Yesterday was quite a turbulent day for me. For the past…many, many years I have believed in and practiced Hinduism but have never actively thrown myself into the Hindu community out of fear of rejection due to my race, and my culture. My race is not their race, and my culture is not their culture. You see, in the society I live in, the American society, we are so disgustingly unaccepting of others, and others cultures and races that I applied that American custom, to their society also. Boy, was I wrong. Here, in America, if you are different..in many ways, lets say, you practice a different religion, you look different, or you are a different race…you are singled out, picked on, and made a joke out of. You are pushed away instead of welcomed.
I was afraid of that same treatment if I went to the temple and willingly subjected myself as a minority. Now, I have been to the temple two other times. Once I just went and I was very welcomed by an old, old, OLD man who taught me the correct way to pray, then I took two friends to the celebration of Navaratri and to be honest..I had no clue what was going on that night.
So, as a Shaivite, I woke up yesterday morning with one worry on the brain. To go, or not to go. So, without further ado…I WENT! Yes, Soda and I were the ONLY white people there. But, no one looked at us weird, no one gave two fucking shits about our race, or our culture. We were welcomed with open arms and I even got a SPONSORED PUJA. Yes. Me. I went up, in front of everyone, with the priest and performed puja, aarati, everything. It was so great.
There were like one hundred people there, it was total chaos, no one cared what anyone else was doing..unlike church where youre made to sit down, shut up, and listen to some old dude talk about shit you dont care about. It was AMAZING.
I think this sums it all up:
