From 8,000 Miles Away
As a kid growing up in South Florida in the late ‘50s, altar-boying was a great gig.
Funerals didn’t pay much but they got ya outta school and, if the cemetery was one of the two close to downtown, you might miss the whole day. I think we prayed more for the far away cemeteries than for the repose of the soul of the “dearly beloved,” especially since that prayer was personal and in English.
The big money was in weddings. If you were really lucky, the groom tipped and the best man slipped you some extra cash. I once hit a grand slam – four weddings on a single Saturday. I was rich!
Cemeteries have grown in numbers and size since altar-boying days. The historic Pinewood Cemetery is easy stroll from our family home, but – like many dynamics of our childhood – too often remains long forgotten. Once the only cemetery south of the Miami River and dating to the days when this now multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual city of half-a-million was a simple trading post on the way to the Keys and Cuba, it is roughly the same size as another cemetery that first opened at roughly the same time.
Eight-thousand miles from the seats of power and ego in Washington, the dead and the living of Narayanganj, Bangladesh have a lesson to teach America’s political and religious leaders.
Local lore has it that the tiny – by American standards – two-acre cemetery administered by the City Corporation originally served as a Hindu cremation site – perhaps in the early 1900s during British colonial era. Over time, it slowly developed into a final resting place for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics and other Christians.
The interfaith cemetery has played a unique role in sustaining harmony among the diverse faith groups of Narayanganj.
Despite sporadic incidents of sectarianism and religion-based violence, Bangladeshi people largely uphold the spirit of religious pluralism, Holy Cross Father Elias Hembrom, who serves the 3,000 member St. Paul’s Catholic church, told the Union of Catholic Asian News. “This cemetery has become a symbol of interfaith harmony not only for local people but also in the country. This is a unique communal coexistence of various religions and a cause for pride of us all.”
“In 1971, ours was the only Catholic family and local Muslims protected us from persecution of the military and their collaborators. For years, we have been living in harmony without any troubles,” reported Pintoo Policup Purification, 53, a local Catholic community leader.
The eighth-most populous country in the world with a population of more than 162 million, the People’s Republic of Bangladesh became independent in 1971.
The only country in the world created on the basis of language and ethnicity - 98 percent of the population is Bengali – Bangladesh is one of the most ethnically homogeneous nations in the world and the third-largest Muslim-majority country. Since 2013, the moderate Muslim nation has experienced a sharp rise is Islamic militancy that has resulted in the murders of atheist bloggers, liberal Muslims, religious minorities and foreigners by homegrown Islamic terrorists. Nonetheless, Purification and others attribute the violence and bigotry to the “evilness” of a few radicals and collusion between politics and religion
Shikhon Sarkar, a Hindu leader, notes that the cemetery was originally donated to the government by a Hindu man with the intention of providing for community welfare. When it became apparent that Muslims, Christians and Buddhists did not have burial grounds, the space was opened to all.
The result has been the gradual – day-by-day and generation-by-generation – development of a sense of communal harmony. "It is true there are people in every community who don't believe in harmony, but their numbers are few,” says Sarkar. “Bangladesh as a state was founded on the principles of harmony and despite some unexpected incidents people of all faiths have been living peacefully side by side. Everyone, from individuals to leaders and institutions, has to continue their role to keep up the spirit of harmony," Sarkar added.
Kamrul Hasan, a Narayanganj City Corporation counselor, points to the unique effect of the cemetery in the life of the city of well more than half-a-million. “It is truly a rare cemetery where people of four faiths are buried side by side. When people are alive, they celebrate Eid, Pujaand Christmas together and they are united in death as well. We are happy to [be] bound by harmony from life to death.”
Perhaps an interfaith cemetery in faraway Bangladesh has much to teach us as, weary and exhausted, we attempt to stumble forward from November 3.
While politicians and television commentators are especially fond of referencing Lincoln’s “better angels of our nature,” not surprisingly they overlook (or are completely ignorant of the fact) that these were the closing words of a sentence in which the Civil War president spoke of battlefields and patriot graves:
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield
and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone
all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union,
when again touched, as surely they will be,
by the better angels of our nature.
The midrash – ancient commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures dating from 400 to 1200 CE – tells us Psalm 91 was composed by Moses after he entered the desert Tabernacle for the first time and found himself enveloped by the ineffable mystery of God’s goodness. While historians date it to a millennium before the time of Jesus, it is often considered the most beautiful of the Psalms, reflecting a profound sense of God’s protection of His people.
In both the Anglican/Episcopal and Roman Catholic traditions, it is part of each Sunday’s closing prayers – Compline, the last prayer of the day - and reflects the quiet confidence of the morning’s dawning hope – “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
Less than a week ago, an American political leader addressed the nation and recalled a hymn that echoes Moses’ great comfort:
And He will raise you up on eagles’ wings
Bear You on the breath of dawn
Make you to shine like the sun
And hold you in the palm of his hand
Let us hope, indeed, let us pray, that those in America’s seats of power and ego will learn from a microscopically tiny speck of land halfway around the world that in the chill arms of death we must all at last repose and, therefore, in the bright days of our lives we must learn to treat each other as children of a shared and common God, with patience, kindness, and mutual respect. If we are to have any hope of being touched “by the better angels of our nature,” we must struggle and become grateful and “happy to [be] bound by harmony from life to death.”