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/