c. 1999 Religion News Service

HOUSTON _ The backdrop is pale lavender, like a morning sky luring you to wakefulness. In the first photograph, the worshipper kindles fire in an invocation ceremony for the goddess Chandi.

The picture records puja, the Hindu practice of daily devotion. One of 75 images in”Touching Fire: Elements of Devotion in India,”a new exhibit at Museum of Natural Science here, the photo encourages reflection. Other images in the exhibit urge celebration. A few provoke sadness.

Twelve religious shrines _ similar to home altars or miniature chapels used for personal devotion _ are featured with the photographs. The religious ambiance of India, from the crowded temples of its inner cities to the pastoral beauty of its village shrines, comes alive in the exhibit. It explores Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism, three significant faiths in India’s religious polyglot. It will run through Jan. 2.

The exhibit features the works of Stephen P. Huyler, a cultural anthropologist, photographer and art historian, and draws from his book,”Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion”(Yale University Press). Huyler also is co-curator of”Puja: Expressions of Hindu Devotion,”an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Like a Renaissance master frescoing a cathedral, Huyler in the Houston exhibition, unveils the religious sensibility of Indian culture. There Hinduism _ the world’s third largest religion after Christianity and Islam _ is the faith of 82 percent of a population of 1 billion.

In India the sacred is woven into the fabric of daily life. Puja comes as naturally as washing one’s face each morning. One Hindu will immerse herself in a river, washing to pay tribute to the goddess. Another will step outside his doorway and light a small lamp. Others will pour water from vessels as the sun rises.”I come at this from a very strong Christian heritage,”he said in an interview.”All it has done is help me to appreciate my own heritage. I also long for or miss how in this century we have grown away from that awareness of the sacred in our lives. I think our ancestors, my grandparents, my great grandparents, were more akin, more similar to this sense that I find in India.”I’m referring to something like the sense of saying grace. Being thankful to God for this which we have in our life. Looking at the sun and being thankful. Looking at our garden and being grateful for the hand of God that allows us to eat this food.” Religious practice is as diverse as India itself where people speak 325 languages.

Among Hindus in India, most communities have their own regional mythologies and beliefs, including specific names for gods and goddesses worshipped there. Unifying this diversity is a common belief in God”as a universal force, indivisible and yet infinitely divisible, the one and the many, the perfect mixture of all facets of existence,”Huyler said.”I’m in awe of the sense that the divine permeates the daily lives of hundreds of millions of human beings in almost every aspect of their existence,”Huyler said. A resident of Maine, the 47-year-old scholar has spent 28 years traveling in India, conducting field research in Indian ritual art and Hindu practice. He took the photographs and created the interactive exhibit, right down to choosing the colors of the walls displaying each picture.”We in the West tend to compartmentalize our lives in every aspect,”he said.”The sacred is segmented, compartmentalized into certain times of the week. If we are devout, certain times of the day. But for the Hindu, it permeates it all times of the day, all times of the week and the year.” His photos explore that reality, chronicling outdoor rituals to the rising sun, household prayers of family members, exuberant street festivals, even the healing of a small child with cholera before a shrine to a Hindu goddess.

Touring the exhibit shows the viewer how Indian culture and religion developed over several millennia.

Huyler said many Hindus would consider it disrespectul to display sacred images, such as a brass depiction of god unadorned, as they are usually seen in American museums. In India, shrines and temples may evolve over months or centuries. They usually begin with one worshipper offering prayers, incense, flowers or food in thanksgiving or intercession. The next worshipper might add a colorful garland or a strip of cloth, the next a terra cotta animal figure. Gradually the shrine develops. In some cases, an enormous temple may be constructed around an image that began with one grateful person’s homage to a god.

Yet most Hindu ritual takes place in the home because family is so central to Indian culture. Often it is the mother or the oldest matriarch in the family who leads the children and other household members in daily ritual practice, Huyler said. Each household or community shrine, as with the shrines in the exhibit, evokes a different response and provides insight into complicated cultural patterns.

Once transported to the United States, adhering to that daily practice becomes a more complex proposition, said Nalini Mukhopadhyay, a mother and grandmother who immigrated to America 30 years ago.”We still want to keep up with our own religion and culture,”she said.”It’s not that we have anything against any other religion, but we do want to maintain our own culture which we have been taught by our parents and grandparents back home. We want our children and grandchildren to be able to understand it.”

DEA END HOLMES