pretentiousness

Before sunset I go around the house and grounds placing the 17 offerings I have made in their designed spots and say an improvisational blessing. It is after I have swept the house and grounds, showered, and put on a sash around my waist as a sign of doing something sacred. The kids often try to speak with me while I am in the middle of this ten minute ritual. They want me to turn the water on, or when are we going to make pancakes or can we draw now, or that our favorite cartoon show just started. I am always torn between ignoring them and staying focused so that they will learn that when I am doing this, it is not the time to speak or request things from me, or just answer them and carry on. Depending on how serious the demand is or my own self interest in what is going on around me, I either react or not. But my general mood is one of kind of walking around the house and grounds in a quiet focused mode so that I don't even notice what is going on around me and they won't notice and need me. I also take it as an exercise in my own self restraint, not to get "side tracked" and start picking up things or whatever that have nothing to do with my actual task at hand.

Together with that I am quite aware of exactly what is going on around me. So when ketut walks in with the big water bottle to place on the holder which I am about to bless, instead of continuing and just blessing the empty water holder, I stop and ask him if I can wait and he would like to place the water bottle on first and then I will bless it, which for me would be more meaningful and also I would prefer the actual water would be blessed and not as if…So I am torn between a strict zen approach and a laissez faire approach. I'm not trying to be more religious than the pope, but if I am doing it I want to do it with a sense of purpose and not just out of necessity.

 But I had to laugh this morning. Just as I placed the offering at the family altar, which one could say is the most central and sacred place on the family compound, and began to bless it, I heard someone bless me with "om swastyastu" (God bless you). I turned around and saw the head priest, my neighbor, who was helping build the new road outside the house, had come to open up the water for the hose, next to where I was standing. I smiled at him, and laughed to myself. He knew perfectly well what I was doing with the big silver tray in my hand and with the sash around my waist. And it was him that interrupted me! He chose to speak to me when he entered the space I was in. Others often wait on the side a moment for me to finish. And as I continued with the blessing I laughed inside, how unpretentious he is, as the head priest of the whole village. How unpretentious they all are all of the time…laughing, totally in the ordinary here and now which can be just as extraordinary as I say good morning while I am placing and saying the blessing.

 The Balinese are so upfront in relation to entering each others space. Just yesterday, as I sat in the little mini bus van going to the city, whoever entered the van wanted to know where I was going and what I had bought. They do this to everyone. It is like we are all one big family with the casualness and intimacy that is natural to such a relationship. I keep learning these lessons everyday here as I live among them each day. We are all One.