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"This day, a great human need was met, and this need wasn't sexual. Did Pete tell you about our prayer mat?" she asked.
Without waiting for an answer she proceeded to tell her story of the prayer mat that she had started to weave to give to her future husband. She told us that she became shocked by this project. She told us that the men that she observed as possible candidates appeared to be as empty and unfulfilled in their lives as she was, each expecting that another would provide this fulfillment. She said that joining hands under these conditions would have been like two beggars begging from each other. It wouldn't have been a union of hearts that brightens the world as when two kindred streams of love mingle to supersede even the sunshine. She also told us that she never found an answer to building that inner fulfillment until our scientific exploration raised it to a higher level that morning.
"Pete and I had discussed the Rig Veda and the very ancient concept of the One Divine Reality that has Many Names, that no one can define, that no religion, culture, person, or ideology owns." Indira said, "We realized that this One Divine Reality is Love. Pete called it the Father and Mother of the universe, the very heart of man, the essence of our being, the image that we bear as the sons and daughters of that One Divine Reality that is Love. He quoted the Apostle John who said the same thing; that God is love; that therefore in loving we find God and the fullness of ourselves reflected in our divine image. I never understood the Rig Veda until Pete and I began to explore it on a higher level, and with it, suddenly, I began to understand myself. That's when I remembered my prayer mat that I had woven for my future husband, and I realized that what I had been looking for, for all my life, I had actually found. No, it wasn't found in Pete. It was, that I no longer saw myself as a beggar, but as a person incredibly richly endowed. In order prove that to myself I went into the bedroom that morning and took my clothes off, which had inspired shame before. Now, as I had expected, I was able to look at myself with love and a great joy, a joy that I was fee to share, that encircled Peter and the whole of humanity. Without that foundation, I don't think our health care improvement project for the poor of India would have even gotten off the ground. Instead it worked wonders."
Indira paused again. "I think if we want to celebrate the dimensions of universal love, we also need to individually celebrate all the footsteps that enabled us to make our way out of the cave of shadows. It seems to me that any celebration has to include a celebration of the footsteps that brought us into the sunshine."
She paused and look around for everyone's reaction. "That was really all that I wanted to say," she added. "That is, what is important to me. It is as important to me as my own birth. In a way it became my true birth as a human being. I need to celebrate that. That is also what Pete and I did on our second day together. We took a journey to the Taj Mahal, where we build on that foundation that we had set up on the day before. That day at the Taj became a celebration of a different facet of universal love. It unfolded into a marriage celebration, of our unfolding marriage to one another as a marriage with the whole of humanity. Only on the third morning, after all of that was done, did we have what one might call a somewhat normal morning meal together on the balcony, if there is such a thing as 'normal' anymore."
"Yes all of this became reflected again and again throughout that three week whirl wind type of involvement that followed," I confirmed Indira's story. "On this basis we were able to do with ease what we set out to do, to set up a structure to enable Indira to be better able to meet the great and urgent health care needs of the poor in India, especially the Dalit women."
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