The Human Cohesion Project — Ganesh Utsav –10 Sep 2021
The Human Cohesion Project emerged during the Ramadan month of 2020, as a peace project. It was the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and there was chaos around in every sense of the term. In that context as Ramadan approached, polarisation and tension began to build up in India, where I’m based. My instinct as a peacebuilder was to engage with the situation, not externally given the lockdown, but to go within instead. The Project continued and deepened during the Ramadan of 2021 and now extends into an exploration of other faith and religious contexts. I invest in it, the hopes of a peacebuilder, engaging with religion as a way to understand and work with some of the conflict in our world. It was an inward journey, and therefore personal in nature.
The invitation to the reader, as I engage in this Project for the eleven days of the Ganesh Utsav, is to travel within too, and reflect on what emerges for you. It does not matter what part of the world you are in, or whether or not you practice a religion. All festivals are times of collectively tapping into an archetype, and they have to potential to therefore shift the archetype for all of humanity. There are several facets to the archetype that is known through various names including Ganesh, Ganapati, Vinayak, etc. We will explore these in the coming days.
For today, I’ll begin with a poetic reflection on the process of the festival, that entails in many households, the arrival and institution of the idol of Ganesh (the elephant headed god from the Hindu pantheon), the worship of it, for a few days, following by release of the idol in a water body. If that God were to respond to our prayers with their own, perhaps they may say…
As you bring me into your homes,
What do you welcome in yourselves?
When the ritual enlivens the form I behold,
What do you ignite in your being?
In offering the food you place in front of me,
What do you nourish yourself with?
As you conduct ritual prayers morning and evening,
What discipline do you instill in yourself?
When you eventually let me go back to the ocean,
What in you reaches back to its source?
I am but a form you created.
As an embodiment of God, I pray,
That my creation serves you well,
That my companionship holds you,
While you bring in aspects of you
That are now ready to show up in the world.
I pray you let go of that in you
Which has served its purpose
And is yearning to go back home to rest.
May you bring in connection
To heal a hurting planet.
May you let go of fears
That colonise your mind.
May you, my creator, be like me
And learn to come and go from the world
In song and dance,
Allowing the present to guide your presence.
Ganpati Bappa Morya! May our faith in life blossom as it did for the saint Morya Gosavi, who’s path of devotion inspired the fusion of his name with that of Ganpati in this commonly used chant during the festival.
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