Returning to the Springs

a reflection by Rev. Abhi Janamanchi

On Friday evening, I found myself walking through the streets of Jowai in Meghalaya, India with hundreds of Khasi Unitarians.

Torches burned throughout the procession. Unitarian hymns played over a loudspeaker, and people sang as we walked: children, young people, adults, elders. Along the route, homes displayed large illuminated chalices. I would catch sight of one in a window or doorway, then another farther down the road.

I have been coming to Meghalaya for nearly thirty years, but somehow I had never managed to be here for Founders Anniversary. This year, serving with the Rev. Dr. Robin Tanner as one of the UUA’s ambassadors to India, the calendar finally aligned.

As I walked through Jowai that night, I kept thinking: so this is what I have been missing.

Founders Anniversary marks the beginning of the indigenous Unitarian movement among the Khasi and Jaintia people of Northeast India. On September 18, 1887, Hajom Kissor Singh experienced what is remembered here as Niam Ai Ei, the Divine Light. He did not keep that light to himself. He shared it. Others received it and passed it on. Communities gathered, congregations formed, children were taught, and those children grew up and passed the faith on.

One hundred and thirty nine years later, I was watching that faith move through the streets of Jowai.

At one point I looked ahead at the torches moving down the street, then turned and saw how far the procession stretched behind us. Somewhere among the Khasi Unitarian hymns, another song began running through my head:

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

And, inevitably:

Hide it under a bushel? NO! I’m gonna let it shine.

There was certainly no hiding the light in Jowai that night.

This was embodied Unitarianism. People of every generation walking together, singing their faith, carrying it beyond the walls of their churches and out into the world where everyone could see and hear it. Sharing the good news of Unitarianism with their bodies, their voices, their presence in the streets.

Over the weekend, Dr. Rupaia Lamar, whom some of you may remember from his visit to Cedar Lane, taught me a Khasi Unitarian word I had not known before: anibarsari. The word is derived from the same Latin root as anniversary, but in Khasi Unitarian life it has taken on a meaning of its own. Rupaia described it as returning to one’s roots, looking inward, being with family, receiving again the wisdom handed down through generations. He spoke of it as returning to the springs.

You return to the spring because you are thirsty. You drink. And then you go on.

Today, September 23, Cedar Lane celebrates its 75th anniversary.

Seventy five years ago today, people gathered for Cedar Lane’s founding service. They could not have known the congregation we would become, the children who would grow up among us, the marriages and memorials we would hold, the causes we would take up, the music we would make, the mistakes we would make, or the ways we would change.

They began something and entrusted it to people they would never meet.

Us.

Being here for Founders Anniversary has given me another way to think about our own. Not simply as a celebration of how long Cedar Lane has been here, but as a return to the springs.

For Cedar Lane, that means remembering the people who gathered in 1951 and asking what they hoped to make possible. It means remembering the generations who built this congregation, taught our children, made music, marched, cooked, argued, pledged, cared for one another, welcomed newcomers, buried friends, and kept showing up.

It also means looking honestly at what we have inherited. Some things deserve our gratitude. Some need repair. Some need to be released. And some are still unfolding.

There is another Khasi phrase many of us at Cedar Lane have heard over the years: To Nangroi. It is a motto of Khasi Unitarianism. It can mean keep progressing, keep growing, keep flourishing, keep shining.

Anibarsari: return to the springs.

To Nangroi: keep going.

I hear our 75th anniversary theme, Rooted and Rising, differently from here in Meghalaya. Rooted, not as nostalgia or a wish to return to some earlier Cedar Lane, but as knowing where we come from, remembering what has nourished us, and drawing again from those springs. Rising is what we do with what we have received.

I keep seeing that procession through Jowai. I looked ahead at the people carrying the tradition forward, then turned and saw how far it stretched behind us.

For a little while, I was simply walking in the middle.

That is where all of us are.

We inherit a faith we did not begin. We tend it for a while. We add something of ourselves. Eventually, we place it in other hands.

Perhaps that is the invitation of this 75th anniversary: to be grateful for what has been handed to us without imagining that our work is simply to preserve it. To keep becoming the congregation our time asks us to be. To carry our Unitarian Universalism beyond our walls, out into the world where people can see it in how we live.

May we know what gives us life and keep growing.

May we mend what needs mending.

May we release what no longer serves life.

May we love where love is needed.

May we leave something worthy in the hands of those who come after us.

And may the faith entrusted to us never be hidden away, but lived boldly in our homes, in our congregation, in our communities, and out in the streets.

Seventy five years behind us. The road ahead of us.

Happy Anibarsari, Cedar Lane!

Keep Progressing. Keep Flourishing. Keep Shining.

To Nangroi.