Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.
I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forget that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest.
Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar.
When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the one in the play of many.
[Geetanjali Song Offerings: verse 63]
The thought of these lines bubbled through my memory this evening. Not remembering the exact verse made me feel all the more desperate to look for these lines. Thanks to internet (Source: http://www.myads.org/tagore/tagore63.shtml) it wasn't very difficult.
The lines are so very consoling to a heart that has been experiencing good and bad changes in relationships after marriage. The fading significance of old and new relations with a greater onus on the beginning of a fresh social life, walked me to a sound philosophy on the acceptance of a myriad changes.
Oh well! not only at a personal level but these strings of words and faith in God is beautifully expressed for any multiethnic contentions and many other difficulties we face as humans in adapting to something: a new place that we inherit for various logical reasons but our heart longs for the older comfortable 'shelter'; new strangers, neighbours or friends; new language, occupation etc.
If I take these struggles to be a reason of cultural variability then the (religious) faith is something that has this universal culture and reaches out to everybody who clings to it irrespective of a sea of variations......
