Ganesh and Blessings for New Beginnings

OPENING

When I was in college, I spent four months in Sri Lanka, which is a country on the other side of the world, near India.  I lived with a family there.  One day, we were setting out on a trip.  As we left town, we stopped by a statue at the side of the road.

Everyone in the family said a prayer.

I didn’t understand what was going on.

I asked them…what are you doing?

And they told me:  when we start out on a journey, we ask a certain deity for blessings.

I want to show you what that deity looks like.

INTERACTIVE WITH BANNER IMAGE

Can you tell me what you see?  (elephant head, person sitting, jewelry, …….)

All that jewelry means he is very special and celebrated.

This is called Ganesh, and another name is Ganapati.

Tell me:  can you see his little mouth here at the end of his trunk?

And can you see his two big ears?

People say that he is a role model for us because his big ears mean he is a good listener.

With those big ears, he can understand the many layers of wisdom around him.

And his small mouth means he talks less and listens more.

Can you see his one broken tusk?

Some people say that here is how that happened:  One say, a very wise sage named Vyasa was telling a long story about the history of the land. Now, Ganesh didn’t want one word to be lost, so he was writing down what Vyasa was saying.  But, Ganesh’s pen stopped working!  Has that ever happened to you?  Well, do you know what he did?  He was very creative!  He took one of his own tusks, broke it, filled it with ink, and used that as a pen so he could finish writing down the poem!  And it became a famous poem, a very long poem called the Mahabharata. And, I got to study it in graduate school!

This coming Wednesday is a day when people all across the world will celebrate the birthday of Ganesh.  This is a ten day holiday! It is called Ganesh Chaturthi, and people eat sweets to celebrate, and in some cities, they have big parades.

DOORWAYS AND BEGINNINGS

Now, people often put statues or pictures of Ganesh outside the door to a temple or sacred building, or even a home, to offer protection for the people entering there.  Because when you walk through a doorway, you are having a new beginning.

A new beginning can mean

starting kindergarten, or

starting college, or

moving to a retirement community.

A new beginning can be something we choose,

like learning an instrument,

planting a garden,

joining a covenant group, or a

marriage.

Sometimes beginnings are things we don’t want,

like having a friend move away,

starting medical treatment, or

being incarcerated.

Some beginnings take a lot of work, like

learning to take care of a new pet,

starting to attend AA, or

being deployed overseas.

Some beginnings don’t require any work from us, because nature is taking its course, like

when the leaves turn color on the trees as fall begins, or

when you lose a tooth, or

when your own children have children and you become a grandparent.

Sometimes endings lead us to new beginnings, like those of you who graduated today from Childrens Worship and now will go into Youth Programs.

Sometimes a whole community or a country has new beginnings.

What are the qualities that will help us succeed when we embark on something together?

We need patience and flexibility enough to travel with the other people who are traveling with us.

But we also need enough focus and striving to keep moving toward our goal.

We need to discern which obstacles are true obstacles and which are imagined.

We need to resist looking for obstacles where there are none.

Whether a new stage is of our own choosing or not, we can still take a spiritual attitude and look for where new blossoming is occurring.

In our spiritual lives, the goal of our journey might not be a place, or making something concrete, or a date on a calendar, but instead something more subtle,

Such as noticing a beautiful bird,

Memorizing a chalice lighting,

Asking spiritual questions,

Respecting your neighbor’s faith,

Designing a ritual,

Noticing when others want to be included,

Accepting moral tensions,

Being a role model.

All of these are things that can happen for any of us in the year ahead as we learn together in our faith journeys.

CLOSING

Ganesh is at the doorway, at the start of a journey, with the hope that he will remove any obstacles that might arise.  An obstaclemeans something that gets in our way, like a big rock in a road.  Now, sometimes he might know better than us what we need…sometimes, people say, Ganesh places obstacles in front of us, so that we may overcome them, and learn and grow as people.

So, people bring flowers to his statue, sing songs to him, and chant chants before they begin something new so that their journeys can be smooth.  By saying Ganesh’s name, they hope to bring luck and power to whatever they are setting out to accomplish.  One of my teachers taught me how to chant, and I would like you to hear this chant giving praise to Ganesh.  I told you that Ganesh is also called Ganapati, so you can listen for that word, Ganapati:

Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha