And Lightning Shall Strike you Down . . . .

If there is a long silence after this post it is because God may not have a sense of humor and has decided to do away with me via a swift lightning bolt . . . .

Like any catholic boy growing up I was very inattentive during mass and so I had to rely on story books to tell me about the saints and the apostles. And although there were stories of wild lions amazingly tamed, people living in the belly of a whales, great floods and destruction and even an odd dragon here and there (St George) I wasn't mesmerized by any of the stories. Maybe it's because after everything was said and done, the characters ended up turning the other cheek and that was the end of the story.

In India however, I was introduced to a religion that, although still made a point to recognize good versus evil, had no qualms about keeping death and destruction within the story lines and did not apologize about it afterward. I am of course talking about Hinduism, a religion with over 330,000 deities in it, all unique and interesting. How can you beat a title like "Shiva the Destroyer" or "Vishnu the Preserver" and "Brahma the Creator". We on the other hand grew up with "Thomas the Doubter" and "Job".

I guess it helps that Hinduism predates Islam, Christianity and Buddhism by a few thousand years, back when people's minds were more focused on staying alive rather than being nice to each other.

In any case, the temples I visited and the superbly knowledgeable guides laid out the splendor of this religion. Panel after panel showed one deity in battle with another, how one warrior magically transformed his one arrow into thousands (with a clear depiction of his adversary getting hit) and how one god dances in the open belly of an elephant (it was after all a bad elephant). My favorite one though shows Narasimha, a half man half lion god with his victim (needless to say a bad guy) sprawled face up across the god's knee. His stomach is ripped open and the god, which happens to have anything from 4 to 10 arms (depending which sect you believe in), has the poor victim's intestines (yes intestines) coming out from the stomach to the outstretched arms. Unfortunately, due to the ravages of time and the delicate nature of . . . intestines, not all the statues actually show this as they have been damaged. Still pretty graphic if you ask me, what with the fingers still dipped inside the stomach and, in a tip to the ancient artist, look at the detail of his right most hand, how it digs into the guys knee. These pictures show Halebid and Belur temples in India's Karnataka State.

Okay, time for me to repent now . . . .