To appear in a book project “Now…and Then”

I’m kind of a religion groupie—I haven’t found a religious service or structure that I haven’t liked. But I’ve noticed that whether I’m in a Christian church, a Muslim mosque, a Jewish synagogue, a Sikh Gurdwara, or a Buddhist or Hindu temple, there’s a sea of grey heads (well beards, in the case of Sikhs in their turbans). Religion, it seems, is for old people.

When I was younger, that was not the case. It was a family affair when I was a kid, back in the day when families actually did things together, and weren’t all individually staring at their smart phones. In college in the late 50s it was popular to go on church dates, and the lines for the three morning services would wind around the block. At the time, I wanted to be a pastor myself. It seemed as if it would be the best job in the world.

Then came the sixties and revolution was in the air. Like many of my peers, I dropped out of religion for the longest time, and turned to studying it rather than preaching it. I wasn’t against religion as a personal practice, it just didn’t seem all that important.

Now in retirement, I’m back in church. I’m there with all the other grey-hairs singing the old hymns and reading the familiar gospels. There is comfort there, I suppose, in getting in touch with one’s youth. And there is community. Old age can be lonely and religion provides fellowship. For some it may provide the assurance of an afterlife, though frankly I think that most people never really think about their own deaths, even at an advanced age. It’s like the Big Quake in California, you know it’s coming at some time, but not today, so life just goes on.

Perhaps what religious institutions offer most is a sense of depth, a ground of being. We grey-hairs are at the point of life where we pause and reflect, and wonder what the meaning of it is. Religion doesn’t tell us, but it assures us that there is a meaning, and it’s worth trying to find it.

The younger generation has largely abandoned their childhood faiths, and I wonder if they will find the same founts of meaning when they get to my old age. Many if not most abhor organized religion of any kind. Yet, I have hope. A Pew survey reveals that the largest and fastest growing segment of youths in the United States, when asked their religious preference, say “none.” They are not Christian, Muslim, or even Atheist or Agnostic. They are none. And when you ask them about their religiosity, they say they are spiritual, not religious.

To look for spiritual depth and accept a moral obligation that binds all of us on the planet is one of the things that we white-hairs find attractive about religion in our old age. It is nice to think that a younger generation, even if they do not find the same resources in institutional religion that we do, are looking for the same thing.

It was many years ago when I first went to India. I had completed my initial graduate programs and contemplating Phd studies when I received an offer of a two-year study and service grant.

I had never been outside the country before, and it was incredible. But I soon discovered that there was a lot that I could do besides my research project in the Punjab. A famine was raging in the Eastern state of Bihar. I was asked if I could help the CARE agency distribute food.

“Sure,” I said. “Count me in.”

I went to Patna, Bihar’s main city. My job with CARE was to control and monitor the arrival of sacks of food supplied by the US AID program. It was mostly powdered milk and bulgar wheat that could be mixed together with water to create a kind of porridge. This was surplus food in the US, for which the government was paying subsidies. It was either giving it away or wasting it. We needed it, desperately.

We had arranged with the education department to have the sacks delivered to schools throughout the famine-afflicted areas. Schools provided a great delivery system for a couple of reasons. The main one is that it was the only governmental structure that reached every village regardless of how remote it was. It provided someone to administer the food, namely the teacher or schoolmaster. And the primary recipients would be kids.

In a famine, one of the most wretched effects of malnutrition is on growing kids. If they are deprived of sufficient nourishment at an early age, even if their bodies survive, their brains might be affected. Famine could create a generation of mentally deficient people. Pregnant and nursing mothers were high on the list of those who would be served first. We were feeding eight million a day, one of the largest hot-meal programs ever. The need was urgent.

When I surveyed the village distribution centers, I discovered there was another organization that was feeding people with the same sacks of US AID powdered milk and wheat. They had a different approach, however. Instead of just handing out the food, which sometimes could create a chaotic mob scene, they organized food-for-work projects. They also utilized the school system, but the schoolmaster, along with Indian volunteers, would round up able-bodied men to work. They were employed to dig tube wells to get water, build dams as catchments for future rain, and construct roads and schools. They were paid in food for their families.

This is smart, I said to myself. Who are these guys?

They were Gandhians, it turned out. The Gandhian Sarvodaya movement, “Service to All,” was prominent in this part of India. In Patna, the leading Gandhian activist, Jayprakash Narayan, set up an office, recruited volunteers, and administered this expanding innovative program.

I left CARE and joined JP Narayan. I was the only foreigner in his Patna ashram, and fortunately I had learned enough Hindi to fit in. Most of my Indian colleagues spoke English as well as Hindi so they nicely helped translate when I got stuck. JP became a mentor and father figure to me, and I came to appreciate why he is regarded as one of India’s great leaders. I became one of his Gandhian followers.

My job was to help coordinate the student volunteers from Indian universities. I also reached out to the US Peace Corps program that was active in Bihar at the time, and arranged for their volunteers to join our group in mixed teams of American and Indian students to monitor the food-for-work projects in the villages.

It was exhausting. But it was also rewarding on so many levels. Even when I was bone tired at the end of the day I would think of how many people we had fed, and how many lives we may have saved.

Sure, CARE, and JP Narayan and his Gandhians, and all the other rescue agencies deserve a lot of the credit for helping to save people in the famine. But we could not have done it without the thousands of sacks of powdered milk and wheat from US AID. They were literally life-savers.

Today as I write this, the Trump White House has terminated this aid around the world. Immediately I thought of what would have happened in Bihar if they had done that in the midst of our relief work. If our supply of food was suddenly turned off, people could die. And then I realized that right now across the world in similar desperate situations suddenly the stream of life-giving aid was ended.

It was a cruel and thoughtless act. Did Trump and his minions have any sense of the tragic effects of their bizarre and capricious decision? And will we just sit back and let this suffering happen without some reaction? I look for answers.