Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

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THEY ALL
STUCK TOGETHER
The boy was praying, not to a Buddhist deity, as one might
expect, but to the Christian God, the Great God, and his emis­
sary, the Younger White Brother, Lord of Nats. This was a
renegade ethnic tribe who had no orthodox religion but had accom­
modated a pantheon over the past century. And so they believed in
Nats and witches and green ghosts as both mischief makers and de­
liverers of disasters. They worshipped the Lord of Land and Water:
O Lord, we’re sorry we had to chop down the saplings, but please
don’t let our soil and crops wash away to the bottom. They had given
thanks to the Crop Grandmother in the days when they had fields:
We pray to you to give us good rain, good rice, no chewing insects,
and not too many sticky weeds.
And they believed in the Younger White Brother, who had been
part of their mythology for hundreds of years. They had once had an