Changes, changes

Our second full day in Bali brought with it a disappointing surprise. The previous night, Yudhie and I visited Ibu in her front parlor, keeping her company because she had received a distressing phone call from her husband in America about some medical problems that might require immediate surgery. She was very worried, because she has always been present for such emergencies. But as the evening wore on she seemed calmer again, and continued showing us the history of her family from the artifacts in the room. Among the many beautiful works of art, there stood on a raised platform at one end of the room two musical instruments.

I don’t remember what Ibu called them but they look like gendèr, a kind of xylophone played with hammers. Since there were two, I’m guessing they were gendèr barung (lower) and gendèr panerus (higher-pitched).

Ibu plays this instrument and also sings traditional songs. I’ve heard recordings of her performing when I’ve visited her in Portland, when her husband plays them as background music during dinner. Ibu had Yudhie climb up on the platform, we rotated one of them so they were both oriented in the same direction, and Ibu showed him how to hit the ‘keys.’
I wish I’d had a camera, but that would’ve only spoiled the moment.
Instead, above is a generic image of a gendèr (pronounced gain-DARE) to show you what it looked like.

That was yesterday evening. This morning brought other news, changes, changes. Ibu’s husband, it seemed, was going to be able to postpone or even forgo the surgery. But one of Ibu’s elderly relatives in a nearby village had passed away in the night, and so she was now both ceremonially unclean, unable to visit a pura without special dispensation and blessing, and also required in the following days to officiate in some way in funeral ceremonies, as a close relative and Balinese eldress. Our plans for today had been to visit the Orthodox pura her family was constructing near the sea coast, so that I could photograph it and make it known in America.

This would not be able to take place, and Ibu was very upset and apologetic. ‘Don’t worry about it, Ibu, don’t be upset. If the Lord wants us to visit it and make it known, He will open the way. If not, He closes the door. Today He has closed the door. That means it is not yet time,’ I told her, while holding her gently in my arms and comforting her. She really was shaking. In the end, she went inside, and then came out again in a few minutes. We were all in the inner courtyard. ‘We will go to the [local] pura and I will pray there. Then, we can drive over and visit the new Orthodox temple and introduce you to Father Stephanos,’ Ibu announced. ‘Then, Moda can take you down to the pasar and to the waterfront.’

The local pura was a very beautiful Balinese temple, as all the others, a walled-in open air garden sanctuary where God meets human beings. It would have been better had we men been wearing sarongs, but since none of us were, not Yudhie and me, nor our driver, nor Moda, the formality was quietly dispensed with. Ibu was dressed as she would be when attending church services. She let us find our way around the pura while she stood apart and prayed quietly. I don’t pretend to know yet how her Christian faith and Balinese identity intertwine, but as long as I have known her, more than twenty years, I have never felt myself to be in the presence of anyone other than a lover and disciple of Jesus.

Christianity, as most people in the Western world hold it, is a faith that sees itself as a kind of militant New Testament form of pre-Judaism, preaching the good news of Jesus Christ, yes, but also demolishing not just ‘sophistries and the arrogance that tries to resist the knowledge of God’ (2 Corinthians 10:4) but also smashing the idolatrous cultures of the people it comes to save. In this it is scarcely different from the religion of Muhammad, which also is iconoclastic and anti-idolatry.

For this reason Christianity makes little sense to the Balinese people, and little headway. The same is true, I think, of Japan. These people are no more idolators than the average Western Christian, who unashamedly tries to serve two masters. The Balinese people, like the Japanese, are a childlike race. Children see through mere appearances. Could it be, that’s why Christ says, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 18:3)?

Here in Bali, we are guests of the first Orthodox Christian family in the island, and we will soon be visiting the Indonesian [Greek] Orthodox presbyter who serves the Balinese Orthodox community. Like Western forms of Christianity, Orthodoxy, an essentially Eastern, even Asian, form of the same faith has sometimes used ‘bait and switch’ tactics when evangelizing native cultures, but not always.

Here in Bali it is the time of testing and opportunity for Orthodoxy to show the Balinese people the face of Jesus, to reveal to them His two thousand year walk among them, so they can recognize Him as their Own, so that all the puras of Bali shine with the knowledge and love of Him Who is, finally and fully manifested in their midst. For is it not written, ‘He pitched His tent among us’ (John 1:14 Greek)? And who is this ‘us’ of which the beloved John speaks, if not also the people of this blessed island?

Next… First church, then the beach!