Crushing the Accursed Loneliness

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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’

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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

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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

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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’

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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

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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

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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

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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”

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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

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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?

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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.

Love Without Talking

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

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


Love without talking (words)?

Can love be without words?

Absolutely. But only when words

Though not ‘talked’, are most cherished


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

‘Do U want to meet’ evoke the profoundest emotions

That is love. Love that can liven the dead ethos

Make obsolete the pangs of pathos


No. Needn’t be smart with words

But yes. Need to be sensitive in spirit

To be more sensitive than smart

Is to love without talking words.


This of course, is the lesson

From Forest Gump as well

To to be more sensitive than smart

Is to truly be in love.

The Phantom of the Opera - The Kiss From God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michel Jackson – timeless or Timeless?

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Date with Piper

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

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

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

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

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

A Walk to Remeber - A Story of Love

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

A Drop of the Divine

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Easter Contention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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