Sacred Grove

Two years ago in my Church at Worship liturgy class, we were given the assignment to plan and describe our funeral. As morbid and disturbing as this might seem, this is actually quite an important exercise for future pastors who will, undoubtedly, plan and conduct many funerals. For mine, I had the idea of having my ashes used at the funeral to plant a tree in a whole cycle of life thing.

Yesterday, all of the MPh students visited the Fire-Flies Ashram here in Bangalore. Fire-flies is an interreligious ashram devoted to ecological concerns. FIRE stands for Fellowship In Religious Experience. Anyway, the founder of the organization (who, by the way, is a friend of Dr. Ariarajah’s) showed us the tree that he had planted using his brother’s ashes. This was fascinating to me because it was a similar idea to the one I had.

Then he told a story about a tribal village here in India. In this village, when a person dies, they conduct a traditional funeral (traditional means cremation on a funeral pyre by the priest). What is different is that they then take some of the ashes and they use them to plant a fruit tree along the road. Everyday when they walk past the tree, they are reminded of what that person meant to them and perhaps they will say a prayer. When spring comes around, the tree bears fruit. In one sense, then, the person who passed away is contributing to the health and vibrancy of the community. When the people take the fruit, they remember the person and tell the children about their good attributes. In other words, the person continues to live on in that community through the life of that tree. Although the person has died, his/her spirit lives on through the memories of the villagers, which are the person’s sons, daughters, friends, etc.

Next, as the city limits of Bangalore continue to stretch farther and farther out, this once-remote village becomes potential land for development. A company comes and buys the land and wants to build a factory or store or something there. But the people protest saying “these are sacred trees! The spirits of our ancestors dwell in these trees!” The developers simply respond that these are foolish notions and that trees do not have spirits and are not sacred. The villagers, they say, are simple minded and superstitious.

Now what do we say about these villagers? Are they worshipping the trees? Are they venerating the trees? Who is to blame for the lack of understanding – the villagers for saying that the trees have spirits or the developer who doesn’t know what they mean? Does the tradition of the villagers seem like a practice we should discourage or mimic? What are your reactions?