I'm glad Nathan opened up the class the way he did, saying that he wants us to encounter the unfamiliarity, the discomfort. When we were talking about how we thought Li's religion served him, I felt like we were so deeply missing it. Talking about reality, meaning, symbolism, and so forth, it missed something. It really missed the raw emotion in Li's writing. It's unadulterated, it doesn't have the tinge of self-reflection or anything like that; it comes before all of that stuff. To even say "raw emotion" misses it: it's more raw than emotion. I dunno, reflecting on it this way feels like I'm missing it, still. Maybe I could just smash a window with a chair; that would probably capture it more effectively.

It invokes symbolism, but it isn't about the symbolism. (Or at least that's how it struck me.) The symbols are there, but they're not there for you to pick apart and cognize: they're just part of the raw experience. I think Bud had a lot of insight in that regard.

And you can't study that. The act of thinking, the act of rationalizing, arises far after -- and opposes -- the rawness. To reflect on it is to miss it, and so I think that's why we're gonna be going to these religious centers. What is real, what has meaning, what is felt can be alluded to by word and symbol and concept, but it cannot be captured by it. Granted, I don't know how much reality and meaning and such we'll find in these places we visit, but maybe some people find it there each Friday or Saturday or Sunday.

I've been reading a book called With God in Russia, and it's an autobiography of a Catholic priest who went to Russia to minister to believers, and he ends up in prisons and GULAGs and on the cusp of life far more times than is reasonable. He was there from like 1939 until 1963, when he was traded for some Soviet spies. It just so happens he's buried about an hour away from here. I'd really like to go visit his grave. I don't know why I want to; I wouldn't know what to do once I get there. But I still really want to go, to pay my respects, and to I guess participate in that reality, or something. I'm not expecting anything special; there are pictures on the internet of his gravestone, and it's not noteworthy, nor is it noteworthy for it being ignored; it's got flags or something around it. But I want to be there for it.

When I was reading "This Blessed House," I saw it as some kind of allegory about modern religion. It seemed like it was about what modern religion was, what it should be, and stuff like that. It seems like Twinkle relishes the tradition, even though it's alien and not her own, which could be said for how I think a modern person could easily feel about her religion. She nonetheless celebrates it and embraces it and makes it her own. Sanjeev, however, just sees the kookiness of it, and wants his house to conform with his values. When Twinkle gets upset about losing religion, Sanjeev suddenly encounters this force, this emotion, this "strangely at peace" vulnerability and sadness that totally disarms him. His first encounter with the divine, perhaps? It leads him to compromise, and put the contentious statue "in a recess at the side of the house, so that it wasn't obvious to passersby, but was still clearly visible to all who came" (150), in other words, nicely compartmentalized. There were a lot of things like that, I felt.

I found this article about the "Dotbusters."

In July of 1987, a month before Mody's death, a local newspaper called attention to the rising number of harassment incidents. In response, it received a letter, signed "Jersey City Dot Busters:"

"I'm writing about your article during July about the abuse of Indian People. Well I'm here to state the other side. I hate them, if you had to live near them you would also. We are an organization called dot busters. We have been around for 2 years. We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I'm walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her. We plan some of our most extreme attacks such as breaking windows, breaking car windows, and crashing family parties. We use the phone books and look up the name Patel. Have you seen how many of them there are? Do you even live in Jersey City? Do you walk down Central avenue and experience what its like to be near them: we have and we just don't want it anymore. You said that they will have to start protecting themselves because the police cannot always be there. They will never do anything. They are a week race Physically and mentally. We are going to continue our way. We will never be stopped."

I have to say, it's really not something I understand. I guess I find what Eck's comment helpful when she says these are targeted more because they're the only overtly visible public image of these different communities. But nonetheless, I just can't understand the depth of the anger and the hatred. I've felt some powerful anger in my life, but (as far as I can remember) never towards a particular person that I've wanted to harm. I think I need to understand it, though, because they're human. I'll have to interact with these people; I may even feel what they feel at some point in my life. Just as Eck says we have to go beyond tolerance and relativism in studying religion, I think we also need to understand intolerance and hatred.