as a weaned child, rest your head on the beach between this & the eternal. measure how deep we go…
back to when we saw our first sun rise, a mother smile, a father breathe his last breath.
where does sadness exit, or soul. or my child’s tears when I touch him, or an old man’s tears, & a beggar’s invisibility:
am startled at What stares back; i got used to war,
Pic- Karsten Winegeart, unsplash
not this. this opposes black&white lines. This breathes between the lies. A Wound that heals. A piece of healing spit in my eye, a bloodied whisper in my riot: forgive. Forgive. Let go. Forget. Breathe. Exhale. Inhale. Be loved. Live, live, not carcasses in the wind –
but arrested by Rest. the greatest temptation is to stay unwanted, unloved. Ay, am staring hangjaw at sacred choreography, “… walk on water? Nay, dance, dance…”
Gopalpur on sea, East Coast India; searching for childhood footprints; change can be beautiful. pic taken by my sis Doc Li, 2023
Negatives stem from disbelief at the State of Peace. And their reason comes from a space so deeply ingrained in us, it takes a super normal event for some of us to believe in the Impossible.
🌿🍂☘️🍁
I’ve always been fascinated by leaves : fat leaves, thin shrunk ones lopping off branches or in the ground, going in the wind. The older these things get, the more they call, they remind me of some thing….
With the pandemic and ensuing ‘plantdemic’ as a local journalist called it today, I too fell headlong into the flora of life. NJ my husband pampered our inner child: we got us succulents and palm. My sis brought home baby vine. Easter gave us Fern and Ivy, creepers, climbers, fabulous darlings with leaves and none of them dried. I hadn’t noticed but when we visited a local farm, I collected these jewels👇🏼pressing them in an old diary:
For me it was a fast from Negativity👈🏽 the thing is in my matrix like a mother.
Though, if you met me and we talked over lemon tea you’d leave with the sun coming out your ears, for all my miracles:
the time my heart got physically healed. And my spine. And how that one onion finds me when I need it, oh our beautiful blind son, and our daughters’ songs with the Psalmist in it, and yet before the sun can set I have a new worry surfacing harmlessly like an ant out of nowhere.Ask NJ.(We went for our second vaccine and it hurt nothing, it hurt nothing so much I really and totally wondered whether she gave me that Vaccine at all. Was it a trick. They were short on it too, weren’t they? NJ had to not only convince me he personally saw it, but that he had a pic to prove it).
It happened again these past 21 days as I aimed at kicking Negatives out. Not easy.
Being one who thinks in images, I used the dried leaves from farm: each to symbolize a need that needed a healing.
Biblically, ‘leaves’🍃 go for healing: Revelation 22:2, NIV: “down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”
During our 21day fast, as I kept away from Negativity, I took out my farm pressed leaves, stuck one on each page, with a request for a specific need. Twas officially Repair Time.
As we went from one day to the next it was the toughest exercise, to steer away from sagging thoughts/ nail them at the Cross/ ask Christ to heal; to each query He gave me two choices: to succumb, or host His healing.
I realized how deep the Human psyche can doubt the power of invisible healing, all because we tend to gravitate towards memos from our monsters: 👥🗣
Tobiah who follows me via childhood, calling me this & that publicly. Sanballat snorting with self righteousness. Christ was asking me to pray healing on Tobiah & Sanballat. Yeah that was two nice dried leaves. I half heartedly prayed ; twas like praying for Covid to heal of itself! There was no external change except that a new emotion arrived, a wish that they’d really meet Jesus.
While the day’s prayer went up, so did my foreboding dark cloud that followed me from room to room. That cloud had hung in my hair, had drooped my lip and haggard’d my heart. Now it lifted.
I ran out of leaves but began finding one new leaf every morning in our balcony. Was God saying I had one more area to sort? Yes! Every morning a new dried leaf was there, and the same kind of leaf I’d collected at the farm!
Now we near 21 days this Sunday, I have more Drying Darlings than I’ll need, and He’s reminding me that there are needs out there, not just my own personal ‘negatives’ but a nation full.
As I write this my daughter gives me three she found in the floor.
These are rose leaves from our wedding anniversary flowers. 35 years, yes quite something. (Allow me to indulge: That’s a Trinity Reminder that we need to totally allow Them to work via our tiny existence…)
Teach me Lord.My heart trips with new emotions for my country & 550 tribes, for an Earth in a Time like never before.
This Post was Titled the way it was, because without Belief it is no use praying at all and expecting any answer;
I’m looking at every Persona of Faith in the Bible- Moses and Abraham and Paul and Peter ….none asked for cars and houses or jewelry … they stalked Red seas, slung Goliaths, slammed Pharaoh, brought down Manna, prayed rain …for others‘ welfare. They didn’t care whether they were healed or not, they didn’t bother to stop at personal imprisonment or stoning. They blest their jailer, and yelled joy till prison chains and floors hiccuped with an earthquake. Some of them died with a smile in their lips, no dying man or woman can fake that. That’s an inner fire that can warm the coldest day. The fire of belief.
We have these two choices, we believe in nothing, or something. Either way we believe. Whichever we choose, will exert its power over us. There’s Death, and there’s Life.
Who names these cyclones? As “Tauktae” batters our west coast, showers and demi-gale rinse our flora, fauna & us all – roof/ roofless, and
newspapers drying in the sun for the Ugh Virus;
Two young girls in Bangalore City, got into PPEs and are helping families bury their dead in a local cemetery.
Unsure if this 👆🏼 is alright- posting their pic here but suddenly I don’t care. Am proud of them, of their parents who supported them in this. Am not too sure I’d do the same. Life’s edgy, uncertain, scary.
Our chicken stall friend Aji asks if we won’t buy 5 kilos please, his voice pleads. Garbage collectors request a ‘baksheesh‘. I would’ve frowned, now the heart is no longer fenced with one’s own dilemma. It’s as if walls have broken, we are all in one room. One emotional room. Some have marooned themself. They are wary. They will not call. Shrug.
That said, green leaves and autumn crocus arrive on schedule. And morning dew and light in the sky flipping in thru my window. What a beautiful earth in all the madness we are. Ashes & death from the Ganges to our monitor sets.
The earth reels as she did from her day 1, she never changed that spin. We don’t know much about existence, do we,
besides what Billy Gates or Elon Musk said or did not say today
or why we must/ must not Vaccine our self; which Vaccine is imported or ex. Exported. And why they must cost any thing at all to ones who cannot afford a meal;
questions, questioning answers.
Meanwhile Tauktae spits & fumes in Gujarat: respect to Newsmen & women braving winds to bring us our daily Feed from graveyards and other places. They are called Vulture Journalists by folks locally, unsure why.
It is the Season of the Unsure. Pre- monsoons have had that flavor from before I wore tiny petticoats. Will our Farmers smile, will they, won’t they?
“Will they be rice tomorrow dad?” Ms Mupti Singh taught us that one at Music class, I must’ve been 8ish. I did not really know anyone who didn’t have a meal to eat. Soyamma & Thamdi from a fisher folk family, came home to help with the dishes, then play. They wore little saris and lopsided hair buns. Oh could they run! You never beat them at cricket, at throw ball, at Hide&Seek, their long legs flaying the sand like young horses. They climbed trees, walls, roof; they were wide eyed with joy at mirrors, at dad’s guitar, at the Pressure cooker, at the tiffin boxes of food Ma packed for them, their round tummies barely hid in the sarees they wore, wore them like little boys. Both of them got married before I finished school. They must be great grandparents by now, in the eastern coast of India, which is battling other storms, like the rest of us are.
Disaster is such a Leveler, phew. We are all on the same plane now, the student, the teacher, the … …well almost. There’s our migrant workers, and hungered masses.
There’s young Nia, grieving for her dad. Tinja for his Grandparents. Families with young kids gone. A set of grown up twins dying within hours of each other, yes of Covid. What can I say. It is too much for a blog post. Am praying, that wisdom will prevail, that governments will know what to do, that they will bless back like only they can.
Am grateful for green grass and crocus that still blossoms a decade after we got them from a beach side somewhere in the west coast. It is a big round circle of life, fitting in square holes in the crust of sanity. Insanity sits waiting like a bride, on the eve of a terrific wedding. I smell change, in me, in you.
Things we thought we did not know, we shall know. What has not been told to us, we will now understand.
Not my words above, that’s from the Bible. Time and Tide take care of Insensitivities.
Innerdialects 
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