God bless you, God?
Odd isn’t it?
I thought so too but it came to me so spontaneously. As if it was most natural that God too should be blessed by the One and the Only.
And the timing was perfect.
I was on my way to Har Ki Dun, a beautiful part of the Garhwal Himalayas. The trudge up had been excruciating, not because of the steep ascent, but because of my many aches and pains that had suddenly sprouted. I had blisters squelching in pain with each step. I had a neck so tight and rigid, with pins and needles shuttling like a metro down my spine. I had thirst parching my insides and hunger gnawing at hollow voids. In short, I was a mess. And all I kept saying to myself was “hang in there… no pain, no gain”. If I don’t squeal into the kilometers ahead, I won’t get any further, and that means no solution to any of the problems at hand. So move on. Offer the pain, offer the pain.
Felt trifle guilty offering my pain to someone else – its not the most exciting of gifts, I thought, but then I remembered a childhood story of people offering Christ their burden, with him carrying it upon his back till the gates of heaven. He made it as did they, some grateful, others shamelessly unappreciative. I also remembered reading notes written by other wise souls saying true surrender is when one offers everything – every last thing. Then why not pain as well? In fact, if anything at all, pain is perhaps easier to offer than most of our other error-ridden glitches.
So offer I did at every step. Gave myself wholly and solely. Felt the pain deaden and no longer send me into cramped despair. Someone was there to take me out of this miserable predicament and it didn’t matter who it was, the name, the form. Someone was there to put a smile on my face, lighten the step, lift the burden, ease the pain. I could nearly feel the Someone, touch, hold, smell.
And then I turned around the corner and saw the delightful silhouettes of concrete structures dotting the village that I so eagerly was making my way to. The happiness struck a chord somewhere deep within and like a cloud ecstatically bursting with rain, out came the words, “God bless You, God”.
I laughed at that instant, speaking aloud those words. But two seconds later I reflected on what I had said, and realized, that it made no difference, who blessed who. Was I blessing God? Was God blessing God through me? Who knows… it was all the same.
I was in love with the moment.
I was in love with the utterance.
I was in love with this beautiful Someone, who I called God.
