Thurifer

Monday, 27 January 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

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

Friday, 29 November 2013

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

Friday, 19 July 2013

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/

Tuesday, 9 April 2013

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

Saturday, 23 February 2013

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.

Sunday, 10 February 2013

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.