How I found God in the temple of the Goddess.

I distinctly remember the worst day I had in India. I am certain I always will. For reasons I have struggled with but ultimately forgiven, on that hot day in Tamil Nadu I found myself alone, heartbroken, and lost in a city of almost two million people. On that day I had no familiar members of my own faith to turn to. For that one day I was alone, outside of anything familiar or comforting, and devastated. 

But I wasn't alone, after all. All unbidden a handful of total strangers reached out and held me up. A man on a motorcycle noticed a lost girl and helped her find her way. A business man at the temple approached a strange girl to share the blessings of his religion with her and led her into a circle of faith otherwise closed to her. A woman with problems and pains of her own spent the afternoon speaking in broken sentences and strange new gestures to a girl who, though visiting in that country, did not speak the local dialect and could not communicate with anyone else there.  

While I do not believe, as my Hindu friends have told me, that all roads lead to God. I do believe, that decency is at the heart of humanity. And maybe, just maybe, we're talking about the same thing.