A Taste of Religion

next week the buddhists in japan, or at least in asahikawa, will celebrate a festival called obon (pronounced oh-bone, like a dog bone). i have been using this as an excuse to, first try to understand japanese culture better, but really as a way to get my students to talk about their beliefs. i often talk about what i believe, but i am really trying to understand, and i am really glad that i did because i am learning a lot! i am trying to be as subjective as possible, and get out of my western mindset so that i can ask questions that i would normally shut out of my mind as ridiculous. obon is celebrating a day when the river between the worlds of the living and the dead is ... wadeable. the living family members will go to the gravesite and pray to the ancestors. they invite them to come back to their home and during this two day festival, the spirits are free enough to return. i was kinda startled when speaking with one student. she was explaining that they talk to their dead ancestors. i asked, "do they talk back?" she answered no, and then decided that they talk to her through dreams. in my basic class today, we first talked about the summer festivals with portable shrines, which is the shintoism side of summer. they explained that the gods live in the shrines. i then asked what the difference was between spirits and gods. this is a difficult question. they didnt quite answer the way that i was expecting, but i am still thinking about their answer and its implications on the gospel that i am trying to share. one of my students kept trying to compare these things to Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter. i easily explained the difference, and even though they are basic students, i think they could understand.
toyo-one of the basic students- had started the class by talking about his new zealand homestay family. he really admires them. he called them honest Christians. i wonder if he meant earnest. either way, at the end of class he said that i am an honest Christian. i praise God for the opportunity to share the God of my faith with this man who is clearly seeking something real. i pray that he can learn to trust in this "new" idea of a God who is powerful, one who does not have the human flaws that we associate even with our ancestors. now i am watching mulan, and though it is set in china, it makes me sad to know that they pray to ancestors. why do they waste their time talking to people who are disconnected from this world? i hope that by learning more about this, they will want to learn more about my religion, about my relationship with the one TRUE, Living God.