I read Dr Luke’s story of “Ten Men with Leprosy” (Luke 17:11-19), subtitle of the Contemporary English Version, as a straightforward “parable”, a word that the translators of this version consistently avoided to appear less “religious elites”. I love parables. And have always enjoyed the “parables” from Middle Eastern terrains including the many fascinating parables of Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese American.
Parables, like poetry, have an inbuilt logic that without straining my brain can gently penetrate into my heart lifting layers of that “inbuilt counter logic” to convince me of the greater truth. Parables, like great poems, are enablers to feel the applied wisdom, a part and parcel of any “aha, aha” moment.
The parable in question is a straightforward healing of a “multi-cultural” group of men, whom the New Revised Standard Version of the Christian Bible calls “lepers”, a politically incorrect word, which also suggests the safe distance!
I have always been fascinated by the fact of men and women who usually cling together in their own racial, linguistic or ethnic groups, nevertheless come and stay together, like children playing, when there is a need that is deeper than race and ethnicity. That deeper need is the only time these men and women feel very comfortable with one another. At which, these men and women long for a shortening of that safe distance, which usually only the stronger men and women desire after.
I have seen that in men and women in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the early eighties and nineties, dodging the liberation the younger Tamil men and women were introducing with their AK 47’s! The older folks, at that moment, could only see things in caste colour, except when they had to run into bunkers to take cover from the Sinhalese bombs! There was, I was informed in Jaffna by a younger woman of low caste, another instant when caste was transcended. And that was when it was dark, and the focus was what concerned below ones waist!
The moment that “need” is rectified they seem to be going back to their racial, ethnic, or caste groups. This is what I see in Luke’s story of the ten men, Jews and Samaritans, with leprosy.
Kahlil Gibran, the people’s philosopher, whose parables and poems provide insights to life, in his poem titled “Love”, distinguishes the stronger and the weaker self that co-exist in every personality. Coming together of persons in his poem happens in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and multi-racial nation, only when there is deeper human need such as physical thirst and hunger or it can happen only when the self is strengthened by directions from, and dictated by, unselfish love. The distancing takes place when the basic need is removed, or when the self of persons in a nation deteriorates. Beyond the basic needs of air, water, food, security, and sexuality it is only love that can close up the distance between the souls of a community and the larger country.
Gibran’s poem in its entirety is as follows:
"They say the jackal and the mole
Parables, like poetry, have an inbuilt logic that without straining my brain can gently penetrate into my heart lifting layers of that “inbuilt counter logic” to convince me of the greater truth. Parables, like great poems, are enablers to feel the applied wisdom, a part and parcel of any “aha, aha” moment.
The parable in question is a straightforward healing of a “multi-cultural” group of men, whom the New Revised Standard Version of the Christian Bible calls “lepers”, a politically incorrect word, which also suggests the safe distance!
I have always been fascinated by the fact of men and women who usually cling together in their own racial, linguistic or ethnic groups, nevertheless come and stay together, like children playing, when there is a need that is deeper than race and ethnicity. That deeper need is the only time these men and women feel very comfortable with one another. At which, these men and women long for a shortening of that safe distance, which usually only the stronger men and women desire after.
I have seen that in men and women in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the early eighties and nineties, dodging the liberation the younger Tamil men and women were introducing with their AK 47’s! The older folks, at that moment, could only see things in caste colour, except when they had to run into bunkers to take cover from the Sinhalese bombs! There was, I was informed in Jaffna by a younger woman of low caste, another instant when caste was transcended. And that was when it was dark, and the focus was what concerned below ones waist!
The moment that “need” is rectified they seem to be going back to their racial, ethnic, or caste groups. This is what I see in Luke’s story of the ten men, Jews and Samaritans, with leprosy.
Kahlil Gibran, the people’s philosopher, whose parables and poems provide insights to life, in his poem titled “Love”, distinguishes the stronger and the weaker self that co-exist in every personality. Coming together of persons in his poem happens in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and multi-racial nation, only when there is deeper human need such as physical thirst and hunger or it can happen only when the self is strengthened by directions from, and dictated by, unselfish love. The distancing takes place when the basic need is removed, or when the self of persons in a nation deteriorates. Beyond the basic needs of air, water, food, security, and sexuality it is only love that can close up the distance between the souls of a community and the larger country.
Gibran’s poem in its entirety is as follows:
"They say the jackal and the mole
Drink from the selfsame stream
Where the lion comes to drink.
And they say the eagle and the vulture
And they say the eagle and the vulture
Dig their beaks into the same carcass,
And are at peace, one with the other,
In the presence of the dead thing.
O love, whose lordly hand
O love, whose lordly hand
Has bridled my desires,
And raised my hunger and my thirst
To dignity and pride,
Let not the strong in me and the constant
Eat the bread or drink the wine
That tempt my weaker self.
Let me rather starve,
And let my heart parch with thirst,
And let me die and perish,
Ere I stretch my hand
To a cup you did not fill,
Or a bowl you did not bless."
From Kahlil Gibran, Forerunner: His Parables and Poems, 1920. P. 8
From Kahlil Gibran, Forerunner: His Parables and Poems, 1920. P. 8
