I am Pagan

Today is summer solstice. In short, it is the longest day of the year (unless you are in the southern hemisphere where it would be winter solstice – the longest night. I never realised it till I sent a sms to my friend Amit in Perth wishing him a happy summer solstice and he wrote back saying it is winter there right now! Duh!)

Summer solstice is a pagan festival. Created in those times when man (oh please, all you politically correct people, I am using the term “man” and all other gender-specific words for sheer convenience, alright?) had not yet felt the need to create a God who reflected his own image. When people realised that nature is the all-powerful force on whom everyone depend, no matter how hard they tried not to. Those were the times when people recognised the omnipresent influence of nature and worshipped her (again, all you PC people, it is just a term of convenience) to the best of their understanding. Events like the solstices and equinoxes, harvest rituals - all such festivals and rites paid homage to the nurturing Earth, moon, sun, stars and all the unknown worlds beyond which played a part, however small, in shaping our lives.

I do enjoy and draw a lot of inspiration from all the different religions. But somehow the idea of creating a god in the image of man, with his own qualities, doesn’t appeal much to my spiritual side. I find that there are two extremes. One is where God is a human who walked the Earth, did all the things an average man would do in addition to the extraordinary feats that distinguished him from the average man. The other extreme is where the omniscient force is supposed to have absolutely no form whatsoever. It is just that: a force, a power, energy.

I don’t like to think of the power that we call God as utterly detached and formless nor can I accept a God in the form of a human, or for that matter, an elephant or a half-man, half-lion, or whatever else. I am personally most comfortable believing that nature is The One. Nature with all her seasons, her moods, her children - animate and inanimate. Not a serpent that churned the ocean, but one that I see slithering across in my native village. Not the mighty mountains that were at last humbled by a short sage but the mountains that cradle my beloved Mumbai and give her rains. Not a sun which shone relentlessly on a kingdom for years on end to teach a lesson to some arrogant king, or the subsequent rains that blessed him after he saw his folly. But a sun that brings a nice glow to a child’s cheeks when it has been playing outside, and rains which are dear to farmers growing grain and children who are let off from school early due to possible flooding. In fact I knew nature is the only real God long back when I would pray fervently for the rains on the days I did not do my homework and it actually rained so hard that we were given an off from school. If that is not God for you, then I don’t know what is.