Gathering the family
With echoes from long-ago
The night after the engagement ceremony, I lay wide-awake in bed, images of new faces, brightly-coloured saris, flowers, food and chanting sounds whirling around each in turn seeking my attention. I was exhausted from the day’s ceremonial activities and the time and emotional energy that led to this day. Outside the owl chanted its deep-toned, even-paced ‘hoo-hoo’s, the crickets purred, the almost full moonlight faded in and out behind the wisps of clouds on their way further inland. These sounds slowly calmed my mind, and reminded me of another place and time.
When I took my children to Bali 24 years ago, we heard other more exotic sounds from birds and animals calling the first few nights when jet lag kept us awake. Our accommodation had only three solid walls, so the forest around us provided a lullaby of night-music. During our visit we visited temples around the Island, and learned about the deities through watching dances and various ceremonies. The sense of Bali as a sacred place infused our experience.
When we visited the temples my son and daughter learned to wear a sarong just like the adults are required to do. As a young boy, my son didn’t have to, but we decided it would be easier if we all wore the sarongs together.
We learned to bow when in sacred spaces, to only use our right hand to greet other people and for eating food. We learned how to behave in the temples and what statues represented and honoured the many Hindu gods.
The Hindu religion as practiced in Bali isn’t a separate activity that is conducted in one place, once a week, and then you go about the rest of your daily routine. Instead, deference and respect to one’s gods is part of your daily routine and way of life. Ceremonies to bless and be blessed, to honour and to be honoured are woven into every act you take, in every gesture of life.
Each morning, the woman who brought our breakfast would quietly leave an offering just outside our front door. When we left our suite after breakfast to put on our footwear, we’d see the saffron-coloured petals scattered with some small bits of rice and papaya on a banana leaf tucked sweetly into the corner. We noticed small offerings hidden near doorways along the street, at the foot of certain statues, or at the entrances to special sites.
At the temple grounds, groups of women were often preparing the platters of flowers, fruit and rice for the offering during the ceremonies. Brightly coloured petals would be separated from the stems, ready to scatter lightly as part of the offering. The trays were beautifully arranged to show respect and love for those to whom they would be offered.
The air was scented with incense and soot, mixed with dust and fragrant frangipani and hibiscus growing along the dirt roads and paths. The humid air pressed the scents and moisture close to our bodies, so that by the afternoon of each day we welcomed a swim in the dark and cool pool waters. One day we had massages, and afterwards sunk into the scented baths filled with bougainvillea petals perched high up in tree branches, bodies and minds floating with the leaves surrounding us.
We celebrated Nyepi, the Balinese new years day when absolute quiet is observed. At the time we were told that everyone stays inside so that the evil deities traveling around in the skies do not see us and curse our lives. I think that was a good tale for keeping the children inside, but the day is more for reflection and contemplation. No cars are allowed to drive, no lights lit, and no fires may be burned. We are all, Balinese and visitors alike, confined to our residences. We had food prepared ahead to last through a full day until dawn the following morning. For me, it was a blessing to stay quiet, read, play games and talk quietly. Not as easy for an 8 and 10 year old!
The children took a class to learn to play one of the gamelan instruments that accompanies most of the performances we were seeing. Many evenings we attended dances or puppet shows put on for the tourists, in part because they told the stories about the deities that are part of their cultural life. The music, the offerings, the temple visits and the ceremonies we happened upon (funerals, weddings, and birthdays) gave us such a rich sense of life here in Bali, and how different it was from my traditional western religious upbringing.
Throughout our stay, I felt a peace and a calmness like never before. I wondered how much my kids would remember and if any of it would influence their lives beyond a few photos and memories retold as stories over the years.
A few weeks ago, our immediate family gathered in a Hindu temple outside San Francisco to participate in a sacred ceremony celebrating my son’s engagement to a Hindu woman. Some of the ceremonial elements—offering sacred water, flowers and fruit to the gods—brought back memories that had been pushed aside. The enchantment of our time in Bali came flooding back to me, and that wondrous peace settled on my shoulders once again.
As we moved through the activities, the family whose lives are now to be entwined with ours quietly explained elements of the ceremony. The engagement puja is an important ceremony, with much symbolised meaning. I performed my tasks in turn as the priest instructed: first offering cleansing waters to the deity, followed by making our offerings; then moving on to the exchange of commitments between the families to accept and support each other’s daughter and son, and finally blessings for the newly engaged.
There was so much to cherish about all of it. One of the most surprising parts for me was learning that around all the formal chanting and the rituals of the ceremony, there was also an acceptance that squirming children need to get up and wriggle into someone else’s lap, that family members will wander around and take photos from other angles, that one parent may mess up the words, and the priest will slightly smile, and other parents might dissolve in giggles and laughter. It is all fine.
The ceremony folded into our lives in a way that feels so comfortable and calm. Unlike what I experienced growing up with rather more severe Catholic services filled with expectations and guilt, the feeling conveyed to us by our new family during this ceremony is to be present and not to worry that anyone will do something wrong. There is no wrong: showing good intentions and positive gestures is what is important.
Our new family is warm and welcoming. They let us know they are relieved we are not put off by their culture. Au contraire! But of course they didn’t know us before this day; they didn’t know that 24 years ago our young boy went on a trip with his family where they learned about the Hindu culture and that other people approach their world differently.
Every engagement signifies an intention to join together; every engagement brings two extended families together to support that intention. Lucky are those of us who also get to experience a unique part of each other’s culture, faith, and set of customs as symbols of joining the families. We loved all of it and we ALL feel so blessed.
Thank you for reading this week! Hopefully there will be fewer travelogues in the near future as we settle down for some autumn nesting, and less adventuring.
Have any of you been to Bali? Did you get to see any of the dances or puppet shows? Did you visit the temples? Did you notice the offerings tucked away in various places?
What other rituals have impressed you in your life? What had particularly special meaning? I’d love to hear from you!
Hope you are enjoying the transition to autumnal weather (or spring if you are down under!). Keep warm and safe-see you next time!
xx Sabrina
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I am an atheist. But I really appreciate the humility and "living in the moment" aspects of the Hindu rituals that you describe. Also the warmth that Carol describes. And beauty—who doesn't love colorful flower petals at our doorstep? Well written and I am happy for your son—and you!
I love the Hindu traditions and the fun and peace they bring to the families I’ve known who grew up in the traditions and still practice many. Warmth is word that comes to mind. Authentic engagement also. I recently was welcomed to a neighbor’s pre-natal ceremony—similarly it was so much more intimate than a typical American baby shower. Congratulations to you and your growing family, dear Sabrina!