Rock of Ages at the Taj Mahal

By Rev Janet Onnie July 13, 2025

The Shenandoah Valley is in mid-summer.  So are the mountain towns in the Blue Ridge.  I know this because the Farmers Markets are brimming with produce and flowers, there’s a smell of charcoal and sunscreen in the air, and I read email messages from friends in far-flung places.  I know that many of you are no longer confined to summer to indulge in your wanderlust, but the rhythms of childhood are hard to break.  July in America – at least the America I chose to remember – is about swimming in rivers and driving past cornfields and catching fireflies in mason jars.  I’m sure you have similar summertime markers.  All of our social cues remind us of our release from imprisonment indoors to the freedom of being outdoors. 

Truthfully, I find summer a bit depressing.  I don’t want to be outdoors in the heat and humidity.  I am aware of the evils of air-conditioning, but worship it nonetheless.  The joys of outdoor picnics with family and friends, baking on a sandy beach, crowded fireworks displays and festivals --  all of that leaves me, well, cold.  A few weeks ago my daughter dragged us to a baseball game in an open air stadium.  I love her and have said I would do anything for her, but that experience made me question my own rhetoric.

What I do like is the rhythm of travel.  Yes, I know the airports are crowded.  The campgrounds, motels, and hotels are full ... and expensive.  The highways are more treacherous than usual.  And the ‘amusement’ parks are often not all that amusing.  What I like is seeing all those people moving out of their comfort zones, if only for a while.  It motivates me to get out of MY comfort zone, which is how I ended up at a July baseball game. The destination is almost secondary:  It may be as familiar as a backyard picnic with friends or a fully stocked second home.  Or the destination may be as exotic as the one featured in a story by Rev. Meg Barnhouse.  The point is to be surprised by the journey.

Rock of Ages at the Taj Mahal reminds me of experiences in coming across the unexpected – or having the unexpected thrust upon you – and finding out you can survive.  But more than that:  you can thrive.  Amy is going to tell us about one of Rev. Barnhouses’s adventures.

In July of 1985 I was on a bus in the middle of India with forty Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Moonies.  We were touring the world for two months to study each others’ religions.

            I don’t know about you, but this opening makes me feel pretty pedestrian.  I’m not sure, even 40 years ago, that I would be curious enough to spend two months with the same group of people; no matter what I was studying. 

We were on our way to the Taj Mahal, four hours from our hotel in New Delhi.  The bus was painted turquoise to ward off evil spirits and hung all over with garlands of marigolds.  The day was hot; the road was dusty and full of holes.  I was sitting next to Gary from Alabama, who had been raised Southern Baptist but was now a Moonie, and we talked as the bus bumped and jolted us down the road.

            This color choice made me wonder if we should paint our airplanes bright colors perhaps drape the TSA folks in garlands of marigolds.  Evil spirits seem to abound in our airports; even on the interstate rest stops.   You can tell when they’ve taken over someone by the glazed look on the travelers’ faces.  You don’t see that so much on bumpy roads.  Those of you who have been in what we call the undeveloped world know the bumpy roads tend to focus your attention on the immediate.  It’s hard to daydream when you’re being jostled around.   Of course you can retreat into yourself and curse the bumps.  This does give you a chance to practice ‘moving into the discomfort’.  But you can also engage in conversation with your seatmate.  It’s a choice between stoic individuality and companionable community.  You can always talk about the bumps past, present, and future.  Everyone has bumps in their lives.I would guess that the transition from Alabama Southern Baptist to Moonie involved some fairly jarring bumps.

I love talking to people who are on the fringes of my religious experience.  Hearing about exotic beliefs and strange practices is one of my favorite hobbies.  The Moonies certainly seemed out there on the fringe to me, so I had been pestering them to tell me what they believed.  We had a good time questioning each other, sometimes debating, often laughing. 

One of the things that attracts me to the adventures of Rev. Barnhouse is her hobby of talking to people on the fringes of Unitarian Universalism.  I find in myself a strong tendency to stick with my own kind – an impulse that grows stronger with age.  I have to work much harder now that I did 40 years ago to extend myself; to expend the energy it takes to listen without judgment.  Or to find the courage to step out of an unfamiliar place on your own.  And the elation that results from finding your way back.  Those of you who have traveled know that it’s generally worth the effort.  After only a few minutes of conversation one finds more similarities than differences.  Let’s hear how that happens.

Gary and I had gotten to be friends.  One of the things we all did to pass the time on long bus rides was to look through each other’s wallets, perusing pictures of loved ones, mocking driver’s license photos, flipping through insurance cards, love notes, and bank receipts.

There used to be a TV commercial advertising some sort of credit card.  The tag line was “What’s in your wallet?”.  I suppose that statement is saying that you are identified by the sort of things you carry around.  I was curious so I looked in my wallet.  No photos or love notes, but a lot of insurance cards and store membership cards.  Is that what it’s come to?  My significant relationships are with Costco and Medicare?  With institutions rather than individuals?  What’s in YOUR wallet?

Another thing we did to pass the time on long bus and plane rides was to tell what we’d be doing this day and this hour if we were home.  It was a Saturday, and I was telling Gary that my husband and I would be getting ready to go over to our friends’ house for supper.  We would grill chicken, eat vegetables with spinach dip, and sit in the dining room under the black velvet painting of Elvis.  The painting had been an anniversary gift from us, and they would hang it up on Saturday nights when we came over.  After supper we would move to the living room and sing hymns around the piano, starting with the Navy Hymn about “those in peril on the sea, ” working up to what we called “blood hymns.”  Blood hymns were the old timey ones about the blood of Jesus, the ones with the questionable theology and stirring tunes that so many of us secretly love.

Gary said, “I know about blood hymns—I grew up Southern Baptist!”.  We started singing.  We harmonized on “There’s Power in the Blood” and “There is a Fountain Filled With Blood” and “Are You Washed in the Blood”.

I wasn’t there, but can imagine this would one of those times to be grateful that other people on the turquoise bus weren’t English speakers. 

We had a fine time, and we got applause from the Sikhs who were sitting behind us with their long beards, white turbans, and curved daggers on their belts.  They sang us some Sikh songs and we applauded. Then the Buddhist monks from Nepal sitting across the aisle were moved to chant, and the sound of their voices resonated through the turquoise bus, making our breastbones vibrate.

That hot afternoon for hours we heard Russian Orthodox hymns, songs from Finland, Rasta gospel from Jamaica, and a spell for making yourself impervious to fire from a witch doctor named Andre who lives in Surinam with his ten beautiful wives and forty-seven children.

I was not able to find this particular spell, although I did find a number of practitioners who claim to be able to cast spells making one impervious from the effects of voudou.  Or, more recently, spells making one resistant to the values of Unitarian Universalism.

For several years I have read this description of a trip to the Taj Mahal.  The image it conjures up never fails to move me.  It brings back powerful memories; of my dad rocking me and singing “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” and “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”.  Memories of singing in harmony with my family on car trips to and from my grandparents’ farm.  Memories of church choirs, great and small.  Of singing heard as I passed by an open window or doorway in a foreign place.  When I think of travel I think of singing.  So does Rev. Barnhouse.

These days, when I hear about the peaceable kingdom where the lion will lie down with the lamb, when I read about the clamor of nations struggling toward peace, I think about that day we sang our spirituals for each other, the day when Christ and Shiva clapped for each other and sang in harmony on a dusty road in a turquoise bus hung with marigolds.

Some of us have already arrived at our destinations.  Some of us are still on the bus.  And some of us are preparing to embark.   Whatever our plans and our expectations, let us all be prepared for some bumps and dust.  Let us open ourselves to share our photos, our identifications of belonging, forgotten receipts of that which was received and disbursed.  Let us find the courage to share our memories of home; the memories that simultaneously sustain us in our discomfort and propel us further along the adventure.  Let us be curious about others; to ask questions without judgment, to seek commonalities.  My wish for you this summer is that your bus be always turquoise.  That the marigold garlands be ever fresh.  And that the evil spirits decide to take the summer off.  May it be so.  Amen.