An Affair with God

During Ganeshotsav in Maharashtra, I am often struck by the work that happens behind the celebration. Artists, organisers, volunteers, and families bring something into being that would not exist without their attention.

In Pune or Mumbai, the atmosphere can be wonderfully alive. I enjoy that energy. What interests me is whether our relationship with the figure at the centre of the festival receives as much attention as the celebration itself.

What do we mean by God? What happens when we pray? Have our answers changed since childhood, or have we continued using an inherited image without asking what it means to us now?

The belief that grew up around us

Many of us encounter religion before we have the language to question it. A story, a ritual, a shrine, and the trust we place in the person explaining them become part of our earliest understanding of the world.

Later, we learn to ask how things work. Science makes explanation and evidence important to us. Yet the religious picture we carry may remain much as it was when we first received it.

We might reject that picture or defend it. Either response can happen before we have seriously examined it.

I am less interested in sorting people into believers and nonbelievers than in the attention they bring to the question. What does the word point towards in their lives? What do they expect from it? Which part comes from experience, and which part from an account they have accepted?

The image we form is available for inquiry whether or not we believe it points to a reality beyond itself.

A few seconds in a temple

I have visited temples across India and have often been fascinated by their architecture. Hampi was especially memorable to me. But standing before a shrine, I began wondering about the brief moment when we close our eyes.

The visible actions may be similar. We offer something, pause, pray, and leave. The inward experience can be entirely different for each person.

Someone may be grateful. Someone may be grieving. Someone may be asking for a result they cannot control. Someone may simply feel less alone.

Those few seconds interest me because they can be unusually honest. We may admit a fear there that we cannot name in an ordinary conversation. For a moment, the performance of ourselves becomes less necessary.

The setting can help. So can the sense of being heard. I want to understand what happens in that openness, rather than assume that the outward ritual explains it completely.

God as a contract employee

There is also a more transactional version of prayer that I recognise in myself.

I bring a problem. I make an offering. I leave with the expectation that the outcome has been assigned to someone else.

In this version, God begins to resemble a contract employee. I have handed over the project and am waiting for delivery. If nothing happens, I return to ask about the delay.

The metaphor is deliberately playful, but the question behind it is serious. Have I confused faith with an agreement that the world will provide the result I want?

Prayer can offer courage, comfort, and perspective. It need not replace the action that remains mine to take. If I have hurt someone, reconciliation may require a conversation. If I am avoiding a decision, an offering does not make the decision disappear.

Devotion becomes more interesting to me when it changes how I participate in life, rather than only what I expect to receive from it.

What love brings into the question

My inquiry began with love. Years of trying to understand it, including my experience of loving twice, brought me repeatedly back to vulnerability.

There are moments in a relationship when we can speak without carefully managing the image we present. We admit something difficult. We allow ourselves to be seen. The relief can feel deeper than reassurance alone.

I see a resemblance between that openness and some experiences of devotion. This does not make romantic love and religious experience identical. It does suggest a shared movement: loosening the need to defend ourselves continuously.

I can care about another person without making every gesture a calculation about what they will give me in return. I can approach an ideal with reverence rather than treating it solely as a source of advantage.

Love can have reasons, and reciprocity matters in a relationship. I do not need to deny either in order to question the demand that every act of care must pay me back.

The affair in the title

An affair, in the sense I am using it here, is an intermittent relationship with honesty.

We open ourselves briefly in a temple, with someone we love, or during a moment of grief. Then we return to ordinary life and resume the habits that make openness difficult.

We long for the feeling of being real without wanting it to change how we live. We keep visiting it.

That is the tension I wanted the title to hold. Can the honesty of a few meaningful moments become part of our daily conduct? Can we remain willing to look after the reassuring experience has ended?

The answer need not involve returning to a former partner or finding a new romance. The person associated with an experience is not our only possible route to clarity. What matters is understanding the quality of attention we encountered there.

Bringing devotion into the room

I sometimes think of a home as a temple: a place where our willingness to care is tested in ordinary ways. The person beside us does not have to become literally divine for their experience to deserve attention.

If I can speak honestly in prayer, can I do so in a difficult conversation? If I express devotion to something greater than myself, can I make room for another person's freedom? What happens to reverence when I am inconvenienced?

These questions make belief tangible without requiring everyone to hold the same belief.

I do not want to enjoy only an occasional affair with the truth of my own life. I want to remain available to it after leaving the shrine, after the conversation, after the music of the festival has faded.

That is the relationship I am trying to understand.