The world is fragile, handle with prayer

Here I am in a small town called Vailankanni, on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, thinking thoughts that would make Karl Marx want to come from wherever he is and give me one stinging slap

The world is fragile, handle with prayer

Here I am in a small town called Vailankanni, on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, thinking thoughts that would make Karl Marx want to come from wherever he is and give me one stinging slap.

I've been thinking So what if religion is the opium of the masses and so what if we believe in a higher being above man and the state?

Marx thought religion was the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

Well, so what if, through religion, we try to set right some of the world's wrongs?

Maybe that's what others are thinking as well. For the last 10 days or so, in the run-up to the birthday of Mother Mary which is celebrated today, the crowds have been streaming in.

It's as if the H1N1 virus didn't exist (though the district administration has been in a tizzy). And the tsunami that wracked this town in 2004 is a distant memory. In fact, it became a distant memory in less than a year).

People across religions, social strata and states have been pouring in every day, paying little heed to the heat and dust and noise and crowds, and drowning their sorrows inu00a0 prayer the bridge between panic and peace.

So, what is it that draws them here?

A strong oral tradition attests to Our Lady's apparitions here The first occurred during the sixteenth century whenu00a0 Our Lady with her infant son appeared to a Hindu boy (as a result, the Hindus here are as devout, if not more, than the Christians) carrying milk to a customer's home.u00a0

She asked for some milk for her child and in return, filled his pot to the brim.

A few years later, she appeared to a crippled boy curing him of his disability and years after that, she rescued a few Portuguese merchant sailors from a violent storm.

The merchants built a small permanent chapel on their return trip as a token of gratitude to Mother Mary and improved it on subsequent visits.

Devotees will swear that the miracles have never ceased some huge, some infinitesimal but occurring all the same. Offering consolation that no human being can give.

As I navigate an arthritic parent on a wheelchair, I never cease to marvel at the miracles every step of the way.

An unruly crowd that could so easily turn into a stampeding mob parts for us as effortlessly as the Red Sea before Moses.

Strangers young and old lend a hand, offer an umbrella, a drink, a kind word. It's clear that they've drunk deeply of that opium.

It seems to have changed their lives on an emotional and spiritual level. They've been blessed and are passing it on.