Tag: Sun

The Boy With No Name

Happened in a few minutes, this one’s script, but the Time lapse + putting together, ah’m!

For actual kids and those with heart for the Unseen. Watch time – 9 mins., and special sound delivery ๐Ÿ‘‰๐Ÿผ “Appey- man*” (line loan, Johann๐Ÿ˜€)

*fruit seller ‘Apple’

Advertisement

The Greatest Human Need*

You see It* in naked mouths, in burdened markets, in death cells & cathedrals; we all await the same thing.

I saw It last week in a wee apartment & momma with sick child,

saw It crying in the Street yesterday outside a Cafe: a man sat in Crossword puzzles; his face sunk. A couple in phones, not touching shoulders like Love sits; she refused cake, he shrugged, got a green mango ice cream, the silence only stopped now and then when the happy eyed waiter grinned. He grinned as he walked between polka-dotted giant cups perched in high wooden open cabinets and acrylic fern;

we diced snakes & ladders at this Cafe called Narcos. Hmm. No drugs, just us in chilled sweaters and hungry for chat as mothers and daughters can be when needing to know we are loved – no conditions, no time to comb hair. There was that need, to taste a satisfaction…..

a diamond waiting to be sharved (just made that word) ;

It….is like Water waiting to Fall, like a Niagara e’en. We say, What. That….! But we turn into terrorists at Traffic messes, we become brooding hens over interruptions, we snarl at headlines, and run like headless chicken when ignored. Oh and this – we absolutely evangelize on the meanness of God when there’s an earth disaster, then we build Cathedrals of mistrust….

It was there yesterday at Happa Stationers‘- guy in dull red cap o’er few flat locks, he strung them over his shoulder, his face dead-fire, as we traded notes for exam accessories for my Kitsy,

she with eyes like stars over an unknown future. Some people are Bearers of Good. They go like a Lighthouse searching the dark:

Clover grass ‘neath step at Stationers.
Pic Courtesy : Kitsy Ruth.

****

we retrace steps back home, the sun is warm in our cold toes. Yea an Indian cold. Cold enough to shiver my pigeon;

am scared to read the papers – they lie face down in a jute bag under chair turned to the trees outside, as if asking these skies for Noah’s rainbow;

today’s unopened Times sun bathes next to Rosie, with her 50+ tiny spiky leaves and rose pouting…..

like us Humans rearing for relief.

We’ve schooled our Self to hiss like serpents in gardens of Grace. We rap our own knuckles if we fall prey to God’s Love. We skid, stop stare like rabbits caught in headlights, stammering- afraid to give in to Humanity’s best-masked need:

(Terrified of what we do not know, what we do know holds us safe among ‘relatables; eaters of edible bad news);

I saw It Staring at me via a Cartwoman selling tomatoes. No Cross tattoo in her throat like some of us Church goers host, no prayer beads except rich busy fingers at brinjal and coriander leaf, like she were a branch off Him who made her veggies! As if there was nothing to fear. Yeah her purpose to be the Bearer of Grace.

Yeah I can talk of Love and Valentine trophies all day but if I didn’t receive this Thing, I wouldn’t know how to give it. ‘IT’ …a 5 lettered word one sees best on a Hill far away.

Soon we’ll be doing Lenten fasts and Anthems to woo It back in our lanes, aye Grace– lurking in corners like a lost Lover, a jealous one, aching to forgive, bless, heal, restore, love:

aching that we believe *Its reach, Its depth, Its width, Its unfathomable Power to raise the Human Spirit from the Store Rooms of hell.

Yea, yes- the most under-rated, least accessed, the Greatest Human need there is- Grace:

Love always follows. No matter the odds.

Grace : unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification. b : a virtue coming from God. c : a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance.http://www.merriam-webster.com โ€บ grace

Designer

This one day after months of gazing thru a dark glass at Life? …this one day began a series of clear eyed adventure among new things not seen before. New things you make. Creative! You say. Half sigh, but I love what happens when we’re not looking. Love how when we least expect it we are surprised by fantastic twig going beserk in the sun, drugged by morning dew and trail of breeze in it. Am I feeling Easter already? Maybe! Sunrise colors at dusk, is a surprise I’m telling you. Away from the city, the sun is closer, liquid. And I’m reminded there’s a design to everything, nothing is random.

Wreathe from dried creeper ‘neath old forest trees few miles away.

A field of marigold, green against buttered yellow petals in rows and rows and the air a pungent smack of earth, nothings random here. We stop, park and stare. Photography cannot capture sun rays sweeping the sky with giant brooms of Light. Not like we’ve not seen Light this way before? What, we’ve changed? As a race, are we staring more at nature? Are we returning to how we used to feel about fields and skies racing us as we travel? Is knowledge more sharp edged, less cheap? Why does Beauty hurt the eye, with its dare? As if here there is no other design except to shine.

Friday five minute writers : prompt : Design

Here Time stands still…

Two minutes to sundown, my roses have bloomed, two tiny strawberry blossoms under honeysuckle all in our garden balcony in the sun going down, I’m staring

Friday five minute writers

staring at Time thats raced, stalled, touched everything, and left this moment untouched by its arms. Am staring at news here and there about Farmers in the streets furious at somethings, staring at a sky gaudy with pink gold as if nothing matters;

as if its all still too beautiful to get ugly. Somewhere in the trees a new bird calls; I cannot distinguish its cry. It has a blue black tail and hat, all the size of my palm. Tomorrow I must paint again after we’ve boxed giveaway clothes to a Place called Liz’s Trust where a single woman with a tiny face and long arms Care takes 50 children in a house with green painted windows and lemon yellow terrace. Its my new beautiful thing: Liz’s Trust. The woman’s voice reminds me of this bird’s, not in its tone but freedom. As if there were no new 70% stronger Covid wave or Avian Flu: or questions searing colonies of humans waiting to dance again like they used to in buses and offices and bazaars.

The sun dips behind a family of palm trees as the sky sulks then dims. The new blue bird twips one last time then back flips into a gorgeous frizzed thorn tree. I’m hungry for some fruit but still can’t stop staring at colors turning slate gray, shining in the aftermath of dusk, in the memory of Light…

it is chilly. January in my city is like that, a foot in summer, but not yet. Leaves are gold, red, brown, confused and happily. I lean in a small breeze; it stammers in the curtain then settles in my shoulder. Before the day ends officially, freeze the moment- hold it close, treasure its gift. It is kind and true like its always been. Its motives are pure- it just needed to meet you, was made for you. Every leaf and piece of color, every sound and scape, made for you and me, but we are distracted by the lives of distractions. We are attracted to these; don’t ask me why. Maybe we’re just staring at some things more than others. Maybe if we chose what to stare at…maybe if we re-grouped priorities, maybe if we got away a bit, to get back to where we began, to Creations’ core, and where we first saw Beauty….maybe then we’d remember how beautiful life is…

Text- Prayers

Today I prayed with Marija- Serb/Russian- she in an empty church (Prague), me here in my Indian Lockdown. We could not talk: Marija had a cough and is much better though still cannot speak. We text- prayed, in a beautiful silence.

Where Marija prayed today with me and her phone.

***

She is a gorgeous girl with a heart of gold; a classical pianist. A star all by herself and as we pray she introduces me to the whole new world we all are in: a world that has crept closer than ever before in a silence that reeks with fear and need: a silence that demands to be filled. We pray for her friend Serg. who is recovering from the worst: for the little children in her classroom and others even here. We go to the altar of an earth keeling; we have no words enough. We have no pride left, no ambition and self. We are as one, muted, stunned into new needs. Has Heaven changed? No.

Thankyou Marija for this.

***

It is the same light in Czechoslovakia that also will fall here a few hours from now. We all still spin around the same sun. It falls on us all the same way; the way it fell for centuries.

Emptied pews, memoirs of finger prints and feet that went through these places; tears, laughter, weddings, babies, christenings, flowers, sermons in candle lit shadows rising to the rafters like hymns;

now they are wooden witness to Marijaโ€™s whispers as she kneels for her Prague and my India and all our nations and friends and peoples….

โ€ฆvarnished mahogany(?) gleaming in the flash of Marijaโ€™s phone. Iโ€™d asked for a few pictures. We have never personally met, but she is blog friend and fellow prayerer at Haven Fellowship.

There are angels in marble here and there in life, in cathedrals and parks. And thereโ€™s us. We arenโ€™t angels, we are real time people with lungs and whispers. So we pray for each other; for employment issues and food, for healing and cure; for peace and the knowledge of the saving grace of God that knows no death.

M.& I finish praying but I realise the prayer must go on like a back burner, even though we say Amen via WhatsApp and go on to dinner here. Monsoon is good this year maybe; thereโ€™s a rose bud in our balcony. New sapling from forgotten pots; like prayers they lift their stems to a laden sky. No we didnot see any Neo-comet. We saw a family of parrots in gaudy green & blood red beaks. Everything looks like prayers to me. Everything seems to be asking heaven for its Saviour:

as I write this itโ€™s all I can think of. Yes Iโ€™m praying for us all, that more than life and death we will experience the Love of God that transcends our very need for mortality. And that He will make a way for us to feel for each other in prayer. In the end it’s the most powered possession humanity owns.

(Below: Marija, playing WayMaker).

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. ” John 3:16. The Bible.

Intoxicating loneliness

Your ways are Mystery and Wonder. I stand as a miracle myself, we are all miracles in this hour- little footprints of You, in a desert of oceans of nothings: here we are…on the threshold of an intoxicating loneliness.

Trees outside one of our windows

Every move of leaf, bird, human voice, a kiss from the heaven we seek.

You are more suddenly more audible, more watchful in Your distance. We are weaning from other mothers, we are closest to the stars.

You are like the silence of the sun, the wind I cannot see, fire I cannot touch. Against my will, I glow in the glow of This.