It’s nearly 5pm and I’m ready to go to bed! =) I did a cycling excursion today, from the top of Gunung Batur volcano aaaallllll the way down through the back villages and into Ubud. Though I don’t think I could bike my way through Laos for 3 weeks straight like some people I know, I do think that cycling through is one of the best ways to get to know a place. The smells, the wind, the local children yelling “hulloo” to you on the streets all add something that a tour bus or motorcycle can’t.
We had breakfast overlooking the caldera and then rode through rice fields and villages, greeting cows and pigs and duck herders along the way. The Balinese are very religious. In every village compound, in front of every shop, in rice fields and gardens, there are shrines set up ready to receive the twice daily offering to the Hindu gods. Flower petals are strewn on the sidewalks and at the entrance steps of temples, all paying tribute to the good gods and shooing away the bad. It’s all so very humbling and as we were cruising down small paved roads with rice paddies rushing past, I marveled at all the beautiful monuments and rituals that human beings create for and with inspiration from their god. The Notre Dame, the Sagrada Familia, Angkor Wat, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, giant Buddhas – all impossibly grande and beautiful, and each inspired by the divine.
Our tour guide, Wayan (which, by the way, is a name that every other person seems to have here in Bali. I learned today that it’s the name given to the first-born child!! Makes so much sense now!) said that having international visitors is a form of travel for the locals because many people never leave the country. Their culture and traditions are rooted in family support and respect for elders. Just like in the Philippines, many people live very spartan lives, but their innate happiness and joy is something to behold. And I wonder how much of this happiness and peace comes from their deeply rooted faith in a god or gods that they’ve never seen, heard or touched.
Just like the faith that we place in each other – in the trust we earn, in the love that we seek – faith in something so much bigger than ourselves has the power to change the way we live and see our lives. And as the days pass here in Ubud, I am witness to more and more of this spirituality every day, in ways so different from those I’ve known before. It is beautiful and inspiring and deeply moving.
