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)

What’s wrong with the World? I am.

Once an editor sent a letter soliciting an essay from G.K. Chesterton on the topic ‘What’s Wrong With The World’. The editor was shocked when he opened the mail which contained the essay because all it said was…

I am.

Yours truly,
G.K. Chesterton.

The editor had to read it twice before he understood that what G.K. Chesterton meant as the answer was ‘There is nothing wrong with the world, it is just that I am wrong with the world’. I had a similar experience at St. John’s Divine Episcopal Church at Houston this Sunday morning, the experience wasn’t as profound as to be worthy of G.K. Chesterton’s quote. I just find the analogy a funny one.

I woke up at 7:00 am on Sunday and got ready to go to 8:45 AM service at St. John Divine Church. I started in my bike which at about 8:20, the roads were unusually vacant. I was at SJD sharp at 8:45 but I found very few cars. “What’s wrong here” I was thinking, “don’t people come to Church in time?” I entered the main Church there was not even a single usher. What is wrong with the ushers aren’t they supposed to be here. I went into the church to find the pews empty, not a soul in the Church. Now I was confused.

I went out there was a lady walking by, I asked her if there wasn’t’ supposed to be a service there at 8:45 AM. “Yes there is” she said. “But the Church is empty” I replied. “Oh, we shifted back an hour, there is a service which starts at 7:45 AM in the chapel, you may come there” she replied and walked off. I was thinking to myself, What on earth did she mean when she said ‘we shifted back an hour’. I can shift something that is humanly tangible, I can shift the venue of a meeting, I can shift my house. How can I shift time? Even God hasn’t performed that miracle for more than two and a half millennia. I though to myself, “What is wrong with her”

I looked at my watch it was almost 9:00 AM. So I was late to the 7:45 AM service by over an hour. I thought that I would be in time for communion at least. I entered the chapel and the lessons were being read. I thought again, “What is wrong with this service, isn’t the service supposed to have the lessons at the beginning much before the communion?”. I was baffled and thought that may be there was a problem in the main church and so they shifted the service to the chapel. But still the chapel was too small and there were very few people. Even if the venue had been shifted shouldn’t the folks that come regularly have come? What is wrong with these regular Church folks? Did they all decide to come to the 11:00 AM service? What is wrong with them? Or was there an important football game? The service was over and as I was coming out, a genial old man came up patted me on my shoulder and told me nice to see you young man. It then occurred to me there I was the youngest guy there. Why aren’t there any young people here? What is wrong with the young people, don’t they come to Church anymore? By then it was about 10:00 AM in my watch.

I went to the main Church building, where as per the Church bulletin, a Bible Study was to begin at 10:00 AM, but to my utter confusion there were ushers giving pew sheets for the 8:45 service. “What is wrong with this Church today?” I was thinking.
So I went to one of the ushers and asked him, “Isn’t there supposed to be a Bible study here?”
He said, “Yes, it is at 10:00”.
I replied “Yes, but then why is there a service now?”.
“This is the 8:45 service” he said.
I replied “But shouldn’t there by be the Bible study here now?”

He as visibly confused as what I was trying to ask. And I was thinking so “What is wrong with this guy?” I really did not know what to ask him next, he really did not know what to tell me. I was wondering. “I just don’t get it, What is wrong with the world today?”

Then I heard a familiar voice calling me “Emmanuel” from behind I turned and there was Dana and Don who always have the knack of finding me when I am lost in Church and making me feel at home. I asked Don “I was thinking there supposed to be a Bible study now at 10:00 here, but why is there the service now instead of the Bible study?” Don thought for a moment and had a hearty laugh and said “Dude you didn’t set your watch back by an hour”. Then it occurred to me that it was Day light savings time shift when all clocks all over the US would be shifted back by an hour I forgot to set my watch back by an hour.

I had been at Church at 7:45 but my watch was wrongly pointing at 8:45 am. So I was attending the 7:45 service thinking it was the 8:45 service. There was nothing wrong with the woman who said ‘we shifted back an hour’. There was nothing wrong with the reading of lessons in the 7:45 service. There was nothing wrong with me being the youngest guy at the 7:45 service, the young guys come to the 8:45 service. There was nothing wrong with the usher whom I had confused by my questions. There was nothing wrong with the world. It was just that I was wrong with the world.

Nevertheless to do my best to rectify my mistake, I attended the 8:45 service which I had originally intended to attend. And then I attended the Bible study at 10:00 it went on till 11:00 and till 11:30 I was at the contemporary service, by then I had had 3:30 hours of nonstop church activity. I decided to take a break. I sat with my laptop at the SJD lobby and was deep into my writing. At 12:30 I went to lunch with my friends at Lake wood. I was back at the SJD lobby at 4:00 pm to work on my writing. On my way back, Rev Doug waved at me as he drove past. I was thinking to myself as to what a queer sight in the road I was, because I guess I was doing a very un-American thing of ‘commuting’ in my bike wearing formal.

SJD lobby is a quite place to concentrate to do some writing. I stayed at SJD and I attended the 6:00 PM service as well. On the whole today I attended al most all services on a Sunday. So the day that started with everything being seemingly wrong ended as a perfect Sunday.

Indian Christians Come Free of Cost

If someone in India wants to cater to his/her urge for crazed violence, then all one has to do is to find a church or prayer hall which can be vandalized at will and then the blame can be put on the ‘idea’ that Christians indulge in forced conversion, never mind the ‘fact’ there in the law courts there isn’t even a single conviction in the numerous arrests that have been made on the false charges of forced conversion.

If someone in India wants to have on heck of a time beating families peacefully sleeping in their homes, then all one has to do is find a Christian home in the neighborhood and break into it at night and beat them black and blue. The ‘propaganda’ that Christians are the ones who run the many destitute homes so that inmates can be forcibly converted to Christianity somehow warrants such treatment in the middle of the night.

If someone in India wants to play a real life game of hunting down humans in jungles all one has to do is get a bunch of like minded folks and storm a Christian village chase the villagers into jungles and then hunt them down until the thirst for blood is quenched. The ‘prejudice’ that Christians are the first to aid riot victims or victims of natural disaster only to indulge in more forced conversion of the victims somehow deserves such cleansing of villages.

All of this beating, looting, raping, lynching and burning alive of Indian Christians can be done free of cost. None will be questioned, none will be made to face the law. It is all free of cost. But this shall not continue on forever, one day justice shall come knocking on the doors of these despicable sons of the Indian soil and demand its pound of flesh, then they shall pay the likes of Praveen Togadia, Bal Thcakrey and Raj Thackrey . Until then Indian Christians come free of cost.

The important Christian perspective that should not be forgotten by the cheap Indian Christians, is not to somehow find a way to make it costlier to persecute Indian Christians but to somehow get the attention of the persecutors onto the single most important even in ‘space-time’ which made Indian Christian free of cost – the blasphemous possibility where the God of the heavens was made free of cost to be beaten and killed by a frivolous throng.

The only payment that Christians can receive from such persecution is the harvest of souls that generally follows every widespread persecution in history. But that payment would never be received if focus of the cross is lost. By not focusing on the cross and by focusing on making Indians costlier, a stop can be put to such inhuman blood-boiling persecutions, but Indian Christian would only have made themselves cheap for they would have relegated off the possibility of earning a big payment of persecution harvested souls.

Lesson From the Little Children

I love observing kids, I love talking to them. To me, they are the ones that talk least nonsense.

Sometime back , when I went for fresher interviews to college campuses one thing I would often wonder about is how to judge the attitude of a person sitting across the desk, who often try to feign polished attitudes.

A couple of weeks back during the annual harvest festival INGAT at the St. George's Cathedral at Chennai the perfomance of some little children helped me get some insights into how the attitude of the interviewee could be judged. I was incharge of the youth group's stalls and when I realized that some little kids were dancing I went to see them. That was when I noticed something pertaining to their attitude.

A few kids were really happy about what they were doing, they did not have all the necessary co-ordination but still the element of 'happiness' was high. They needed no external reason for doing what they were doing, the happiness they felt in dancing was sufficient reason enough. On the other hand a few other kids were just performing for the sake of performing perhaps their parents wanted them to dance or their sunday class teacher forced them to enroll. Internally, by themselves, they had no reason as to why they had to do what they were doing. What they did simply brought them no happiness.

Even in work I often find people who are not really happy about the work they do. When there is a problem with the written program and work needs to be done to 'fix' it their face becomes as oblong as it could. They work not for the joy of work but for the sake of something else.

Applying this to conducting interviews, the interviewer need to ascertain the extent of 'happiness' the person has in just 'doing' the work he says he has been doing, withtou regard to any external factors. The interviewer has to ascertain if the interviewee worked in his college for the joy of work or if he worked to get a job or to get better grades. The best attitude to have is the attitude where work is a joy in itself.

Martyrdom and Communion

The recent and continuing spate of Christian persecution has been a painful thing to observe and even more so to internalize. Internalization means asking myself the question "If I were to face the choice between the bullet and the Bible, with what 'attitude' would I choose the Bible?", "Would I 'cheerfully' take the Bible and accept the bullet?" To be honest, I was thinking it may be difficult, in the moment of reckoning, to take the bullet and give up all the dreams and passions of life. So, I was not sure about how 'cheerful' I would really be at the prospect of martyrdom.

As this thought was going over my mind and in a way eating through my mind, I was at the Cathedral for a communion service on 27th Septmeber 2008, which was also my birthday. It was also the aniversary commomeration service of the union of Church of South India (CSI). It was a Eucharist service. When I was preparing for the communion, suddenly a thought struck. I was here 'celeberating' Christ's martyrdom for my sake but I was being gloomy about my martyrdom for Christ's sake.

It was in this mood of humble introspection as I was walking up to the altar to symbolically partake of the divine Body and Blood that communion had an entirely new meaning to me. It was after thinking through the existential prospect of martyrdom for Christ that Christ's sacrifice for me seemed so much more real and closer to my heart.

Probing the Mind of Indians killing Indians

The literate elitist Indians were shocked when they heard that a CEO, Lalit Kishore Chaudhury of Graziano Trasmissioni was beaten to death by the workers of his company at Noida, an important industrial centre of India. Perhaps they were even more appalled when the Union Labour minister Oscar Fernandes said ‘… this should serve as a warning to managements in other companies to respect the workers’ (an off-hand remark for which he later apologized).

To me, though that was indeed shocking, that wasn’t very surprising. The basic issue here is not about who is getting killed but about the basic impetus to do the killing – the principle which makes the killing an act of justice. The principle being that killing is justified not because the one killed did something wrong but because the one killed represented a force before which the killer feels powerless against. We have been used to this principle of resorting to killing people when one really does not know how to counter a force which seems unstoppable. The Hindu fanatics of Siva Sena and Bajrang Dal have been killing Christians to counter the seemingly unstoppable force of Christian conversions. When killings go on without any repercussions, acts of violence become the ultimate panacea to problems against which one feels powerless.

The Hindu fanatics do not know how to counter the force of Christian conversions. Let us face the fact, there have been cases where conversions were not genuine, there have been cases where conversions happened to gain material ends. But this is a small fraction of the conversions happening across India. The Hindu fanatics have no idea how to counter these mysterious conversions of the second kind which are much higher in number and more threatening than the first kind. They resort to violence and then justify killing Christians on flimsy ground that conversions are inhumane acts which deserves capital punishment.

The reason for killing the CEO was not so much about the wrongness of his decision to fire workers but the powerlessness the worker feel against him. The impetus to killing Christians is not the wrongness of the act of conversions, but the powerlessness one feels against the force of conversions.

The problem is this, once the idea of killing people becomes justified when one does not know how else to counter a force that is formidable and threatening, it naturally follows through that this principle will get applied to all spheres of life, including the communal, social and economic. Eventually, this principle of killing would also be applied to sphere of the economic disparities and what we have in our hands would be a revolution where the root cause wouldn’t be wrongness which deserves punishment but just a feeling of powerlessness which demands blood of those representing the indomidable force, to feel powerful against the force.

There are two ways to respond to a formidable force. One, is to give a cerebral response the other is to give a carnal response. When Emilie Zola in his campaign against the attrocities in the French army relied on the principle "Truth is on its march and nothing can stop her", it was a cerebral response. When the Maximilien Robespierre started the French Revolution by appealing to the carnal inclinations of the masses, he set in motion a phenomena which had become a 800 pound 'irrational' gorilla and it turned back on him, it was the carnal response at its work. When reason is thrown out of the window and the basal instincts take over there is no saying who is next on line. The Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal are creating a 800 pound 'irratonal' gorilla which when let loose will be unstoppable.

It is saddening that the Intellectual Elite of Indian seems to be very slow in awakening to the realization of the creation of this irrational self-destructive phenomenon which will shake the very foundation of freedom and democracy in India.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

- Martin Niemoeller (A decorated U-boat captain of WWI who later became a respected Protestant leader who openly spoke against the Nazi ideology and was sent to a concentration camp for his anti Nazi propoganda)

Capitalism VS Communism??? Really!!!!

All of the media propaganda and the progressive economist say that capitalism is the solution to fight against the evils of communism. But that argument goes only until wall street is on its own feet, if at any time it indeed was on its own (it could be argued that it is always standing on the feet of the American tax payer). Once every couple of decades the wall street buckles down and needs infusion of billions upon billions of dollars from the FED to get back on its feet. Depending on FED to get back on its feet is to depend on the tax payer to bail oneself out. This is not capitalism, it is communism.

The basic difference between capitalism and communism is that in capitalism none is entitled to anyone else's economic well being but in communism each man is responsible for the others economic well being. Capitalism is about catering to self-interest in such a way that everyone caters to their self-interest, communism is about catering to the other’s-interest.

In a recent interview with Bill Gates about the global economic down turn and what impact it would have on his development work in the third world countries, he was asked a question. “Now that the American way of running the economy has failed, wouldn’t the other countries say ‘why do you want to do this the American way, after all it has failed’?” Gates replied “No, I don’t think so, I think the other countries would like to have the kind of problems that America has… (it is better than the kind of problems they have)”.

I was immediately reminded of the late Russian thinker, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s classic Harvard lecture which earned him a boycott from the western elite, where he said

“But the blindness of superiority (of the west) continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development is quite different.”

America, though it considers capitalism as the ultimate ideal for economic and social development, has to resort to communism to stabilize itself because of the imbalances created by the capitalistic ideals. Without communism, capitalism will buckle down into an everlasting demise. When communism comes to the rescue, the tax payer takes it upon himself to rescue the mismanaged financial firms whose CEO made millions of dollars for that asset management credentials. The financial firms somehow by a sudden change in the mood become entitled to the tax payer’s money. Capitalism suddenly becomes communism.

And wall street, the paradise of capitalism, gets back on its feet, thanks to the 'transient' communistic mood, and it again gets back on its capitalistic ideals of ‘individual self-interest leading to collective good’, only to find itself playing a different ball game of communism a couple of decades when it buckles down. Spat comes the ideal of communism to the rescue.

The problem is that the western world simply fails to understand that greed and self-interest cannot give the right ethos for life in the long term. No matter how many lessons we learn we are never able to unlearn that the ideal of ‘individual self interest leading to collective good’ is simply not right for life.

It is a classic irony of every age that the icons of capitalism of each age whether it is Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, all of them after having reached the pinnacle of capitalism by seeking self-interest and resorting to ruthless business strategies, have to espouse communism to make some sense of their life. This again proves that that ideal of goodness of greed and self-interest does not really make sense in life in the long term, but then this is another of the lessons that will never be learnt.

The bottomline being that for capitalism to be a long term way of life, communism as to be its life-line. Selfishness cannot exist without large doeses of selflessness and in that 700 billion dollar bailout what it is the large dose of selflessnes of the American taxpayer that compensates for the selfishness of the wall street executive who rakes in million of dollars. This capitalism at work, this is capitalism standing on the feet of communism, as against capitalism working against the evils of communism as the media elite would like us to believe.

Dead Poets Society

I saw the movie 'Dead Poets Society' a couple of days back. It started at 00:30 am and I couldn't stop until it was over and I had written this...

It was one of the interesting movies I had seen of late. The movie is about an English professor, Mr. Keating, who is inducted into Welton school which is run by a bunch of realists whose sole purpose is to make the students get into the ivy league universities. The English professor is a Romanticist whose principles run against the realists. The realists on pragmatism, proven tradition, discipline... and the romanticist harping on beauty, free thinking and indulgence. Heavy words like 'free thinking', 'tradition', 'wisdom', 'beauty' used freely all over.

Keating inspires a few students to follow their soul rather than the set expectations of the world outside, they do so and when one of the students experiences conflict between the two, he resorts to commit suicide. He decided to loose his soul rather than loose the soul.

The question of the romanticist VS realist struggle boils down to this. How does one have 20/20 hindsight to know what is right and what is wrong? Who is really responsible for the student Neil's sucide? Was it Neil's father's inability to 'freely think' about how Neil's of life should be or was it Neil's inability to look at life the way his father did or was it Keating inability to look at life from Neil's family's unromantic perspective?

In 'real' life we find that, on one side are the romantics of the sixties leading to the ‘woodstock’ hippie phenomena which essentially ended up being the LDS paradise in a romantic world of ‘free thinking’ and extreme sensitivity to beauty, as espoused by Aldous Huxley, leading to serial killings or suicides. On the other side, are the ivy league realists who bring the wall street crashing down taking the whole global economy in a cataclysmic tail spin.

The question again goes back to lack of 20/20 hindsight. Neither the romanticists nor the realists win. Neither 'free thinking' nor 'traditions' win can win on its own. The right balance of traditions and free thinking within the bounds set by the ultimate 'Revelation' alone can win because revelation mitigates the damages caused because of lack of 20/20 hindsight.

Revival without a Ransom???

Ever since the widespread persecutions got underway, I have been wondering about what the right Christian response to this ought to be. This is a painful and uncomfortable question to both reader and more so the writer because the writer ought to be aware that he would be judged by the King as per what he writes. In this writeup, I do not endevour to critic the Christian reaction or give my opinion on an good action plan to realign the Christian activity in India. I am going to try to delve into the underlying thought patterns and Christian convictions which are the impetus behind the Christian reaction.

The moment the persecutions started Christians have invariably jumped on the bandwagon of cranking the diplomatic mechanism to prevent a conflagration. The Christian egroups were flooded with what letters to be sent to ddresses of government authorities, rallies were organized, much was done to get the attention of the government and the media. Using the diplomatic avenues wisely is important, after all Paul used his Roman citizenship when it was wise and expedient to do so.

But the fundamental question one has to ask oneself is “why are the Indian metropolitan Christians so eager to get help by resorting to diplomatic channels?” is it because they want the plight of the poor tribes being hunted down in the jungles in Orissa to end soon or do react so because of the vested interests closer to their homes so that they wouldn’t themselves, because of unmitigated persecutions, have to face the thrust of the Trident in their big cities?

Empirically, Christianity has only spread when the blood of martyrs made the soil fertile for a huge harvest. Christian blood is the ransom for the gospel to have a substantial effect in any society. Even God had to give a ransom to usher a new age of freedom in human history. Even God was nor exempt from having to pay a ransom. Without ransom there can be no revival. But as I keep watching the reaction of the Indian metropolitan Christians, I seem to feel that they somehow want to be exempt from the necessity of the ultimate ransom - the Christian martyrdom.

The covert duplicity in the Christian reaction was clearly brought recently, when a Church was attacked in Mangalore, one of the most literate cities in India. The pastor of the church said to the Hindu fanatics who attacked them, “you guys got the wrong Church, in our church we don’t go about preaching the gospel to the non-believers, other churches preach the gospel to non-Christian, but we don't. We don't deserve to be punished so…”. The idea of having to pay a ransom for the Christian cause was too painful and unnecessary to these city churches.

This is a stark contrast to the attitude of the western missionaries during the early part of this centuary. In China the Boxer revolution of 1900 made martyrs of close to 200 western missionaries. The very next year, in ships from the west, close to 200 western missionaries landed on the Chinese shore to take the place of the martyred missionaries. Why? because they were inspired by the example set by their precedors. How? because that is Christianity at work where the followers of the King try to imitate His example of sacrifice. It was this attitude of great Christians that made Christianity to be global force to be reckoned with.

But before wondering if much of the Indian Christian reaction was Christian enough, one has to wonder how comfortable each of us is with the idea of martyrdom. “Would I be willing to be a martyr for Christ?”, “Would I lay down my life for God’s glory?”, “Would I be willing to be a martyr just to prove that I am ALL, God’s alone?”, “Would I be willing to forego all the dreams and passions of my life for the sake of Christian martyrdom?”, “Would I or would I not, that is the question.” Every Indian Christian ought to ask oneself these costly questions. Afterall, Christianity was never cheap.

The answer would be “Yes, I would”, if the greatest dream and passion of my life is to be considered worthy of partaking in the ultimate ransom by following the example of the greatest Martyr ever to have walked this earth. St. Peter did not even consider himself worthy of equal (similar) partaking with Christ and hence he made a plea to be crucified upside-down. No wonder Christ choose Peter to be the rock upon which the Church would be built. In the early Church, when martyrdom as considered an unequalled privilege not many would be worthy of, Christianity spread like wildfire.

In our cosmopolitan Churches, the idea of martyrdom is relegated as unnecessary and may be even archaic. The Indian cosmopolitan Churches need more Peters. The more Indian Christians are willing to be martyrs claiming their place closest to God, as flames in the ‘crystal lake’ before God’s throne, the more the Church would grow as a wildfire, after all there cannot be a revival without a ransom.

The most captivating Lovesong

Today is the 'Women's Day' in Diosces of Madras. I was a the evening eucharist service at the Cathedral and a special solo was sung after the lessons. It was a beautiful love song and I was initially thinking it was about God as the Groom and we as His bride but somehow that did not fit the context of the song, then I remembered that it was the special song for the 'Women's Day' and I read it over and over again because it was such a captivating love song.

In Native Worth and Honour Clad - Haydn's "Creation"

In native worth and honour clad,
With beauty, courage, strength, adorn'd
Erect, with front serene, he stands,
A man, the lord and king of nature all.

His large and arched brow sublime
Of wisdom deep declares the seat!
And in his eyes with brightness shines
The soul, the breath and image of God.

With fondness leans upon his breast,
The partner for him form'd,
A woman, fair and graceful spouse
Her softly smiling virgin looks,
Of flow'ry spring the mirror,
Be speak, him love, love and joy and bliss.

*****************************

It describes Adam and Eve. And may be it is a wee bit partriachal. And the soloist that sang this was male. No matter how manytimes I read this, the words just leap out to touch my heart.