I grew up in the stifling heat of the Bible Belt. So when I first stepped into the Varanasi noon sun, I didn’t wilt. Certainly didn’t flush like the European tourists. But even I am thankful the sun has now set.
The oldest continually occupied city in the world seethes and swirls around me: rickshaws honk and pedicabs whir past; one-ton lumbering cows adorned with garlands of orange carnations get in the way; slender-armed women beg spare change, the infants on their hips staring out at me under darkly lined eyelids.
As is the custom for Indian children.
I grew up in the religiously saturated culture of the Deep South. So, as I near the banks of the holy Ganges River, the religious men who approach me are not the first to try to save my soul. For a price, of course. Always for a price.
Swaths of bright orange fabric wrap around them, long dark locks piled atop their heads. Their faces and beards are smeared with white ash, an oversized red bindi daubed between their eyebrows. Their beckoning hands both invite and demand.
As is the custom for religious men.
Just a few hours prior, when the sun was still high in the sky, I walked along these same riverside ghats (massive stairs) following the smell of smoke. Locals swam, bathed, washed laundry in the river to my right, as unbothered by the polluted water as they were by the smoke in the air. Varanasi is, after all, a place where people live side by side with death.
In Hinduism, it’s believed that if your body is surrendered to the Ganges after you die, you go straight to heaven. Some bodies are simply placed into the water. But most are cremated on the banks, their ashes pushed into the water to release the deceased into the arms of heaven. It’s this sacred, end-of-life ritual that I came to witness.
As I rounded the corner, I passed a stone bench with a sleeping street dog curled up tightly in its scant noon shadow. Every rib was visible under its patchy skin. I watched it as I walked by, waiting for its eyes to open and take stock of the human disrupting its nap. Then I realized it wasn’t sleeping. It was dead.
A fitting sentry for the funerary pyres.
Just beyond, carved right into the ghat, was a large semicircle pit where the fires burned. Everything was black with smoke and soot. The walls, the ground, the workers were all covered in it. They tended large funeral pyres fed by logs thicker than my waist. I ordered my eyes not to look too hard at the flickering cloth mounds at the base of the flames. They never stop burning. Twenty-four hours a day, every single day of the year. Those flames never go hungry.
I’ve come back in the relative cool of the evening to attend the massive riverside ceremony for the deceased who were cremated that day.
I climb into a boat that putters through the holy water to join dozens of others at the funeral ceremony site, and, as we coast to a stop, I meet the eyes of two women. They’re sitting side by side in the boat just ahead of mine, their bodies turned toward each other. And both faces are fixed on me, desperately searching for my eyes.
And I quickly look away. This is unnerving. This is different. This feels a bit scary, if I’m honest, because this is not a custom I know.
I got good at being invisible in my overwhelming hometown religious environment: hiding my wounds, my questions, my doubts. ‘Fine-how-are-you’ing my way through interactions until I could go home and cradle the great emptiness growing inside me.
But I got good at it because no one really tried to see me. If they accidentally caught sight of the scope of my spiritual deconstruction, they gave me reductionist responses. Bumper stickers, really:
“You can’t be angry at God about what you’ve endured.”
“Make sure you don’t neglect your Quiet Times in this season.”
“God works all things together for the good of those who love Him.”
“We just have to trust that He has a plan.”
These were godly people. They were quick to give me an 8-step plan, a Mark Driscoll book recommendation, a bumper sticker platitude. So this is what I thought God was for a long time: dismissive and uncomfortable with my pain and doubt.
But Jesus didn’t land earthside to be named God with a plan.
Or God Omniscient.
Or God Omnipotent.
Or God of the megachurches and prosperity gospel and GOP.
He was named Emmanuel. God with us.
Just…with us. Present. Here. Together.
As I sit in the Ganges, the holy men and chaiwallahs both shouting their respective chants, I risk one more glance at the two women in front of me. They are still staring, bold and unblinking.
We meet each other’s gaze, but I don’t look away this time. I anchor myself to the moment and try to just…be here. Open and present, I risk a smile and a small head wobble.
As is the custom among friends.
Their faces blossom into big warm smiles, with earnest head wobbles. They both bring their hands in prayer position to their foreheads and bow deep in my direction. The physical gesture of namaste:
“I acknowledge the divinity within you.”
And maybe this is a better representation of God. Maybe God looks less like a bearded man on a stage: reductionist, in control, and charging fees. Maybe God looks more like two women in a boat on the Ganges, desperately searching for your eyes.
Simply looking for you.
Excerpted from Tiger in a Lifeboat: Discovering India, Deconstructing Faith, and Deciding to Trust Again by Lauren Cibene ©2025, published by Lake Drive Books. Reprinted with permission.
