I’m Gay, Catholic, and Married to a Hindu Man
A Cross-Cultural Love Story That Healed my Broken Image of God
On my first trip to India with my husband Rahul, his aunt showed me an altar in her home. As I bowed my head to pray, I was surprised to see statues of the Virgin Mary and images of Jesus next to the statues of Vishnu, Ganesh, and Buddha.
“We aren’t possessive,” Rahul told me.
Rahul’s mother was culturally Hindu. She chanted with a Buddhist group. And when she visited my Italian grandmother’s home, she seamlessly transitioned to honoring the Virgin Mary, telling my grandmother that she learned to pray the rosary from Jesuit priests at her school in India.
My Indian relatives simply do not believe that anyone has the market on truth cornered.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Their openness to multiple spiritual frameworks reminds me of an Indian parable called “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” which I learned about in a class called “Spirituality in Counselling.”
In the parable, a group of blind men who have never seen an elephant before discover the animal and learn about it by touch.
“This being is like a thick snake,” one blind man says, feeling the trunk.
“No, it’s like a large fan,” says another, touching the ear.
“No, it is like a tree trunk,” says a third blind man, feeling the legs.
In some versions of the story, the men come to blows about their versions of the truth. In others, they collaborate to form a more cohesive understanding of the truth.
The lesson about the limitations of subjective experience and absolute truth applies to the spiritual life. No one path to God captures the totality of the Truth. As spiritual writer Ron Rolheiser puts it, any God you can understand would not be God.
My Accountant God
I used to view God through a safe but narrow lens. As a gay Catholic teen, I was anxious, particularly about moral issues. In the face of this uncertainty, I clung to the structure of rules. Rules brought order to chaos. Rules made me feel more in control.
In my limited worldview, God was like a demanding accountant, tallying my sins and nagging me when I made mistakes. In response, I grasped God’s approval by being a “good kid.” When I failed, I sought relief in the sacrament of confession. When I felt scared, ashamed, or lost, all I had to do was check the box.
Evolving My Image of God
I eventually got into spiritual direction and learned how my scrupulosity was creating walls between me and God. In my quest for certainty, I was creating a false idol to manage my anxiety.
“The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty.” -Anne Lamott
In time, I learned to let go of my need for certainty and to embrace a spiritual life that left space for Mystery. Through the practice of Ignatian Spirituality, I learned to “Pray my Day” and discover God in my experiences.
But the spiritual life is not linear. It’s more like a spiral. When things are new or difficult, I find myself reaching out for that old, demanding accountant. Each time I repeat my pattern, I learn something new.
When I first started dating Rahul, I became deeply anxious about the fact that he did not share my faith.
I was berating my spiritual director about my fears when she stopped me in my tracks. “You’re acting like God is only coming from your side of the road,” she said. You don’t have the monopoly on God.”
Her words hit me right in my spiritual ego. Rahul may not use “God language,” but that does not mean that God isn’t at work in his life.
With time and prayer, I began to trust that God was at work in Rahul and in our relationship. My lens on what God could do began to expand.
A New Place Reveals New Insights
Part of my relationship with Rahul involves traveling to India. India is an intense place for a Westerner. It requires a long flight. The traffic is fast-paced and chaotic. Most public places are crowded and hot.
When I’m in India, I’m aware that many rules in life are unspoken. Due to different expectations around male and female interactions, I don’t know when it’s okay for me to hug a woman.
Many Indians (or at least my in-laws) have a different relationship with time than I do. The activities of the day are not beholden to strict time expectations. Because of this, I often don’t know when things will happen.
Rituals are less structured. On our last trip, we attended the cremation services for my mother-in-law. I am accustomed to Catholic services, where a priest is firmly in charge of the ceremony and there are clearly identified times to sit, to stand, or to greet loved ones with a sign of peace.
My mother-in-law’s services had no such structure. No one person was in charge. Loved ones approached her body as they felt moved to in order to shower her with pink flowers and touch the cloths draped over her body. At a given moment, some relative or another would move to pray near her body and others would follow. I found myself longing to be told where to stand and when to move from one ritual to the next.
The next day, we traveled to a river to give her remains back to the earth. As we approached the water, there was no program, no song and no leader. Rahul and his siblings simply entered the river with a jar containing her remains. When Rahul nodded for me to join them, I stopped asking where to go and when and waded into the waters with an open heart. I prayed without asking what to say, where to stand or for how long. I surrendered to the flow of things.
New places force me to look at the lens through which I view the world. When I don’t understand the rules, I can see how desperately I cling to them. When there’s nothing to hold onto, I’m forced to let go.
The many unknowns of India typically stress me out for about three days. At the moment when I’ve worn myself out with resistance, I give myself over to the chaos. It’s usually at that moment that I begin to make room for something other than my own thoughts.
As the gospel of John says, I must decrease in order for God to increase.
God often shows up not as a clearly defined idea but as a quiet presence waiting for me beneath all of the noise, a presence that I can access in a quiet church or a crowded street, in moments of clarity and in moments when all seems lost. India reminds me that I don’t need to reach for a clearly defined idea about God to try to control reality.
God is already there.
