Offerings

What a trip! Three different islands on the archipelago, each defined by a very different religion, culture and history. Java is predominantly Muslim, but its own Java-style form that is at about 600 years old. East Timor became predominantly Catholic during the Indonesian occupation, as the Church offered protection to the people and their culture. And now Bali...

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Bali is  visibly religious, in its own unique, Hindu-Buddhist fashion. Every morning and evening elegantly dressed women in traditional sarongs and lace blouses make offerings in fron of their doors, at shrines and temples, before sacred trees, at wells and other places of worship. The waitresses at the restaurant at our hotel do the same thing at the edge of the swimming pool. There are so many places of worship and they are so integrated into daily life that I am having trouble distinguishing homes from temples.

Entrance to a house? A temple?

Offering at the pool of our hotel.

 In Ubud yesterday morning I saw a woman making an offering on the hood of a Land Rover, pouring the oil on the ground at her feet. I badly wanted to take a photo, both of her and the woman I later saw carrying offerings of fruit on a basket on her head, but these are intensely private moments, if acted out in public. While waiting for a flight at the Bali airport, I saw one of the women working at the Polo store, dressed in a business suit, spreading incense through the small boutique before laying it on the small shrine at the door.

The woman in the upper LH corner makes an offering.

With Bali coffee, yum.

Monkeys at Ubud's Sacred Monkey Forest enjoying the offerings. The Monkeys are considered sacred.

Some gestures are common across religions, if done in different ways and coming from different contexts. In East Timor, Sunday Mass is a major social as well as spiritual event. Here are photos of the delegation making the offering at Mass that was co-celebrated by Development and Peace  in Dili:

John and Linda: present part of the offering.

Jess and Roberta also involved in the offering.