A Blessed Christmas With God

I have just returned from attending almost 2 1/2 Christmas services this evening since 5 pm to 12:00 pm in two different Churches, my Episcopal Church and the Ecclesia Church. I have never had such an awesome worship of the Lord before. I just can’t enumerate how wonderful the services were. I need to enumerate and capture my joy at experience of God, which I shall do later in another blog entry. Even as I was worshiping I had at least two insights about worship in Christmas. The insights that one gets during worship are awesome because I believe they are inspired by the Spirit of God.

I was at Ecclesia for the 5:00 pm service and as the worship started, I was wondering to myself what this was all about. I was dead tired. I had had just 3:30 hrs of sleep the prior night and I was also a little disappointed with myself that I had to spend Christmas alone, without any family or festivities or Christian friends to spend Christmas with. I had a mild headache as well.  I was completely drained and I thought that this was my worst Christmas ever. So, at the start of worship, this question,  “What it was all really about?” seemed quite pertinent to me. Then like a flash, I realized that this was ALL about Jesus Christ. It was not about me or about how I felt about my sorry lonely drained predicament.  This re-orientation of focus on God who is True, Beautiful and Good gave to me the right Spirit, one which is self-forgetful and God adoring, to really worship God.

The second insight I got happened a little later during worship, I really am not able to remember the context of how a chain of thoughts came about which made me think about Christmas worship. But out of nowhere a thought occurred to me that as I was worshiping God and adoring Jesus Christ, because God was in a timeless world, to Him it would appear that I was along-side the Wise men and the Shepherds worshiping the new born Christ at Bethlehem. That I am 2000 years separated from the event is only a limitation of the reality as I see it. In God’s eyes, my worship is not bound by time and so my worship is happens real-time as Jesus Christ is born. There is not limits to how this thought thrilled me. To realize that my worship of God during Christmas was not just a commemoration of Birth of God, but actually seen by God a real-time worship of Jesus Christ along side the Shepherds and Wise Men, added an entire new dimension to worship. My worship changed from worship commemorative of a past event to real-time worship.

Then I went to my Episcopal Church for the 10:00 pm service. Oh, my gosh!!! It was the best worship ever. The choir’s worship was astounding. I’ll write more on that later. I was sitting there listening to the worship and participating in the worship of God in my Spirit by attributing all the worship by the Choir to God by imagining this Choir to be singing real-time beside the Shepherds and Wise men and I also imagined me standing there real-time alongside the shepherds and wise men, in awe of the most High God being worshiped by the best of human abilities.

As is obvious in my prior blog entries, I have been questioning myself as to why I have been alone during Christmas and why I wasn't spending Christmas with any of my Christian friends in Houston. But looking back, I realize that I was really able to involve myself in an awesome worship only because my mind was free and was not tied up in thinking about other festivities. I remember other Christmases where there have been some festivities which ‘tied’ my mind to the earthly and I wouldn’t be able to really have the ‘abandonment towards God’ during worship.

This Christmas I have been lonely, but the loneliness helped me get closer to God. Though alone, I was with God like I was never before. Yes, as I said in my prior blog entry, I think it is disappointing that I don’t have friends in Houston, to invite me for Christmas, but God turned that into something good. That I had none to spend Christmas with has become a blessing in disguise, in that I was truly able to spend Christmas with God.  I am planning to order some Pizzas and have Christmas lunch with my Hindu and Muslim colleagues who live in my apartments. May God be praised.

A Lonely Christmas - A Sobering Solitude

So here is the third Christmas I am away from family and feeling lonely. My vacation was in the month of February, so I don't get to be with family during Christmas. Yesterday, one of my friends asked me if someone in my Christian friends circle had invited me to spend Christmas with their family. I said no, and that I wasn't bothered that I wasn’t. Today, my father asked me why none, from the many Churches that I went to, had invited me. It was tough to give an answer, the way the question was phrased. I finally said, "Well, folks are busy". My Dad found it incredible that I was not invited at all. That bothered me and got me thinking...

I don't lack Christian friends in Houston. On an average I spend about 10 - 12 hours a week with Churches and Church related fellowships, that is excluding the social events I get invited to by folks in the Christian fellowships. I go to three Churches an Episcopal (which is my mother Church), an Emergent and a non-deonominational, (rarely I also go to an AG church and an Orthodox Church). I enjoy my Church life in Houston. I attend multiple services and multiple small group fellowships in the three Churches. I folks lots of in the small group fellowships who can be called ‘friends’. So I too really find it incredible that I am having to spend Christmas alone devoid of any Christmas festivities.

I can perfectly accept the fact that I haven't been invited by anyone here, because everyone is crazily busy during Christmas. If I were to have a family of my own here and if there was to be a new guy here who did not have a family, and was lonely during Christmas, I too may have been too crazily busy with my own family affairs during Christmas that the thought of inviting him may never have crossed my mind.

Besides, getting invited for Christmas is often a matter of time, chance and matter. When I meet families at Church fellowships, if time, chance and matter were if any help, it would have 'occurred' to them that I would be alone during Christmas, they would have felt like wanting to invite me. But I think, the confluence of time, chance and matter this time wasn't in my favor during this Christmas season. When I met people at Church, it did not ‘occur’ to anyone to even ask what I was up to during Christmas. This just is the way it IS. This isn't anything to regret over.

The reason why I write what I write is not to rant about situations, but to reason with myself as to why I find myself in this predicament. After all, most writing that is done in journals and blogs is an act of reasoning to ones own self to make sense of life.

Apart from the two reasons stated above, I believe there is a third reason which I believe, is essentially the root cause as to why I am having to spend this Christmas alone. I am going to take the longer route to get to this reason. I believe it has to do with how people build relationships in their lives.

There are I believe, at least three types of relationships

1. Acquaintances

2. Friends

3. Caring Relationships

Family and close friends fall under the category of 'caring relationships'. The reason why I believe I haven't been invited by anyone for Christmas , in spite of all the long hours I have clocked in Church fellowships and related social event, may be because I have never really fostered 'caring relationships'. In other words, I don’t have close friends here. I have got lots of friends, singles and families, in Christian circles and lot more acquaintances. There are quite a good number of friends I meet with often, almost weekly. There are two or three who would qualify for fairly close friends whom I meet over lunch or dinner and chat for a couple of hours about life and stuff. But I now begin to doubt if I really have any deeply close friends who really care.

I wonder why this is so, that I don't really have close friends in the US. I wonder if there is something wrong with my personality or with my lifestyle that has prevented me from having deeply close friends in the US. I do not know the answer. By the time I figure out the answer, if at all I figure it out, I believe I would have gone past the sobering phase of my solitary Christmas season.

I believe something good has come out of this hitherto lonely experience, at least in that I now know a little bit more about me and my life and the kind of relationships that I have in he US.

Is he alone he who writes.

Is he alone he who reads.

Reader communes with the Author.

Writer communes with himsef.

But one cannot read all the time,

Neither can one write all the time.

All activities have an end. Good solitude begins.

But when unhealthy, morphs into loneliness.

Why is the sensitive soul lonely?

Why does the lonely soul need

Someone to care about

And to be cared for by someone?

Caring relationship, unlike reading and writing

Has a life of its own which pervades

The realm of activities. And even when all activities stop

The relationship still exists.

When all activities, reading or writing, cease

And the mind cannot be distracted anymore,

The very sense of caring and being cared for

Stands its ground in the calm of the storm of pointless activity.

Christmas in India - A Reminiscent Account

As of this year 2009, I have had to spend the past two Christmases at Houston away from my family. Being nostalgic, I have been reminiscing quite a bit about my childhood Christmases in India. Below is an account of how Christmas in my part of India used to be. I will write a succinct account of festivities within the broader culture, then within the Christian circles, then within the Church and finally within the Christian homes.

First, about the festivities in the broader culture outside of the Christian-circle. Unlike the Christmas in the States, Back in India, we do not have radio stations playing Christmas songs all of December. Neither do we have ‘Happy Holiday’ bill boards or TV ads. Shops don’t have Christmas lights unless the shop is owned by a Christian. Some non-Christian owner will also have lights if he wants his shop to appear cool and trendy to his customers. The Human Resources managers in some Multi-National companies in cosmopolitan cities use the Christmas opportunity to have X’mas parties and spread some cheer among the employees to make them ‘feel good’ about the companies they work for. Of course, who wouldn’t like the Santa and chocolates and gifts. Shops and malls in bigger cities which have huge Multi-National corporations try to catch in on the wave of 'spreading cheer' to - why miss an opportunity to make people feel good and buy more (no rocket science there!).

Now, about the festivities within the Christian circles... When we were kids we lived in a densely populated residential area. During Christmas season, the Church choir will come singing Christmas carols to each of the Christian homes after 10:00 pm. The choir would go on from house to house till 3:00 am in the morning. It is done this way because Jesus was supposedly born at night, secondly because this way they can make sure that there is someone at the house to answer the door. It doesn’t matter if someone looses a little sleep one day a year during Christmas season, after all it is CHRISTMAS. They go knocking on each of the Christian houses and sing a carol song, then receive an 'offering' (contributions of money) and then move on to the next house. They have a Santa and chocolates and huge portable halogen lights… This group does what they do not to spread the Gospel, but to uphold a tradition. No matter what their motives, the kids in the houses really enjoy it. I remember when I and my sister used to be kids, we would hear the carols being sung at some house at the other end of the street and will eagerly wait by the window. And when the carol comes to the house adjacent to ours, our hearts would be thumping. They would come to our house, we would open the door and stand there. Everyone will be looking at us, we will be looking around shyly, the Santa would shake our hands and dance. When the song is over, the Santa would give us chocolates and someone would extend an offering box and my sister or I would place the offering. One year, my sister and I heard Christmas carol choir and we waited by the window, wide awake, but alas just a few houses ahead of ours the choir decided to call it a night. Needless to say, we did 'lose some sleep over it'. :)

On one Christmas season, the Hindu lady adjacent to our house told us that she too would like for the Santa and the Carol Choir to come to her house, but that it never happened. My mother being the creative enterprising lady she was, had an idea. She asked me to get all the kids in the homes on the street our house was on, Christian and non-Christian. There were like 15 of us. We got one of the taller non-Christian kids to wear my mother’s red night robe and we had a Santa mask that came handy. We tied a pillow around the belly under the robe so that the Santa looked fat enough. My mother gave us chocolates and told us to go to all the non-Christian homes in our street to sing carols. We were to give chocolates, but not collect offering. I can’t forget how the Hindus living on in the houses on our street were overjoyed. I can’t forget that night. Of course, we were sensible enough, we started at 7:00 pm and were done by 9:00 pm.

The 'tradition upholding' Christian carol group apart there are some truly ‘compassionate’ Christian carol groups that, instead of going to Christian homes to collect 'offering', go to poor villages in the 'suburbs' and sing Carols in each of the non-Christian homes. They don’t take offering. They in true spirit of Christmas give gifts to the poor people. As a child, going for Christmas carols around the poor villages were awesome experiences.

Then there are some committed Christians who’ll have a Christmas party at their house or at a party hall and invite their non-Christian friends. They would invite a Christian speaker to share the gospel so that the Hindus will have a chance to listen to the gospel at the excuse of the party. In fact, the Christians in my company at India had one such party, you can see the photos here http://picasaweb.google.com.hk/wilsonjust/EkkattuthangalPrayerFellowshipChristmasCelebration?feat=email. It was conducted in a Church near our company. The ones sitting in the pews are Hindus, you’ll notice that some women wear the 'kunkum' on their foreheads (If fact, it is based on this Hindu tradition of wearing the 'kunkum on the foreheads that the phrase 'dotted India' came about, as against the 'feathered India... if this makes no sense, never mind). :)

Then there are the Church festivities in the Church.  Most Christmas services aren’t Christmas eve services (as in the States), the Indian Christmas service starts at 4:30 am on the Christmas morning. The tradition being that Christ was born early in the morning, so we too have to be in Church early in the morning (if you are keeping count by now two nights of sleep is gone in the Christmas season :P). Anyways all those inconvenient traditions that bring meaning to life! :D

Churches have massive decorations, lights all around, along the edges of every wall,  along the ridges of every section of the roof, all the way up to the Church spire. Some Churches have huge lighted stars hanging all along the way from the residential areas to the Church. As people go to the Church, it is symbolic of the Magi following the star. Every Christian house would have a huge lighted star hanging in front. In fact, you can walk into any street and count the stars and you'll know the number of Christian homes in the street. The starts are generally huge colored paper stars with light bulbs within that make the star glow brightly at nights. Of course, there were were rivalries and jealousy among kids as to whose star looked the best!

All Indian Christians wear a new dress for Church on Christmas day. During Christmas service, the amount of gold the Indian ladies wear to Church would be more than any Bank would have in its lockers. Of course, in some sensitive areas there is police protection as well. Church service would get over by 6:00 am.

Then there are the festivities within the Christian homes. Of everything else, it is these festivities at my home are the ones that I miss the most. :( On Christmas day, as soon as we come home from Church, 6am-ish, we would have a brief family prayer. As soon as this was over, at about 7:00 pm, my sister and I, when we were kids, would run to the street to burst fireworks (crackers). In India, we did not have to get city permission for fireworks. Like folks in the US have ‘gun rights’, Indians have ‘firework rights’.

A HUGE part of the festivities of Christmas rested on my mother's shoulders because the most important part of Christmas festivities would be sharing delicacies with non-Christians. My mom would have started planning for Christmas meal, the 'Biriyani', more than a week prior to Christmas. ‘Biriyani’ is a South Indian delicacy that is very rich in spices and tastes great to the South Indian pallet and it takes lots of preparation and a lot more patience. On Christmas day we would give Biriyani and Christmas cake to the non-Christian homes in our neighborhood and those not in our neighbourhood. My mother would prepare Biriyani in a 10 gallon cooking basin. We would hire a handmaid in addition to the full-time house-help to assist my mom with the cooking for this occasion.

Remember, before we went on this detour about the details of cooking, my sister and I were playing with fireworks starting 7:00 am. Of course, there would be friendly rivalries and jealousies among kids about who had the best collection of fireworks. Kids!!! Well, at about 11:00 am, my mother would call us and give us parcels of food to go and give to the non-Christian homes. My sister and I run to each of the houses nearby, to give food, the sooner this was done, the sooner we would get to have our Christmas lunch.  In fact, the non-Christians would be eagerly awaiting for my mother’s special Christmas Biriyani. I loved this part of my contribution to Christmas festivities, because it was the simplest, and more importantly because it was more rewarding, I got to see the happy faces of people. So by the time we are done with this it would almost by 2:00 pm. Then we would have the most tasty meal of the year. I would patiently eat for about an hour. Then have a peaceful sleep until evening. Christmas would be done. :D

I miss those good ole days… so much that I cannot help but make a cheesy attempt at writing poetry.

Oh, the irony of life that when Good times pass-by

We know them to be 'Good' only after they have past us by.

But the gift of life are the sweet memories
Of the reminiscences of the Good.

Ironies of 'This Life' point to the Truths of the Next.

Past-taste of Good times gone by is the irony.
Past-tastes of the Good times, in Truth,

Are Fore-tastes of the Next Life!

For all things Good are subject under Christ,

After He ushered in a new Kingdom, at the first Christmas.

And every Christmas since endeavors to be a celebration of all things Good
In the Culture at large, in the Church and at the Homes of Christians!

Avatar (pseudo)Spirituality - A Need for True Spirituality

I see Avatar as a spiritual fiction as against some who might see it as science fiction. The essence of the movie is the battle between a race that resorts to technological solutions and one that resorts to spiritual solutions for their problems. It is not surprising that in Avatar, the spiritual ones come over the top at the end, after all 'avatar' is a religious word.

In Sanskrit the religious text of the Hindu religion, 'avatar' means incarnation. I am not surprised that Christians who see the movie see similarites between Jake in Avatar and the incarnation of Christ. Jake, the protogonist, enters the Navi world with a human mind and a Navi body and eventually redeems the Navi from being wiped off by the human race.

If we look at the movie in its entierity, the 'Avatar' is more reflective of the Hindu mythology than Christian theology. Hinduism has many Gods, good ones and bad ones. Then there is the God of Gods who is the impersonal reality called the Brahman who keeps the balance and sustains life. The 'Avatar' God Mother, Eywa, is a feminine characterization of Brahman in Hinduism. When Jake goes to the trees and prays to the Navi God Mother to help him in the battle, Neytri tells him that the God Mother does not take sides and that she is not concerned about individuals, she is responsible to maintaining the balance of life.

There are three ideas here
1. God does not take sides.
2. God is not concerned about individuals.
3. God cares only for the balance of life.

The first idea implies that there is no distinction betwee the good and bad for a God to take sides. This is true in Hindu mythology. Brahman the God of Gods is the source of all of life, both the good and the bad. This is a complete contradition to the God of the Bible.

The second idea implies that the Navi God is as impersonal as is Brahman. The very fact that Godhead is co-equal trinity belies the extent to which God can't help being personal. Of the 100 sheep, even if He looses one, He goes in search of it because He cares for individuals.

The third idea flowing out of the second and implies that the Naiv God is at best a force, at worst just an idea about reality. Brahman, as per Hindu mythology is the impersonal reality out of which all thing flow and that which also holds things together. The Bible does say that all things in life are held together by the Word of God, but this just a very small part of who the God of the Bible is is, whereas with Brahman, to hold the world is balance is ALL of what/who it/he is.

As Neyetri tells Jake in Avatar, there is no use praying to God. If God is an impersonal reality, then prayer becomes ponitless, one can only meditate. It is in this vein that when someone supposedly asked Paul Tillich, "Would you pray when you die?", he replied, "No, I do not pray. I meditate".

That a science fiction thriller is actually a spiritual fiction, belies the need for the modern techno-crazed generation for spirituality. But the spirituality of 'Avatar' is a psuedo-spirituality that makes one aware of God, but does not lead one to God. As much as I feel encouraged when I see movies acknowledge the spiritual, I feel saddened when the spirituality acknowledged is a pseudo-spirituality.

In Avatar, spirituality is just portrayed as the acknowledgement of an alternate reality. Period. Noting more. This caricatured view of spirituality is not even like seeing one half of the coin, it is perhaps like seeing the coin in a parallel line of sight, that it appears as a slender metal stick. What saddens me is that a person who sees the bankruptcy in technology and tries a pseudo-spirituality of this kind will find this too to be as bankrupt. Because in the spirituality where the god does not care for the individual, there is no individuality that affirms the existence of the individual. In that world view, even if a person commits suicide, noting is gained or lost. After all, this god who is just the representation of an alternate reality that we dont normally see is silent, it has not answers. It just IS.

On the other hand, true spirituality is not about alternative realities, but about a personal supernatural reality. This spirituality points to a God who is a person and so He needs to talk. He needs to give us answers. He needs for us to enjoy having a relationship with Him through which restores us back to our individuality, that our deeper needs of life are catered to in this regenerative process is just another add on.

This generation does not need movies that falsely exalt pseudo-spirituality. We need movies that truly exemplify true spirituality. We need Christians who can use their God given ability for imagination and art to depict true spirituality through great arts.

Avatar - Spirit Fiction

Watching James Cameroon’s ‘Avatar’ in an I-max theatre was an astounding visual treat. The landscape and the jungles of the new planet, Pandora, were so exotically beautiful that I heard myself saying, “Oh my God, this is heaven”. If heaven were to be as overwhelming as this, then I would gladly exchange my earthly life for the heavenly one. In fact, at the end of the movie that is exactly what happens to the protagonist of the movie, Jake.

That being said, I should state that ‘Avatar’ is closer to ‘Jurassic Park’ than to ‘Matrix’ or ‘Lord of the Rings’ in that it is more of a visual treat but hasn’t much of a storyline or an engaging script. So, past the 45 minute mark, by which time my eyes and optic neural network had gotten used to the novelty, it became more of a visual chore to endure the rest of the 2 and a half hours of cartoonish flamboyance. In fact, my colleague who sitting next to me leaned across and asked me if I my eyes were getting strained, his were and he was getting a headache.

There was something about the movie beyond the 45 minutes which kept me engaged. It was the realization that at some level, the movie was about a struggle between technology and spirituality. The whole plot revolved around an interesting kind of biological-spiritual mystery in Pandora which the non-spiritual but technologically superior human beings struggle to contend with. As I think back about the movie, there are a couple of lines I can recall which, I think, give us little glimpses the Navi world view. One, “I see (into) you”. Two, “I realized that I had it backwards, I wasn’t sure what was the dream and what was real”. Before these lines are explored, a brief background is due.

Humans want a rare mineral that the planet Pandora has. Navis, Pandora’s humanoid natives are extremely strong, blue bodied, arrow shooting, technologically primitive, spiritually mature nature lovers who whisper a prayer even if it is to kill an animal that they want to eat. They have no wish to trade their Mother nature’s mineral wealth with anyone. If there were to be military confrontation over the minerals, the primitive inhabitants of this exotic planet would get wiped out by human technological superiority. But the Navis have something special, their biological ability to ‘bond’ with the spiritual realm around them. Humans wanting to be politically correct, don’t want to destroy the inhabitants, but still want the mineral. To find a way to get the minerals, human kind has to understand the Navis. So they send in an ‘Avatar’ – a dream walker, Jake, who is actually a live human being’s brain activity harmonized into a cloned Navi body who can go, live with Navis as one of them, study them and give enough information back to the humans to help them decide on the course of action to get the mineral. Jake enters this community with his human brain and Navi body and in an attempt to win their trust, plugs into the spiritual realm and gets to experience the Navi spiritual harmony.

Now, let us explore “I see (into) you”. When Jake is being trained by scientist to understand the Navi world view, he tells him, “if someone tells you ‘I see you’, they actually mean, ‘I see (into) you’”. They don’t see just the person. They see ‘into’ the person’s connectedness with the spiritual realm. In other words, the spiritual realm is a part of what they can sense. The biology of the Navis and other organisms in the Pandora is capable of connecting with the spiritual. In fact, Jake survives only because of a spiritual intervention early on. Just as a Navi arrow is about to be shot at him, the shooter senses that the Spirit Mother does not want him dead.

As Jake, in his 'Avatar' role, goes back and forth between the two worlds, one where he is the earthling and the other as where he is the 'dream walker', he recounts, “I realized that I had it backwards, I wasn’t sure anymore what was the dream and what was real”. As Jake gets more and more plugged into the spiritual realm, he begins to wonder which of the two worlds is the real one. The one which is entirely non-spiritual? Or the one in which there is a harmony between the material and the spiritual? As the movies goes on, human kind decides to resort to the military solution and Jake has to decide which side he would be on. He knows that the Navi tribes cannot stand the military might of the humans, but having already ‘tasted’ the new spiritual realities and having found his sweet heart, Neytiri, he sides with the Navis and spiritually metamorphosises to becomes to the Navis what Neo is to Zion in Matrix, the One. It is at this point that Avatar's Trinity, Neytiri says, "I SEE you".

I SEE Avatar as being closer to spiritual fiction than science fiction. I believe that James Cameroon is hinting at a clash of worldviews - technological superiority VS spiritual harmony. I see this movie as a reaction against the modern trend among human kind of considering technology to be having superior redemptive powers. The modern man yearns for the ability of technology to titillate him through the TV and he pursues the ability of technology to give him powers that he is physically incapable of. The more he uses technology to have his way, the more his biology gets conditioned to being estranged from the spiritual realm that beckons him.

This techno-crazed generation, no matter how they would intellectually discredit the spiritual realm, they cannot help viscerally yearning for the spiritual. The yearning that isn't satisfied in the pseudo techno-solutions in real life, gets catered to in the realm of arts and movies through such spiritual fictions. James Cameroon true to his genius, the mundane storyline and insipid script notwithstanding, has captured in ‘Avatar’, the techno-spiritual dilemma of this modern materialistic age. I would suspect that this could probably start a new genre of spiritual fictions which may even usurp pure science fiction all together.

Strange Mercies of the Giver of Givers

The ‘little drummer boy’ song is one of my favorite songs of Christmas time for two reasons. One, when I was a little kid, my mother taught me the meaning of the song. Two, the meaning of the song has been so ingrained in me that every time I sing it, it evokes in me the tenderest sentiments. Yes, sentiments are good, even when they are directed at God, for He created in us the ability to be sentimental.

My mother explained the song to me as follows… “When Jesus was born, great kings came and brought great gifts to the new born King. Even the shepherds brought sheep and everyone had something to GIVE. A little boy like you was standing there watching Kings on camels and shepherds with sheep. He was so sad because he had NOTHING to gift the sweetest little infant he had ever seen. He did not know what he could do. Suddenly, he had an idea. He was a drummer. He told himself that he was going to play the drum for Mary’s little boy. He told himself that he was going to play his BEST for Him. He played the best for Him and the little boy Jesus smiled at him.” Christmas is about making God smile by giving Him the best we have. Fallen beings as we are, it is indeed a ‘strange mercy’ that God should smile at what we can give Him.

Back in those days when India was still under colonial occupation, British missionaries supposedly, were frequenting the Hindu holy places to understand the Hinduism in order to find the right context to preach the good news. In India, there is a story of a British missionary who met a Hindu lady at the banks of the holy river Ganges. The lady walked up to the river with two of her little sons, one was partially lame the other was healthy. After a while, she came back with only the partially lame son. The British missionary had asked her why the other son was missing. She replied that she had sacrificed him to the gods. Aghast, the British missionary supposedly asked, “If you had to sacrifice a son, why did you not sacrifice the partially lame one”. She apparently replied, “I do not know about your gods, but to our gods we always give our Best”. The British missionary was FLOORED.

A Christian friend posted in Face book, “Christmas is not about spending all our money on gifts to make others happy and then we are miserable and broke the day after Christmas. Christmas is about focusing on the One who requires us to PAY NOTHING to live a life of abundance all year long. CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT CHRIST”.

Yes, I agree that we don’t need to go financially broke during Christmas by giving gifts to people for whom gifts hardly add any value to life other than creating a momentary ‘feel good’ sensation. Christmas is NOT about how good it makes us feel, it is about Christ. It is about doing things that make Him smile. But, I disagree in that we need to PAY NOTHING to make God smile. Christ is costly, for one, He requires of us a broken heart and a contrite spirit. God never comes cheap, He does come easy, but never cheap. I think one of the problems with contemporary Church is that it has made Christianity cheap and God cheaper. Historically, religion has always been a costly affair, followers of all religions have had to pay a heavy prize. Early Christians and Church fathers paid a heavy price. But the advent of post 21^th century evangelical Christianity changed that, Christianity was made priceless in that it was made completely free. Martin Luther’s idea of ‘free provident grace’ has somehow mistakenly morphed into an idea of ‘free’ feel-good-God. It is in this context that C.S. Lewis said, “Catholicism is accused of resembling the pagan religions, but the problem with Protestantism is that it resembles no religion at all”.

Contemporary Christianity, especially during the Christmas season, has to make a ‘U-turn’ away from the ‘free’ feel-good-Christianity and ‘commercial’ spread-the-cheer-Christmas and return back to its roots of sacrificial, discerned and compassionate giving that pleases the Lord and makes Him smile. The ‘strange mercy’ of God is that even though everything that we have is already His, He makes it possible for us to give Him what is ours, by giving to the little ones around us.

The wise men expended their brilliance in seeking the King

The shepherds gifted the choicest sheep to the Prince of Peace

The little boy drummed his best for little Jesus

Even the reindeer rendered to St. Nicolas the services of his red nose

What about me? What have I to give?

To commemorate Godhead’s affirmation of human dignity

By the GIVING of the One for a broken and a lost,
Fully restoring true humanity back to humanity.

What about me? What can I give? How can I make the Mediator smile?

Oh, the strange mercy of God, that restores me to fullness and light

That I may give to the broken and the lost, and make the Heavens smile,

Reflecting in me, the true humanity - the Image of the Giver of Givers.

To My Greyhound Aquaintances :)

Last week, when I was riding the Grey Hound from Dallas to Houston, adjacent to me there were a couple of Muslim ladies who were arguing with Christian guy about religion. I felt an urge to even out the numbers and couldn’t help stepping in to join the debate.

There was a point during the debate when I said that the Quran gave a very unique place to Jesus by claiming that He was sinless and that his birth was of a virgin womb. The ladies did not know which verse I was talking about so I told them that I would post the verse I was talking about in this blog for them to read. My initial, impulsive thought was to get their email ids and send the ids to them, but then I realized that sharing emails was a very imprudent idea. So here, I am writing this blog to let them know the verse from Quran I was quoting. I gave them this blog address. I hope they would check this sometime.

Below is the verse.

And make mention of Mary in the Scripture, when she had withdrawn from her people to a chamber looking East, and had chosen seclusion from them. Then We sent unto her Our spirit and it assumed for her the likeness of a perfect man. She said: Lo! I seek refuge in the Beneficent One from thee, if thou art God-fearing. He said: I am only a messenger from thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a FAULTLESS son. She said: How can I have a son when NO MORTAL HATH TOUCHED ME, NEITHER HAVE I BEEN UNCHASTE? He said: So it will be. Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me. And it will be that We may make of him a revelation for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained. And she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a far place. Surah 19:16-22.

My point was this. Quran states that God alone is faultless. Quran says that Jesus is Faultless. So Jesus has to be God. I don’t think even the Prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him) has claimed to be faultless.

I enjoyed the debate. One of the ladies was a Christian who converted to Islam 3 years ago. Her problem with Christianity she said was the it was too vague and did not give her answers. The trigger to her abandoning Christianity was the lack of love in the life of a committed Christian who was close to her. It is understandable, after all, it is human nature that the ‘followers’ of a religion abuse it. On the other hand, it is human nature that ‘spectators’ of a religion should be disgruntled with religion because weakness exhibited by those that are religious.

As in any game, it is easy to be a ‘spectator’, it is difficult to actually be playing the game. I am reminded of what G.K. Chesterton said, “Christianity wasn’t tried and found wanting, but it has been found difficult and left untried”.  It is not an easy thing to be a Christian. There aren’t a set of rules that one can follow to claim to be a good Christian.

In fact one of the primary objection of the other lady who was a born Muslim was that Christianity seemed to make salvation too simple. All one had to do she believed was to just believe that Jesus died for everyone sin and then that gives Christians a ‘ticket’ to Heaven. If only Christianity has been that simple, then even the Devil would become a Christian. Christians of this centaury in trying to make Christianity appealing to people of other religions mistakenly portray it as a simple and cheap ‘belief system’.

The essence of the Christian message isn’t just about a ‘belief’ in some Truth, but in a REGENERATION of the heart which turns from the old ways of life to become holy reflecting God’s holiness. Goodness may be attained by doing good works, but holiness cannot be attained by doing good works. Holiness is not about works, but it is about the fundamental nature of the person. Holiness is not a state of not doing something wrong, it is a state of not ever having an inclination to do anything wrong. Holiness of this kind is state of being which is required us to have communion with God. The Christian idea of this regeneration of the heart is about attaining holiness, the purpose of holiness is to make it possible for us to be able to have a relationship with God whose nature is to be holy. The purpose of having a relationship with God is to glorify God. Because of these reasons, Christianity is not about a set of rules or procedures. It is a lot more, it is about maintaining a relationship, something that man finds very difficult to do. To follow a rule is very easy, to be in a relationship is a lot more difficult. Hence Christianity is a lot more difficult than it appears. It is precisely because of this reason why it is a lot more fulfilling a well, because a relationship is more fulfilling than a ‘rule’. On the other hand, it is also because of the relationship aspect of Christianity that some people leave it untried.

The lady also thought that Christians imagining up the idea of the ‘Trinity’ was non-sensical. Yes, it is true that Christians imagined-up the word ‘Trinity’, but to relegate it as non-sense is to completely misunderstand what trinity means. Trinity is the word the Christians use to describe the multiple facets of Godhead. There are better Christians that I who have written about what trinity means, any true inquirer of Truth can understand the idea of a Trinitarian God for what it means, after all the word ‘Trinitarian’ is an adjective that helps understand the ‘paradox’ that is evident in the Godhead.

She also said that the Bible was inconsistent with itself. For example, she said, “ if God was God that He wouldn’t have had to ask Adam where he was hiding?”. I think the answer is this, if a father were to talk to a his kid with the intellectual prowess, then the whole point of talking to the kid is lost. If God were to use all of his omniscience in his conversations with His prophets, then the point of conversation would be lost completely, it would be like God talking only to Himself. When God talks with man, He has to come down to the level of man to talk to him.

Looking back at the debate I had, I am having a renewed understanding of the scriptures and human nature. I realize how easy it is to comment about what appears wrong and inconsistent about the other person’s scriptures by taking a few verses, out of the context, and then posing questions which simply belie a complete misunderstanding of the history, the culture and the intent with which the Scriptures were written.

Christian experts and Islamic experts have been debating with each other about inconsistencies in each other’s scriptures. So what does a person do? What does a person believe in? Does one believe in the Christian experts who say that the Bible is true? Or the Islamic experts that the Quran is true? I don’t think both can be true, only one has to be the truth. How can one get to Truth?

I believe that Truth can only be revealed by God, no man can reveal Truth to anyone else (though men can talk about truth to each other). There is no Truth apart from God. So to reveal Truth God has to reveal Himself to man. I believe that He reveals Himself to any man or woman who is ‘truly’ seeking the Truth. That person will get closer to God.

Meditations on the Salute of the Snob

A few days ago, I was at the 'Wings over Houston' air show where diverse range of aero planes from the ones used in WWII to F16s performed breathtaking acrobatics ranging from spectacular reenactments of some classic WWII battles to a lady doing some really scary wing walking.

By far, the best performance of the day, to me, was that of a F15 which was piloted by two US air-force pilots. Its diamond shape, sharp nose, flame tail and the roar of the revving engines captivated the audience in a trance. The aesthetically shaped shining mass of grey metal roaring its way 3 miles into the atmosphere and then traversing the space over the airfields at reckless speeds and daunting maneuvers with class of its own, was a beauty to behold. As I was mesmerized by this spectacle, the word that kept non-volitionally popping into my mind was, 'elegance'. I kept whispering to myself 'elegance'... 'elegance'... ‘pure elegance’...

The audience was caught up on a 'state of transcendence' during the 10 minutes of mind boggling air acrobatics and the sheer aesthetic beauty of the F15. Among the audience, I saw two guys a little farther with the tough-guy-demeanor… bushy moustache, a goatee that emphasized the constant smirk, arms crossed across the chest, denim and boots. They appeared to represent the kind, whose face is permanently set into a sneer, expressing a cynicism at everything around them. But as the F15, snooped down over the crowd to bid its final 'adieu', the tough guys did something unexpected, they looked at each other and seemed to say 'let do it' and then when the F15 passed over us, close above our heads, the couplet did a salute!!!

It was glorious to watch the massive machine doing some super natural feats fly so close to our heads. In fact, the salute was the 'ordinate' response to such an experience. They weren't just saluting the F15, because the glory did not belong just to the piece of metal called the F15 or the pilots, the glory of the experience belonged to the invisible 'spirit' of human creativity which envisioned and built such a machine that would with elegance, defy ubiquitous laws of nature, which has bound mankind for many millennia. I couldn’t say which of the two spectacles intrigued me more, the elegant F15 and its spectacular feats or the tough guys’ salute at the experience of glory.

As I was thinking about this, my mind digressed into thinking about another class of intellectual ‘tough guys’ who are the true cynics. They call themselves skeptics and wear an expression of a perpetual sneer. I think that the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hutchins fall under this category. I suspect that they would give a free-pass to or even be appreciative of these tough guys who salute the 'invisible' human-spirit that created such a marvel, after all the salute is a sign of gratitude to the sublime human spirit. On the other hand, if these intellectual skeptics were to see a man that were to go down on his knees marveling at the 'invisible' Spirit of God whose creativity is seen in the starry hosts of the heavens and the universe within the atoms, these intellectuals 'materialists' would pounce on them calling them disillusioned mentally retarded religious bigots.

My point is that the materialists who claim that sane men cannot worship something they cannot ‘see’, constantly keep worshiping things that aren't 'materially' seeable. They worship the 'laws of logic and reason', which they use in their arguments against God though none on earth can 'see' the laws of logic. The laws of logic is an 'immaterial reality' as is the ideal of the human spirit or for that matter, the Spirit of God.

Yesterday, in President Obama's speech in the State Dinner in the honor of the Indian Prime Minister, he said, "there are two things that are most beautiful in life, the starry hosts above and the sense of duty within the human heart". I have seen a part of the starry hosts. I have never 'seen' the sense of duty. I may have seen the manifestations of the ‘sense of duty’, but that is not ‘seeing’ the sense of duty itself, after all most people may do things because of the sense of fear rather than duty. Nevertheless, none can ‘see’ it precisely is because it is a 'sense'. If it can been ‘materially seen’ in a test tube, it can no longer be called a ‘sense of duty’, neither would it likely be ‘called’ beautiful.

The cynics of the kind we are talking about do not discount the universal sense of duty in the heart of man, even though they cannot ‘see’ it, but they discount the sense of God within the heart of man. In suspect that, empirically speaking, the 'sense of God' in the hearts of men would be more prevalent among men than the 'sense of duty' in the heart of man.

I find it surprising that the cynics wouldn't discount one ‘sense’ but would disparage the other. This is outright hypocrisy. We may wonder what motivates these intellectual heavy weights to be hypocritical, after all if there is a crime there has to be a motive. What would that motive be? I suspect that the reason why they do not discount the validity of the ‘sense of duty’ is because they don't see the sense of duty as directly implying the presence of a superior personality outside or above them. But the sense of God, if it is acknowledged as genuine, would imply an acknowledgement of a superior personality above.

I am remained of the progenitor of these Anti-Christian cynics, Aldous Huxley, who perhaps was a better cynic than the contemporary ones, as he directed some of his cynicism at himself as well. He said, "I do not believe in a God, not because there isn't enough evidence for a God, but because I do not want a God to be there… (because that would imply that there truly is a standard morality and I need to adhere to it)".

The class of cynics who do not want a superior authority to be there, rile against those who believe in a superior authority, just because they want to live lives their own way, without any encumbrances from any superior being. Their tirade against God has nothing to do with God being invisible, even if God were visible, they would explain Him off with a new scientific theory, no matter how untenable it sounds. Their need to rile against God and all those who are on His side has everything to do with the spirit of rebellion in every man that does not like to be truly grateful and consequently humble towards anyone else other than self. What starts as gratitude would impel a person to be humble and would help the person to salute or go down on his knees at the experience of glory.

The lesson to Christians in this is that if the Christians were to be yield to the downward tug of the 'fallen' human nature to not be grateful to anyone else other than self, then they too would end up in the class of the cynics who sneer at everything good around them. So in this Thanks giving season, as we move towards Christmas, let us take time to be grateful to the invisible yet pervasive God who is 'there'.

Why don’t we have Doggish Horses?

Anyone who knows me will know that I seldom miss an oppertunity to ride a horse. I have had quite a number of dates with horses. The last one of them really went bad when the horse, when it was galloping down a hilly slope at about 50 miles an hour,  suddenly decided that it had had enough of me and unloaded me to crash down my right shoulders leaving me with a scary, and in a strange way, a cherished, remembrance of that affair.

Some of my friends at the Camp Allen retreat took to horse riding. For one of them, it was her first ride on a horse. She told me that she constantly was speaking to the horse and patting him. I understand why she had to talk to the horse, because I have done it myself. I talk to the horse and keep patting them when I ride them precisely because a horse is not a dog. This may seem confusing. But let me explain, unlike the dog, the horse seldom comes off as a lovable being. It takes more effort to befriend a horse than a dog.

Whenever I get on a horse, I am often apprehensive that the horse wouldn’t be friendly to me and would want to do something bad to me - like bite off my hand or throw me off when going down a hill. So I, in speaking to the horse and patting him, try to placate him and make him feel loved so that he would be predisposed to be friendly towards me. But with the dog, I don’t have to do all of this, the dog is such a lovable and friendly creature. The moment I get close to him, his eyes brighten, he walks towards me, smells me, touches me with is wet nose, licks me, wags his tail. With the horse, I get a disinterested glance, then a indifferent snort and a dismissive wag of the tail.

Oh, my dates with horses would be a lot better if only the horses had the spirit of the dogs. If only there was a doggish horse, I would devote all of my life to maintaining a stable of horses and be happy and content with my life. But no there is no doggish horse anywhere in the world… Sad.

This got me wondering... I wondered why God did not have this brilliant idea of making a doggish horse? Why didn’t he give the horse the heart of a dog? This got me thinking…

In life, one's expectations are full of such ‘wish creations’. I have a friend who is a movie lover. I have another friend who is a book lover. I dream of having a friend who is a bookish movie lover. But no that friend isn’t to be. Why does God not give me such friends? After all, if I had such a friend, I wouldn't need any other friends… oops! Perhaps, God knows this, that is why He did not give me a bookish movie lover for a friend, because I would be 'dangerously' too content with him and wouldn't seek other friendships.

A man has a mother, he has a wife, but then he wishes he had a motherly wife – a wife who embodies the unconditional affirmation of a mother along with the passionate love she has as a wife. No, God hasn’t created that genre. Perhaps, this is because if a husband has such a person, he may be too 'dangerously' content in this worldly soul-mate and may not want to pursue and seek solace in his heavenly Soul-mate (God Himself). Likewise, a wife may dream of a fatherly husband but would never get such a man, because if she got hold of such a man, she may be too busy pleasing her earthly fatherly husband not have any energy to expend herself in pleasing her heavenly Father and eternal Husband.

God hasn’t created doggish horses for a good reason. But He has created dogs and horses so that we would be discontented with ‘just dogs’ and ‘just horses’ and would seek to find the non-existent doggish-horses and in the process of ‘seeking’ would ‘find’ our contentment in Him who is the embodiment of all that is real, perfect and beautiful in life. God wants to use life experience to keep from getting 'dangerously' contented with the million trivialities of life, so that we would be impelled to find our contentment in Him who is the Father and Husband and Friend and Master and Prophet and King and Priest and inexplicably, the Sinner to walked up the gallows on my stead.

The purpose of all of life from dogs to horses to books to movies is to glorify God - to glorify God by using all of this 'means of discontentment' and thereby to draw us to Himself. After all, one day we would indeed have doggish horses, that would be the day when the children play with snakes and lambs would lay beside lions, when we live in the new Heavens where God is at the centre and would be supremely glorified.

Crushing the Accursed Loneliness

Leaving the warm room, sparkling wine and lively chatter

I walk into the dead cold of the night.

Wanting to feel the soul, wanting to feel the intensity, I embrace loneliness

An accursed loneliness, even the gods despair of

A loneliness that hates loneliness

A loneliness that seeks a friend.

Not just a friend, but an intense Friend who touches the soul.

I peer into the mysterious heaviness about the dark woods

I wait for a friend to emerge. Not a twig moved.

I look up at the tree, an enormous being, so full of life.

Implore Him to talk to me.

He is silent as the dead dark night.

I walk back to my room, alone, through the dense night

Lo, was the Lover, the Groom waiting for His wayward Bride.

A Bride that sought, to no avail, in the frivolous and the mysterious

An eternal intensity to nourish her soul.

An intensity that is imbibed, only by Him who
Transcends space-time, and touches the soul.

That touches the soul, as the Bride is impregnated with the Spirit of the Groom
As He crushes with the heel of His feet, the accursed loneliness of being.

A weekend with ‘C.S.Lewis and Friends’

At the start of last week, I updated my facebook status to say ‘…a weekend with C.S. Lewis and Friends’. Now, again, as I title my blog ‘A weekend with C.S. Lewis and Friends’, I realize that over the course of last weekend, my understanding of the meaning of the word ‘friend’ has grown deeper. The profound experiences of life are the ones that help us understand the deeper meaning of words which we often blithely use. For example, a guy will not really understand the meaning of ‘falling’ in love unless he has ‘fallen’ in love with a girl. It is when a loved one dies that one gets to understand the meaning of the word ‘death’. Over the course of the weekend at Camp Allen with the singles Fusion Fellowship of SJD, Andrew Lazo’s special emphasis on friendship during his exposition of C.S. Lewis’ “Four Loves” was, I think, one such experience that helped me have a renewed and a deeper understanding of the word ‘Friendship’. In fact, today, when I was typing an email to one of my ‘friends’, I stopped for a moment to ask myself if my email was an ‘ordinate’ response to the ‘friendship’ we shared. 

Having been inspired to think about love over the course of this week, I realize that the love that really intrigues me is 'Need Love'. Need love is the love that people have because the love satisfies a need of theirs. When Shakesphere said 'love loves love', I think he was essentially talking about need love. It is a love where love just 'needs' the feeling of love. This love does not necessarily, selflessly, seek a person to love. Some men idealize this kind of need love, some demonize it. But I think that a man who neither idealized nor demonizes but understands need love for what it is, will be a good lover.

Without this need love, a man and a woman may never risk passionately falling in love with each other. The ‘first love’ (which is 7 parts need love, 2 parts gift love, 1 part appreciative love) is that spark that causes a man and a woman to fall in love. But this ‘need’ soaked ‘first love’ which causes the couple to fall in love, dies soon. Then out of the ashes of this ‘love death’, resurrects Agape (selfless love). Need love is the ‘severe mercy’ of God that helps man attain higher forms of selfless love. As Lewis often says, 'the higher does not stand without the lower'. No love reaches its noble selfless supremacy which has not started off as a need love in some form.

Even as man approaches God, it is need love that propels him to God. If a man were to think that his love for God is not propelled by his need for God but by of his supreme selfless love for God, he is probably deceiving himself as the Pharisee was deceiving himself at the altar. Whereas, the tax collector confesses his 'need’ for God’s mercy and was loved by God. Though need love is good to a certain extent, need love lasts only as long as the need lasts, so it is not supremely good. But still, God does allow us to start off with need love, then He uses the tricks of nature (the delicate balance of providing contentment and discontentment) to nudge us away from need love towards the Agape love. Thus work’s God’s severe mercy. The fallen man, to attempt to imitate Agape, has to go through the humility of a helpless, and may be even hopeless, ‘need love’. Any man who tries to idealize need love or demonize it, is bound to remain an inane lover all his life.

On a different note, I realize that there was something about the weekend at Camp Allen which rejuvenated my creative energies. I got to write loads for my journal, which was not surprising. But what really surprised me was that, the sporadic, reluctant and mediocre poet that I am, I managed to pen two poems over the weekend. Looking back, I wonder what it was about the Camp Allen retreat that fostered creativity.

I think the answer is that in Camp Allen, one gets to enjoy the natural ‘real pleasures of life’. There was no television neither did I get to browse the virtual world. I did not write in anyone’s walls either. I lived with real people in the real world. I looked at the grey skies, walked the brown earth, breathed into the cold wet air, felt the chilling drizzle, touched the grazing horses, watched the embers in the camp fire die down into the midnight listening to Andrew’s narrations of C.S. Lewis writings, after midnight wandered about the misty nights, fellowshipped with those who loved the Lord and above all, worshiped God.

I think all of these experiences fall under the category of what C.S. Lewis calls, the ‘real pleasures’ of life. In ‘Screw Tape Letters’, the (Devil) uncle instructs Wormwood (the trainee devil) to keep his target, the Christian man, busy with the frivolous pleasures of life, away from the heavier ‘real pleasures’. He says that this nudging of the Christian man away, from the ‘real pleasures’ of life would keep the Christian away from that which is 'real' in life and consequently away from the ‘real’ God as well. Looking back, I am not surprised that the dose of the natural ‘real pleasures’ of life revived in me a fecundity, the source of which is the 'real' God.

Before I started off for the retreat, a Hindu colleague asked me what the seminar on the book was about. I had read “Four Loves” earlier, I remembered some philosophic ideas from the book and explained to him what the book was about, but it made little existential sense to him. My words were perhaps a little too removed from the reality of how stuff happens in life. But during the seminar, Andrew Lazo’s real life ‘blood-letting’ changed that. Nothing speaks louder than a man speaking from the depth of his pain.  I think I got an existential understanding of the meaning of the words ‘Storge’, ‘Philia’, ‘Eros’ and ‘Agape’. Perhaps, next time when I have to talk to someone about "Four Loves", I shall hopefully do C.S. Lewis proud.

The Dance of the Trees

The ipod played ‘That kind of Love’

I look out of the window at the green woods

Through the gleamy drizzle in the sunny outside

A moment of transcendence

It was the dance of the trees swaying in the breeze.

The grace of the lean branches and the leaner leaves

Drew me deeper into the timeless world.

My shoulders slanted, legs crossed, I pen this

Why should the rain be beautiful?

Why should green be green?

Why should the trees dance?

Why should I be enthralled into a trance?

I wondered what it was all about.
Or may be, ‘who’ was it all about?

Tempted as I was to say ‘me’, but I couldn’t get to say it

I was still in trance experiencing a beautiful new reality.

No. It was all about Him who cannot be in a trance
For He pervades all reality.

The drizzling rain, dancing tree, the perky leaves

And I who ‘wonder’ what it is all about

In the very act of transcended wonderment
I lay down the crown on behalf of the rain, tree and leaves

At the feet of the timeless One of whom
This transcendence and beauty is all about.

Men's Life @ SJD

Before the Sun rises
The pace accelerates
The noise distracts

A bunch of men, with their coffee mugs
Get together on Tuesdays
To mull over the Questions of life

Questions that get drowned
In the noise and pace
But are loud and insistent in the calm of ones soul

Over hot coffee and cherished movie clips
They search for answers, answers that are
Disturbing to the being, but peaceful to the soul

The soul that seeks not to lose itself
For the sake of gaining the world
The soul that searches

Searches for the sacred ground of ones life
Along with other barrel-chested men
Before the sun rises on Tuesday mornings
This is Men's life @ SJD.

Fired-up by Flowers and Francis Schaeffer who were ‘there’

Last Friday, at about 10:00 pm I was sleepy as I had had just 5 hours of sleep each day during the week. But then I really wanted to read Francis Schaeffer’s “Death in the City”. So I went to the 24/7 Starbucks near Galleria. I got myself a venti Mocha and sat down in a cozy corner armchair. I was all set for my date with Francis Schaeffer.

In "Death in the City", I was enthralled by how Schaffer built the case that without the orthodox God being ‘there’, the existence of human personality is superfluous. This implied that the Christian message wasn’t just a message of love, joy and peace but one of ‘affirmation’ of the significance and the essence of human personality – striking the right balance between exalting and at the same time reigning-in the spirit of 'human individualism' and freedom.

This realization that the gospel is such an emphatic affirmation of (borrowing Schaeffer’s phrase) 'the manishness of man’, was like fire burning within me. Without the orthodox God who is ‘there’ and who gives man the dignity of free choice and then 'partners' with man as the Sovereign co-creator of human history, man gets reduced to a clog in a gigantic machine. He becomes insignificant - a small 'blip' in the vastness of 'space-time' continuum, if he does not realize that he has in him the 'image of God', and so is capable of affecting the course of history, within space-time, using the ability of 'free choice' bestowed upon him by the God. The denial of this orthodox gospel-truth and rebellion against the God who is ‘there’, causes man to lose sight of the 'image of God' in him and is the cause for the disillusionment of the post-modern man who, in vain, having lost the 'image of God' in him, is scavenging the 'material' world for meaning and direction in his toils and for significance in the essence of his personality.

The message of the orthodox gospel to this post modern man searching for significance and meaning, it so help him realize that the essence of his personality is the 'image of God' in him. The good news will help him realize that even in his fallen confused state, the God who is ‘there’ gives the framework for finding meaning and direction in man's aspirations for wonder and creativity. The orthodox gospel also paves way for the fallen man to be redeemed back to finding his essence 'in the image of God' as co-creator in space-time human history. Having found his true image/nature, this redemption becomes the means for man, to the find the greatest sense of meaning, significance and wonder through a relationship with the ‘supreme Lover’ who is ‘there’. Love joy and peace being the byproducts of this supreme relationship.

So there I was at Starbucks at 1:30 am, ‘fired-up’, with all these revelations consuming my mind, trying to make sense of this ‘rush of reason’. I was absolutely overwhelmed in the realization of how the orthodox gospel affirms the ‘manishness of man’ and how could provide for the lost post-modern man a means to see the essence of 'personality' that God has so specially imbued in him. I wanted to ‘cool-down’ and assimilate all of these thoughts that were clogging my mind so I took a brief walk outside Starbucks.

In the calm of the night, as I walked closer to the edge of the road, I heard a distinct hissing sound, the sound of the water sprinklers. I stood and ‘stared’ at the pretty flowers right in the middle of Post oaks gleaming in the darkness of the night. Behind me, was the distant chatter of people at Starbucks. They were probably 10 feet away from me, but it seemed that I was in an entirely different universe, mesmerized by the little white, yellow, red, cream, orange, violet, indigo, blue and pink flowers that were ‘there’ for me to see, amidst the beauty of the night.

It was awesome to be reveling at the beauty of the flowers and the depth in Francis Schaeffer's "Death of the City" that were‘there', co-created by man and the sovergin God who is ‘there’, so that I would be 'fired-up' about life and be grateful to the Sovereign.

911, Church and Family

On 9/11/2009, I was reading some articles on 911 and its impact on the world. There was an interesting article that said that 911 was essentially a war of the middle eastern civilization against the modern western civilization. The writer argued that the Jihadists do not have to have to repeat another 911 to achieve their goal – ‘to bring down the western civilization’. The writer says that to achieve this goal, all the jihadists have to do, is to ‘wait it out in the caves in Afghanistan and allow the western civilization to cave-in under its own weight’.

He says that the modern western civilization will eventually fall as people do not have enough children anymore, the population is stagnant. Any civilization where people don’t have enough kids will eventually fall because there aren't enough young shoulders for the civilization to stand on. On the other hand, the middle eastern civilization which the jihadists are the protagonists of, is procreating at an amazing pace. The hypothesis of this writer is that when the western civilization collapses because there are very few people in the next generation, the children of the people representing the middle eastern culture would inherit the world by default. The writer says that the Jihadists don't see a need for another 911.

This may seem a radical idea to some people, but I think there is some truth in this. No civilization can survive if the fabric of family life is destroyed. The institution of family life is needed for a sane stable society and for a thriving economy. Perhaps, the post-Christian modern civilization which is getting more liberal and moving away from family values would soon realize that the pursuit of radical individualism at the cost of family life is a formula for disaster and a violation of God's first command to the first man and woman.

In the by-gone years of western civilization young boys and girls were trained and ‘conditioned’ to be family builders. Back then having a prosperous and joyful family was the greatest 'pursuit of life'. But now, the greatest pursuit of life has become the ‘pursuit of individual pleasure’. Today's young children in the 'ultra-developed' post-Christian world, aren’t trained or ‘conditioned’ to build families they are ‘conditioned’ to pursue their ‘radical individualism’. Radical individualism is the pursuit of individual wants and cravings, with absolutely no regard for the community, family or the neighbor next door. Radical individualism of this kind predisposes the young people less willing to undertake the hardships and the commitments needed to build a family.

In the post-modern post-Christian culture, we find many people conditioned to delaying marriage, of those they marry many delay having children, almost half the marriages end up in divorce, three fourths of the second marriages end up in divorce as well – all of this contributes to perpetually stagnant or reducing population. The reason for this trend of reducing population in this post-modern, post-Christian civilization is a fundamental problem with people's idea of the most important 'pursuit of life'.

Today's young man needs to be willing to commit to and have the ‘spine’ (courage) to start and sustain a family with a young lady. Today's young lady needs to be willing to be patient and in modesty wait for the guy that is worth starting a family with. The society does not instill in them the virtues of commitment, courage, patience and modesty. Sadly, often, the church does not help the young men and women either. It is a blatant irony that the Church should forget to help young men and women fulfill the first command that the Lord gave mankind - to ‘multiply and be fruitful’.

Putting my ‘critic’ cap on, I wonder why the modern Church has not addressed this problem. I have been a part of singles fellowship in a bunch of different Churches over the course of the past few years. Honestly, I can't recall any place where I have been taught the basics of family building.

I wonder why the modern Church has a ‘singles fellowship’ at all. I understand the need for children’s Sunday class at Church. I understand the need for teens fellowship and youth fellowship. After youth fellowship, I think there should be family fellowship. But in most of today's Churches, between youth and family fellowship, there is the ‘singles fellowship’. The Church, instead of trying to mitigate the need to have the singles fellowship, endeavors to making the singles contented in their singleness thereby slowing down the process of family creation.

I think building families within singles group at Church shouldn’t be left at the mercy of time, chance and opportunity. Rather, the Church should work in instilling the values and virtues in the young men and women to help curb their predisposition to radical individualism and help them find their life partners and build strong Christian families. If only the pervasive problem of radical individualism that is causing decadence from within is systematically confronted, this postmodern civilization may get closer to where God wants it to be.

Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful Night – Thank God

I just came home and I thank God that tonight was so beautiful. I was riding my motorcycle back from Tom’s house at 1:15 am in the morning. As I started my motorcycle, I realized that there was thick due in my motorcycle. I could ‘see’ the air was laden with moisture. I began to have a feeling that my ride back home on the I10 8 lane freeway was going to be awesome. There is a stretch of I10 where there are trees on either side. As I was tearing through the foggy atmosphere, with trees on either side and the whole 8 lanes to myself, the whole world racing towards me at 80 miles an hour, with the moon right up ahead, I felt like I was riding on a magic horse in a fantasy land.

I was supposed to take the Durham exit out of I10, but I couldn’t stop drinking into the beauty of the night. I decided to take the next exit, studentmonte. But even then, I decided to prolong the pleasure until the next exit. Even then I couldn’t get myself to get off the freeway. I decided to take I45 freeway and the take the Allen Parkway exit. But even then I couldn’t stop. I decided to take to 59 south freeway and then take the Kirby exit. But the night was just too beautiful. I continued on 59 and then took to 610 and from there I again came back on I10 were I started. I had taken a full circle around and was back at the place at started and I loved it afresh – the fog, the moon and the trees. Finally took the Studentmonte exit to get home I had been travelling for about 30 minutes between 70 – 80 miles an hour.

After taking the exit off the freeway I was slowly riding back home. I stopped at a traffic light and on the other side, there was a water sprinkler that was sprinkling water high up in to the air on to the right lane of the road. My first instinct was to take the left lane, but then I realized that I couldn’t allow the possibility of riding through this water foundation go past, without being enjoyed. I went right through the fountain and it was a surprising splash of water. I was brazing myself expecting the water to be cold, but the water was warm – a brief moment of suprising ecstasy.

I can’t help thanking God that the night was so beautiful and that I had a motor cycle to go about enjoying the 8 lane freeways in Houston at 2:00 am in the morning.

What I learnt at Fusion Fellowship

I original idea was to write a blog ‘What I like about Fusion’. Then it occurred to me that I can like many things ranging from the movie ‘District 9’ to Hamburgers, but I cannot 'really' like something enough to be appreciative of it unless I really learnt something from it which got me closer to living my life to ‘all its Fullness’. So I decided to title this blog as ‘What I learnt from Fusion Fellowship’. I think I would like to surmise at least four truths that I think I learnt through Fusion over the course of the past few months.

In the book club on John Piper’s, “Don’t Waste Your life”, I learnt that glorifying God is not about going to Church and participating in the worship session and then doing some ‘Christian good works’ outside church. Rather, glorifying God is to be ‘supremely satisfied’ in the relationship with God, even if it means loosing all comforts and privileges of life. A soldier forsakes all the comforts and secure privileges that life has to offer because he is ‘supremely satisfied’ in the cause of his serving his home land. A country that has such soldiers is the one that is truly glorified. When God has soldier-minded conscientious Christian who are so satisfied in God that they’ll sacrifice anything for Him, He is indeed glorified. Even the legitimate pleasures that we enjoy in such a Soldier-like way glorifies God because the soldier is grateful enough to realize that legitimate pleasures in life don't come cheap - they are bought with the blood of Christ. A life crux of which is in such glorification of God, isn’t a wasted life. It would be a life lived to 'all its fullness'.

In Kemper’s class on the Maledictory Psalms, I learnt that to indubitably acknowledge the Maledcitory Psalms (breaking heads of babies… etc) as the inspired Word of God is to acknowledge in humility the inability of the unaided human reason to make a correct moral judgment on that which is right and that which is wrong, that which is fair and that which is unfair and even that which is of good taste and that which isn’t. Perhaps Kemper intended folks listening to learn a lot more than that, but this is all that has remained ‘stuck’ in my mind.

Truth Three: Ever since my early youth I have at times wondered ‘how’ I knew what I thought I knew. I wondered to myself, “if I do not know that ‘how’, then how could I trust that I ‘really’ know that which I think I know”. If I followed this David Hume-ian polemic, it would cause me to question how I could really ‘trust’ my faith in God. Why couldn’t my faith in God be an illusion created by my unaided reason. After all, history tells me that at one time, led by unaided human reason, people in the west thought the earth was flat, people in the east thought the earth was the back of a tortise.

During Chuck’s class I learnt that faith is God isn’t so much about ‘my’ faith in God as much as it is about God engendering in me a faith on Him. So, this revelation, that my faith in God has little to do with my unaided reason but more to do with God’s work in me, was liberating. It absolves me of the need to try to figure out if my faith is indeed trustworthy or not.

Lastly, but most importantly, I learnt from Cheryl that I could use the word ‘happy’ before any noun in the English language. Happiness is not just a habit, it is the overflowing expression of the well-being of the soul. It is only when the relationship with God fosters the well-being of the soul that such expressions of overflowing happiness is possible.

So as we look forward to a 'happy' new season of Fusion Fellowship, I look forward to learning more age-old 'happy' truths, that are new to me, which I think would help me look at life from a better vantage point and as promised, live out life to all its 'happy' Fullness.

Waiters say, “Church going Christians suck”

Disclaimer: For the sake of the case being make, please bear with me as I make some blatant generalizations about Church going Christians.

It is said that Church going Christians are the ones that tip the waiters least when compared with every other category of restaurant goers. I do not know how true this allegation really is, but I would think that there seldom is smoke without fire. After Church, as I was sitting with fellow Church goers at a restaurant having lunch, I was wondering why church going Christians had this reputation when it came to tipping waiters. Below are my meditations.

Perhaps it is an interesting irony that a Christian who comes out of an awesome Church service is often the most mean guy walking on earth because this is when he feels most self-righteous. It is when the Christian thinks that he is indeed the Christ-ian that he is least likely to be a one. Though this is one of the causes for the notorious reputation of Christian tipping, I think that the reason for stingy Christian tipping goes deeper than this. Even those Christians who are penitent enough to not feel too self-righteous are often prone to a bigger Christian Evangelical pitfall – being lead by 'the spirit of entitlement'.

When a Post Enlightenment, Post Reformation, Post Christian Evangelical Christian goes to Church, he exudes with a sense of chronic entitlement. He feels entitled to a great worship service, he feels entitled to a good message, he feels entitled to communion - all of this free of cost. Then he goes a step further, just because he is able to say 'Halleluiah, Praise the Lord' and then claps hands when he sings or perhaps jumps about during worship service (perhaps in his mind, trying to mimic King David) he thinks he is entitled to the 'presence of God Almighty'.

When he walks out of the Church with this spirit of entitlement of having even earned God with a few easy techniques, he, possibly quite unwittingly, is prone to be the most snobbish being. The worship leader, the priest and God have served him without expecting a tip (unless he goes to a mega church where the pastor invariably always makes a claim to the attendee's tithe). Nevertheless, he is most pampered and attended to at the Church, he thinks that the Church exists to pamper and re-charge him at the end of a tiring week.

All of his burdens are laid down and he is in the mood of 'post-awesome-worship-service cloud-nines', lead continually by the spirit of entitlement he is insensitive to the kindness and the service of the waiter gives him and consequently does not feel ‘moved’ to tip him. On the other hand, on a Friday after a week’s tiring work which breaks down his sense of entitlement to anything in life, if the Christian were to go to a restaurant, he would be more appreciative of the service rendered by the waiter and would feel ‘moved’ to tip him.

Isn’t it an irony that the harsh realities of the world that teaches him that there is ‘no free lunch’ would better minister the Christian than the comforts and pampering of the Church. If only Church going Christians would understand why the waiters think they suck.

Beautiful Little Things of Life

A couple of weeks back, on a Friday evening, when I was reading C.S.Lewis’ “Till We Have Faces”, it dawned on me that it was heavily raining outside. Prior to this, every time it rained in Houston, I would be in my office looking at the rain from the glass window wishing that I was walking in the rain rather than looking at it from the glass tower.

So here was my chance. I closed C.S.Lewis’ book. I knew he would forgive me for preferring to walk in the rain which is one of the most beautiful and legitimately natural pleasures ‘under the sun’. I changed over into my shorts and flip flops and walked into the rain. Walking in the rain is when I feel close to nature. Somewhere a few miles above earth out of thin air a water droplet gets formed and pulled by gravity, travels all the way down to earth to create a ‘cool’ sensation on my skin, reminding me that perhaps, even the manna that fell from the ‘heavens’ created a similar sensation.

As the rain became a drizzle, I decided to get into the pool. To float around in the pool when it is drizzling is an awesome experience. I lay in the water, floating about. As I was weightlessly bobbing up and down, face down, ears and eyes within the water, feeling the rain droplets on my back, hearing the slow rumble of the thunder from the high heavens and seeing the splash of lightening lit up the pool, it seemed that the beauty in this little experience of life was more profound and real than that of the Roman empire in all of its glory.

God has created so much of beauty in so many little things of life, if only man would ‘stop, look and relish’.

Ps: Well, looking back, I am glad I did not get electrocuted. J

What makes a play a play?

Ever since I saw the ‘Phantom of the Opera’, I have been wondering what makes a play a play. As I endeavor to try to unravel the mystery behind my wonderment, I need to reckon that my exposure to plays is limited. In all my life I have seen just three plays in a theatre and all of them have been musicals. I have never acted in any play, except for some small dramas in my Church fellowship. So my exploration of my idea of plays is entirely based on my inspiration on seeing the ‘Phantom of the Opera’, twice.

I think my wonderment started with the thought, "why the play is better than the movie?". I was trying to ascertain the essence of the difference between the play and the movie. The movie and the play both primarily cater to the sense of sight, sound and spirit (intellect), but still they are different.

I think the essence of the difference which gives the play a whole new dimension which the movie lacks is that the play appeals to a different sense in human beings in a way that the movie can never appeal to – the ‘sense of reality’. Apart from our sense of sight, sound and intellect, we have a sense of reality. The sense of reality is our innate ability to sense that which is real from that which is illusionary. The play has in it a sense of reality which the movie can never create. Perhaps, this ‘sense of reality’ sensitizes a very deep part of the human essence that is otherwise untouched.

In the movies, when an actor raises his hand once, it is captured in digital or analog data and then replayed to recreate the illusion of the actor raising his hands again on a screen millions of times before billions of audience. But with the play when an actor raises the hand, it is done in a 'real' way each time, and the audience sees the realness of the sights and the sounds. This realness causes a part of our being to liven up, which otherwise is pretty much dead.

Owing to my limited vocabulary, I lack the right words  to describe this part of human nature which livens up when it interacts with the ‘realness’ of life. I do not know much of human psychology or human nature to know what word in human lexicon describes what I want to describe best, so I think I’ll coin a new word for this – Quillity (kind of rhymes with quiddity. Quiddity is the sense of ‘whatness’ of things).

Let me define Quillity as the sense of realness of human relationship in the interaction (or the activity) that appeals to our ‘sense of reality’ in a way beyond the simple ‘space-time’ dimension. For example, the quillity in chatting with one’s sweet heart in facebook is less when compared to chatting in a restaurant. The ‘realness’ of human relationship in the experience makes all the difference.

To delve a little more on what other areas would find some application for the word 'quillity', I would like to start with a question.Why did God not just imagine human beings as a dream in His mind? Why did he not just make a movie of human history in His mind? Why did He have to create ‘real’ flesh and blood human beings who are distinct from Him and then allow each of them to 'really' play on the Stage? Afterall, the brilliant poet said, 'All the world's a stage', Why did Go have to create the stage at all? The answer is I believe in the 'need for quillity' in the experience of love. God is love, He cannot love without quillity, for love cannot operate in a world where there is no relational realness. For in love if there is no relational realness, then love becomes unreal. If love becomes unreal, then God who is the embodiment of love become (un)God. God cannot make love go unreal because to do that would be to aninhilate Himself. So He created flesh and blood human being to love them. God wants quillity in human relationship.

In fact, when I was watching the Phantom of the Opera the second time, at the end of the play, I saw the actors come up to bow to the audience. I felt a sense of love for them. The emotion wasn’t just adoration, there was a tinge of love-longing. Somewhere in the deeper part of my human nature the quillity (relational realness) of the experience had fostered within me a love for them. I believe that it is here the play touches a part of human nature, in a way the movie can never be. I have watched umpteen movies, and there are some movies I have watched umpteen times, infact I have watched the movie of the 'Phantom of the Opera' more than once. But in the movies, I never felt any love-longing for the actual actors. I think it was probably because the place somewhere deep within me, where the spring of love has its source, can only be touched by the sense of 'relational realness' of the object - the quillity of the object. In movies, the sense of the 'unrealness' of the object is often the pervading force, so they cannot reach out the that part of human nature which longs for 'relational realness'. With the play, it is the 'sense of reality' or the 'relational realness' that is its appeal - it is the quillity that makes a play a play.