one of the simplest ways to get close to a woman is to be good to her children. To be kind and gentle and to pay close attention to the things that make them special. To try to see her children the way she sees her children. And how God made us in his image. How he is the mother and father of all of us. So I wonder if that would be the best way to get closer to him too. By being kind and gentle to his children and noticing all of the things that make them special. So many of us spend our time trying to find God in books, but maybe the simplest way to God is directly through the hearts of his children.

Recently a friend sent me a book called Nomaskar, which was written by a priest who followed Mother Teresa and studied her spirituality. I love Mother Teresa. I love her for what she did and, more important, why she did it. I believe she was living according to the Truth, so I try to pay close attention to her.

The reason that Mother Teresa served the lepers and destitute and dying in the streets of Calcutta was not because Jesus told her to; it was because Jesus was leprous and destitute and dying in the streets of Calcutta. And since she worshipped Jesus as God, she figured she should probably go help him, because it didn’t make a lot of sense to worship God in church while he was dying alone in the streets. And she believed that it was silly to weep when thinking about Jesus being crucified two thousand years ago, yet not weep while watching Jesus crucified today, on the streets of Calcutta or Haiti or D.C. or in the high school hallway.

Mother Teresa saw God in every human being, and when she held a dying leper and dressed his wounds, she did not imagine that she was helping Jesus die with dignity, she really was helping Jesus die with dignity. She was holding, as she would have said, “Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.” She understood that everyone is Jesus. She understood the meaning of the word Nomaskar, or Namaste, which means “the divine light in me sees and honors the divine light in you.” God in me recognizes God in you. And the God in me honors the God in you. So when she encountered a person, she would fold her hands, bow her head, and say, “Namaste.” And when she wanted to see God, she didn’t look up and away; she looked into the eyes of the person sitting next to her. Which is harder. Better.

So. I’ve talked to God about it, and I am sooooooo not going to Calcutta. Not really my bag, baby. I’m a Sister of Sister … not a Sister of Charity. You understand.

But I watch the news and my friends closely, and I hear the sadness in people’s stories and the loneliness in their hearts and the pain of their pasts, so I know that Calcutta is everywhere. All of us live in some sort of poverty. Poverty of hope, poverty of peace, poverty of love. We are all poor in one way or another. Mama T. used to call material poverty the easiest poverty to alleviate. Everyone is suffering. And since everyone is God, I’d like to be kind, and at the very least not add to people’s pain.

So I decided to start bowing to everyone who crossed my path. Just a little teeny bow of my head. Just enough to remind myself not to be a jerk, since no matter who I’m talking to, whether it’s a child, or a principal, or a gas station attendant, or a frenemy, or Craig, it’s GOD I’m talking to.

And as I bow, I say, Namaste. God in me recognizes and honors God in you.

I just think Namaste in my head, like the way Orthodox Jews wear a yarmulke to remind themselves that they are living under the hand of God. Or how Muslims pray five times a day to remind themselves of whom they serve. The world and the people in it are so beautiful when you’re awake. And so the bowing and the silent Namaste is just a little practice to remind myself what’s real. What an amazing life I’m leading and what a gift the people I meet are to me.

I know all of this might sound a little nuts, but I have decided that I am just over worrying about that. Robin P. Williams said, “You’re only given a spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” And maybe the world needs some crazy love. So I am embracing my spark of madness. Fanning it, even. And I’m bowing. And something’s happening because of it. It’s working. I’m starting to see God everywhere.

It’s like that little bow of my head snaps me out of the horrible trance I allow myself to get lulled into each day, in which I forget that everything and everyone is magic. Including me. Namaste.