Inspired by a real life 5 year old I met one monsoon at a school for slum kids,
you’d never forget ‘Raju’ the school called him. His folks called him ‘chokra’ for street boy. There was no hatred at his home, only the face of poverty, the numbing face of sleepless days and nights. His parents were construction workers.
When Raju first arrived in a pair of oversized torn shorts, shirtless and with eyes like tiny thunder, he wouldn’t speak. I was story telling art teacher; we did some fun things, enacting Jesu in the boat. Raju loved being the storm.
By the third day we knew he loved drawing – with one crayon, the black one. He drew thick circles in black, then some more. Pages of black circles.
I was recovering from 3 years of a fever no one could diagnose, it could’ve been anything, but I was there every morning as a part of my own ‘get well’ project;
It was, is an unforgettable thing – to experience that sinking feeling of instability, physical failing, & be in a ‘Gully’ that thick with hope.
Lil Raju and I became speechless friends as we learned the power of blue against black, or orange with grey, yellow with maroon. He called me “didi”, big sis.
Every morning he was there, waiting for Art class, and drama, in the street opposite the tea shop.
On the last day I ever saw him he clutched my hand and said, “Didi mujhe ghar leke jao” (didi, take me home)
I loved him with all my heart, and I couldn’t take him home with me. There were at least 50 others like him but ofcourse Raju was the one no one liked. He was full of lice, his fingers were quick, he knew how to steal, he understood the street, he was scary to most. To me he was that little baby boy I couldn’t take home. But forever and ever he lives in my heart.
“The boy with no name” is a fantasy offering that has little pieces of my own life woven in its prayers for joy, for all our streets, infested with poverties of more horrific proportions than we could’ve guessed. Do watch if you have the moment: return to childhood, listen again to that Still Small Voice that ceaselessly whispers to the heart of a child within us, or around. If there’s a kid (or kiddy- like human:) in your home, or neighbourhood, do share. This is the second episode. (Part I, U tube, also below).
..the need to feel unafraid again. We’ve cast our vote against the thing that causes insecurity….
after all of that, if we have not got our own person in sync with peace, we will still be afraid, we will need hope and the energy that rises from freedom from temporary sunshine.
PiCredit Joe Ciciarelli
Some of us do pilgrimages, we do rituals, we dance our prophecies of pain away,
and some of us do the humble thing of kneeling to pray: not that we can be perfect for doing it, but oh the relief of seeing how tiny we are in a universe of divine intelligence. Here nothing shakes our Unshakeable Kingdom within; for what can separate us from infinite existence that does not depend on economy, on professional stamina, on legal majority, or socially acquired sweetness. Here, in the gaze of a Christ who defies all else, here I rest, arrested by a certain non – need of material anchors that can spiral me down!
These are my thoughts this nice November morning; what happens when you pray, you ask? For me it centers my core, it shakes away all that hinders freedom. So I did not get this and that, we lost some feet, but when you wait in prayer you and I , we rise on eagles wings, renewed strength to run and not be weary, walk and not faint.
There will always be human need for strength & security. And there will always be this human leaning towards God, much as we might deny its leaning.
Looking ahead to days of nestling in that Unshakeable Kingdom within!
Stop pretending it’s not still there: that selfish way we lived our lives, vying, clamoring for attention- suspicious of each other, or plain scrambling for power. Stop it, it hurts us. It hurts you. It’s not just old mode now, its the naked truth of how humans have lived between plagues and wars and holocausts. Then we huddle and forget our differences for a bit. Then we talk of God and love and peace. As if that weren’t our birthright. We forgot who we were. We went into humanism. We forgot how we never made us. We never even knew how we died or where we went but we knew so much of how to hurt each other as if we were gods. We lost manners, we thought we were tiers of castes with Touchabilities and Untouchabilities. Yea we forgot there was a darkness so dark it could try obliterate the light in us. We put out each others’ iris. We talked of how there was no Light. It was all just a trail of burnt stars. That’s all we knew to say. So we sinned and glorified that. We killed God in every form and erased His memos with quarts of water we couldnot even make. That’s how far we all got before this pandemonium took its scepter and ruled us into neat queues of waiting dead, & dying dead, so now get this. You and I can talk on about all this just being here every century, these plagues. And in between we can still host our power parties and roost our joke- clubs about a Man in the Sky. But look deep. .. we are scareder. … yes… that’s a word now… than we’ve ever been. We laugh harder than before, we try our old power games, we are desperate to get back to when we could size each other up with our judgements as if our own vices did not matter, as if there were no God who could see through our shivers. But this. These times…..
these days are Lighthouses in the dark. We can mutter all we want about each other, we can back chat and we can try sit prettier than each other, who are we fooling? It’s a shared planet, whats mine is yours. These routes and air. This earth and God’s Love. Shut your eyes wide to the visible mortal, open it to the Invisible heartbeat within our rib. We are more than mortal, we are children of a Cross too much to bear on our own. Remember Christ. Remember Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:18. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
she said that to me, just like that and I felt the arms of those words descend on my senses. We are limited by human description, we are victims of fatigue and yet, now and again, God sends His angels to remind us of the Christ within, waiting to be unfurled again, and again, and again.
May you know the power of what lies within you: for we were not born to be paper and twig houses. We are the original temple of the living God, if we would…
Between all our rights and crime, we carve an existence. Someone made rules but deep within even a baby knows what is theft, what is hurt, what is cheating. You cant just say you and I can do what we wish, somewhere it hurts someone else. Our choices are dominoes. And like it or not we are responsible for each other. Like it or not, theres a sky and theres gravity. Theres hearts and theres love. Theres peace and theres war. Theres way too much going on in an earth keeling with need for understanding. We are bridges. We are bricks. We are more than just humans. We are givers and takers; we are borrowers and lenders. We hate, we are indifferent, we love. Emotion is unseen, and it’s there. There is right and wrong. Much as we yell about it, deep within we know, we knew it from when we were kindergarten and we took someone’s pencil and hid it; and we know it now too. We know when we hurt a sensibility, we know when we judge amiss, and we know theres evil and good. And if there is, then theres more to what we refuse to … and the chasm between those two is the answer to every question we ever!
And I’d thought this Cross was a symbol of suffering: but It is more. It’s a coat hanger for my soul…. but more, more! Now and then, I’m shredded by life. Now and then dragged into chasms alone… so I thought. So we think, we humans.
We are suicidal, sick, disabled, dependent on human resource; we are hostage, we are criminal. But
You standing next to me, in me: crossing out evil, negating my dark;
You pouring words through my lips of clay,
You rinsing my hands and feet o’er and o’er; You saying words in my ears I could not have found on my own. Words like a 2edged Sword- one edge cutting away death, the other granting me life:
You, shining a trillion times x infinity- more than all our suns: Your Light stark blazen smashing every last snicker of evil, every stinkn’ shroud casting its net in my bones, in the soul of my nation, my borders, my dregs… blazing with Your light…. personified by the Cross.
This Cross more potent than Light as we know it, Its reach deadlier than sin and hell; what force can separate me from its Love nailing me to Its heart, Its Heaven, Its Immortal Vein? ….NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING. IT IS THE BRANDING FIRE OF GOD, IT holds my breath, my pulse my all. My all.
To hold on to the good in us. To remember mercies and love. And faithfulness. It’s that time to practice peace. And pray like we believe prayer works. It does. Everytime we healed, someone prayed. Everytime our heart of stone melted, it was someone praying. Someone changing the stone of us into a pleasant pasture. What a tragedy that we believe drug- related elation, rather than what made us. It is time
Net pic.
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..to rest, lean on the magnitude of true Love. I have lived a while now. I’ve seen good and bad and ugly. In you and me. I have eaten nice days that melted down to garbage. And I’ve been kissed by green pasture still waters, my soul has tasted of the Lords goodness and old fashioned as it may seem to someone’s intelligence, darling all our intellect cannot even begin to explain the goings on of mortal breath.
Yep. It’s time to pray. To know God is there here within the arms of our screaming need; Lord heal our lands, our diseased core. Why we fear death is because we know there is more beyond these days, & all our material ways. ‘Neath clothes and head and shoulders & knees & toes, we are creations made. We are more than bags of bones descended from ape and tapes of theories. We are more than doctrines and philosophies. In the core of your pillow you know, you know… in the stark of night, you look out your window asking the meaning of it all, and you know there is more. There is your beautiful mind and it will not die in a box. It leaves into territories we must seek now before late cannot get later.
It is time beloved, to not just pray for life but that also in death we will be safe. We are more than corpuscles and conditional peace. What are we, what is man, his woman, her child: do we know?
In the core of the night with stars, we wonder twinkling star shining bright, what you are…? Just dust. We are more. We write and deduce, we think and celebrate. We justify and keel. We are storms and wars, deciders of things we negate, but this:
a little piece of virus has us running like rabbits into our holes where we beg grace. Our theories and kings, all our horses and men, cannot put us together again.
In our distress we become murderers. Killers of decency. Not just now but thru’ history we read that when we are pushed beyond limits we are limited in our morality. Then we know there is good and bad. If there is good there is a Source. And it’s not us. There’s evil and there’s a source and its not us.
Something made a nice man a demon.
Something made a terrible man an angel.
Get a little closer, listen to my breath. Tell me the source of that and I’ll tell you the source of what draws humans together in the presence of a crisis. There is a Power wider than the girth of the earth spinning on an axis at her tummy. There are polarities geographically, spiritually. We have tasted the bitter dregs of evil and we have sniffed a sniff at some good. We have accepted the powers of Ugh but we are suspicious of God because He wouldn’t like us nestling with Him with all our horns and tails on.
We hate the idea of a Christ that upset the grave. “Bah humbug!”
We suspect His love that spurns evil. We would believe every other, not Him. Though we thoroughly blame Him for all the evil we invited in our living rooms. I’ve done it too.
But it’s time. Time to wipe our glasses and shed embarrassment at being created. The grave has no shame. That last word belongs only in this fleeting land of human existence.
Refresh my soul, let the doors of you, open to Peace. Let everything within breathe Grace. May our mind lean on Him whose mercies never fail, they are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness. Greater than all my bounteous lack. His power in my weakness, oh the fact of that. Not I but Christ in me, not the dark, but the Light in me. ReNew every morning soul, stay blest.
My brother who died at the feet of evil? Everyday his children rise stronger strong;
Unsplash.
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but that one with hell as his mentor: weep for how he was low, so low.
My slain brother lives tall eachday, his children rise, watched by the heav’ns of his Maker.
The Wounded weep but they sleep sweet at night; ach! they weep yell at the hell in ones who steal the very thing that could’ve made their own children rise,
nah today I did not weep for my brother, but for humans who go low so low they must murder their own eternal life,
..but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, we live: & may I add, we live not by bread alone but by words that proceed from our own mouths, we live/ or do not live fully…..
Unsplash. ***
Words have the power of life and death, they kill or heal the human spirit. But ah the Words of God, they overwhelm basic human instinct. They breathe life, they forgive, grant hope and strength for our own intake and much left for one another. Word of God Speak.
Come on over, the sands are ripe for your heart. Yes it’s hard. But I Am with you. In every grain of sand, I AM for you. Watch this:
Thankful. Unsplash. ***
there is a season turn turn, a time for every purpose under heaven. Come on over, the times are ripe for your tears that smile- they rinse the earth and grow your fields, watch how it needs you:
how I need you turn turn come on, winter & summer rain – nothing goes away, ‘except in My Hand. Permit a healing, beloved. My darling, in every grain of sand, all that you are, I AM.
***
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Here, I find me.. pieces of me, stitched together in the Hem of Your garment.
Old calendar on tiny easel at home. ***
Look Lord, here around Your edge, pieces of prayers, darts sewn with silent fingers.
Here I am Hannah, a woman ridiculed, hated by her sister, despised for unproductivity. A Hannah ruthlessly in a life not as good as expected. Here my God
How do I feel the contentment of reaching in this moment-
You stopping to hold my holding of You. You not laughing, not You:
here there is zero derision/ judgment. Here, we receive that Touch that alone can reach a wound. Only You, of the Cross where no pride rules, only You could Hem the Streets of my Hannah,
I begin to shed all need of social acceptance. As I breathe, I understand this isn’t as bad a place as we thought it was. Humiliation can wear a crown of thorns. It can disgrace vanity: its stronghold. Rejection bears wounds you cannot receive in courts of honour. Being hated too: ah this one can teach us one or two lessons in freedom. Freedom from that race for supremacy.
There is a State of man, woman, child: a State that is freed from the clutches of skin-deep power. You lose the craving to be loved; you can still love, perhaps more! There is no bitter. There is forgiveness, there is a certain letting-go of all other hems.
You walk valleys and climb mountains barefoot till the mountain becomes you. You cannot be a plateau anymore. Or you sink sink in waters so deep, the river takes you: here, you cannot be anything else anymore. You understand the power of that very tide that towed you off limiting shores.
Or you walked a desert so long now, its acres speak in a voice you couldn’t have heard any place else. You’re grateful for that, for the way it could run without showers or oasis for as long as it took. If you’ve run to the Hem of His garment you meet these wastelands in the Hem. You hear the voice of the Humiliated, the cast down. There is no other place that holds it all, like here. Here there is zero pride of performance, of amassed wisdom, here, you are freed from the whip of laughing scorn, it cannot tug its hook in you anymore, how I don’t know. Ask The Hem.
I woke up this morning with all that. Like I’d met Ruth and Hannah here in the Tattered edge of This. I asked a few things, He will answer in ways we will understand later. He always gives us what we ask for, or something better. (Anonymous quote)
Cover me with Your garment Lord; spread Your shield o’er an earth keeling. There are things we do not know to see. There are Secrets in these Edges , as invisible as a virus, as potent, virulent. Here I kneel my inner being, grateful for the privilege of feeling a certain ‘lowliness’. How beautiful it is, to come apart and rest in the secret place of This Freedom.
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Do check below Poster: is a Live Concert, Vihan D. featuring Originals. You’ll need to be there, 6 pm to 8 pm tonight, April 23rd- Indian time, to know what else goes on. Please do.
ALL PROCEEDS BEING DONATED TO RELIEF WORK AMONG THOSE DISPLACED BY CURRENT SITUATION, INDIA. ***
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How many footprints are we, how many miles, how many stories writ or half made, waiting, stalled,
how many lanes are we, bylane – gullies, routes, detours: how many doors have we done, thresholds; how many
shores laced with each others drift: how many piles of chatter, players of games in the sands we walked, how many grains of day and night, how many clusters of seconds, of hours:
how many stacks of us, strangers together, like a planet full of pile.…
That Impossible thing you do relying on your 'nth sense alone.
I’ve been fascinated long enough with Michelangelo’s 15 ft marble masterpiece David, to take a good read on material I could get, and look what I found: along with some Questions, some Answers & an impossibly naked prayer….“**
The slingshot over his shoulder is near invisible… signifying as one account stokes me to say: this battle was not fought by fabulous human armoury … ‘the head and arm are proportionately larger than the rest of the body‘, perhaps because it was meant to be displayed at a higher level than it finally was. Or to emphasize that David was held by the Invisible Strong Arm to Whom he looked for help. David is a Biblical story, (1 Samuel), where this young shepherd defeats giant Goliath with a slingshot, and Faith in a God who was proven reality in his life. He would also be known as the Psalmist.
…
Michelangelo sculpts his David as before his battle with Goliath: quiet tense, with ‘pebble’ hidden in right palm, his slingshot seemingly at rest on his shoulder. He is left handed? He catches his giant by surprise.
At 26 years old in 1501, Michelangelo accepted the challenge to sculpt a large scale David, from an unfinished project flawed with ‘taroli‘ or imperfections: it was in the Vestry’s courtyard for 25 years. No one expected such a revolutionary translation of a biblical hero.
What was this young Italian Sculptor thinking those 4 years working a discarded humongous white rock of ‘flawed’ marble? Why the heart shaped pupils and ‘one eye looking at a closer object, the other at a more distant one…?’ What does this Teenage Shepherd boy symbolize, not just as the most famous naked statute in the world….?
Traditionally, David had been portrayed post- victory over the slain Goliath. But Michelangelo chooses a David poised, before all of the action – leaning his focus on the power of a God who had already delivered him from a lion and a bear, bare handed.
It would take 4 days x 40 men to move the statue the half mile from Michelangelo’s workshop by Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral to the Piazza della Signoria. Luca Landucci, diarist, recounts:
“…midnight, May 14th, and the ‘Giant’ was taken out of the workshop. They even had to tear down the archway… 40 men were pushing the large wooden cart where ‘David’ stood protected by ropes, sliding it through the town on trunks. The Giant eventually got to Signoria Square on June 8th 1504…”
Michelangelo worked at the statue in secrecy … he worked in the open courtyard, in the rain: this inspired him? It’s been said he submerged a wax model of his design in water. As the water level dropped he’d chisel what emerged. He slept in at work, ate when he could….
his craftsmanship is ‘flesh- soft’, frozen palpable restful caution, reflected in a classic pose (contrapposto); one leg bearing full weight, while the other leans forward allowing hip and shoulder to recline at opposing angles, lending the entire torso it’s now legendary S- curve : the stance of a confident, focused watchful warrior.
**Why the heart shaped pupil under furrowed brows? You’d furrow, burrow, …….owwww anything if you were faced with a bloodthirsty monster’s 7ft sword going at your jugular… I can’t say. I wasn’t there,
though I’ve seen a few monster cyclones, a semi tidal wave, a few insane river crossings, one deadly mountain route; sat in at a Mumbai eatery while a 10,000 strong mob rioted past looking for petrol and match; I even been in the 200 km No man’s Land between India and Karachi: with quiet (back then) Border Security and long sweet smelling grass:
you were not just staring at danger, you were gazing at Something else you couldn’t define. Your brain had registered earlier Goodness. You remembered how the ocean looked before the storm, you perhaps even thought this too- would pass. You chose not to think the cyclone would sweep your roof away. You looked on life with ‘heart-shaped pupils’ waiting for the morning sun, waiting in a way that knew storms and rough places were not eternal situations. In that moment you chose not to rely on mere senses; if you prayed, you didn’t have time to format words. There were no words. You forgot formality, you were stripped of human comfort, you didn’t care. But you remembered somethings no one could have told you to remember, none but another Power could whisper that secret, in ways beyond aural, they were metaphysical? Maybe, maybe there’s more adjectives than we know.
D’you remember a time you thought you were alone in a place no one else could reach, but Something held you? That Fever you thought could never leave, that Accident that took your leg but gave you wings, you now remember all that and it pushes you up the rungs of a Thing like a stair case made of gold, gold because it’s like nothing else you’ve known…. resilient after a fire rinse, beautiful in the refining….
You’re looking at all that now with eyes of a love you never thought existed …
A love for divine intervention, interpretation…
a love for the impossible.
You cannot find words to pray, but your mental Sling is working:
there’s a giant, a Goliath in your face. You’re looking at It, but also at the Possibility of an impossible solution. You’ve got to take the very thing you been good at, those proverbial ‘5 pebbles from little stream at home’, your well worn sling>these kiddie weapons, but it’s all you got, stripped of other armour too much for you to fit into!
But all you got is enough.
You surprise yourself, and your giant.
You become the giant….. 15 feet tall, pure gleaming material now, from something you thought was flawed:
if anything is a Prayer/ an Asking – it’s this one:
when the human spirit asks its Creator, what they can collaborate on together: “..what d’You want me to do next?”
What is that one stance that is most opposed to human nature?
It’s what made a Michelangelo, and the original David. (Michelangelo surprised even Leonardo Da Vinciin that broad room meeting they had, deciding where to stall David). It is Job sitting in the market place in ashes and sackcloth saying,”Never mind the nasty things my besties say about me, bless them God, I know my Redeemer lives…for me.” It is Daniel flung in the lion’s den, unafraid, “..even if He slays me, I trust Him.” It is Esther and Ruth, Hannah and Sara. Or Gideon and Moses. It is you and me, every so often, walking through everyday miracles of existence and healing and we mightn’t even notice some times but we prayed these impossible prayers, naked of all garb/pretence/fear/doubt/lack of gut;
we might be there today, and we look around and find these little or large, old and new mammoth Illustrations of how humans can pray, or perhaps it’s possible we have done it, and haven’t realised it….
No?
Not possible to gaze beyond our Goliath and look askance at ……..an Invisible God?
No?
Non possibile???
But this got me here, @ the kind of prayer Stance that defies visible support….*
“…. nor has there ever been seen a pose so easy, or any grace to equal that in this work, or feet, hands and head so well in accord, one member with another, in harmony, design, and excellence of artistry.” Giorgio Vasarion the most famous statue in Florence or perhaps in all the world.
“…ONLY GOD CREATES, THE REST OF US JUST COPY…” Michelangelo.
With blind school kids, and a musical I worked with them
His name was Dhru*; he loved the ‘roaring’ bit. Dhru must be at least ten years old today, when we did “Everybody is differently beautiful”, he must’ve been 7? To think he couldn’t see his costume, had no clue what a lion’s mane was like, or even heard it roar, what a sport Dhru was. All these unknown things and he had to act as well as mime singing! But they were all game, as game can get.
I learned how to appreciate life, how to dance even if we missed a step, how to laugh out loud against all odds- from these kids who were my son’s schoolmates. The School asked if I could help out with Spoken English: oh I hinted broadly at Drama and Poetry. They didn’t get the Poetry bit, but one little girl did. She loved every poem in her braille typed book, especially the one that went, “…and Saturday’s child has to work hard for her living…”
It still breaks my heart to recall how they were taught to cross the street by themselves. Some of the older ones were actually going on crowded buses and getting off alone, cheerfully unafraid.
“They must learn….how else will they face life?” Their Daily Living Skills teacher asked me.
Sometimes I wish our own Joh weren’t as independent as he is. I wish he were less self reliant, I wish our kids didn’t need to grow up in a world that knows how to take advantage of the ‘disadvantaged’. I wish our roads were safer. But then am proud of every young /older challenged person or otherwise who can “work hard” at whatever Life gives them.
Thankyou young Dhru for reminding me today of people like you who still teach me to be brave and beautiful, no matter what.
Much to un-think here, @ a 3 hour drive from Bangalore city, into tiny growing town.
That cloud sits on thatch? …. its an untouched blue sky with no malls or smog. At Kuppam’s local market, one or two women are speaking fluent English, their eyes are warm. I meet a beautiful lady at the Railways- she mans a 2ft iron wheel that lifts railway-cross gate. There is no time to take her picture….. want to wish her a Happy New Year like we wished some others, but Railway lady in blue sari is busy; she turns to give me another look, then surprises us with a wide smile, white teeth and laughing eyes. The woman must be somewhere around 3o, 40? I send a small hand-wave. She waves back, laughing like a school girl. On our next visit to Kuppam, we simply must get a pic with her. Good holidays are also those when you’ve no time for a good photograph?
We stay almost a week here. That lovely Gate is under repair. There were lesser sheep this time at Kuppam: no it’s not a farm for animals, just us humans+ cuddly paws.
My sis sculpts her fav words into woodwork, grills…. She’s an Eye Doc in this town, border to three south Indian states. Li loves the precious simple life here with a faithful househelp and furry princess.
Like Trees planted by Springs of Living waters; there’s backyard Date palm, bougainvillea, guava, papaya, mango, occasional monkey ….
Bonfire woodies. Such memories here with Mom&Dad in this space by Christmas tree, Gulmohar, shoeflower, a baby tamarind tree. Time has flown by ‘like smoke through a key hole…’ (Movie : The Bucket List) Honey!Li’s exquisite cuisineThat new double road used to be a rough path to Kupz’s lake. There are more people, cars, school buses, buildings today….Floors, tiny christmas lights asleepMeshed safety front grill to keep away esp. mosquitoes. That door lock has seated one or two friendly frog. Very tiny ones. They look like Kermit to us, but Li doesn’t think so. She says(with shudder) they (her leapy frog) wait for her with sly grin. “No, they’re not ..!” is her horror response to my Q.”What if they just want a kiss, and will turn into your Prince? “ Li loves her Prince of Peace best.
The road back…. miles off city limits: goatsherd!Thresh time! We must gingerly drive over their sheaves, this helps them? (Green lid sohmph my new travel mate from Li’s kitchen).You can’t see this well enough, but that’s a Church steeple over local temple, rerouting past Kolar gold fields.Sunset over another gorgeous day; Joh is quiet this past hour. Bangalore city is closer from this long stretch, after brief stop for Lassi. Back home @Greenview, our feathered granddaughter Tina has two ugly blonde chicks… soon they’ll grow fine feathers. One must wait. And watch. And did you know Pigeon can be trained to recognize every alphabet? Tina’s mom is our second daughter Kitsy:) Tina herself was hatched here (also mothered by Kit, so). Complicated!
All this in our little garden which will be busy this season. Phew! Wishing 2020 Vision for us all.Peace, Shalom : nothing missing, nothing broken. And if there is ‘missing- broken’, may each fit in a whole new way, causing Peace beyond belief. Selah: meaning, Pause calmly & think of that.
These past months I’ve come to a few (21!)conclusions that renew me; warning though…long post.
Appreciating peopleis a craft all its own: it breaks barriers in Invisibility & Understanding of human co-existence. (You being here with comment, follow, share: made blogging a truly creative experience for me. My best liked Post was thishere, where I discovered that my Art Quotes were liked? Thankyou!)
2. We create new experiences : re-visiting a long past ‘Happy Place’ right here in the Now.This Post: Little chapel in Monmouthshire, surprised me> an Instagram friend’s Photograph that provoked a childhood memory with new realisation that I have this beautiful space in me now forever. It never left, I needed a re- visit/ reminder, via blog? Wow.
3. ‘De-cluttering is also giving away some amount of personal space to listen to another. It is life’s sweetest investment. I haven’t been able to throw away old cards, or my kids’ kindergarten scribbles/ their first baby curls- but we’ve been inviting more people home.Over the months of 2019, I’ve had the privilege of watching my first love for God walk back in. Time has been restored. Time spent nursing health issues: the more I stopped sitting in my own personal fenced Pond, the more healing happened. (If you like, there are a few words from there in Heal).
Digital,RN
4. ‘Old’ structures seen again with new eyes renewed my understanding of my own defences (I’m captured by the world around me👀 in blogosphere!) It is beyond belief how a PhotoBlogger’s Capture of Old Cold Bench re-wrote my own indifference to life outside the front door.
5. The Net has some inspiring movies that worked well in my core;listed in my Decade Tag Post. They expose some incredible events in everyday living. Looking forward to more!
7. Praying more for those in my ❤, or not, (again, am deeply stirred by some amazing Blog friends who remind me that we are humans in the most demanding era ever, and old fashioned as it may seem I’m stoked to pray for others as others have done for me),makes this whole connectivity thing worth the effort and time and love.
8. Play Angel unawares {This Upload inspires me to go out and take more real life pictures of my own. (You don’t have to read all of my Posts, but am getting a kick out of seeing what I’ve been upto 🤗). Humans can be angels, every single basic one of us.
10. Go, GLOW : work out, eat healthy, forgive, speak life. I’ve never personally asked myself to do that.😅.
11. ExperiencingSilencewrites new words Sing. Play an instrument. Listen to birds. Squirrels. Leaves. Rain. It’s no easy discipline, when you’re tempted to not be silent.
15. Remember that one line that’s been holding my head. “THERE IS A TIDE TURNING…” < that Post was inspired by the trees outside my house. I know now Natures’ Prompts are from God.
16. Taking inventory of what lives with me : is a critical Must Do!
17. Working on Heartlifts crucial to existence, involves the act of Prayer. Yeah people will find you odd.
She found us on a railway platform, Bangalore East; was fascinated by our daughter’s phone and finger ring. Then she wouldn’t leave us; half hour later I was curious to see her family, was she alone? Were there more pretty eyes like hers, gold amber, dark with long lashes….
Photograph Vihan
You could get trapped between tears and soft rage. The child was not hungry for food, she was hungry for things she couldn’t have, not with her lifestyle on the pavement. I looked away hurt that I felt irritation, hurt that I could be repulsed. Somewhere in all that, there was (is) horror that 23%? (according to 2012 census) live below our poverty line. Somewhere in all that is the voice of Sakshi Malik a Facebook friend who said Poverty exists more in the human spirit than anywhere else.
So I follow Amber girl, past a glass bangle seller who also sells heart shaped balloons. He wears kohl in his eyes and one earring. Any other day I may have returned his smile but today the mother in me wasn’t amused. What has happened with us all, that children like this child, must stay in railway platforms? She’s speaking my local Kannada, she is chatty, street smart. If she went to school she’d be in front row full of pep and silver/gold paper stars in her project work.
She points me to her Ma with five other sibling, all their amber eyes on fire. The mother has infant at breast under thin cotton sari and green blouse with safety pins all down opened neck line. Words still fail me, what does one say?
Amber, she grinned at me, her face turning into one big heart. This was ten years ago? She was some kind of angel in that transit zone: we were shifting cities, just about getting used to our third child’s blindness, we were between jobs, it felt insecure, tiring.
I remember Amber today, not as representing the invisible population of a country unable to tackle its vast tribes, but as a bright faced young one who could be beautiful in her spirit and gift us a smile like that, no matter what her circumstance.
Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers. –Victor Hugo.
@yomargey
I called this one Street Prayers after a recent Haiku Jam starter, “Corner of the Street,” but maybe it was inspired by a visit few evenings ago, a visit by a little face in a shop window. The face of a small child, not 10 years old, he had these sweet eyes and half smile almost apologetic but steady. Any prayer of mine could be futile. I was staring at Humanity, and It’s hunger was staring back at me.
We were strangers in a month that’s all for shopping, fun, food, laughter. I stood there with my heart load of trouble but the kid in the street looking at me couldn’t see it. And yet if I hadn’t had trouble of my own, with my own sick child, I probably wouldn’t/ couldn’t have felt a twinge for this child with his cheeks muddied, burnt in the sun. When we came out of the shop he wasn’t there. Now I had guilt. I should’ve told him to stay right there, got him at least a meal. Looked everywhere, but he wasn’t there, not anywhere. What was his name? Did he have a home? Will I ever know? Will a prayer do?
@yomargey
A few years ago while at a street school in Mumbai, I met another little child, his name was Raju. We learnt how to draw and skip rope, brush our teeth and hop. He taught me how to walk through the tiny spaces between the shacks that were his colony. He taught me how to smile and laugh and forget that I’d had a fever for three years, he helped me heal. Raju wouldn’t talk to anyone, he was known as a kid that disrupted the hours at the two roomed house that also served as school for construction worker kids. When he drew, he did black circles. I don’t know how we got talking maybe it was during games and skip rope. I wasn’t great at it, he found it hilarious. That stint there changed me from an ambition driven ‘writer’ to an observer. And I’ve been watching the things that make us more human: here’s my finding. Need, shared or personal, it changes the way we respond to each other. Shared need, the need for acceptance, ah that one can start a revolution. And sometimes we pray for one another, and that’s the most powered place between Spheres that Humanity will ever experience. It changes me everytime I pray for another. (My Psychology lecturer in college would have a fit if he read this post).
No alarm bell, no burst of glory. It tiptoed in ‘neath my gate. It wouldn’t hold my hand, It couldn’t. I was cold cold cold, every leaf in my garden shrivelled, ashed; Ivy & dust layered the ground and walls of my address.
When Healing came It bled into me. It Crossed boundaries I had built. It broke Itself like Bread over my hunger and poured Itself out like Water over my drought. New metaphors crowd my space. This had been desert with no oasis. Now, this Healing-
growing me into things I do not want to recognize:
a Garden of Shadows where a Lone One prays. Prays as if for me. What’s this. He breaks on two planks where He hangs, I hate this like a personal wound. I’m screaming words with no decibel: He’s saying it for me. Two words, three- I will never forget. “IT IS FINISHED.” He said, smiling stars in His eyes as if we were in Paradise being made over again.
Wait,
wait. He takes my buried memoirs of habits of pain.
No, wait!
But I can’t have them back, He says. Healing takes it all away. I’m blinded by an emotion with no name, Its a Light falling careful in my blind eyes. It grabs my poison ivy with new strong Vine: It inhales me, slamming my dying dead inside, don’t ask how. I have no Theory, no Words wise or pretty. All I know, when Healing came to me I was dead blind, now I see:
I see Scars, Its Body broken. Healing has scars, you get this? I don’t and maybe never will, not till we go Face to Face past that proverbial Glass darkly in the way. Now I peer through Reason, Logic, Theories, Rule. Oneday when we have crossed our rules, we will see the host of things that see us now. Oneday we will break through gravity bound toes: on that day we will see what we question these days. Oh when Healing came It broke Its news gentle to me. It knew I’d be suspicious,afraid,disbelieving…
When Healing walked into me, It spoke things I believed I couldn’t know…..
that gain came in via loss, true I knew, but what else could a human fight for? We needed this. This War for Survival was our one socially acceptable behaviour; it united man and woman and child and nations and bazaars and gangsters and priests, it fed global talks and need. If I didn’t do Survival what tell aunty Maya I was doing ? Or Pastor Sahil. Or neighbour Bishhy. Or Karu Harben my brilliant corporate cousin. What tell Didi Grey my mentor..or art collaborators… that I didn’t care anymore how I’m being received;
who could I be, what of my ‘me‘?
When Healing came It talked into me – sacred syllables of the Father Son and Holy spirit, groans not uttered by the carnal 5 senses: we are heart and mind and spirit soul, beyond flesh and sensor. I had territory within that must heal first*, my Healer said, it began in the acres acres acres (deep in my core where we live or die, there we heal, there we host our virus, our sickle cells, our warrants of life, our predictions of peace. If we die there, how could we survive in the peripheries?) ..
Healing took me to an impossibly narrow dizzy path. When I began to heal- one tiny step at a time, It unleashed me to run my feet like a deer’s in cliff edge sheer mountain. Fear rose bitter gall in my throat and I killed it like a beast is killed with bare hands: something I’d tried an entire lifetime, now it happened with one rapid wish;
here was this desire to thank every mean thing that had ever come my way, hey yes those nasties I’d crumpled over? Them. They were my helpmate, they now proved my brick and mortar needed to build foundation of this impossible route. “Forgive. Go on higher,” The Healer pled with eyes of deathless Love, and the Light of that gaze scorched my last defense, over and over like with birth pangs. How could I have known this detail if I hadn’t needed healing ?
Why haven’t You been here earlier- how much went in wasteland of my nothing. My Healer replied as if I had spoken, He said,”You are more than all this. In these deserts more Gardens could grow, if you go. “
Say what, why? There’s more folk like me, why would I care, but now I did.
When Healing came to me It rained and Its Tear whetted my thirst for Its fact. I used to think with Healing I would be strong again to return to old strengths, I’d be a pillar of fortune, a wheel of Change. Oh look- see how nice healing is, but that is not Its way. It told me things I couldn’t know.
When Healing began I leaned my core on Its Strength. No more great burden of goodness to bear! I was still a torn leaf garden but with new shoot- as if I had wing, the Healer said,”Never mind your Self. Rise..”
When Healing came It did not give me wings, that’d have scared us all.
It is much more than we show and tell, it’s in the way grass grows o’er and o’er and wise men die and babies born will oneday grow to know more than you or I confess. When Healing can, It will come to you and the Light you see will be outside of our incapacities, then perhaps you too will say to another, “…how else could I have known…?*”
..
Inspired by our son(& little brother Joh) as he heals.
Innerdialects 
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