Magical Walks, Hindu Talks and a Question Mark Remains

Somewhat by myself in a somewhat dark room... I purposefully did this. Spring break so far has been exactly what I needed. It's not so much time to think as it is time to be. Time to be at peace with life, time to be with people I care about, time to be away from the stresses of every-day college life.

We (Alvin, Joel, and I) went to a national park a couple days ago. The place put me under this spell that I think is still somewhat affecting me. There were so many feelings and thoughts running through my head. I felt like a child and was fantasizing about being a wood nymph, and imagined seeing little gnomes and fairies playing in the trees, puddles, snow and ice. I realized that I was looking at the ground a majority of the time, but this wasn't out of depression or whatever, it's just that the ground was so intriguing. (This is perhaps the first time in a while that I have been ok with looking at the ground.) It made me feel close to the earth, feel short, feel like I did so long ago as a child back home in one of the parks or the mountains. I felt so at home, even though home is miles and miles away; it was wonderful. Also, I couldn't help but relate this nice little walk to a journey of sorts, a journey where I didn't want to look back for fear of seeing it as less magical than what it was, and because of that, I didn't look behind me, I didn't try to relive a particular moment or feeling, I just let it be what it was and enjoyed the quiet moments I had to myself in the park. I would call our trip to the park a silent retreat of sorts. No one felt a need to talk to anyone, and everyone was ok with going their own way and keeping space from one another.

Later that evening, we all went to downtown Des Moines and walked around for almost 2 hours. It was nice. It made me realize that there's a certain dynamic to our group, at least from my point of view. We're all ok with doing whatever the other person wants to do. I don't recall having that with past travelling experiences. It's quite nice.

Yesterday we went to a Hindu temple. It was amazing and the temple was absolutely beautiful. It's also cool because the three of us are all in the same World Religions course, which had gone over Hinduism at the beginning of the semester. It's sort of funny, because they have all of these shrines to various gods, but they believe that all the gods are the same god, just reincarnated in multiple different ways. So here's the ultimate question: are Hindus monotheistic or polytheistic? I'm still trying to figure that one out, and I suppose it's all up to personal interpretation of what they believe (which we could never understand anyway without becoming Hindu and living in a Hindu community).

Funny fact #1: While at the temple, we talked to one of the priests, and we're pretty sure that we accidently told him we are Buddhist.

Funny fact #2: Later that evening, we watched Michael Clayton with two of Joel's friends and the phrase "I am Shiva the Destroyer" came up a couple times throughout the movie. Plus Alvin was wearing a Shiva shirt. (For those of you who don't know, Shiva is one of the gods in Hinduism). So yeah... yesterday was all about Hinduism.

Finally, today I went to church with Joel's family. I'm not quite sure on what to think or feel about it yet. It did drive a point home to me (surprisingly enough) about Christ's love, but that should probably be elaborated on at a later time...