18/03/2022
In Hinduism, there is a tradition of offering your heart to a personal deity from amongst the pantheon of gods and goddesses. That deity is known as an ishta dev.
Your heart quickens as you think of the qualities your chosen deity is said to embody. Of all the ways a deity might be represented — as fierce, gentle, creative, protective, demanding — this is the one that calls to you, that embodies what means most in your life. This is the one that compels you to go beyond the ups and downs of daily exigencies and reminds you of why you were born.
Even after the years I lived in India, if I was ever to be asked if I had an ishta deva, without hesitation I’d respond by saying it was the Statue of Liberty. Even when I was a child growing up in New York City, she was a potent symbol for me — perhaps because my grandparents, who were first generation immigrants from Poland, raised me for some years; perhaps because the question of belonging, and the fear and heartache of not quite feeling I belonged anywhere, had become the core issues of my young life.
I saw the Statue of Liberty as affirmation that there was a place for everyone and, therefore, a place for me. She wanted and welcomed, even those who weren’t wanted anywhere else. She is a woman bearing light. She was my first symbol of bottomless compassion. I have felt a thrill go through me again and again when reading her inscription, written by the poet Emma Lazarus:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
I think about what it must have been like to leave the known world behind, to be desperate enough or adventurous enough or frightened enough to journey far, to begin a new life in a new land. I think about what it must have been like to see her, standing on her island in the New York City harbor, welcoming, saying “You also count. You matter. There is a place for you.”
Photograph by Ray H. Mercado