Honoring the divine within

Over the years I have seen this gesture many times: a person puts her hands together as if in prayer, acknowledges the person she faces, and, bowing slightly, says "Namaste."

What I didn't know until I read it this morning is that Namaste means "I honor the divine within you." Jack Kornfield, in The Wise Heart, suggests that, as an exercise, it would be good to begin a day with the clear intention to look for the nobility in three people you encounter that day.

Initially it might be best to do this on a day when you are feeling very positive, but ideally you would expand the number of people over time, then expand to doing it on less positive days,and then eventually you might come to honor the inner nobility of every person you meet.

As a photographer I tend to shy away from intimate moments; it seems intrusive. Which might explain why, despite all the photos I have of retreats, there are none of people with their hands in a gesture of prayer. The closest thing I could find to that sort of reverence was this shot, taken when a group of us visited what is reputed to be the oldest and largest tree on Bowen Island, up in British Columbia.

There is a bench placed beside the tree whose back is at a much larger angle than 90 degrees to the seat, so that people may lie back into it and look up into the tree. But one of the women I went with was not content to just admire the tree; she wished to commune with it directly.

It is, I confess, a rather obvious shot -- the phrase "tree-hugger" does immediately come to mind. But it seems to me to be a sort of cross-species version of Namaste; she is honoring the wisdom and divinity inherent in the tree.

So what would be the opposite of Namaste? I suspect there are many answers to this question, but the one that would seem most common to me is to look at another with contempt or suspicion or prejudice; to assume the worst about them rather than to honor the best.

I remember reading about a marriage therapist who practices in Seattle (I believe it's John Gottman at the University of Washington, but I'm not absolutely positive about that). Apparently he will videotape a couple's interaction, and, watching the video, can predict in only a few minutes the potential success of the marriage. And if I remember correctly, one key indicator is contempt: if one partner rolls their eyes or sneers at the other, chances are the relationship is doomed.

So if, as we begin this exercise, we start on a bad day, and cannot bring ourselves to honor anyone's nobility -- perhaps because we cannot find our own -- we could probably start by noticing the times we look at others with contempt.

Just notice. And then see how that feeling resonates within you; feel how your body pulls away from the other, feel the slight shriveling inside. And if you cannot bring yourself to reverse that process, to honor their inner nobility, then at least imagine how you might feel if you could: the softening of the eyes, the opening of the heart.

Someone said to me yesterday -- in a conversation decrying all the sad things that can happen in church congregations -- that churches make Jesus' message so complicated; get so caught up in blame and recriminations; the right and wrong way to "do church."

It's so sad, he said, because at heart, Jesus' gospel is really very simple; it all comes down to loving your neighbor as yourself. And sometimes it seems like church is the last place that sort of respect for the "other" is likely to happen. Curious, when you consider that it is in church you would expect to find that prayerful gesture -- the palms of your hands together -- most often. Perhaps we will never be very good at honoring the divine in God if we cannot begin to honor the divine in one another.

Namaste.