Tag: Manna

‘Eat Cake…’

‘Eat Cake…’

Infamous Marie Antoinette quote that fired social rage, ‘Eat cake’ when people had no bread left: yesterday it brought home the fact of how rich these times of physical poverty can be;

I watched our little girl who’s outgrown/ still outgrowing little and large social – growing up- bruises in a time that’s maybe the best/ not the best for anyone this much@ home: she bakes a yum cake besides entire dinner/ lunch to warm our hearts, but it’s a day that hungers for all kinds of Breads.

Kitsy’s Cake yesterday
***

It is the 40 days after the resurrection of Christ, I’m curious about everything He did during that time. Wasn’t there also an early morning He fixed a seafood breakfast at the beach, at dawn?

Also curious about ’40 days’. His fast was 40 too. What is the significance of those 4 tens? Here a Newborn must wait 40 days before a Christening. People fast 40 days at Lent. Curious. There’s time enough to look close at many things we chatted on about/ took maybe easily. Now it’s all looking in at our windows.

We played LUDO! 🥰 another one from K’s Instagram.
***

My Gran Tara was Ace-Ludo player, oh was she queen at it, she’d kill, stalk us with the craft of a Chess champion. I wonder now, how the older Gen. would’ve handled Lockdown woes if they were here? They’d have taken music out, skimped on food mercilessly, there’d have been more fastings and prayer than we dare, or care to have, scripture readings….

Gran Tara was an avid Radio listener to everything from Vicks’ Vapourub commercials, to Beatle’s music and Billy Graham. Is how I got to hear him, and Beatles in the first place. Oh gran wasn’t into lyrics but she loved to dance, her sari pallu tied in knot at waist as she sometimes cooked a surprise meal for us, after insisting we all go out for a walk at the beach.

I try hard to be like the ones gone ahead. My Ma never never yelled if someone left a coffee cup somewhere. I break into hives, not that I’m a clean bee at all. Been praying earnestly for a ‘Clean spirit’ to de-possess my laid back self. Been praying for the easy wit of my dad, and Jeff’s dad, they were gentle-warriors too. Jeff has that patient love that will not take offense at all. I go up the wall. But no, not him. Yesterday all our streets were cordoned off and I know it’s all for good. I’m no extrovert, hate having to dress up to go somewhere, unless occasionally. Now I’m reeling at being physically fenced in like that.

Then. I read a blog post this morning from a young girl who lost her Mom this week, having given away their nice house to a poor family, to run from a political situation. My head blanks. How d’you cope with that?

Today is my quiet day, the family gives me abs space to go away into quiet with a list of things to ask Daddad in heaven. So my thoughts travel around all of us in an earth, in a time like Now:

will all miraculously change in 40 days? Should I take 40 to breathe soft in the air, pray, think, live, love deep: look at the dear ones around me, look for signs of things they need, watch them smile, eat their love offerings of little cake and hugs, take nothing for granted, not one little new green leaf in our tiny garden balconies and spaces around…

Jeff and me thought we took a good selfie at a friend’s new 11th floor apartment overlooking gorgeous acres of coconut grove & sky 3, 4? months ago. We never got those acres in any Selfie though, just our own shades. Haha.
***

I’m thinking some more thoughts. They walk all over my floor, and ears and mind. Wondering how little we know of an earth we share, and how massive our blockades are, in terms of culture and development, or language and pace. It’s all crashing. Our needs are getting more basic today, our prayers the same, almost….? I’m trading a particular memory of an old chapel on a hill we used to go to, it’s well worn pew…. trading that for a new Christ Jesus I’m seeing recently : nothing about Him changed. He still walks through Locked doors and wall….

What if only now we’re eating at the same table, communing with the real thing… what if This is all going to break into a new Era, the likes of which we have never even begun to comprehend ….

What if the Love and Life of God hasn’t even begun in Us, what if we’re all about to be startled like never before, in our prayer closets, in our Upper Rooms, and Hiding places in gardens of a self-centredness, nothing like the original One; we have just been weeping for our own daily bread and physical safety, been judgemental legalistic and narrow/ suspicious of each other, with zero preparation for Eternity.

I get that about this apparently new Christ Jesus treading the Waters of Social mindsets, treading our well fenced privacies; a Christ @ that Gethsemane praying futuristically for us in 2020 that we’d get off our rocky status in rocky boat & take those steps to Him no matter the waves of uncertainty; a Christ in blood tears hoping we’d trade old anchor for a walk with Him yeah via this valley of the Shadow …

eat Manna, feast at Tables of Grace, rest in His Touch:

Grace: let its Oils bore deep in our minefields of habit…

I must stop for now, but this is real: this Covid Age – Christ walking on the Waters to you & me.

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Flavour of the month

GoDogGoCafè

If you zoom in, you’ll see those Lotus low left in tiny pond at Cubbon Park here in Bangalore city. India. Warm warm day, 28 degrees already!– lunch and ice cream in the shade. Too much fun to take pictures, but we got a few.

2 weeks ago, Haven fellowship @ Cubbon Park.

March always feels like sunshine warming herself up from cold waves and February mist/rain.

March’s flower- Daffodils, (in India its called Nargis), oh what beauties these are too, ‘Heralds of Spring’! As we get a new sunset, my heart fills with new colors. It’s like we must determine our flavour. What tones would you choose, what Flower/ (flavour) would you be?

Not a question I’ve thought of before,

NetPic.
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but today…..a young person at our Haven fellowship; all he could talk about was the Love of God, and how on earth did God love like that? He asked.

The more I listened to him, the more it struck me how different he was from the rest of us with issues at finance, or health! This guy, (I’ll call him Len) got eyes like liquid stars when he talked of the Love of God that drew him in. He spoke a few soft sentences and it went round and round that one thing: the Love of God.

Unrelated pic? But another of God’s touches of Love: little Chikku adopted by my cousins Shirl&Dan. At their table.

After we went each into our lives, post service, there’s that gentle fragrance, of the touch of God. Like Light and Rain that falls on the good, the bad, the ugly. Nothing changes the way It falls in at us.

As this new month arrives, I’m feeling all blessed- up grateful for the flavors life brings in. Unsure of my own flavour, but I’d love to sample more of the Aroma of Christ:

how He is Manna and Dew in our days, how His Love has no limits, limitations. How It overwhelms all other love, need, want, showing me a pathway of peace and one that does not misunderstand my place in it all.

Tokens of His care, for ‘the littlest of these...’
(Thankyou ShirlDan; hope your infant squirrel Chikku won’t mind breach of privacy?)
….

As I wrap this, a lone bright star twinkles through branches of trees outside. Another month approaches, I love the way a new month feels, especially this one. Fragrances of Lent, of a Father Heart with room for us all.

It is almost too good to believe, the whole story of ‘Easter‘, the Cross, Gethesemane, the Passion of Christ for us each. We tend to lean on our own needs and their fulfillment, more than what is,

or perhaps tend to misunderstand why this or that happened in our lives. Why there is war, or crime, illness, loneliness, why something is the way it shouldn’t be.

My sister’s Gulmohar tree with shoeflower, last month at David’s Pasture.

And then there are people like Len, all still in wonder at the Love of God.

I’m basking in those four words, THE LOVE OF GOD. Maybe it’s fragrance is best expressed in Joy? And I’m lending myself this, for the next 30 days. Maybe that’s the truth of Lent. That we take for free, not just as a Lending, the absolute Joy that comes from knowing how deeply we are loved by the One that made us, each, so intricately complex, every cell and thought process. How magnificent the aspect of each human, far more than lilies of the field, or all the blossoms in every tree, ever. I find myself staring at humans. Irises. Brows. Fingers. Smiles.

Our daughter Vi
..

Laughter. The fantasticity of Births. Deliveries. Pain. Relief. Grace. Healing.

The way my friend Maya looks when she’s happy. Uncle J’s stillness. Light in the Gulmohar tree, and Dina’s voice when she prays. The hush of waiting…..

Even a mother may forget her child, but I will not forget you..” quote, Bible. Pic – Sis Shirley and furry babe Chikku.

it’s all too much beauty stacked in one life, and I’m bursting grateful for the opportunity to see it all. Not just the shiny bits but the grey of dawn as I wrap this.

Gratitude: it’s the flavour I want to be, for it delivers one to Joy.

I couldn’t have dreamt that up all by myself.

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idialects@gmail.com, updated in Contacts. Apologies, this Blog is taking a while to update. There’s some mail still going to my old blog address. And I don’t understand how 2 or 3 of my Blog friends are unable to see any email from here. If that’s you, please do let me know. Thanks! 🌻

RN.