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Good morning.  When I was young, around November we’d celebrate the birth of Guru Nanak, who founded the Sikh faith.  Familiar paintings of his wise, generous face and white beard would soon be echoed for me in yuletide images of Santa Claus.

As I fast-forward now to being a parent, I notice my own children growing up in a world of criss-crossing traditions.  For my three-year old son, Harjot Singh, this includes all things Spiderman.  Often, to get to nursery, we take a top deck seat on the bus and start naming the landmarks along the main road in Handsworth, Birmingham.   Somewhere between a Polish café and Turkish and Kurdish restaurant, we pass by a Vietnamese Buddhist Temple with a huge, celestial Buddha-like statue in its courtyard. 

The first time I took Harjot to see it up close, I remarked how it seemed the statue’s hair was in a top-knot, just like his as a young Sikh boy, and how in one hand there was a mala or prayer beads, just like the ones we have at home.   ‘Look….!’, he beamed, mimicking how the two middle fingers holding the prayer beads were bent inwards.   Even Spiderman, I thought, brings us that wise saying that ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.
In a world which seems overcrowded by difference, it’s often the fresher eyes of children which can make out familiar shapes and reassuring qualities.

So, in prayer, I today remember, ‘Sabh meh jot jot hai so-ay….’  Your divine flame, O Creator, rests within all beings; by the light of that One flame, may all beings shine.