The little temple

Before Wen and I meet, Wen lived her life alone, well she lived in her family's house, but she did not live with a man. When her parent past away she decided to go look for a husband. In helping her with this big task, she went to her temple and prayed to God to let her find a good husband.

Wen's temple is not big and stunning, even Taiwan have many such temples. It is a small local temple, among normal houses where people live. Nevertheless the God is quite capable. Not long after asking for help, Wen meet me. First we were in love at a distance, but shortly after we lived together as husband and wife. For this we are very gratefull, and for that reason we always pay our respect by visiting the temple whenever we are back in Taiwan.

The ritual is simple and always the same. We shop for sweet cookies in the 7Eleven, the type he especially like. In the temple we light incense + 9 in total. 3 in the center, 3 in the inner and 3 in the outer - closest to the cookies which are put on a table in a basket.

Each time we place the incense we pray a small prayer inside, that is, without sound, and after we nod toward the alter. Once this is done, God is left to eat the cookies, which takes until 1/3 of the incense is burned down. While he is eating we sit a bit away and talk about normal things - no magic - we wait, he eats - side by side, but not together.

The last thing to do is to burn paper money. The paper money are special golden and red money which are burned in a big oven next to the temple. Some people think that you transfer money to your life after your death, some see it as transfer to your loved ones - it is up to you! 

Before we go, we pack the cookies bag into our back and bring them back home. This surprised me the first time, as I thought we just gave them to God, and he would be angry if we took them back. Wen thought I was silly, thinking like that, as she thinks he already took what he needed and these cookies now are double good for us, as they are blessed...

For me as a Dane, it is so wonderful to participate in something so down to earth, yet very spiritual as this. I feel religious doing this. There is no priest, no ceremony just togetherness. God eat cookies and our children eat the rest. My wife is very rational in her normal life, but when we visit the temple, she is very religious in her own way. Rational and religious in the same person without conflict. This is the right way.