Two Truths learned:

Alone again, I realized that I had missed the 3:45 time for the group to meet and leave. I started looking for this group of Lutherans, but realized that now, the Taj Mahal area had many more people at 4 pm than it did when we walked in at 1:30. I could see no one I knew! Oh, oh, I was messing up the schedule of the tour group!

I moved out of the main court through the big arch into the outer court, and again saw no one I knew. I checked back into the Taj main plaza, changing position and looking everywhere, and still saw no one familiar.

I also realized that I had no way to call anyhone, did not know the name of the bus group, nor even the name of the restaraunt for dinner. I was on my own, and completely flummoxed! Ron Henning certainly had material for his devotion tomorrow on the Parable of the Lost Sheep!

Should I go out past the security gate and make my way through the pestiferous souvenir hawkers to where the bus might be? Should I stay in one place?

I finally checked with a security officer, who told me to go check on the bus, but return to him if I could not find the bus. A plan, though somewhat flimsy!

The souvenir hawkers came onto me the instant I came through the gate. I waved and nodded "No" repeatedly, and walked faster up the road.

One of the hawkers, a young man with wildly tousled hair, the sort of kid I would make sure to watch if he came into my classroom, burst through the rest of the merchants, waving and cursing them away. Dispite my trying to avoid him too, he grabbed my elbow, all the while saying, "Come with me. I know where your people are. Come with me...."

He propelled me to the next exit gate and waved up the slope, saying "They are out there!"

I looked at the incoming crowd, where he was pointing, and suddenly, I saw Bishop Wollersheim and then our guide, Mr. Singh!

I shouted, and the Bishop saw me. We embraced as Mr Singh swept us up the ramp.

As we followed, Bishop Wollersheim said that we would rejoin the group at lunch. He added that they had started the meal with prayers for my safety.

I looked back for the young man who helped me, who had disappeared...without asking for money ...or anything! And Mr Singh had not paid him either.

After one of the fastest, even for India, taxi rides through streets which certainly not wide nor uncrowded, we were at the restaurant.

Two Truths learned:

The Taj Mahal is a place so beautiful, with so many individually beautiful parts, each complete in itself, but with all these parts coming together into one beautiful and transcendent whole. It has beauty in the Greek Classical sense of beauty.

The lost lamb rejoined with the flock, so that the flock is made whole by its Shepherd, also has its truth, spiritually and religiously.

Praise to God!

Art Milton