offerings (Ava and Alex)

Ava: An offering is a little basket made of leaves.  They are filled with flowers, chopped up fruit, leaves and grasses.  They are in temples,outside doors, or anywhere really.  Where ever they are put they are taken by the gods.  People give them to the gods to say thank you.

I made two offerings but they are empty.  When we were in the care we some some ladies with big baskets made of wood.  In the baskets there were offerings.  om says, " offerings are the bridge between us and the gods."

I got to help Nyoman put out a whole tray of offerings.  We put them in the temple, in the house, by the TV, in the kitchen, and outside in the yard.  After i got a blessing and went to bed.

Alex:  One of the first things you notice that is a little bit different in Bali are the small palm straw folded trays of flowers and a small cookie that you find almost everywhere.

The car we are hiring has an offering on the dashboard. Every rice field you pass by has a small bird house sized temple where a daily offering is left out for the gods who watch over the crops. Of course every business has an offering outside as well as every house.

In fact every house has it's own temple outside as well as altars inside It begs the question, what are the offerings in our culture?

It is said that the average family here spends the bulk of their income on rituals, temples, offerings, etc. This culture obviously prioritizes a connection with the divine far more than you see than on the streets of Yellowknife, Toronto or Vancouver.

It is not necessary to imagine that pantheism is the solution to the lack of divine inspiration in western society. I have seen the same kind of commitment to the divine in catholic Mexico.

For me these offerings raise more questions than answers. Is the average westerner so self assured that s/he feels that demonstrating some kind of respect and awe to the force (apologies to George Lucas) of creation is unnecessary or perhaps anachronistic?

Not every culture should be as religiously focused as the Balinese. We need cultural diversity to make for an interesting and archetypically rich planet. It would be nice to think though that our society had a bit of that spiritual spice to add to our collective melting pot.


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Location:Jalan Darma Saba Permai,Abiansemal,Indonesia