WHAT'S HAPPENED TO ME?

WRITE TO ME AT: ivan.arthur@gmail.com 
I NEED YOUR HELP. 

 I am stuck. Fr. Ubaldo has requested me to write a piece on Compassion. Such an easy subject. The Gospels are full of it. The Prophet Mohamed talks about it. So does the Buddha. Anybody should be able to write about it.

But I am stuck. How can I write about it when I am what I am?

 On the way to Yaari Road, I see a man whose limbs are twisted like the branches of a vine. He drags himself on the muddy asphalt, dodging cars and buses to stretch out his crooked hand for a coin. I click my tongue in pity. My eyes get moist. I drop a coin. Then I go home and put on some music. You call that compassion? What has happened to me? Tell me.

Write to me at: ivan.arthur@gmail.com

****

I wasn’t always like that. I promise. When I was five years old, I remember seeing a man lying in the gutter. We lived in Bandra then. As a child, I felt terrible to see him there. I went down to him and asked him. “Are you drunk?” And he said, “I’m starving.” I ran home and asked mother for a glass of milk and some puranpoli. He ate, drank. Then he fished out of his bag beautiful sketches that he had done. He was an artist. Looking for a job. I was glad I helped him.

But today? What has happened to me?

Sorry, Fr. Ubaldo. I cannot preach what I do not practice. Something has happened to me Tell me what to do.

Write to me at: ivan.arthur@gmail.com

****

It wasn’t always like that. I promise.

I remember January 2002. I was walking home from work. Lakshmi Building. Sir P.M. Road. Heavy traffic. My eyes caught the sight of a young man. Lying in the middle of the street. Totally naked waist down. Cars swerved to avoid running over him. I ran to where he was. Tried dragging him to the pavement where he would be safe. He screamed at me in anger. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Get away. Let me lie here.” I told him he could be run over. “You’re a fool,” he said to me. “The police will arrest me.and take me to jail. There I will get shelter and food. Go away, you idiot” So I went away. I didn’t put on any music that day.

You call that compassion? What has happened to me? Tell me.

So then, you can see: I am making excuses: the city has made us like that. All those crafted beggars have eroded our compassion. Right? Write to me and tell me that I am wrong.

What would Jesus do in my place? But don’t you see, Ivan Arthur. That was Jesus you saw on the way to Yaari Road and on P. M. Road. And I ask, “Was it?”

You tell me. Write to me at ivan.arthur@gmail.com

****

O forget those street scenes.

What about my neighbour who is bringing up her son alone?

Or that old, lonely widower with no one to talk to? (Oh,but then he is at the other end of town.)

Or Mrs. D. Cooped up in the house because she cannot walk?

Or ... Please don’t remind me of all that.

Please do not tell me that Compassion is nothing if it does not end in action. If it does not make me get up and do something.

Write to me at ivan.arthur@gmail.com

Maybe then, Fr. Ubaldo will be able to print your sermon to me. Thank you.


Published in Fr. Agnel's magazine, October 2015

What a friend we have!

How good a friend am I of Jesus? I wonder.

If I see him on the street today, would I go up to him, thump him on the back like I do with my good friends and say, “Hi Jeez! Coming home for a cuppa?”

Or would I fall down on my knees and say, like Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”

Or would it be: “Jesus, it’s good that you’re here. You see, I have this house I have set my heart on. Can you be a friend and help... And this daughter of mine who cannot find a husband at age 30 ... And can you do something about that terrible migraine that the doctors can’t seem to fix...”

Or would I quickly cross the street, lest he see me and question me about that shady deal I entered into and that ugly spat I had with my neighbour or the unfair wage I am paying my maid ...

Or would I come face to face with him and just remain tongue-tied, not knowing how to address the one I know as my Savior?

What would I do, I wonder.

What kind of friend am I, if friend I am at all? And then I wonder even more. What kind of friends were the apostles to Jesus. What image does the gospel give me of their ‘friendship’? Do I see Peter going up to him, thumping him on the back and saying, “Hey Jesus. Want to come fishing with me?” Or would Jesus himself say with a thump and a chuckle, “Hey Simon Pete! Come let’s take that stroll upon the water again.”

But no. Jesus is shown as benevolence in action; a man of compassion for all, a master, a guru, a rebel, a reformer, a miracle worker; divinity clothed in flesh. But not a friend as we see it. Jesus is no buddy. Except in Matthew 11:19. “The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say,’Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” Or again “And it came about that he was reclining at the table in his house and many tax-gatherers and sinners were dining with Jesus and his disciples...” Or perhaps, when we see him in the house of Lazarus and of Martha and Mary, we see Jesus with friends. Our saviour and Lord was keeping bad company, wasn’t He? Friend of sinners on the one hand and Lord and Master to his disciples on the other?

And in all this, was He telling me something about His friendships and mine?

Look at me. I have a lot of friends. I thump a lot of backs. Of those in my own social circle. Of those with whom I am comfortable. Of those I know will be of use to me tomorrow. Of those who admire me and sing my praises. And I have on a few heaven-sent occasions thumped the backs of those who were in need of my help; of those who had nobody to turn to; of those who had nothing to offer but affection. Was it then that I got the feeling? That it was His back I was thumping. And did I hear at those moments His whisper “Inasmuch as you thumped the backs of the least of my brethren...’’ or something to that effect.

But then, I have also felt His hand on my back. Not in any hail-fellow-well-met thump of jollity. But in grim seriousness, with the firmness of reprimand; a hard push against the direction I was taking; a slap of chastisement, painful and seemingly merciless. And I may have said, “Why, my friend, why?” Until I felt his hand again, gentle and healing. When I had sinned. When was confused. When I was shattered. When I was sick. When I was grieving.

And then I remember John 15, where he proclaims his friendship and his love. “Greater love has no man than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” He said it. He did it.

What a friend!


Published in The Agnel Ashram Magazine

Wedding Anniversary Prayer

First Anniversary  
Thank you Lord for this day and the three hundred and sixty five in between this and that day before Your altar when we gazed into each other’s eyes -- or was it Yours? -- and said our I do’s. I thank you for the love you have shown me through his caresses, his concern for me, his scolding, his acts of giving and forgiving, our time together, the movies, the one sandwich we shared on a broke day, the time he stood up for me with his family, the ... Oh so many big and small events... Thank you for all that love, so big that it could not be ours, not his nor mine. It is yours. Poured out into us. This I know and I thank you.

Second Anniversary
We have gone through two whole years, thank you Lord. But it has not all been smooth sailing, you know. I am seeing sides of him that I hadn’t before and not all of them make me happy. His job and his career ambition have become a thorn between us. We have had arguments, fights, sometimes severe, exchanging hurtful words so much so we thought it would be the end for us, but now I know it was only the miracle of your love that made things right again and made us feel that nothing had happened to the caresses, the concern, the acts of giving and forgiving. Thank you Lord.  

Fifth Anniversary
 He’s a wonder. Our little Rahul. Two years old already. Just looking at him makes me want to sing hosannas to your name. He takes up all my time and can be quite naughty. But he is cute. His father is so proud of him, you’d think the brat’s name is not Rahul but Mozart or Einstein. Thank you, God for this gift. Again your love for us. It is so big that you needed one more vessel to fill it in. And so we keep pouring it from one to another like warm milk that will not cool. Thank you Lord. Thanks again.  

Tenth Anniversary
Thanksgiving day again, Lord. Both Rahul and Reena are growing up beautifully. Rahul as a beautiful voice and has won prizes for his singing. He tends to show off a bit and that worries me. Reena tends to answer back already, but it is only with me. She is OK with her father. He has again gone back to giving his job all his attention. There seems to be trouble in his office. Politics. He comes home tense. Doesn’t speak. I try to soothe him down the best a wife can. But it doesn’t seem to work. I know he loves me, but he is certainly not showing it right now. I know what you are doing now, Lord. Your love is playing a little game with me. But I can take it. With a little help from you.

Twentieth Anniversary
What are you doing to me, Lord? And why? We don’t seem to have any control over both our children. Serves us right, you will say, for our pride. Both come home late every night. I am afraid for Reena. The world is not as innocent as it was during our time. I am afraid of consequences. Their father loses his temper and threatens to throw them out of the house. In all this, I know there is love. Between them and us. Your love. Playing peekaboo in the corners of our despair. With some difficulty I say thank you Lord for this anniversary.  

Twenty-fifth Anniversary
Beautiful day, Lord. Thanks a lot. The parish priest came home with his holy water sprinkler and he blessed us as we exchanged vows and rings again. My fellow looked handsome even with his paunch and I think that he had not noticed how much weight I had put on since the last time we said I do. And friends, Lord. Wow! So many! Where did you find them for us, Lord? Like bells ringing out our joy. Yes we know. This love of yours for us, so big that you had to find more and more vessels to store it in. And it still spills over. Thanks.  

Fiftieth Anniversary
From Silver to Gold. I didn’t think we would make it. But you decided that we should. That there was still a lot of love to go around. For each other. For our children. Our four grandchildren. And our many, many friends. And You, the source of it all, still pouring it in plenty. Thank you once more. I try hard to hide my wrinkles now and he his limp. But how does one hide one’s love?  

Fifty-ninth Anniversary
I’m celebrating today. Only the memory. Dressed in black still. We buried him six months ago. But funny, I still feel married to him. See. I still have his ring on my finger.This sacrament of yours is a stubborn thing. It sticks to one for ever. Strong glue this. Your love. Pouring out on us from that day in Eden.

Two Brothers

Two Brothers

Rahul sat in the last row with his wife, Sheila. He was too nervous to sit up front. There were all kinds of important looking people there. Some were in uniform. The others in well-pressed suits and saris. He had worn his best kurta pyjama, which his wife had ironed for him that day. He cast a sideways glance at her in affection and gratitude. His wife, he thought looked good in that sari. He had bought it with his first bonus. Oh, she looked so good, he thought. She could sit in front, he thought, but not he.

They were there that day to applaud his younger brother, Randhir. A jawan in the army, he was one of those who were to be awarded a medal for bravery. He had shown great courage at the border, where he and a few others had confronted militants and overpowered them. This was a big day for the family, Rahul thought. He hoped they would take pictures that he could frame.

Sitting there, his mind went back to that other morning, ten years earlier. He had woken up with an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. He rushed to the mori, that small enclosure that served as bathroom in their one room home. Involuntarily he coughed up blood. At first he thought that his gums were bleeding. But then after cleaning his teeth with tooth powder on finger, he coughed again. Blood. He decided not to tell his wife. Why bother her. She had her own problems, poor thing. Their five-year old son was constantly falling sick and Sheila had to take him to the municipal hospital and wait in long queues for almost the whole day, while he had to go to work.

He was a loader with a transport company. Every day he thanked God for the job. It barely provided his family with what they needed to keep body and soul together. But he managed, somehow. He worked extra hours to get overtime. His brother, Randhir was then living with them. He had passed his 9^th standard. The school had granted the boy a freeship. But his books and uniform and an occasional tuition fee all added up to quite a sum. After the 10^th standard board exam, Randhir expressed the desire to study further. His friends told him to forget it. Randhir should start working. But Rahul thought about it. He would send him to college.

Randhir did well. Passed his 12^th standard. On the morning of the bloody cough, Randhir gave Rahul the news that he wanted to join the armed forces.

Life was not easy. Rahul kept coughing up blood almost every day. One day, he took an hour’s leave to visit the municipal hospital’s OPD. It was TB, he was told. He had to take his medicines regularly. But more important, he would have to stop doing his kind of work. A loader’s job was too heavy for a TB patient. When his company came to know of it, they told him they could not have him work there any more. He was given three months pay and asked to leave.

This hit him hard. He went home and wept like a baby. His wife watched him for a while. Then she took his hand and said, “Look at me.” Slowly he looked up, his jaw hardening with resolve. “Look at me, she said. I am there. Don’t worry”.

The next day Sheila found work in two houses. But Rahul could not bear the thought of doing nothing himself. He took the three months pay, went out and bought himself a second-hand cart, loaded it with bananas, oranges and fruit, which he bought in the whole sale market. Every day he went out in the sun selling fruit.

Yes, life was not easy these past ten years. But they had survived. His tuberculosis had left him, thank God. Life was still quite hard, but he was not complaining. He was alive with the best wife and son in the world. And now this brother of his! God is so good, he said under his breath.

He heard Randhir’s name being announced. He saw his younger brother in uniform walk up to the dais and receive his medal to loud applause.

Then his brother did a strange thing. He unpinned the medal from his shirt, held it up and briskly walked down the aisle. The audience followed him with their eyes as Randhir came to the last row to where Rahul was sitting.

He pinned the bravery medal on to Rahul’s kurta, clicked his heels to attention and stood for a good minute saluting his older brother.

For the Agnel Ashram Magazine May 2015

Last night
I discovered the secret
to peace
in the family.

Until last night, on passing our house, you would hear the din of battle; terrible, disturbing, scary: screams, abuses, cacophony of voices. The sounds of people wanting to kill each other.

Last night it was over. I put an end to it.

I had the whole thing thought out and planned a week earlier. This is what I did.

I looked through my album of old photographs.

In my younger days, I loved to take pictures. I clicked little babies, beautiful women (wife included), beautiful landscapes, birds, flowers, shapes, shadows, designs … everything that caught my fancy. I made enlargements of these and kept them in a big album. Once in a couple of months at least, when I was feeling out of sorts, I would look at them and feel good.

Last evening, I picked out six of these pictures. They were really good pictures, even if it is I who say so. They made me feel very good. I showed them to my wife, who said that they made her feel good too. Next, I took a large sheet of thick hard cardboard, which I had at home. I stuck those pictures on to it. Then, with great care I took the measurements of our television screen and cut the cardboard accordingly. Meticulously, with Fevicol, I fixed the cardboard with pictures over the television screen. And voila! There was peace!

No more screaming from that ill-mannered anchor (I forget his name) on that channel (whose name too I forget, blame it on my age). No more verbal chappals hurled at each other. No more sound of fighting in my home.

Oh I had patience. For a long time. I tried other channels. But then I saw that every other anchor on every other channel was aping that one anchor on that one channel. I tried the movie channels. No use. Again noise. Fighting. Sex. Or else excruciating boredom. No peace. No goodwill towards men.

But now, thanks to cardboard, all that is in the past tense. Our home is no longer the noisy place it was, particularly at prime time. Now all I see on TV are those nice, pleasing photographs that make us smile.

Peace at last.

You would say this was very clever of me. But I must confess. This was not my idea. It came from the Bible. From Jesus himself. So you can do the same. I have no copyright on it. Ask Jesus. He said, “If your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” Well, I didn’t gouge that eye and throw it away. I just gave it a nice eye-patch.

That, you may say is too flippant a metaphor for something very seriously wrong with society: Negativity.

People more serious minded than yours truly are saying that there’s too much of it in the world today. Negativity. We tend to look at everything through soot-tinted glasses. So we see devils everywhere. In government. In schools. In our homes. In the Church. Among doctors, lawyers, politicians, police, priests, even family. Negativity everywhere. It shows up in the form of suspicion, dissatisfaction, jealousy, excessive ambition and a whole long list from the devil’s menu card. It ends up in chronic depression, stress, suicides and murder.

We are told to be positive. As if it is as simple as turning left or right at a crossing. Never see your glass as being half-empty, they say. See it as half full. Positivism, see? But what if the glass is more than half-empty – if it is three-quarters empty? Well, it is still one-quarter full! Something that the thirsty crow was clever enough to know. Remember what he did when he saw that 60 ml of Scotch, right down at the bottom of the glass? He asked for a lot of ice. 60 ml on the rocks is good for any beak to reach.

There we go, being flippant again! Right?

But that’s my answer to the devils that surround us. Be flippant. Pass them off as a joke. Laugh them away. Jokes are sermons that are easy to take. They are swords that tickle instead of wound. Laughing gas, not tear gas. The creative eraser of all things negative.

So, now you know.

For a start, go and get your thick hard cardboard and those nice pictures. Head straight for your television screen.

Peace be unto you.



Written for the Agnel Ashram Magazine.


Ivan Arthur

Email: ivan.arthur@ gmail.com

Make a Joyful Noise

An inconsequential conversation between the writer and his friend.

Writer: Christ had His desert experience; the yogi has is Himalayan retreat, the cloistered nun her monastery; but you and I, where do we go for our portion of silence?

Friend: The heart. Go down deep into your heart. There you will find Silence.

W: Says you?

F: Says sage, mystic, priest and parlour preacher.

W: Oh yes. We have heard that one before. Journey to the centre of the heart and all that. Have you ever tried it yourself?

F: Yes and I’ve got lost on the way. Perhaps the Himalayas, the cloistered convent and the desert would be easier destinations than that little place under your shirt pocket.

W: You may be right, my friend.

F: And Silence, just in case you find it there is not an easy thing to handle. Witness the silence of Christ’s desert. Only the Son of Man could have handled it the way He did. For you may hear in that silence of your heart the amplified tremolos of fear, the groans of guilt and envy, the roar of ambition, wailings of self-pity, the urgent clanging of deadlines to be met …. And other jarring noises. Not silence. A tinnitus of the spirit. The heart is a noisy place.

W: I looked at Silence as the womb of Thought; of ideas, reflection, contemplation and prayer. Particularly prayer.

F: You don’t need silence to pray. Do you?

W: Don’t you? Have you tried speaking in a pub? Loud music. Much babble. You see lips moving in pantomime. You cannot hear a word being spoken.

F: So, you’re saying that God cannot hear you in a crowd?

W: Rather, you cannot hear God amid all that noise.

F: But listen to this: I once happened to be at a Hare Krishna satsang in one of their temples. There were more than a hundred people present. And a hundred bells of various sizes clanging out their brassy tones that got louder by the mninute until the din reached a deafening pitch.

W: Ah! Deafness. Isn’t that silence?

F: You got it. Suddenly, amid the clangour, I heard nothing. A strange silence, paradoxically engendered and protectively enveloped as it were by all that noise. You don’t believe me.

W: On the contrary. I do. I have seen an elderly bachelor say his rosary in the train every morning on his way to work. He told me that the rhythm of the rails, the loud confusion of a hundred conversations and the general noise in that overcrowded compartment created for him a ‘silence’ he could not find even at home.

F: I do believe that the urbanite learns to find his silences in the very heart of noise. In the rhythmic banging in his factory, the continuous whirr of machines, the urgent sounds of a traffic jam and the dissonance of so many voices …. Useful silences into which he enters to look for ideas, insights, contemplation and prayer.

W: Didn’t the psalmist say, “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord”?

F: The Psalms are full of trumpet blast, the sound of timbrel and harp; claps of hands and shouts of joy. Beautiful noise that helped them to pray.

W: But there are other noises, not so beautiful. Those that offend our sensibilities and disturb the peace. What about them?

F: Noise for noise’s sake. Those that ruin our most joyful festivals, making them imitations of war and strife. These can never engender silence. These we should shun.

W: But then, my friend, we are a noisy nation, celebrating every event with volume knobs turned to maximum. We live in a city that rudely wakes us up even before sunrise with din of traffic, the cacophonous chorus of shrill voices and the raucous calls of everyday living.

F: That’s OK. The regular, quotidian noise of your city. The rhythm, if you like, of our existence. Like the rumble of that train. These are the trumpet blasts, the timbrel and harp of today.

W: The rough, hard oyster shell inside which you may find that pearl of great price. Silence.

Appeared in the May issue of Agnel Ashram News

Blackboard

A Prayer for Humility

I want to be your blackboard, Lord

A black piece of blankness,

Nothingness

Inviting Somethingness

Anythingness

From the hearty scribble of that two-year-old

(The promise of tomorrow’s wisdom)

To the scientist’s quod erat demonstrandum

And everything in between

For only in blackness can I see the stars

Only in blankness can I be enlightened

Only in emptiness can I be filled

Only in Shunyata can I be open to grace

And yet

Deliver me from the painted blackness

Of the sainted braggart

Of Simplicity worn on my sleeve

If it has to be mine

Let It be my skin not garment

Preserve me from the priestly cassock

The monastic sackcloth

The godman’s saffron

The mahatma’s put-on nakedness

Stagecraft of the humble show-off

No. Not that, Lord

Nor even the bent meekness of Diffidence

Or Cowardice or Self-regard

Or the careless slovenliness of Sloth

Masquerading as this hard virtue

If those be the chalk marks on this blackboard

Wipe them off, Lord

Wipe them off

Because I am a blackboard, Lord

Not a printed sheet

Or carved granite

Blackboards are devoid of pride

Can be dusted to new blankness

An Eternal Shunyata

The blackboard waits for Vidya

That comes from Vinaya

Only to wipe out the differences

Between high and low

Between him who has and her who has not

A Humility that engenders Learning

And a Learning that makes for true Humility

Write again on this blackboard your beatitudes

And your promise you made then

To the poor in spirit

To those who mourn

To the peacemakers

To the meek

That they shall inherit the earth.

This appeared in the Fr. Agnel Ashram News Magazine of March 2014

The Crib as Spiritual Exercise

 

The Crib as Spiritual Exercise

            Lots of newspaper. Covered with wet mud. Dried. Crumpled. Spread out. And there you have it: the cave that forms an important part of the Christmas crib. All you need now is plenty of dry grass that you go into the fields behind your house to collect. It is the straw on which you place the cows of the stable. And then of course, Joseph and Mary, if you happen to have those figures. Last of all you place your precious Baby Jesus there. Now you are ready for Christmas and for the Crib Competition.

            You stand back and admire your craft. It has recreated, with paper, straw and mud, the most shining moment in Bible History, nay, World History. You look in your mirror and see sculptor, artist and historian, all in one. Very good

            And then, one Christmas, years later, you watch this priest with a scraggly beard directing the young men who have come together to make the parish crib. They have got ready a whole ream of crisp, muddied paper that should form the hills of Bethlehem and the cave for the babe. He tells them to keep all of that aside. He has no need for them. He has other ideas. He has arranged to have a portion of a PWD water pipe brought into the church compound. That, he tells the young men, will be the crib for the year.

            On Christmas Eve, you see it: the water pipe against a painted background of the city. Inside the pipe you see the Holy Family. Yes, you see it: God incarnated in the slums. Craft has made way for the Intellect. History has given way to humanity. The crib is no longer a re-creation. It is a creation, you say. The crib has a message.

            And so, the next year your crib is a 3-D chalice with a 3-D host above it. Embedded in the host is the Babe. Don’t you see? It is Christmas at every Eucharist. History gives way to Mystery. Tradition is replaced by your small personal theology. The message: He is born every day if you receive him.

            Soon you grow out of all that. Out of History. Out of Intellect. Out of Theology. Out of Creativity. Out of Ideation. Out of delivering messages.  You grow. Into your Self. Into your personal craving for His Coming. Christ is not born in Bethlehem. In one little piece of the universe. His geography is fuzzy. Infinite. Not pinned down to latitude and longitude. Bethlehem is not where Bethlehem is. Bethlehem is where you feel His coming. In your drawing room. In your laughter. In those embraces of loved ones. In your tears. In the bread you break together. Your crib must express it all. It is no longer art or craft or philosophy or sermon. It is your prayer made tangible.

  And when your daughter in the USA tells you of her personal prayer, you say Amen. It is the year of the Presidential election around the time of Christmas. She prays for the first black President. It means something to her. She places the Babe inside a replica of the White House. With Isaiah’s prophecy: “And the government shall be upon his shoulders.”

            Closer home, your other daughter is moving house. She wants the Babe to know her new address. She wants Him to move with her from Amboli to Yaari Road. Her crib this time is a mover’s truck. Her own personal prayer.             

            And I? And you? And all of us who want to fabricate this personal prayer this Christmas. What are we going to do this year? Will the crib be our family album that includes in its pages Jesus, Mary and Joseph as our close relatives? Our very own prayer for harmony and understanding? Is there a wedding in your family? Will then your crib be an invitation card to the Holy Family? And today, amid the din of slander and mischief of the media and the splatter of blood on our television screens, what is our crib-prayer going to be? Can it be your very own newspaper, “Glad tidings” that looks for good news to give your friends? Your prayer for a better world.

 

The Crib as Spiritual Exercise

            Lots of newspaper. Covered with wet mud. Dried. Crumpled. Spread out. And there you have it: the cave that forms an important part of the Christmas crib. All you need now is plenty of dry grass that you go into the fields behind your house to collect. It is the straw on which you place the cows of the stable. And then of course, Joseph and Mary, if you happen to have those figures. Last of all you place your precious Baby Jesus there. Now you are ready for Christmas and for the Crib Competition.

            You stand back and admire your craft. It has recreated, with paper, straw and mud, the most shining moment in Bible History, nay, World History. You look in your mirror and see sculptor, artist and historian, all in one. Very good

            And then, one Christmas, years later, you watch this priest with a scraggly beard directing the young men who have come together to make the parish crib. They have got ready a whole ream of crisp, muddied paper that should form the hills of Bethlehem and the cave for the babe. He tells them to keep all of that aside. He has no need for them. He has other ideas. He has arranged to have a portion of a PWD water pipe brought into the church compound. That, he tells the young men, will be the crib for the year.

            On Christmas Eve, you see it: the water pipe against a painted background of the city. Inside the pipe you see the Holy Family. Yes, you see it: God incarnated in the slums. Craft has made way for the Intellect. History has given way to humanity. The crib is no longer a re-creation. It is a creation, you say. The crib has a message.

            And so, the next year your crib is a 3-D chalice with a 3-D host above it. Embedded in the host is the Babe. Don’t you see? It is Christmas at every Eucharist. History gives way to Mystery. Tradition is replaced by your small personal theology. The message: He is born every day if you receive him.

            Soon you grow out of all that. Out of History. Out of Intellect. Out of Theology. Out of Creativity. Out of Ideation. Out of delivering messages.  You grow. Into your Self. Into your personal craving for His Coming. Christ is not born in Bethlehem. In one little piece of the universe. His geography is fuzzy. Infinite. Not pinned down to latitude and longitude. Bethlehem is not where Bethlehem is. Bethlehem is where you feel His coming. In your drawing room. In your laughter. In those embraces of loved ones. In your tears. In the bread you break together. Your crib must express it all. It is no longer art or craft or philosophy or sermon. It is your prayer made tangible.

  And when your daughter in the USA tells you of her personal prayer, you say Amen. It is the year of the Presidential election around the time of Christmas. She prays for the first black President. It means something to her. She places the Babe inside a replica of the White House. With Isaiah’s prophecy: “And the government shall be upon his shoulders.”

            Closer home, your other daughter is moving house. She wants the Babe to know her new address. She wants Him to move with her from Amboli to Yaari Road. Her crib this time is a mover’s truck. Her own personal prayer.              

            And I? And you? And all of us who want to fabricate this personal prayer this Christmas. What are we going to do this year? Will the crib be our family album that includes in its pages Jesus, Mary and Joseph as our close relatives? Our very own prayer for harmony and understanding? Is there a wedding in your family? Will then your crib be an invitation card to the Holy Family? And today, amid the din of slander and mischief of the media and the splatter of blood on our television screens, what is our crib-prayer going to be? Can it be your very own newspaper, “Glad tidings” that looks for good news to give your friends? Your prayer for a better world.

This appeared in the December 2013 issue of the  Fr. Agnel Magazine

Thanksgiving

 

Thanking God

Is that good religious manners?

We Catholics are a grateful lot. We are visible in demonstrating our gratitude to all of Heaven: to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; to Mother of Perpetual Succour and Mary Help of Christians; to the Infant Jesus of Prague; to St. Anthony, St. Jude, St. Rita and the Communion of Saints. We are grateful for favours received: for safe deliveries, safe journeys, the gift of a son, a cure without surgery, a good job, a fine house, a “good catch” bridegroom, a successful court case or the reformation of an alcoholic spouse. Every day, Thanksgiving Masses waft heavenward. Envelopes stuffed with grateful currency are dropped into those sanctified post boxes in church. Candles can be seen burning on side-altars, shedding wax tears of blessed gratitude for mercies from above.

            I look at all this and say, “How beautiful!” We go down on our knees and ask for favours. We storm heaven for them. And when finally we receive them, we do not forget to say “Thank you.” The Church has taught us good manners.           

            And then, I remember something….

            “Ingrid” I call out to my wife. “Shouldn’t we offer a Mass in thanksgiving for … ”

            “Yes,” she says, in that same tone of quiet piety with which she leads the night prayers. “Yes, we will do that, but not before we have said a meaningful Thank You to Guru and Usha (our house help) and to Lorna and Tony… “

            “Oh yes,” I say, feeling sheepish about my own thoughtlessness.

            “And Dr. Jawaharlal,” she reminds me. “He showed a lot of concern during your idiotic viral fever. And Liz and Peter and Avi and Nirmal. A whole lot of people prayed for us, I know. You must design Thank You cards that you can send by e-mail…”

            “Yes,” I say, trying to redeem myself. “Let’s make a list.”

             “Yes, do that. God would want you to thank these people first, don’t you think?”

            Unknown to us, Lorna is at the window, listening.

            “What about thanking God for favours not received?” she pipes in.

            “What do you mean?” I am confused.

            “What about thanking God for bad times, when he didn’t give us what we prayed for”

            “I don’t think I understand.” I’m more than a little dumb.

            “Remember when you failed that test for a clerk’s job? This was soon after your graduation.”

            I think it is rather unkind of her to bring this up after so many years. A jab to my ego. But never mind. I say nothing.

            “Mummy prayed hard that you might pass the test and land the job. But you didn’t. You failed. Don’t you think we should offer a Thanksgiving Mass for your failure?”

            “You’re mad.”

            “Just think, Ivan. If you had passed that test, you might have been head clerk today. Not bad. But you would have gone down a totally different path. And that would be a tragedy, I think.” Lorna can be embarrassing sometimes.

            She continues in the same vein, enjoying my discomfort. “Not just you. Tony and I have to offer Thanksgiving for that gruelling time we went through during the Lever lock-out. If not for that, we would not have gone abroad, we would not have been able to send our daughter to Switzerland; she would not have met her husband and we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

            Suddenly we find ourselves nodding and coming up with memories of the many other times when the apparently bad turned out in hindsight to be not just good, but the best thing that could have happened to us. Prompting in us a paradoxical thanksgiving for favours not received. Lorna, as usual is right.

            A long ensuing silence crowds over with thoughts, like sheets of blank paper written over with invisible ink. Thoughts swirl around Gratitude and Thanksgiving to God.

            Lorna cannot bear a break in the conversation. “So you see? We ought to thank God at all times,” she says.

            “I’m not quite sure of that.” Ingrid makes an uncharacteristic refutation.

            “What do you mean?” Lorna is surprised at her sister-in-law’s irreverence.

            “I’m tired of hearing “Thank God” for every silly thing: thank God my exam is over, thank God the movie was at 5.30 and not 5.00; thank God we won the match, thank God it’s friday … I’m sure God does not want credit for things he has given you the free will to do yourself.”

            “Yes,” Lorna agrees. “We’re trivialising Thanksgiving.”

            “We are willing to give Him credit for these silly little things,” Ingrid continues. “But when it comes to bigger favours, those that shape our entire lives, such as our personal gifts of mind, body and heart: a rare intellect, a talent for art, music, sports, leadership; our health and well-being and our good nature, we would like to hog the credit for ourselves. Success is our personal possession.” Ingrid is breathless. This is the lengthiest speech she has given in a long time.

            I can’t remember which of us gave the last mini-sermon, but I put it down for what it is worth:

             “True Thanksgiving can only come from faith and humility. The realization that our own efforts, however good are not enough; that we need at most times that divine contribution in our lives. To be truly grateful, we must be humble, so help us God.”

Published in the November issue of the Agnel Ashram magazine

           

             

           

           

                         

           

           

           

Wanting Happiness

 

Wanting Happiness

A couple of weeks before his wedding day, his Company decided to fold up and he was left dangling on a small severance package with nothing else in sight.

            “Cancel the wedding,” said the sane voices in his family and hers. “Wait until you find another job.”

            “We’re not cancelling the wedding. We’re getting married as planned,” he said

            “Not as planned, maybe,” piped in the bride-to-be. “We’ll have a smaller wedding. Fewer guests. A smaller menu. A smaller hall. Recorded music. But we are getting married. We’re not going to wait.”

            “Why the hurry?”

            “No hurry,” he said. “Just no worry.”

            “Aren’t you worried about how you will manage?” That was Sanity speaking.

            “We will manage,” he said with a confidence that foxed them.

            “How can you say that?” Sanity needed to know.

            “Simple,” he said. We don’t need much. We don’t want much.”

            The wedding was small in size, but big on jollity. The bride’s smile stretched from ear to ear, right from wedding march to the rollicking chaired kiss.

            And it continued through the days after; that ear-to-ear labial stretch foxing the sane and the worldly wise as the couple took life in their stride. What people saw was Contentment laced with cheer. Were they putting on a show? How long would the severance money last? Did he have some unaccounted money stashed up somewhere? Were they living on loans? Some malicious investigations revealed that it was none of those. The fact is he was trying for another job, but jobs were not easy in those days.

            “Companies are broke, poor guys,” our new bridegroom would sympathise with the corporate world that let him down.

            He took in some free-lance assignments. He bought himself a typewriter and some basic office equipment and set up his own little office at home. And got paid for small jobs he did. She gave piano lessons. “There’s enough currency between those flats and sharps,” she said with that ear-to-ear punctuation. “But I’m doing it moderato for now. In any case, we don’t need much. We don’t want much. We have to keep time for each other, you know.”

            They kept time for each other and for their friends. She even took over the children’s choir and in time would persuade you to attend a practice session. “Come and listen to them,” she would urge you. “They sound like angels.”

             Life was beautiful at all times, they said, whatever happened.

            One day, returning from his aunt’s place, our man came back with a rose plant. It was one of those cluster roses that he always admired. Lovingly he planted it in a pot. It thrived with huge clusters of little white roses. Soon he was able to make other cuttings from that rose tree. He put them in plastic bags and kept them outside his house for sale. On day one he sold a plant. The customer paid Rs.10 for it. Our man was over the moon. “I made ten rupees out of nothing,” he almost sang.

            He read a lot about plants; spoke to gardeners and stopped in front of every nice garden he passed by. This, he told himself is what he wanted to do. Gardening. Plants and flowers did something to him. What music did to his wife, plants did to him.

            He spoke to his cousin who had garden space around his house. Together they set up a nursery, which made plants available at reasonable prices to all nature lovers. Our man now had become an expert gardener. He could reel off botanical names as fluently as the litany of the BVM. Today he knows how to relate seasons to species, knows when to prune, when to plant and how to talk to a recalcitrant cactus. He has regular customers, some of them institutional. While he sometimes sells his plants in truckloads, the money comes in smaller packets. But enough to draw those smiles across those faces.

            “You can make a lot more,” his friends would tell him, “if only you….”

            “We don’t need much. We don’t want much,” was their now known antiphon.

            Life has moved on for our couple. Two children: a boy and a girl. The boy loves hockey and a nice young thing who he hopes to marry soon. To your casual “How’s life?” he answers: “Beautiful.” With that inherited ear-to-ear expression.

            The daughter plays and teaches piano, but her great love she reserves for animals. She picks up sick and wounded dogs and cats, brings them home, nurses them back to health and gives them up for adoption. One of the dogs she has made her own and trained him to do the most incredible tricks. One of them is what she calls the barking metronome. She tells the dog which song she is going to play on the piano and he barks the minims and crotchets in tempo. For reward he is given a doggie snack. Now the dog smiles from ear to ear.

            “You all are always so happy. Is there nothing that makes you sad?” I once asked them.

            “Yes,” he said. “I feel sad when I read the newspapers. All those reports of men and women and even children committing suicide because they were not able to get what they wanted – that makes me sad. I feel sad when I see other children in the neighbourhood; my friends’ children and others who have so much and want more. Every child has a mobile phone, but he wants a better one because his friend has one. He has an MP3 player but his friend has an IPod. So he is unhappy. Sad,” he said, shaking his head. “People want things. That’s bad. Wanting is the first step to unhappiness.”

            “But isn’t it natural to want things?”

            “Yes it is. But it is better to do things rather than want. It is better to feel. Rather than want. If you can manage not to want, you can manage to be happy.” He said.

            Our man was no philosopher and that short lecture didn’t fit in with his personality. His best sermon was his life, his family. The happiest family I know.

This appeared in the July 2013 issue of the Fr. Agnel Ashram News

Ivan Arthur

Blogs: http://arthurivannoel.blogspot.in/

            http://arthurivann.blogspot.in/

The New Pope

 

A Dream

I saw the sun rise on a vast, barren plain, wrinkled with the furrows of a land dying of thirst. Against it, like shadows, I saw crowds of people moving very slowly. A plaintive moan filled the air. As the sun rose higher and the orange sky turned slowly to a golden dawn, my eye picked out the shape of a huge rock in the distance, its outline gilded by the rising sun. Then, slowly, rising from behind the rock I saw the figure of a man. A fisherman, I thought, but he had a shepherd’s staff in his right hand. He stood on top of the rock and looked around him at the crowds, whose faces I could now see in the light of that early dawn. I saw that they were in great distress. They lifted up their faces to the man on the rock. “Who are you?” they asked. And he said, “My name is Peter.” He looked at them with eyes of pity and I thought I saw a teardrop trickle down his rugged cheek. It made a small splash upon the rock on which he was standing. At that moment, to my amazement, I saw that teardrop pierce the surface of the rock and from that spot there came a stream of clear running water. In an instant the moaning turned to shouts of joy. The crowds ran towards the stream, which quickly spilled over and spread across the plain. They drank from it and splashed their faces with the cool, life giving water. They held hands and danced, and the fisher-shepherd held hands and danced with them and loud songs of joy rent the air. As the sun rose to meet a cloudless sky, I saw the dry land come to life with green grass and a hundred different wild flowers. By sunset I could see the land covered with trees and I heard the glad music of a thousand birds twittering. And my heart leapt for joy.

I saw the sun rise again on another morning. The stream was now a great and magnificent river. On it I could see many wonderfully crafted boats and vessels. Coming from within them I heard many-voiced choruses singing the praises of The Most High. Harmonious. Inspiring. Divine. The biggest and most imposing of these boats was beautiful and grand in its design. Inside it I spied the Fisher-Shepherd. He was splendidly attired and my eyes danced upon the glittering patterns on his clothing. His staff was now made of gold.  Many princes and kings came and paid him tribute. Along the banks of this great river there were people dressed in fine clothes singing those uplifting songs of praise. They went down on their knees, beat their breasts, joined their hands and recited prayers in one voice. And the river flowed on, growing larger and even larger. And I said how wonderful it all was.

Another sunrise, another morning. The river had sprung tributaries and I saw people moving over to the banks of these side streams. I saw other boats, other barges plying these other little rivers. I heard different but beautiful new music coming from the many new tributaries and there was beautiful music heard along the main river and my innocent ear tried hard to harmonise the many mellifluous though disparate sounds. The Fisher-Shepherd raised his eyes up heavenward and I could see the lines of earnest effort on his countenance. Other sunrises; other mornings and I watched the river flow, sometimes smiling, sometimes scowling over sharp rocks and branches of dead trees and now and again I saw the shapes of creatures in the river, some friendly, but some, where the river had meandered into a swamp, looked threatening. I heard the people in the boats and those across the plains singing songs to unheard of tunes in which discord and dissonance popped question marks and ended in crescendos of disquiet and even anger. And I trembled.  I heard in those atonal melodies, words of concern, choler and counsel. Do this, they sang and do that. The boats need repair, they sang, they need renewal. The swamp needs to be drained, they chorused. The creatures must be annihilated. We need new sails, new masts, new rudders, new engines. We need to trim these sails, they sang in agitated counterpoint and to paint our boats another colour. We need to explore motorboats, rafts and new, exciting water sports to invite the young, the bored and the adventurous. They sang in voices of varying pitch from feathery pizzicato to shrill sforzando. And the Fisher-Shepherd raised his eyes heavenward again.

And then I watched one more sunrise. The songs of dissonance were still in the air when I saw the Fisher-Shepherd rise to his full height and come to the edge of his big and magnificent boat. He looked out into the plains and he saw again, amidst the finery of a few people, the distressed faces of so many. He brought his boat to the banks of the river and looked into the eyes of these people of God, many whom did not belong to his boat or to The River. “They’re thirsty,” he whispered. And in the new sunlight I thought I spied again a teardrop trickle down that rugged face. As the drop splashed into the muddy river, I saw ripples of crystal clear water grow outward and spread across the entire stream. He looked down into the now clear water and he saw a reflection of himself. I looked down at the water and I too saw there the Fisher-Shepherd’s reflection as in a mirror. There once again I saw him, as on that first sunrise, wearing those simple, old Fisher-Shepherd’s clothes and in his right hand the shepherd’s staff. The people saw that reflection and looked up at his face. “Come and drink,” he said. “That’s why this river flows. Not for boats and things, but to slake your thirst. Come.” And the people said, “Who are you?” And he smiled at them and said, “My name is Francis. Pray for me.”

This article appeared in the April issue of Fr. Agnel's Ashram News

Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Writing?

 

Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Writing?

(With apologies to Larry Norman)

Why, Lord? Why?

Why do I read the Playboy magazine and drool?

(At the writing not the pictures.)

Why do I revel in the sensuous prose of Updike’s Rabbit

Or the verbal virility of an articulate Senator

In defence of an adulterous President?

I have turned green, Lord at the clever lines

Of the commercial scribe who can seduce millions

In a thousand words or just ten,

Making mass conversions beyond the imagination of

Those fire and brimstone sermons.

With burning ire I read,

(but read, I do, every word of it)

Shourie’s nicely penned slurs on your Church,

The frothy gossip of social reportage,

The succulent phrases of the songwriter

And the many wordy unheavenly mansions of the Internet.

And then, Lord, I come.

With trembling hand and greedy spirit

To read what they have written in Your name.

To drink at the literary fonts of my baptism:

Books, leaflets, magazines, pamphlets of godly intent

Promising enlightenment, inspiration, grace.

And then I weep.

For myself.

For what has happened to me.

I am stuck in the first chapter, Lord.

The first page. The first paragraph, The first line.

What has happened to me?

I struggle to wade through the syrupy thickness

Of pious verbiage and regurgitated righteousness.

I hear echoes of those one or two sermons of pop religiosity

Raised to the power of a thousand.

What has happened to me?

My eyelids turn to stone and drop down

On well-meaning eyeballs.

What has happened to me, Lord?

I stumble through stony paths of our religious magazines

Strewn, deliberately, it seems

With boulders of ecclesiastical jargon and theological thistles;

Words becoming in that fervent moment

Penance for the simple reader.

And then I pause, chastising myself.

Be a good boy and read good reading, I tell myself.

Am I being a spoilt child, Lord?

Have I been pampered by the delectable fare of secular expression?

By the ghostwriters of the devil?

I am not sure, Lord. I am not sure.

Have not eye, mind and spirit caressed the pages of your Gospel;

Your Old and New Testaments?

Augustine, Aquinas, Á Kempis. John of the Cross. Teresa of Avila.

And in phases of earnest searching, Merton, Rahner and Küng?

Have I not relished them all and found sustenance in their words?

Or even in the intellectual stimulation of a C.S. Lewis

And that soul-searching creator of Pepone and Don Camillo?

No. I will not complain like a spoilt child.

I will pray for the grit, the patience the charity

To be able to plod through the facile and most difficult passages

Written for my edification and gain.

I will read on my knees, theological dictionary and church history at hand.

I will. Yes, yes, I will.

Modified from an article published in the Examiner some years ago.

GIVING

-->Giving

You see a needy person and you dip your hands into your pocket. And you give.

You visit Mother Teresa’s Home; you are moved by the work the nuns do and you decide to offer two days of your week to the cause.

Your neighbour’s son, weak in mathematics is in danger of failing his class and you offer to give him tuitions – absolutely free.

At night you go to bed and say, like Mr. Jack Horner: what a good boy am I!

And then neuroscientists like Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman go and spoil it all for you. They tell you that good works and charitable donations are all a matter of neurology, connected to something called the mesolimbic reward pathway. The mesolimbic pathway is one of the pathways in the brain that carries the neurotransmitter dopamine from one part to another. It is a primitive part of the brain that usually jumps up in joy in response to pleasures such as food and sex. When charitable people like you put the interests of others before your own by making donations, the limbic pathway carries dopamine to the subgenual cortex. And you end up feeling good.

So, Mr. Jack Horner, when you are being charitable or altruistic, you are not being a good boy who is suppressing your own selfish urges; you are actually tickling a part of the brain wired to give you pleasure.

Food, sex and charity: they are all part of the same hedonistic cluster in this pathway.

By that token, we would have to say that The Bill Gates Foundation or Mother Teresa’s Homes, for that matter are nothing more than just so much dopamine, rushing through the mesolimbic pathways of Mr. Gates and the Blessed sister?

They did all that philanthropy and charity for their own pleasure!

And then Mother Teresa was heard to have said, “Give till it hurts.” What “hurt” was she talking about? It was all pleasure, if our friends, Moll and Grafman have to be believed.

Before we strip philanthropy and charity of all their moral and spiritual sheen, let me hasten to reassure you that the conclusions of the neuroscientists are still mired in controversy. What they say is not yet universally accepted.

Personally, however, I am not averse to accepting their unholy conclusions as gospel truth, one that sits comfortably with divine design. I am happy to look upon that mesolimbic reward pathway as an ingenious system fashioned by the hand of the Lord as an incentive for us to do a rather hard thing – to give with no expectation of visible reward.

Face it: giving is not easy. Trapped as we are in a largely self-seeking mind and body, everything we do is for our own preservation, comfort, gain and happiness. The time and energy we spend for others can be seen by the selfish gene to be time and energy wasted, if we do not get anything for ourselves in return.

It’s okay for me to give your college-going son free tuitions if my wife tells me that he would make a nice catch for our college-going daughter; or for my wife to spend time and money on making those marzipan chocolates for my immediate boss just before increment time. Or what about paying for that expensive, new statue of our church’s patron saint, knowing that my name will be immortalized on a brass plate on the pedestal? Giving in such instances is not just easy, it is attractive. It has visible rewards that can be counted like currency notes. Like currency notes, however, those rewards are finite; measurable. Giver and receiver can evaluate the exchange value of the gift.

On the other hand, we have heard of virtual unrealities, such as Father Damien, Vincent De Paul and in our own time, Mother Teresa and of so many nameless young men and women who give up gainful periods of their life to work along the borders of inhumanity in Africa, India and Ecuador without expecting anything in return. You yourself have experienced moments when you have seen people and situations crying out for the succour that you sense only you can give. All thought and reasoning sink below the level of your heartstrings and you find yourself giving without counting cost or reward. The pleasure that you experience then cannot be measured in finite terms. And if you stop to wonder about the infinity of this joyful experience, you may come to that big and mystical realization that it was not you who were the giver. You were just the courier. The real giver was the Source of all love. You were picked for the job of delivering a small parcel of that infinite love.

True charity then, is what the Church would call agape in action, the compelling force of a love that is unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, and voluntary. The pleasure that you receive from agape-prompted giving cannot be grasped by way of reason or good sense. It would, in fact be viewed by many as folly or even madness. It is the madness of a few, for as we can see, not many are gifted (or should we say burdened?) with the genetics (or should we say spirituality?) of the unconditional giver.

And so, I find in neuroscience’s pronouncements about mesolimbic reward pathways and all that, a respectable scientific explanation of your altruistic and charitable behaviour, enough at least to exempt you from being silently regarded as either insane or eccentric.

Charity is kind, not mad.

THE DICK DELUSION

This year too the Jaipur Literary Festival had its creases, with the Dalits doing a big time pout at some comments by sociologist, Ashis Nandy. Last year it was Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses that came in for major communal sulks.

I too did my little bit of sulking in response to Richard Dawkins' exhortation to people in India to stop wasting time on God, who didn't exist. 

This piece appeared in the Agnel Ashram magazine.
 

The Dick Delusion

Dick is a very, very clever man

He does what every other man can:

He thinks!

                        Only he does it much better.

Or so he thinks.

                        For he follows the rules

Of that god called Science. He uses the tools

Of Reason, Mathematics and Logic.

(Not God with a capital G. Or Magic.)

Peering through electron microscope

Looking up the great Hubble telescope

He can see what every other man can

Only better than any other man.

Using pure theorem and syllogism

To demonstrate to one and all: the chasm

Between Rational Man and a thing called God

That made the earth with a word and a nod.

Nay says Dick, the only god he knows is

A blind watchmaker who fashioned all this

With a series of accidents that fell into place

In a book by Darwin, a charlie who says

Your great-grandpa was an ape and that you

Are what you are today because a few

Million years ago you or rather your genes

Did some selfish cherry picking, the means

By which Evolution separated

The boys from the men who grew up and dated

Your great-grandma. And so you are today

What you are today, hip hip and hurray!

Here in Jaipur, attending the Litfest

Reading from Satan and thumping your chest

And chanting “Aye! Aye !” in unholy fusion

With the author of The God Delusion.

Will someone please tell this clever man, Dick

That Truth is revealed to Science and Logic.

As well as to Metaphor, Intuition

Fairy Tale, Myth and Imagination

That God does not play hide-and-seek under

Microscopes and telescopes. His wonder

Is not unravelled by sums and equations

Or clever syllogistic deductions.

He is not a Q.E.D. at the end

Of a theorem, my dear memetic friend.

He may not be seen by the curious eye.

Or fathomed by crafty brain.

                                                The High

Priest and theologian too may not see

Through ground glass lenses of theology

Dogma, doctrine and apologetics

And all their studied catechetics

The true vision of that divinity.

Get real and accept that Infinity

Lies beyond the finite grasp of Logic

Even the logic of a very clever Dick.

The eyes that see Eternity are not

Up in the head but in the human heart

Magnified by Infinity’s lenses

Of Faith and Love -- not the senses.

Faith will see through a multitude of sins

What till now has been hid from Dick Dawkins.

Grandson

 

Grandson

(An autobiographical indulgence)

Thanks for the breast. That was good, very good

And I am satisfied. Now cover up

And go.

              To the call of kosher kitchen,

Your pots, pans, needle-and-thread and chickens

Or to pretty up for that dreamer, your man.

And hand me over to Grandma Anna. Go.

You too. Dreamer Dad. Go. Go. Go. Go Go.

To your chisel, saw and hammer and nail

That will fashion the chairs and shape the cartwheels

Of Pilate’s chariots.

                                 And will they shape today

The nice notches and the wedges to fit

One horizontal strip of wood over

Another, much longer, vertical piece

That will then be planted into a hole

Dug on the summit of that punitive mount?

Hand me over to Papa Joachim, Dad.

Hand me over, Mum and Dad to those hands

Of pure affection superimposed over

Gratitude to Yahweh and to you two

For delivering me, your son to them,

My parents’ parents. Love undiluted

By Duty, Responsibility or

Divine fiat. With no thought for Simeon

And his prophesies and visions and Signs

Of Contradiction and the foretelling

Of heart-piercing swords. Nor expectations

From me. To walk the Pharisaic path.

And more: no expectations from you yourself

Of doing right by Moses and now Gabriel.

Of shaping a messiah.

                                    For I will

Soon lose myself in the temple and then

Will magnificat give way to miserere?

Son why hast thou done this to us? Oh why?

And will carpenter Dad fashion a stick

To spank the madness out of the Son of Man?

“Get a job, a well-paying career.

Climb the corporate ladder, my son. Get rich.

Stop hanging out with that locust eating

Wild son of your Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Zach

And his megalomaniacal voice

Of one crying in the wilderness, son.

And that ragtag bunch of faithless fishermen

And tax collectors. All that hippie talk

Of love, for Christ’s sake! And saving the world!

Get real, Son of David! Remember your stock.

Did your mother and I dodge the bloody sword

All the way to a cattle shed for this?”

Oh I get your point, Dad, Mum. I get it.

Now just leave me to Joachim and Anna.

They’ve none of those hang-ups. None of those fears.

See how they hold me, change my diapers.

Lisp endearments with no fear of doing wrong.

With no expectations from me or themselves.

As they had when they were bringing you up.

They spoil me. And themselves. We’re having fun.

Ah! If only you had me before they had you!

I would have taught them how to bring you up.