{"id":6956,"date":"2006-06-23T09:53:17","date_gmt":"2006-06-23T09:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/spanning-the-globe.html"},"modified":"2006-06-23T09:53:17","modified_gmt":"2006-06-23T09:53:17","slug":"spanning-the-globe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/spanning-the-globe.html","title":{"rendered":"Spanning the Globe!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jen Ambrose is back from her China adventures, and if you didn’t read the last couple of weeks of posts, go catch up. Take to time to read her account of Corpus Christi Mass in Hong Kong.<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, and since we’re roaming, the globe, Roaming Roman is coming back to the States next week, but has a fascinating post about the papal Corpus Christi Mass last week and then a Sunday Corpus Christi Mass and process in Norcia<\/a>, which more of you might be familiar with as Nursia, birthplace of Sts. Benedict and Scholastica. It’s a quick post, and she promises more detail and photos later, but what’s she got up now is definitely worth a read.<\/p>\n

And then go read Gashwin Gomes’ absolutely wonderful post about a family ritual in which he participated in India<\/a><\/p>\n

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As the aarti<\/em> went around the room, people extending their hands over the flame, and bringing them to their faces and heads in a fluid gesture, a sign of reverence and respect, I froze. Should I do that? It’s been years since I’ve participated in any Hindu ritual. It happens but on special occasions in the family, and I’ve been away in the US for years. How do I honor the First Commandment?<\/p>\n

The last time I had any serious role in a Hindu ritual was … well, I don’t know. [A Satyanarayan katha<\/em> that was done to celebrate my brother’s admission to IIT. When I was 10. We both sat for hours with the pujari<\/em> and the part that I recall with painful clarity was that I had to throw one single grain of rice on the coconut for each of the 1001 names of Vishnu.] Since then, I’ve been to Hindu temples and been present at rituals, without participating.<\/p>\n

Of course, to some, (the same set that went into apoplectic fits at Pope John Paul receiving a tika<\/em> on his arrival in India), my very presence in this room contaminates me, and is a participation in idolatry.<\/p>\n

Well, no. It’s a family thing. I’m the only Christian in the family. So no, I don’t worship any God but God, and I won’t bow to idols. And I probably will not do the aarti<\/em> thing. But I can respect my family’s religious beliefs and be present at family fuctions. And yes, I do eat prasad<\/em>. And of course I’ll say a prayer for my cousin and his wife and the baby.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah. What about that laafa<\/em>? I had to cover my palms in kanku<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/em> and then gave two light pats on cousin’s wife’s cheeks. And then the maharaj<\/em> handed a saffron cloth, twisted together to make a whip-like-thing, and I had to slap her back. Five times. Lightly. Woah! "Arrey diyar bahu dayalu che!"<\/em> (This diyar<\/em> is very kind!)<\/p>\n

The part that I wasn’t told about was that she got to return the slaps.<\/p>\n

Boy, it took a lot of scrubbing to get all that red color out!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jen Ambrose is back from her China adventures, and if you didn’t read the last couple of weeks of posts, go catch up. Take to time to read her account of Corpus Christi Mass in Hong Kong. Oh, and since we’re roaming, the globe, Roaming Roman is coming back to the States next week, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSpanning the Globe! - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/spanning-the-globe.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spanning the Globe! - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jen Ambrose is back from her China adventures, and if you didn’t read the last couple of weeks of posts, go catch up. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}