Hindu God, Christian God
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loginIt seems that I began work on this book before I knew it. In 1993 I spent aweek in Alvar Tiru Nagar1, the home of Satakopan, a great Hindu saint fromeighth-century South India who wrote beautiful and powerful poetry in honorof Lord Narayana. It was the time of the winter festival in honor of Satakopan,and I joined in the daytime and nighttime events celebrated in the great templethere. Perhaps because I had been studying his great Timvaymoli for severalyears and because I had been so graciously received in Alvar Tiru NagarT byAnnaviar Srinivasan, a priest in the temple, I felt as much at home as I everhad in India. To be in the temple, with the saint's people and before Narayana,who he had praised, was a holy moment. But I also saw clearly that I was nota Hindu and could not be one. It had to do with the color of my skin, my ever-faltering Tamil, my Irish Catholic upbringing in New York City, and my longeryears of study of Christian philosophy and theology. It also had to do withthe deeper commitments of my heart, since I had always tried to be one ofthose who simply "left everything and followed Him" (Luke 5). One doesnot lightly trade such commitments for new ones.
