Day 8, August 18

Today, upon awakening, Fr. Anthippa and I celebrated Mass at the parish church for four of the sisters who run the school in this exurb 0f Mysore. No lay people attended. The parish has only 18 families. It’s a shame the bishop has assigned such an intelligent and community-minded priest to this backwater town. After Mass, we dined with the sisters and I received another tour of another school. The vast majority of the students are non-Christian; yet, they pay great respect to priests. Neither of us wore clerical garb and they still recognized us as important people. In no time, the students here as in the previous two schools I visited learned to receive and give high fives. Soon, they became enthusiastic for them.
Later that morning, Fr. Anthippa put me in his car to take me to my five day stay at an Ashram. On the way he wanted to show me one of the splendors of medieval India. Way off the beaten path past a few remote villages, lies the 12th century Buddhist Temple at Somnathur. It was exquisite. The outside was thoroughly immersed in detailed miniature statues. Inside, there was a forest of pillars. Each of them was produced by spinning on a lathe. All of them were granite. There were three shrines inside (a kind of Trinitarian theology perhaps?). It taught me that India certainly has a rich heritage.
Leaving the twelfth century, we drove not to modern Mysore, but to Anjeli Ashram. In one sense it can take one back to the fifth century BC. Or, it could be a vision of the future when religious people recognize and accept each others’ spiritual wisdom. The latter is why this Ashram was founded.
So, like a child brought to his first day of school, Fr. Anthippa dropped me of at the Ashram. Both of us spent time talking to Fr. Louis, the guru-ji of the ashram. He proved to be a kind and wise man and a great leader. I was shown to my room by Brother John, a Montfort bother, who was to remain my guardian angel taking me to all the sessions, meals and gatherings. My room was no more Spartan than at my previous stays in India so far. It had an en suite bathroom aw well. I soon found out we all sit (lotus style) on the ground including at meals which are silent.
Present at the Ashram were novices from three convents. A ten day experience is part of their preparation for profession. There were two groups of Pralines and one group o Franciiscans. The novices had to be 19 or 20 years old. Fr. Louis said I was lucky. At this time he was recapping the previous week. I could get all that in one day and then continue to the conclusion. So, I settled in with the girls and started learning. It proved, as you will see, educational and fun.