Love Without Talking

Inspired by ---> http://lerwanderer.vox.com/library/post/love-without-talking.html?_c=feed-atom

The video here is better --> http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=109247895549&ref=mf

Love without talking (words)?

Can love be without words?

Absolutely. But only when words

Though not ‘talked’, are most cherished

When simple words ‘Hi’, ‘Nice 2 meet U’

‘Do U want to meet’ evoke the profoundest emotions

That is love. Love that can liven the dead ethos

Make obsolete the pangs of pathos

No. Needn’t be smart with words

But yes. Need to be sensitive in spirit

To be more sensitive than smart

Is to love without talking words.

This of course, is the lesson

From Forest Gump as well

To to be more sensitive than smart

Is to truly be in love.

The Phantom of the Opera - The Kiss From God

The first time I ever heard ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ in an audio CD, I 21 years old and I thought that I had to see the actual theatre play someday in my life. And that day happened to be last Saturday in Houston, and I thank God that at 26, my wish at 21 got fulfilled. Watching the actual play probably by one of the best performing Broadway groups in America was like being taken in rapture into another world of dazzling sets and supernatural sounds.

It was when I saw this play, I realized that the beauty of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ wasn’t just about the sets and sounds but about the profound insights into the deeply hurt and reclusive soul of a musical genius who of all things in the world, wants the ‘tender affection’ of a fellow human being.

The Phantom of the Opera, the mystery man, is a musical genius who is has retreated to live in the underground dungeons of the magnificent Paris Opera house. The humankind outside has rejected him because of his grotesquely disfigured face. The only human contact he has is with a chorus girl Christine Daae, whom he secretly trains in his dungeons to be a singer whom the world would marvel at.

Right from the beginning of the play, I was never sure of impetus for the Phantom to train Christine Daae.

Does he want to bring the best music out of her and thereby worship and glorify music?
Or does he want to use her to show the world that rejected him that is seeing the disfigurement in his face, it has missed the genius in him?
Or does he want her to be impressed by his genius and see him in the different light of the 'music of the night' and fall in love him?

The first need belies a need to worship music, the second belies a need to worship one’s own self the third belies a need for affection and companionship.

Though the Phantom is sometimes depicted as a self-obsessed monster of a man who thinks not twice to murder people, the reason why his character is strangely appealing is because the animal-like nature of his is caused by the universal human condition of tension among the three basic psychological needs - need to worship a higher ideal, need to garner the worship of self and need for affection and companionship of fellow human beings.

With regard to wanting to fulfill these three basic human needs, the Phantom of the Opera is a normal man. But as he tries to go about fulfilling his needs, it is his obsessive need for the 'mask' to cover-up his feelings of insecurity and hurt about his disfigured face that complicates his life and makes him into the mysterious Phantom of the Opera.

As the play goes on, there are some glimpses into the Phantom’s soul the first glimpse is when he is first unmasked by Christine. He goes into a fit of rage because his vulnerability had been exposed. Without the mask, his sense of security has been destroyed – he is no longer the admirable genius musician, he is a loathsome ugly man. The deep old wounds of his heart, that even his mother did not like to look at him or touch his face and that the earliest memory of clothing he ever had was that of the mask, get reopened.

The second glimpse is angst he expresses when he sees the cute, handsome, rich, young, untalented Roul sweep Christine off her feet in a way that he could never do. The Phantom’s training helps Christine win over the crowd in the song ‘Think of Me’. Just as the phantom thinks that he was close to getting Christine where he wanted her to be (on the stage as the star performer and closer to his heart), all his genius not withstanding, she and Roul fall in love. The only human being with whom he could share his genius and world of music with is about to get stolen from him. The formidable Phantom of the Opera is in a helpless anguish.

Third glimpse is when he tries to manipulate Christine Diane into falling back into a adulation for him by trying to appeal to her sub-conscious sentiment of his being her special 'teacher' of music and also especially of his being her beloved father’s 'Angel of Music'. He wants her to love him, but is not direct about his need for love. He rather manipulates the relationship to appear to be platonic when his intent was to make the relationship romantic.

Fourth glimpse into his heart is in the last scene in the underground kingdom of the Phantom where he tries to forcibly marry Christine. This time, he gets real, he starts off trying to appeal to her sense of pity by speaking of his need to find a way out of inexorable solitude. His need is real - to have someone to share his world of music with. She does pity the deep anguish of this helpless genius, but there is a disconnect when he tries to use this need of his to justify marrying her. She does not relent, enraged, he then puts Roul on the noose and asks her to decide between Roul and him. He puts her in a position where she either had to marry him or see Roul die, there was hardly any room for her to make a decision. Looking at it the other way around, it was he who was the ‘cornered beast’, he did not have any other trick he could pull, he had taken the greatest risk of being ‘real’ about his need, but that does not help his cause.

It is at this point as Christine is in great turmoil, she calls on God for help and tells him, "God give me courage to show you, You are not alone...". In a moment of divine wisdom from God, she realizes that the last thing he needed at the moment was a wife, what his reclusive frigid being needed was the ‘tender touch’ of a fellow human being. Then she gathers up all her God-given courage, takes his disfigured face in her tender hands and kisses him, full on his lips. So genuine is the kiss that it strangely brings about a healing to his soul. Perhaps, it was God that apparently wronged him by giving him a disfigured face albiet with an astounding musical genius to compensate the disfigurement, and it took the ‘kiss from God’ to heal him.

In the very last scene of the play, the Phantom disappears forever away from his reclusive life, and I would presume, completely healed, leaving behind only his glowing mask. Looking back, I couldn’t help but wonder how many times normal human beings, their genius and goodness not withstanding, would act like the phantom of the opera in trying to address their genuine needs which get marred because of their deeper insecurity causing them to conceal a part of themselves under a mask. The more one holds on to the mask the greater is the complexity and ‘collective hurt’ involved in the unmasking process, and consequently the longer the tenure of the ‘Phantom of the Opera’ in one’s life.

Perhaps in all of our lives, there is lurking in the dark recesses of our hearts, a ‘Phantom of the Opera’ who gets resurrected whenever a genuine need marred by deeper insecurities needs to be addressed. Sometimes, it take a 'kiss from God' to heal such 'wounds of a life time'.

Michel Jackson – timeless or Timeless?

I was a little surprised to hear Michel Jackson, ‘out of the blue’, in the coffee shop this evening. I flipped open my laptop and started working, enjoying MJ songs which used to be my favorite during my early teens. Just as I was in a dreamy reminiscence, I got the news that MJ was dead. As the sudden death of Michel Jackson was, I was a tad bit shaken. Later, in the ‘calm of the day’, I wondered why I was a little ‘shaken’ by the news. I realized that the cause for my being shaken had much to do with my being jolted back into the ‘real’ from my world of the teenage dreams.

Listening to the songs at the coffee shop, a part of my self had drifted back to the realm of my dreamy early teen-hood. Back then, MJ was synonymous with timelessness. He was then, to me, a true timeless legend. I thought I would never grow out of my enthrallment for him. The reason for my ‘shaken’ disposition, on hearing the news, was that I was jolted back from that illusion of timelessness into the ‘real’ world – a world where there were no ‘truly’ timeless legends. It suddenly struck me that though, in a sense a man’s creation may be timeless, man himself cannot in the same sense, be timeless.

I remembered MJ being made fun of in a comedy show, recently, about his attempted return back to glory through a series of his last concerts. I cannot help speculating that MJ somehow knew that his time was near and that this last series of concerts was his attempt to make himself transcend into the realm of the timeless. Perhaps his yearning wasn’t so different from that of Alexander the Great who wanted to get drowned in a river to preserve his aura of a being that was timeless. So much of human endeavor is a striving to transcend into a timelessness permanence, from the tower of Babble to the Egyptian pyramids to Roman Empire to ideals of Declaration of Independence of the American Empire.

Perhaps MJ did not prove to be timeless as he would have wanted himself to be, but he has indeed transcended into the realm of the Timeless, though in a different sense. The moot point here being that there are at least two types of timelessness. As I was jolted back from my reminiscence at the coffee shop, I guess, it was my intuitive consciousness of the difference between these two types of timelessness that caused me to be shaken and gloomy.

One form of timelessness is the human striving for a timelessness permanence (of earthly life) that drives all of human endeavor whether it is to preserve ones gene pool hopefully through eternity or it is to build a home for oneself hopefully to transcend the limit of time at least in the context of one’s life span.

The other form of timelessness is the ‘real’ Timelessness (of heaven) that permeates and pervades all time. The apparent striving for timelessness that fuels human toils perhaps is unreal in as much as it is a shadow of the ‘real’ Timelessness. Continuing on this reasoning, it implies that so much of human effort is just as unreal, as much as it attempts to achieve the unreal form of earthly timelessness as against the ‘real’ form of heavenly Timelessness. Perhaps the difference between the wise and the foolish is the difference between the real and the unreal – the difference between the endeavors that strive for the (earthly) timeless and the endeavors that transcend into the (heavenly) Timeless. As I am jolted back into reality, shaken and gloomy, I question if I am being wise or being foolish – if in my strivings, I am pursing timelessness or Timelessness?

Would time give the answer? Can time answer the question of timelessness? If there is an answer it has to be with someone who is beyond time. If there is One who is beyond time, it ought to be the Creator of time. Perhaps, MJ has got his answer to the quest for the timeless in the Timeless world he is in now. Well, I am not shaken or gloomy anymore. Perhaps time does give the answer, when one has transcended into Timeless and met the ‘truly’ Timeless and has seen reality, not as through a ‘veil’ but in the very ‘being’ of the ‘truly’ Timeless One that always IS.

Don’t Waste Your Life – An exposition of the obvious

If great thinkers are people who have the ability to expound on the obvious with a mastery and ingenuity that helps fellow men to ‘look’ at the obvious and really ‘see’ it for the first time and thereby have a paradigm shift in how life is perceived, then I guess John Piper has to be counted among the great thinkers. The axiom “Don’t waste your life”, is something that is too obvious to all of us, not just because it is most frequent warning that we get to hear from our parents and teachers but because somewhere in the our fundamental human nature it is ingrained into our sense of consciousness that our life and time is not be wasted but be used to some worthy end.

It is this aspect of human nature, that says that a life spent for the worthy cause isn’t a wasted life, which causes men to barge into a battle field and willingly risking the thrust of the cold blade into their breast or the sensation of quick bullet barreling through their body or, on the other hand, sitting all day and watch TV or getting lost hours together in the virtual world of social networking - the former being the nobler virtues of ‘sacrificial living’ the latter being the banal activities of ‘enjoying life’, both of them being driven by the principle of not wasting life, though from very different perspectives.

John Piper’s brilliance in this book is that he takes this ‘Don’t waste your life’ idea that is too obvious and then another idea of ‘magnifying God’, which again is too obvious to Christians, and then in his ingenious theological exposition of how these two ideas interlace with each other he makes a compelling case for how ‘sacrificial living’ is truly ‘enjoying life’. He finds a monolithic unity to seemingly disparate aspects of sacrifice and enjoyment in life - the ‘blazing centre’ of that unity being the ‘severe mercy’ the Cross of Christ.

I have been reading this book for the past few weeks to keep pace with the book club. I have spent much time assimilating his view points. I just completed reading the book. Looking back at the big picture that he has drawn, I think his work has a lot to do with the Des Cartesian quest for certainty from chaos.

He starts off the book explaining his youth life of confused existence when he was looking, in the midst of chaos, for some certainty that he could commit himself to. He ends the book with a great degree of certainty about how Christians should approach their leisure life, work life, mission life and vision life. Pivotal to the paradigm shift is his realization that the act of enjoying God/life and magnifying God are the same and that the act of self-abandonment and magnifying God are the same. So the act of enjoying God/life and self-abandonment for a worthy cause become the same. This is a simple A = B, B = C so A = C logic.  

It is this principle behind this paradigm shift that helps one to ‘look’ at the obvious and really ‘see’ it for first time. It is precisely this principle that the modern humanist to whom self-preservation is the means to enjoying life, fails to understand. To the extent to which the modern Christian fails to understand the relationship between magnifying God, enjoying life and abandoning self, the modern Christian will have wasted his/her life.

Reflecting on all of this, I am reminded of two words of advice my mother used to tell me when I was a kid, "Heaven has not place for lazy boys", "you cannot got to heaven in a rocking chair". This book, I think, is primal to any Christian who wishes to live a life such that he/she does not have to look back and be exasperated, “I have wasted my life, how on earth did I fail to ‘see’ the obvious”. 

A Date with Piper

On a Friday evening eager to unwind from work-life and get back to real-life, I was on time for the date with Piper. Before the start of the book club meet on John Piper’s, “Don’t waste your life”, it was whispered that we were waiting on Kristi’s cookies, she came in just as we started and boy the wait was worth it. I would say that even if the date with Piper wasn’t worth the date per se, it was worth the cookies. So finally, with the taste of the cookie lingering in the taste buds, the video started rolling.

That was the first time I saw John Piper and I instantly was struck by the tenderness, sensitivity and strength in his demeanor. As he spoke sometimes in a quivering voice, as though in search for words but actually, I think, in a trembling cognition of the sublime Truths being uttered, he was ravishingly compelling. I just couldn’t help sitting upright in the cozy corner of the couch being riveted to his exposition of Truth.

I cannot forget the way he expounded on Lewis’ idea of ‘quiddity’ or the ‘thisness of life’ not just because of the profundity of the idea being conveyed but because of the way his whole being was involved in the exposition. It is permanently ingrained in my memory how when he expounded on the ‘thisness’, he held up the bony back of his hands, all ten fingers spread out between him and the camera and said, “the thisness Lewis spoke of helped me appreciate the realness of life”.

Later he, rightly calls Lewis as the ‘romantic rationalist’. I would like to call Piper the ‘romantic realist’. The first time I ever came to know of Piper was about three years ago when, in a book store, I read a captivating title of a book, “Desiring God”, and thought to myself, ‘Oh, boy, who is that guy who has written a book titled so’ and there was the author John Piper. Then I thought to myself that I had to know more about this guy. My first guess was that this guy ought to have been a monk like Antony Bloom or Thomas Merton or Henri Neuman to be so ‘romantic’ about God but then I did not know that he was a guy living a ‘real’ life as anyone else.

I had to wait three years to have my first date with Piper. Though it was an e-date, I have been so impressed with him that I can’t wait to have my second date with him at the Book club at St. John the Divine Church’s Single Fusion club. 

A Walk to Remeber - A Story of Love

 It is 3:00 am and my mind is on fire. I just watched the movie “A Walk To Remember”, which has almost the same story line as the timeless classic “love story” written by Eric Segal. When I got this movie at Block Buster the lady at the counter told me that this movie was awesome and that she loved it. Even then I got a sense that this movie was about something deep. When I was watching this movie I couldn’t help thinking about “love story”. In both, a guy and a girl fall in love. The girl in both cases is intelligent, musically talented and beautiful. The guy purues, the guy proposes, they get married. A terrible sickness, cancer in both cases, befalls the girl. The girl dies. The guy is devastated. But there is one difference, “Love Story” is not a ‘story of love’, but “A Walk to Remember” is.

Ever since I read “Love Story”, and saw the brilliantly made movie based on which the novel was written, I have been mulling over some questions in my mind, “What is wrong with the novel?”, “Why does it make me feel desperate?”, “Why does it make me cry?”, “Why should two people who did everything right be victimized by the randomness of life and human condition?”, “Why is the end so devastating and haunting?”. It is devastating because there is no miracle. It is haunting because the capricious randomness of affliction casts a dark pall over every blossoming feelings of love. It is haunting to realize that love is subservient to the randomness of life’s traversities. So the most haunting existential question that “Love Story” taunted me with was this, “Is love limited by the traversities of life?”, “Is the idea that ‘love conquer all’ a myth or worse just plain rhetoric?”, “Is it possible that in my life I can do it all right and still be victimized just because the lot falls on my name?”. “A Walk to Remember”, gives a glimpse of the answer to all of these questions.

The problem with “Love Story” is that even though it is a story that evokes the most intense emotions out of the depth of ones heart. It does not have depth in itself. “Love Story” is not ‘story of love’, it lacks a meta-narrative. It has a narrative, a very intense one, but it has no alpha or omega. It says nothing about the people and their beliefs, it leaves the end just as it is, there is nothing beyond. The reader is left dangling in the middle of nowhere just as Oliver is at the end of the movie, with a lost look on his face, yearning to reverse time, is left nothing else but a haunting memory and one tag line ‘Love means not ever having to say sorry’. In her deathbed, all she could say is, “Hold me Oliver, hold me tight”. It appeared to be their final attempt to defy the inevitable, an attempt to make love triumph over life. And a failed attempt at that.

On the other hand, in “A Walk to Remember”, the girl is the daughter of a Priest. A very intelligent, talented and devout girl who in the prime of her life and its pursuits, realizes that she may not have long to live. She wishes for a miracle, she wishes to get married. She finds herself being pursued by a guy from a broken home who delights in perverted masochistic pleasures. She accepts the friendship but still they have conflicts in their faiths – she a theist and he a mocker of theists. As her strength wanes, their love deepens, he sees a depth in her which causes him to want be better than himself. He turns from his old ways and really learns to love life. The miracle she expects in her life never happens. She says that she does not have a reason not to be angry with God, but she still stays true to the love of God. He marries her and grants her second wish. In her death bed, she tells him. “I expected God grant me my first wish - to work a miracle in my life. I now see the miracle. I see that the miracle is you. God brought you into my life. He transformed you through me. You are my miracle. You are my angel.” She gives him a book of quotations and ask him to read her favorite one, “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not resentful”…gathering all her strength she repeats the words and with the most serene demeanor and a smile on her face. He is not left with a tag line, he is left with timeless truths and eternal relationships.

The pivotal difference between the two movies is that in the former there is no place for God or faith, where as in the latter God and faith become the foundation of their love. In the former when love was not longer present there was nothing left to make sense of all the capricious randomness and the angst. Where as in the latter, even as the tangible love disappears God and faith makes sense of the randomness and helps experience the miracle of the metaphysical love transforming the life of the guy into playing his part in the ‘story of life’, a story that has an alpha and an omega, a story where one isn’t left dangling in the middle of nowhere with the most intense feelings of lostness and anguish, a story where metaphysical love makes ‘real, cherished and eternal’ the love experienced in the tangible realm. 

A Drop of the Divine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRmM1J1sfg

There aren’t surprises which do not have the element of the transcended in them. There isn’t an admiration where a part of the unconsious self does not admire an absolute. Without a God there are no absolutes, without a ‘God of surprises’ there are no surprises either.

47, unwed, unloved except by a cat
Unemployed. Unruly hair
Unkissed lips, ungroomed being
Stands up to surprise an audience.

An audience that love freely
Groom costly, sit smugly.
Kiss countless, cuddle many.
Cynical coterie, ridicule ready.

Stocky limbs, stumpy physique
Grumpy manners, Cheesy chatter.
Not unlike the distant cousins
Evolutionary garbage?

Suddenly, a dream
Out of nowhere
Simply outrageous
Ultimately hilarious!

Oh, but, from the ludicrously dreamy
Unshapely frumpy bundle
The sound of Divine Breath
The dream come true.

A shocking marvel.
Ravishingly outlandish.
A voice of an Angel.
A miraculous evolution – the misfit survives.

From the primordial slime
To the first amino acid, to ape and the man
The fit miss, the misfit hit
A dream, a beautiful dream.

Not a chimpy cousin
Not an aberrant DNA
Not the primordial soup.
But a drop of the Divine.

If nature's got talent
Man’s got the Divine.
A drop of the Divine
Of the God of surprises.

The Easter Contention

Google has a different logo on its search page for the special days of the year which can be anything from St. Patrick’s day to Darwin’s Birthday to Christmas. I was curious to see if they had something special for Easter, there was none. I really did not know if I had to be surprised about that or not. I was surprised at myself that I was not sure what to think. After all each Easter I come across emails and blogs from fellow Christians telling me that Easter was originally a pagan festival and that Christians ought not to observe Easter any more. Once I called a Christian friend and said ‘Happy Easter’ and he said, ‘Oh, I don’t celebrate Easter because it was Emperor Constantine’s conspiracy that we celebrate Easter today, I don’t want to be a part of his conspiracy “. (of course I paraphrased that a little) I guess folks at Google did not want to take sides and left their logo unchanged.

I am stupefied by the contention within the Christian circles on whether Christians should celebrate Easter, after all the conspiracy theorists say that Easter was a pagan festival that got Christened for astute political reasons by Emperor Constantine. And among those Christian who celebrate Easter there is a contention on how they should greet, ‘Happy Easter’ or ‘The Lord is risen’.

The day before Easter, when I finished the purchase at Wal-Mart supercentre and paid the bill when the old Hispanic lady at the counter told me ‘Happy Easter to you’, I was overjoyed. The feeling of being overjoyed certainly wasn’t the joyful reminiscence of the Easter mood with all its festivities and the food. The reason for my joy was just that after a tiring day of shopping and running errands when out of the blue suddenly I heard ‘Happy Easter’, it gave me an opportunity to be ‘reminded’ of God.

Let me state that  at the Wal-Mart, it did not matter to me that 2000 years ago Easter was a pagan festival. It did not matter to me that many Christians thought it was wrong to wish ‘Happy Easter’. The point is that the lady’s Easter wish gave me an opportunity to ‘stop’, step back from my ‘shopping mood’ and ‘mediate’ on God. Likewise, the celebration of Easter whether it coincides with the lunar cycle of harvest or not, whether it was originally a pagan festival or not, gives to me an opportunity to celebrate the love of the risen Lord.

Personally, I think that the “Lord is risen” is a lot more meaningful than “Happy Easter”, but even saying the ‘Lord is risen’ can become another custom if we don’t realize the meaning of the truth that we utter - that it is the fact of the risen Lord which brings us together into fellowship with each other. It is true that sometimes, when we say the “Lord is risen” or “Happy Easter” we really d not feel it resonate with the deeper meditations of our heart and it appears to be just a  ritualistic greeting.

But it does not matter. I would rather have an Easter where get an opportunity to take a step back and mediate on what resurrection means to me and thereby get closer to God at the cost of saying ninety percentage of the time “Happy Easter” or “Lord is risen” without really feel the profundity of the utterance rather than not celebrate Easter at all not wish anyone, ‘Happy Easter’ or ‘Lord is risen’ and thereby just loose an opportunity to ‘stop’, ‘step back’ and ‘mediate’ on God.

In Houston, during Easter season, I have enjoyed my Christian fellowship at the St. John the Divine Episcopal Church. Last weekend, I was invited by an affectionate family to fellowship with them in their advanced celebration of Easter lunch as they were out of town for Easter. This weekend I was invited by another loving family to fellowship with them on Easter day and I enjoyed the delicious lunch and the long conversations that we had over the lunch. My mom was concerned that I may be having a lonely Easter season in Houston , “Oh, no”, I told her, “I am having one heaven of a time here”. But for the fact of the risen Lord and the celebration of Easter we may loose the opportunity for such wonderful Christian fellowship.

In today’s Easter service I was struck by the exuberance and zeal that exuded from the demeanor and the message of the Rector of the St. John the Divine Episcopal Church. When he started the message, I loved the way contrary to what he usually did, after ascending the pulpit, he allowed the congregation to stand for a couple of minutes as he ‘proclaimed’ the glory of the risen Lord before bidding the congregation to sit. After all we all stand when the national anthem of our country is sung, why not stand up when the glory of the risen Lord is ‘proclaimed’.

May the celebration of Easter that has continued on for well over millennia go on for many more as well.

May the glory of the risen Lord be proclaimed and celebrated by His Bride, the Church until He comes back for her.

May we wish each other ‘Happy Easter’ or ‘Lord is risen’ and truly mean it and mediate on its meaning. 

Dude on the shining Cruiser

Ever since I got my Vulcan here in the US, my life hasn’t been the same. It has been a dream come true, I always wanted to ride a cruise in the US. I wish it were the shiny Harley but a Vulcan will do well for now. I did 90mph on the highway 59 last week. This is something that is never possible in India. Someone asked me if drivers on the highway 59 weren’t crazy, I replied, “Well..., I didn’t notice, perhaps because I was one of the crazy ones there”. I think every man, sometime in his life, loves to be a crazy on the motor cycle.

A part of modern man's appeal to the motor cycle I guess is because the equestrian riding position is the closest the modern man can come to riding a horse. The dude in the shining cruiser is the closest the modern man can get to the gallant medieval knight in the shining armor. Motor cycling is more pleasurable and romantic than a car for the simple reason that in the motor cycle one is closer to nature than in the car. As one pierces through the air at 90mph riding equestrian on 500 pounds of metal which produces sheer power at the turn of the throttle, one feels as thought ones sensitivities extra sensitized - the air that moves over the face, the lips, the chin, the hair the arms and make one feel 'fully alive' whilst feeling the pounding of the piston beneath, kind of reminiscent of the gallop of the horse.

The other reason why I think the motorcycle is more appealing than the car is because motorcycle is a lot more dynamic than the car in that the whole body in involved in the driving process. At every curve the whole body has to go through a balancing process in which the mind calibrates how the body should position itself over the motorcycle so that motor cycle goes through the curve at the highest possible speed without allowing the centripetal force to throw the motor cycle off course. The key to balancing being how equilibrium is maintained through the bodily balancing of the centripetal and centrifugal forces, which is why you could turn a motorcycle without touching the handle bars at all. :P Motor cycling is the act of battling the natural forces and at the same time being one with them.

The thrid reason why I think motorcycling is appealing is because, it is more thrilling than a car. It is like dancing on a thin wall. One feels more insecure on a motor cycle than a car and the increased agility adds to the feeling of insecurity. In fact the first time I went on a freeway without a helmet I seemed to me like all hell was breaking loose. If there was to be a small mistake, it would be a battle between my cranium and the hard concrete if not the other cars zipping past at 70 miles an hour. Nothing appeals to the vanity of the alpha male as such trysts with mortal dangers.

As one feels the engine thumping below and a whiriwind of a breeze racing over the bare skin, there is an 

ecstasy which cannot be captured in any other life experience. When the inexorable movement of history towards the more docile pleasures of wii and xbox has made motor cycling obsolete, my only preposterous hope is that the dudes on the shining cruisers would be fondly remembered by posterity as the knights in the shining armours are idealized now. Long live the dudes on the shining cruisers.

On the Wrong side of the Road - What I Missed in my Trip to India

The first thing that made me realize when I was in India that I was ‘really’ in India was when I took our car from our home when to the main road and saw a another car farther down the road driving towards me, to my utter shock, on the same side of the road. I wondered what on earth the other guy was dong on the wrong side of the road. It was then it struck me that it was I that was on the wrong side of the road. In the roads in India, ‘right is wrong and left was right’, following the British we drive on the left side of the road.

I had a 10 day vacation but I was travelling for 4 of those days. I took 8 flights in total. I spent 6 days with my family. During my stay in India, I missed two aspects of my life the US the Church SJD and my motorcycle. I have seen churches where the Truth is deep but the fellowship is cold, there are churches where the people are warm and affectionate but the Truth is shallow. SJD is a very unique church in that it has a great combination of the Truth of God and an affectionate godly congregation. I missed SJD, especially on Sundays.

The philosophers tell us that death is the universal equalizer. In my experience I find that the Church is the universal equalizer. One can travel as far away as one can from their home, walk into a new Church and be welcome as though it were ones home Church. One can go to a nation where everything is different, from driving on the road to eating with a fork. One may even drive on the wrong side of the road but feel ‘right’ deep inside one self once one enters the Church. After all the Church is the metaphysical home to the wandering soul which seeks its solace in the metaphysical Body of Christ.

That I am able to feel one with the mystical body of Christ even as I am farthest from home is, to me, an existential proof of the living Lord. But for the fact that Christ died on the cross, I wouldn’t find for myself at home in the Church half way across the globe, neither would the Church be the universal equalizer.

On my way back, I thought I would find it hard to return from India to the US. But in an inexplicable way I did not find it as hard as I thought it would be. A BIG part of me was longing to be at SJD and then to ride my motorcycle on the 59. A BIG part of my wished to go back to the Right side of the road, and that I did when I took my motorcycle on the 59 last and clocked 90mph. I was glad to be on the right side of the road.

It was then I realized that Houston had somehow become my second home. I find this to be a huge irony because When I was asked by my company to go over to the US, I hated it. In fact, I took drastic measures to avoid having to go over to the US, but God worked it His way to bring me to the right side of the road. If there is something in my life here which has made Houston as my second home, it is SJD and that folks at SJD. I am thankful to God that He has given me the grace to be a part of this blessed Church. 

Valentine Meditations

"Blessed are the single, for they shall find True love"

 After 4 months of living in Houston, and repeated attempts to getting a motorcycle being unsuccessful, I have become crazy the my freedom is being limited by my not being able to find a quicker means of commuting about than commuting on a bicycle. Today, I came to know that a guy had a motorcycle for sale. I called him and asked if I could go over and see his motorcycle. I could feel the exasperation in his voice when he said, “Today is Valentine’s Day and I am going to my girl friends house”. And I said, “Oh, I am sorry I didn’t realize that today is Valentine’s Day”.  It was then I started on my valentine meditations.

Popular history states that Valentine’s Day is a lovers’ celebration of the sacrifice that St. Valentine did in order to get to lovers married against the law. I wonder why St. Valentine isn’t given as much importance in how valentine’s day is celebrated. This day is not about St. Valentine but about lovers. Lovers are so lost in each other that they fail to acknowledge the person who sacrificed himself to bring lovers together and make this day of celeberation possible. St. Valentine is moved out of the equation of Valentine celebrations.

Human beings are wired to celebrate joy but they also seem to be wired to forget the cause of the joy. Consequently, after quite a while, forgetting the cause of the joy makes the joy that is celeberated into something other than what it was meant to be and then they would never be able to enjoy the joy that originally was. If St. Valentine would be come back to life today, I think he would most likely be flabbergasted by the things that are celeberated, which he has become the cause of.

The ultimate cause of all causes is the uncaused Cause of all. The ultimate cause of love is the ultimate Valentine the One who first envisioned in his uncaused mind the possibility of human love and then when  on to create with all his powers of creativity, a place for man in the cosmos. Then He went one step further to create man and woman as lovers of each other. Every time love is celebrated leaving the ultimate cause of love the ultimate Valentine, the ultimate Lover out of the equation of celebration of love, the love that is celebrated becomes something else.

The other day in MSNBC there was a new clip about a company which offered discrete dating services for married people. The CEO of the company was interviewed and asked to justify the moral legitimacy of the services his company was giving. He said, “we have always been evolving, in the previous era we redefined the idea of arranged marriages and now we are redefining the idea of monogamy in marriages.” When the creator and the caue of love is left out of the equation of love, love becomes something else.

Christian singles who are still single and wait would do much better for themselves if they found true love in the ultimate Valentine before they go about trying to find love in their life partners. It is not surprising to me that in the Bible, God should use the bridal analogy to relate with human beings more often than the father-child analogy. Unless they learn to love God as the Groom they would never be able to involve God in the equation of love with their spouses. Only when Christian singles learn to love God as the Groom, would they be able to experience what true love is and would be better able to love their life partners much better than they could have had they not loved God as the Groom. Loving God as the Groom can best happen in single life. Blessed are the single for they shall find true love.  

Lessons from ‘Lessons and Carols’

Last week was Christmas ‘lessons and Carols’ service at the Saint John the Divine Episcopal Church at Houston, my new home, where is snows one day and is sunny the next. I was not excited at the prospect of attending a service which did not have the holy Eucharist, but Sunday morning is a time to be with God and God’s people so I was at the service. Little did I know how so captivating the lessons and carols can be. I attended both the morning service and the evening service of lessons and carols at SJD and loved worshiping God in both.

The way the sequence of songs and lessons were chronologically organized tracing human history right from the fall through the '4000 thousand years of winter' to the redemption by Incarnation, to the day when the lions and lambs would lie beside each other was beautiful. But what was even more appealing was the way one form of worship alternates with another and keeps our souls and minds enthralled the whole time. The Word of God that precedes each song awakens the mind to be engrossed in the beauty and the pertinence of the Truth that exudes from Him. The age old songs which shall be sung for ages to come, true to their timelessness, and sung by a choir that feels and exudes its granduer, connect deeply any mystically with the soul. The whole experience creates a transcended sense of the Truth in our minds and hearts.

The age old carol songs carry with them a richness depth from of the age old Christian saints, something the musical creations of contemporary Christian TV celebrities seldom match up to.

There is something so awe inspiring about the lessons, about one person standing up before a rapt audience and reading aloud and clear the Word of God in it pure and glorious form, unadulterated by any human being’s expositions and interpreted by the great Interpreter in the hearts and the minds of ‘those who have ears’. The Word of God does not need human exposition, the Word of God is the ever- living Word of God. The Word enters our beings and has His ‘life’ there, thereby creating in us new life. This is experience of God is unadulterated transcended purity.

Some contemporary Christians don’t seem to be able to appreciate such unadulterated purity of experiencing God through lessons and carols, they assume that lessons and carols are a thing of the past. It is a pity that the modern man’s jaded senses demand a lot of aberrations in the form of jokes and rhetoric from the preacher to make the Word come ‘alive’ in them. But with Lessons and Carols there is no such aberration, either one gets the pure Word of God or one gets nothing. After all it is better to have nothing than to think one has got something of a ‘feeling’ only to realize at a latter stage that what one thought one had ‘got’ was just an illusion which was forcefully inculcated by the sheer will power when one comes to the Lord expecting to receive some ‘feeling’ than to give ‘ear’ to Him.

Apart form the beauty of the Word of God that was so apparent in the lessons and carols, the thing that struck me most in the service was the song ‘What child is this…’ It is a song that is loved by many cChristians.

'...Why lies He in such mean estate,
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.'

God moved out of His ‘comfort zone’ in heaven, was willing to be born as a helpless baby and had to be dependent on others. It is a deep irony of how God places Himself at a position where He is dependent for His survival on His own creation. It spoke volumes to me because I was sitting in the Church disgruntled that God had brought me out of my ‘comfort zone’ in India where 'freedom' was the essence of my being, to a new land where the essence of my being had become anxiety and dependence. The loss of comfort and freedom was so disturbing and depressing to me, but there at the Lessons and Carols, in comparison to the loss that God had to suffer, mine feebled out.

I thank God for the wonderful experience with the lessons and carols at SJD. When I was walking out of the evening service, one gentleman shook hands with me and told me, "This is the neatest service I have ever been to". I couldn't agree more. :)

The 4 year old Teacher

Last weekend was the thanks giving weekend I had looked forward to so much. I spent my time with a much loved family at Dallas. The most important person in that family of three is the 4 year old who lovingly always calls me as her friend.

She wanted me to go ice skating with her. I told her that I did not know ice skating. Spat came her reply “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you. I’m a good teacher”. And a good teacher she was, I never got to learn ice skating from her. But I learnt so much about the gift of fellowship.

I love to fellowship with people in ‘deep’ relationships. And my idea of ‘depth’ was often only about having some intellectually stimulating conversations. My personality being so I never made an attempt to voluntarily relate much with little children. When we go out as family and meet little children, I leave the aspect of entertaining little children to my sister and I would try to get engrossed in some ‘deep’ conversation with adults. With this family too the parents were great intellectual companions. I loved their fellowship.

But with the kid I was in the dark. I wanted to relate with her but I really did not know how I could do that. Unlike my sister I lacked the skill of ‘sweet talking’ to kids. Even before I went there, I knew where I would have trouble. So I thought the best I could do would be to get many gifts for her hoping to offer something be worthy of her friendship. But she looked at my gifts and said, “Oh! That looks scary”. I was devastated, I did not have any other cards up my sleeve. I tried to make a ‘rational’ case to there that there was nothing to be scared about, but I did not get any where. The gift had a picture in it which scared her.

I was like a knight who was riding in his gallant horse with shining armour only to realize that what awaited him was not the battle but a banquet. I was in a strange land. I did not know what to do, my reason had failed me. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to go to the level of a four year old and ‘sweet talk’ to her and make her enjoy my company. I was afraid I was going to bore the kid out.

It was here the four year old became my teacher. I was floored, and she took the lead. She came and told me what ‘we’ had to do. “Will you play this with me?”, “Will you come here with me?”, “Will you chase me around?”, “Will you sit with me in the car?”, “Shall we do this?”, “Shall we do that?”…

Then I realized that what she needed was not an intelligent person to talk to or a person that would give her many gifts or a person who could playfully engager her or make her feel great, she just needed ‘fellowship’ - plain and simple fellowship that has no overtones of any kind whatsoever. What I mean by this ‘plain and simple fellowship’ is this that I don’t have to have anything special with me, I don’t have to be great, I don’t have to have any impressive skills of ‘sweet talking’. In other words, I did not need to have anything which would make me worthy to have fellowship. I just had to have time for her.

So often adult fellowships are defined worthiness of individuals. If a person is not worthy in some quality that is preferred then there would be no fellowship. But that is not the case with kids. Knowing this, it is not surprising at all that God said that the kingdom of heaven belonged to such little children.

The lesson that I learnt from this is that I should be willing to fellowship with all people whether or not I think I am qualified to fellowship with them or they are qualified to fellowship with me. Man’s ability for fellowship with fellow man is a gift of God and man should put that ‘talent’ to good use by extending fellowship to those whose lives would be so enriched by our fellowship. If we do not use that ‘talent’ we would end up burying it and would consequently incur God’s wrath. This experience made me quite introspective and I got to wonder if, in my life, I had displease God by not extending my fellowship to people in whose company my intellect was not titillated enough.

The 4 year old never knew of how much I was struggling with myself to make myself worthy of her companionship. All she knew was that I was her friend and I was there to give her fellowship whenever she wanted. To her it was all about plain and simple fellowship bound by love. She recited a letter to me in which she said, “Emmanuel, we love you. You must come here again and we can skate and play again.”

Plain and simple fellowship is one of the most beautiful expressions of life. To live life in all its fullness one has to experience this overwhelming beauty of plain and simple fellowship.

A lovely SJD weekend

My weekend started with Discovery classes at St. John the Divine at 9:00 am Saturday and went on till 4:00 pm. I loved the class. Rev. Doug started the discussion on how in history post modernism made it way in and has held sway by permeating into the collective consensus in epistemology (how to think and know the truth?). Then he went on to really explain the concept of Original sin not being the act of sin but being the impetus to be God-equal which was the cause for man’s sin. He talked about the centrality of the cross of the Christian gospel. He then explained how the book of common prayers was supposed to be used. I loved the whole class. I gained so much from it.

The rest of the evening I spent with an affectionate family from SJD about which I have written here (/emmanuelreagan/2008/11/children-love-of-life.html).

On Sunday, I went to the 8:45 am service. I was floored by the hymns we sang. The theme for this Sunday was ‘Christ the King’ and we sang the song ‘Let all mortal flesh keep silent’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR2YAOzmhiw&feature=related) . Which I believe is a 4th centuary chant each an every line of which causes the whole of ones being to have a foretaste of the King’s majesty. It is a truly timeless song. As the dismissal song, we sang ‘Crown Him with many crowns’. What a way to pay homage to the King of kings. They are truly timeless songs and I believe that this would be a song we would still be singing in heaven after having sung His glory for ten of thousands of years.

I went outside the Church and it was the most beautiful day I had seen. The temperature was just right. The light from the sun was diffused through the clouds to create an awesome ambience. There was the most gentle breeze and the brown leaves of the trees were on the green lawns. It couldn't get more beautiful. I just couldn't help myselt. I went and sat at the bench in the lawn to enjoy the beauty of the day. ‘Let all mortal flesh keep silence…’ was still playing in my head. I went to the last of the three Next classes. Then I attended the contemporary service. The song there too were awesome we sang ‘Amazing love how can it be’ and then ‘From the rivers to the ends of the Earth’.

I went back to the lawn to sit at the bench and read a book. As I was proceeding into the timeless world, I saw Kelly walking by and he invited me to go to lunch I went to lunch. After lunch, I was back at the lawn continuing with my book, back into my timeless world, until 4:30 pm. The sun disappeared the into the dark clouds and the temperature was beginning to drop and I rode my bike homeward.

As I look back now, I think it has been a perfect weekend. So full of Church, fellowship with God's people, timeless solitude and the overarching love of God.

Children – the love for life

There are two groups of people whom I love to spend time with - the young children and the older and mature people because they both have something in common – the love for simple life witout any trappings. The young children have an intuitive love for life, a simple yet profound love for the fact and the act of ‘being’. They are the ones that ‘simply’ enjoy the fact that they are alive and kicking. Whereas, the grand old ones have the rich experience of the love of life, an existential proof of fact of ‘being’ being an act of love.

The other thing that the young ones and the older ones have in common is that they both live in a timeless world, they are un-pressured by the trivialities of the act of being. I was lead to think about all of this because of a memorable experience I had last Saturday with a very affectionate family from SJD small group study and their three kids a 5 year old, a 2 year old and a 3 month old little one.

Last Saturday evening I had completed my discovery classes and was on my way back loitering round Rive oaks in the bike because I was not ready to call it a day, I wanted more out of life. I was pondering what I could do next, that was when I thought I heard someone call me from behind I looked back there was a car close behind. I was wondering who it was. When the car pulled by me, I realized that it was the family from the small group Bible study at SJD and seeing me they had called out my name. They invited me to dinner at their house close-by. I couldn’t be gladder than to spend time with a family with three cute little kids, and all of them so welcoming and affectionate.

I could see how the children, were so excited just by the fact of being. 2 year old, was so glad to just see me, it did not matter to her if I was her friend or not. It did not matter to her that I was a bloke that had a tough time relating to kids in an existential sense. It did not matter to her that I was really not sure how I had to sweet-talk to a kids. All that mattered to her was that I was a ‘being’ that was there and I was ‘looking’ at her. She would go and hang from the edge of the table and look at me with a big beautiful eyes to see if I was watching her aerobic exploits.

Then she would think how else to engage me, because I was her guest and she was the host. The parents were making dinner and we were all at the kitchen were we all were. 2 year old would be the busiest person there walking around the kitchen wondering how to engage me. Then she called me over to the couch and there she took out a coloring book and started coloring the pictures – like an artist performing for an audience. I was so surprised that a 2 year old could be so cognizant of how to relate with people so well. I guess it is a part of the unblemished image of God in human beings. She was just keeping me occupied and happy.

Then came my turn to reciprocate, my turn to play the only trick I know to make kids happy which is to lift them high up over my head and give them a supported free fall with a few variations. Kids love it. It is my trick to compensate for my inability to sweet-talk to kids. Kids like me to do that again and again and because my arms are strong I don’t tire easily. I love two things about it. One, how the kids laugh with a sparkle in they eyes. Two, how they come back for more – when they want more they would shyly walk up to me and lift up their hands as though reaching out for another candy.

It astounds me that such a simple ‘act of being’ as lifting up a kid could make them so excited to want more and more of it. It is their innocence and the sense of wonderment of being that makes them enjoy something so simple. As people grow up they loose that sense of wonderment for the simple things of life.

What was so beautiful about this event is that in lifting up 2 year old again and again, I was enjoying it as much as she herself was. In a way the experience had made a kid out of me. It made me enjoy all the simple nuance of life.

2 year old was taken to sleep. The five year old came down wearing a feathered Indian band she had made in her school. Being a five year old, her way of relating was pretty different from her 2 year old sister. She was more vocal. She was visibly self conscious and shy. She started talking about her school and what happened there. She was an entertaining story teller. It was so apparent that she loved to talk. I loved listening to how a kid would script her story how she builds the nuances into it. By now, it was getting late and it was time for her to go to bed.

But of course, kids live in a timeless world. They are never pressured by what they needed to do next. She really did not was to go to bed and was lingering as much as she could in the hall and then finally bid goodnight and went off to sleep.

The 3 month old was such a cheerful kid. I guess it was because of the way the parents involved him in conversations. We would talk about Ten Commandments or Benhur and during our discourse, the mom or the dad would look at the little one ‘so, you would love to see Benhur, wouldn’t you?’. It was as though little one was always a part of all conversations. I think they set a very good example in parenting because I have seen parents often shut their kids off adult conversations. Of course, little 3 month old kid even smiled at me. But I really couldn’t figure out the reason for the smile. Perhaps it was just that I was a different looking being in there and it seemed funny.

Kids make a kid of me. That I am sitting here at 3:00 am ‘charged-up’ and typing this off, well aware that I need to wake up at 7:00 am to go to gym and then to office is proof enough that I have entered into the timeless world as theirs.

What I love about the kids and the old people is their zest for life. I see it in their eyes – the love for life.

Old Bond VS New Bond

I was watched the new Bond film ‘Quantum of Solace’ and was reflecting upon whether I liked the old Bond as characterized by Pierce Brosnan or the new Bond as in Daniel Craig. It was widely believed that the old bond was suave and the new bond was steely. And when it came to deciding which of the Bonds were better that it was the suave one that was better than the steely one. Many bond fans, including myself, were disappointed that the old suave Bond wasn’t there anymore. I went to the theatre expecting to be disappointed when I would be walking out. But I was surprised that the case wasn’t so.

I believe that the reasons why the new Bond was more endearing are two fold. The old bond had just one rule of engagement ‘be cool’ the new bond had just one rule of engagement ‘do right’. Consequently the old bond was more about the 'spellllling' his name and tightening his tie where as the new bond was about duty and principles. This meant quite a difference in how their individuality was portrayed. The old bond was portrayed as being defiant towards, the top boss of British Intelligence, the ‘M’ in a very silly way. Like in sleeping with a girl she wouldn’t want him to and would already have made a maternal note of caution to him about. So the old bond’s defiance was often about how much of a silly play ’boy’ he was. Where as with the new Bond the way he defies the great ‘M’ is real and manly. He goes by his ‘gut’ even if it meant having to outright defy her orders and take M’s own agents to task when they try to arrest him. And 'M' says something about the new bond she never said to the old bond "He is my man, I trust him".

Second differnce between them is, the old bond has much sensitivity in only one organ of his body which I shall leave unnamed whereas the new bond has inside a 'really' steely body a soft sensitive heart. A heart that loves, hurts and seeks vengeance with an enormous ardor. The old bond was a man without a chest, whereas the new bond is a man with a strong and sensitive one. It is the chest that makes a man a ‘real’ man. A man without a chest is still a silly play ‘boy’.

The bottom-line is that it felt great to look at the old Bond whereas it feels great to really like, admire and perhaps even love the new Bond.

The Modern Trends: A non-contemplating Civilization

Glad as I am to witness the first time in recent recorded history a black man becoming the most powerful man in the world, I think there is great value in reckoning that the Obama VS McCain battle, apart from being a tussle between change and reform belied an underlying tension between showmanship and statesmanship. Showmanship won the day, Obama was ‘cool’ Mc Cain was not. McCain was a statesman who had been in public life for about 40 years and had high credentials whereas, Obama came out of nowhere, had very little credentials for executive leadership. But Obama captivated the hearts world over by his ability to enthrall a crowd by his ‘coolness’ factor – charisma, showmanship and rhetoric. He spent $650 million on his advertising and showmanship - the record highest for any US presidential bid. If he had opted as he had promised and as Mc Cain did, for public financing then all he could have spent would have been about $90 million dollars. His charisma drew two hundred thousand Europeans when he was in Berlin. McCain his statesmanship not withstanding, could never match Obama’s showmanship. It is astounding that a person, coming of out relative obscurity, can by sheer showmanship become the most powerful guy in the world.

My intent here is not to delve into the differences between Obama and McCain. Obama is a leader that America needs to salvage what is left of is tarnished reputation in the world. But I intend to use this display of showmanship which won the day, as a starting point to allude to the modern trend in human nature because of which we have allowed ourselves to be persuaded more by the ‘coolness’ factor, showmanship and rhetoric than by reality and rational persuasion. This is not only true of politics, it has pervaded all spheres of life. This was true of the IBM vs Oracle struggle as well, during the initial years. Though IBM had a better product, Oracle took giant leaps by sheer showmanship of Larry Ellison and got a head start in market share.

Over the course of modernization, there has been an increasing focus on creating the coolness factor through showmanship and advertising. That a company like Google can blossom out of nowhere and make net profit of over 4 billion dollars annually, just after 7 years of its inception, just by tapping into the online advertising potential, is evidence enough for the importance of advertising and showmanship in this modernized world. Online advertising has grown so big so quickly that it gives the great Microsoft chills as it has missed the crest of the new wave. In the 2006 ‘Client Summit’ Steve Ballmer the CEO of Microsoft in the key note address said, “in the 1990s Microsoft was about ‘windows, windows, windows baby!!!’ four years back it was about ‘developers, developers, developers baby!!!’ but now Microsoft is all about ‘advertisers advertisers advertisers baby!!!’”.

To understand the implications of this trend in the modern man, of his predisposition to blithely give in to such showmanship that is so prevalent around him, one has to understand the words of Voltaire one of the profound thinkers of the age of Enlightenment when he said
“The modern man has no time to think about truth, his intellectual history is just a replacement of one myth by another”.
Advertising and showmanship is all about captivating the human hearts and minds and then feeding it with myths while at the same time, deluding it into an intellectual laziness of blithely assuming that it is getting a glimpse of reality and also feel ‘cool’ about it. The modern man would buy into anything, whether it is the legitimacy of abortion or the adultery or rampant materialism if it is well ‘packaged’ and ‘delivered’ with cool showmanship.

Advertisers and showmen are easily able to tap into this trend of intellectual laziness in human because humans beings as Voltaire rightly points out do not want to spend time thinking about Truth. They do not want to think or spend time in deep contemplation. Edison the man who invented much more than any man alive could ever have, said, “Man would go to great lengths just to avoid having to think about something”.

If Voltaire would come to this world, he would be flabbergasted by the way the post modern world has fallen from the intellectual ideals of the enlightenment world. He would be happy to go back in time to the enlightenment world were reason and content held sway over intellectual laziness and showmanship. The 21st centuary man, to retain his intellectual fidelity to reality, has to make a concerted effort not to allow showmanship or the ‘coolness’ factor to delude him from truth. He should go through the painstaking path of rationally thinking through content and have a glimpse of truth for himself.

The problem with the post modern man is that the idea of introspective contemplation and the quest for Truth has become non essential. In the good old days when India was one of the most advanced civilizations in the world, the highest vocation a man could dedicate himself to was to take up a life of meditation in which one was in a quest for Truth about life. Even in the western world, the golden age was when Philosophy was the pinnacle of education. Now a days, the highest vocation a young man can devote himself is to become a Steve Jobs and create devices which is so much about look and feel than about anything else. The need for such devices is in their ability to seduce the modern man’s mind and being absorbed by anything other than contemplating the truth of being.

21st centuary man thinks that his civilization is perpetually progressing. But he does not even realize that in allowing himself to be seduced by showmanship and ‘coolness’ factor around him, his supposedly ‘progressive’ civilization distracts and deprives him off the time he needs to introspectively analyse if his civilization truly is progressing or not. He blithely gives into the ‘cool show’ that is put around him and assumes that he is progressing into a better world than his ancestors lived in, just because he has a ipod and his forefathers did not. It would do him a lot more good to remember G.K. Chesterton’s quote

Civilization can exist in only one angle, right now, we are testing angles

Reflections on Obama Making History

During the initial stage of the election campaigns, I was carried over by Obamamania only for a shortwhile before I got back to my sober self. I did not support him for Presidency. I am not American, so it did not matter what I preferred. I did not agree with quite a few of his policies, especially his stand (or non-stance) on abortion. I was not enamoured by his showmanship either. I was looking for a statesman in the President, he is a smart Harvard graduate who may make a great President but I was yet to see experiential proof of his statesmanship. In spite of my predisposition against his being the President, when I got to witness his being declared the president, it was palpable that I was witnessing a historic event. I was in a small election party with my Lakewood friends here in Houston. It was a 'Obama party', most people Obama supporters. I was greatly inspired by the atmosphere in the room. I was so inspired that I typed the following in my laptop. The moment was electric, that I did not support him for presidency seemed inconsequential.

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I am now sitting at my friend Andrew’s house with the Lakewood friends of mine. We are celebrating Barack Obama getting elected to become the first Black man to become the President of the US. What was at stake here was not just a black man becoming the President of the US, but the first black man to become for the first time in recorded history the most powerful man in whole world. This is history that has been waiting for many millennia to unfold, I consider myself so fortunate to witness this moment in history.

This event is not something that can right all the wrongs of history and this isn’t something which just signifies a change in the course of history but this signifies the way justice finds her path in history even if she had been lost quite a long time in the cosmos. This event shall be marked in many millennia of history as something that gives hope itself an audacity that shall be spoken of for much of future history and as the day in which men were able to walk straight backed and square shouldered again, that freedom was really free. Tomorrow as the sun rises for the billionth time it would not be lost on anyone that the rays of the grand old sun would not be met without a recognition of special nature of the day.

Obama is now on the stage with his daughters and his lovely wife. He has an aura bout him which in time would embalm the face of this nation whose face has been smeared by so many insensitive decisions which history shall stand up to condemn. Even as I watch the reaction of the people black, white, brown and yellow with a tear going down their cheeks, it is apparent that they do not see just a hero, they see something beyond that which can be seen by the human eye, they see the ideal of the human spirit which corrects the mistakes of crooked history. And he ends his speech with the ‘Yes, we can, God bless you, God bless America’.

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I guess I am more inspired by Martin Luther King's speech 40 years ago the day before he was assasinated http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP-DsxmbtGc&feature=related because his words were not a 'punch line' for the moment, but timeless truths from the word of God.

In a Timeless Perfection

In a timeless perfection
I am. I read. I write. I talk.
I fly. I dance. I laugh. I love. I am.
God smiles at me.

I read a book. Write two. Paint New life.
I debate; make a speech.
I love the theatre. I make a movie.
And Master Artist smiles at me.

Unperturbed by time, I cherish being
The essence of what I am;
The discovery of my real self.
My Architect smiles at me.

I am; my being Him worships
My New Life I love. My New Home I cherish
My King of Kings smiles at me
And I at Him. This is heaven.

Train Moves On

Alone in the station
Wanting the train to stop
As the train leaves with the loved one
On a journey of no return

Forever ingrained in a haunting memory
The eyes in the window watching
The eyes that would kill
Till the beholder’s closes forever

Would the beholder’s eyes close as the train moves
In a prayer to stop the moving mass of steel
Or would it be riveted into the eye at the window
Not the loose the last of the loved one

The eyes all the more endearing
As the loved one disappears into oblivion.
Until all there is, is nothing.
Nothing but a searing pain in the fainting sense.

The train is gone.

The whole being fights in sobs deep and big.
The eyes that held itself clear and dry
To look for the last of any love
In the eyes at the window, flood now.

The frigid being comes to senses, afraid.
Lost forever, the loved one
Left forever with an inexorable longing
For the love and the time gone by.

The time that consciousness fears loosing for eternity
A time that has become its own curse
A curse that would continue till the casket closes
Of falling in love with the wrong pair of eyes.

Alone at the station of life
The train moves on.

(inspired by the ending scene of 'Sunflower' one of Sophia Loren's classics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbU-a99giUg this is the scene where the husband of hers who loved her initially suddenly leaves her for another woman far off)