47. Report - A little prophecy

Small bowls of fruit salad are offered at the roadside. The seller quotes a price at which I instinctively back down. But two men just come up and notice my reaction. The older one smiles and pays for the fruit bowl for me. We make it with the three of us. Meanwhile, the man tells that he is a pastor. I am happy because there are hardly any Christians in this area and I ask to be able to visit his church. The younger one drives me there.

When entering the church I am amazed: A huge hall in which there is nothing. Nothing at all. There is a small percussion instrument in the front left corner and the Indian flag is painted on the wall at the front - that's all. Where and how should one experience God here? But as I write, I realize that if you don't know that you have to experience God within yourself, you won't experience God outside of you either. Not even in a nice church.

Two hours later, a beautiful church appears on a side road. I turn the corner and look for the entrance. Two strange dogs bark in the yard: one is so fat that I'm surprised he can still bark. The other is happy-excited and keeps spinning around on himself.

A serious looking man comes out and calms her down. It's a Pentecostal church pastor again. He opens the church to me, where a nice atmosphere blows towards you. Although I just wrote that one cannot experience God anywhere unless one discovers Him within oneself, there is an attraction from a peaceful environment that can awaken a longing for one's own inner holiness.

Plaques with quotations from the Bible hang on the walls. Since everything is in Kannada*, I don't understand anything. The pastor goes back into the house.

I sit for half an hour now and try to perceive something holy in the inner silence.

In other words: I forbid myself to think about yesterday and tomorrow.

In other words: I try not to think in order to finally experience the happy nothingness in me.

In other words: I want to feel God in my own depths.

In other words: I concentrate completely on the here and now.

In other words ... alas, all efforts do not help. And yet they have to be in order to reach the end of one's ego powers and thereby become open to the wonderful.

But even worse: I'm already fully immersed in my thinking and I've rushed past my own inner peace. Instead of being calm inside, I usually just tell myself that I should be calm.

The pastor comes. He offers milk tea. I ask him to translate the Bible verse on the front of the altar. It is the verse: "But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks." (1 Cor. 1:23) This verse had changed the life of the then civil servant. Before that, he was doing well financially and family-wise. Inwardly, however, his sadness became ever clearer. Then, thanks to this verse, he found great comfort in the wisdom of dying. He has become a pastor and I must say that he comes across as clear, calm, kind, helpful and authentic both spiritually and personally.

The next morning he takes me to church early and conducts an online devotional. I don't understand a word, but I can feel his life-giving energy.

 

After breakfast he puts his hands on my head in blessing. When we say goodbye, he puts several banknotes in my hands. He looks at me and says that I would become very important on my way.

As I continue walking, I notice that something has changed in me: the trust in the divine in me is more noticeable today.

Whatever is to come, it shall come. It can now also be big. Eventual failure will only be a painful variant of trust.

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*The national language of the southern Indian state of Karnataka