My Writing …

It is Friday. But it does not make much of a difference in my life. I know, many – in thousands – here in Edmonton get enthusiastically, excited when it is Friday, looking forward to rest, or a change in their priorities, during the weekend. But for me it has been a continous stay at home since Chandra, a woman whom I have known for forty years, left me on St Patrick’s day (March 16, 2010). But, after all that initial chaotic pain, I have tried to retain a positive, a healthy attitude, towards life, not craving to be driven around in a “Mercedez”, only collecting “Manna”, for that magical living in the margin with all my health concerns since my open-heart surgery on October 16, 2009, or authentically praying the Lord’s Prayer, “give us this day our daily bread”!

Of course, I have done plenty of cursing and whining during this time. I needed to do that to retain my sanity while watching a thirty-five year life style crumbling down, a forty year of hard work, as a poet, a priest and professor, being swept away, very swiftly, and myself, a man with lots of self-confidence and a sense of independent thinking and judgment being walked to the gallows, with face covered, by an ugly, arrogant lawyer and a handsome, cunning realtor, with many dirty hyenas around to clean up the remains!

On the flip side, I feel some advantage in being “unemployed”. May be it is this that has given birth to praise the Providence – an art I have indulged much during the past almost seven months – manifested in and through many, hundreds, of feeble human beings: Gitanjali, Jay, Justin, Iris, Todd, Brian (and, perhaps, Molly), Ajay, Prakash (and, perhaps, her old mother in law), Danny, Yasmin (and, perhaps, her Fijian mother in law), Wenzhe (with Jingbi, and their Church in Kamloops), Carrie, George, Yatta, Azeb, Joyce, Madusu, Vijendran, Ashley, Rob, Jenna, Aster, Thaddeus, Melina, Salem, Beatrice, and now Benedict, a total stranger – an Iranian Canadian, a Christian convert from the Islamic faith. The list is, no doubt, an incomplete one.

My writing – specifically journalling – is my reframing my experience and attitude to sow a seed of inner peace when I am upset, and confusion and delay are the order of the day, my daily bread! As I faithfully waste this time, I re-center myself in that hand that moves my days and nights, building up also an element of courage in my heart, with six bypasses and a scarred artery, an outcome or the cause that caused a heart-attack after the St Patrick’s day event.

This, the chiseling of my vocabulary, with a little filling in of grammar, but in an alien tongue, then, gives me my releif, my release, and my rest – my true Sabbath, my authentic weekend for another week of scarcity-filled, monotonous life, an unpoetic onomatopoeia!

My scribbling, the tapping on my key-board, then, is also my way of readying to put on that washed and pressed garment of unforgiveness. Hence, at the end, I modify my “Lord’s Prayer”. This time I look up to heavens, or turn towards my own Mecca, that innermost inward part, and say, “forgive me for my unforgiving spirit”.

Ajay’s God, Narayanan

Ajay Narayan, with a natural bent ness to God, bent down to pick a penny at the Tim Horton parking lot. And he said, “Henry I always take this money”! First, I didn’t understand. Later when I connected what I saw with what I heard, that made sense to me.

Ajay is a wealthy man. But his wealth is his friends, rather his acquaintances. He greets every man he meets on the road. There are moments when his greeting prolongs to a friendly chat that connects two souls. That’s how, today, he is my friend. But he repeatedly, with great emphasis, affirms that I am his brother.

With me he frequently blurts in Hindi, though I have said so many times that I know no Hindi. Still Ajay, somewhat a short man in physical height, needs to say that in Hindi. Then he would be his own translator! Once Ajay ended challenging the official translator when the latter was wrongly communicating Ajay’s speech to his doctor writing a report for the Workers’ Compensation Board. Such is Ajay’s presence of mind that he extends very naturally to his awareness of God, the source of his very character and personality.

Ajay, his first name derived from the Sanskrit language, means “unconquered”. It is the equivalent of the Western name “Victor”. Ajay, though lacking physical tallness, and unemployed since his work related injury, he is very tall in cheerfulness. And he carries in his heart a victorious spirit, battling courageously even a wealthy contractor and a learned lawyer who have landed him in unnecessary difficulties despite taking great sums of money as fees for the services. These exploiters, he claims, exploit his lack of education and sophisticated English language skills.

His last name “Narayan” – pronounced, nārāyan, also called as “Narayana” – is a reference to the creator God. And in Hindu religion, which is Ajay’s faith, it usually refers to Brahma or Vishnu who dwells in the waters! “Nara”, according to other sources, also means “waters”, an essential resource for life! “Nara” also means “human”, while “ayana” may mean, “the direction, or path”. “Narayan” in Sanskrit also refers to the “primordial human”, the Purusa, the equivalent of the Semitic, Adam!

And it is interesting to note Ajay Narayan manifesting all these lofty meanings of human life in his simple life style of caring for his family, including his elderly widowed mother, and neighbours, particularly those who are hurt by human callousness and in need of extra human compassion, while he, gleefully, enjoys his grandchildren.

He has, in his house, Hindu images and statues, Hindu representations of God, everywhere one turn. They are his precious possessions. As for Ajay these are not mere religious monuments. They are, in some sense, God, or at least incarnation of God in which he gets absorbed. They are really divine. One cannot fail to notice Ajay, as he walks about and turns around in his home, bowing and offering flying kisses to these sculptures, expressing his devotion to God.

It is, perhaps, Ajay’s regular ritualistic immersions into God awareness that has transformed this honest, harmless, humble man to cheer up every human he encounters outside the home, feeding them also when they are hungry and in need of food.

Ajay, my friend, for many of his friends and me, is an undeclared humanist and an un-canonized living saint. He earlier sacrificed his own education and all that security and comfort that came with it in order to feed and clothe his earlier home soon after the death of his father in Fiji.

But neither his devotion nor his many sacrifices make him humourless. The other day when he was driving me through the “drive through” of the Tim Horton, I saw him hurriedly rolling down the car windows. And then he loudly said to the (white) man – colour is important here to see Ajay easily crossing colour, class, caste, and creedal boundaries – picking pennies dropped at the Tim Horton window, “today your pay day, man!” First I thought that must be his friend. But I learnt Ajay has never even seen him before!

Chiseling the Christian Arrogance

The Contemporary English Version of the Bible gives the title, “Jesus is Greater than Moses” for the passage in Hebrew 3:1-6. The Good News Bible too took that line. The more popular New International Version is no different. This, for me, betrays the present Christian perception of Judaism. Not every Christian, I have reasons to believe, would subscribe to this erroneous belief that only reveals Christian arrogance and ignorance of other religious faiths.

The Ecumenical Tamil translation is still worse. This speaks of “Jesus is Greater than Moses and Joshua”. Joshua is not even mentioned in that passage. Some may differ. Considering Joshua’s part of Moses’ team that directed the people of God, they will argue, the Tamil is precise!

Bible nowhere mentions that Jesus is greater than Buddha or Muhammad. Yet, many Christians conclude this way. For them, Christian faith is not possible, not relevant, without that conclusion.

I find this way of talking about Jesus as “greater” than Moses, Joshua, Buddha, Confucius, or Muhammad is not very conducive in the contemporary global village. For me it is a sign of ignorance and spiritual immaturity. This is true in the context of the growing awareness of “religious pluralism” and the increasing alertness with regard to the “serious content of people’s faith”.

Judaism is a living religion practiced by millions in Israel and elsewhere. My student Rivka, probably in her early twenties, takes pride in her Jewish Faith that celebrates Moses as the greatest of all the prophets and the most faithful of all the servants of God! Can I tell her that my Jesus is greater than her Moses? Can I consider such a telling part of Christian love?

These questions may lead to further unsettling questions that may have to be taken seriously before I settle down in my “faith” promoted in the book of Hebrews, a letter written by a Christian of the first century in the Common Era. To the exploring of such questions I will add the need to listen to Rivka, and her friends, of what they are learning about the Christian missionary activities in places such as Kenya.

I am aware of others who may encourage dismissing such questions and concerns as evil thoughts, promoting of doubts, or as attempts “to scratch the itches of our culture”. I am aware of their good intent. Their concern often is that such questioning lead to “stubbornness”, “hardening of heart” that happened to the crowd that followed Moses thirty five hundred years ago.

I am one of those – to put the record straight – who has no time to scratch the itches of the contemporary consumer culture. I proudly announce my inclination for being and becoming counter cultural. I believe the present world needs many more to resist the dominant culture and its value systems.

But I do not apologize for questioning the folly of Christian arrogance. My critique of Christian superiority emerges from my desire to provide a healthy soul to the global village. The values of that man from Nazareth two millenniums ago, I firmly believe, still can provide inspiration.

In the context of these concerns and questions someone may be “inspired” to re-write the text. Else, the text will be rejected as irrelevant to my times, twenty first century. The other alternative is to “re-interpret” this first century text to make it relevant to my times.

There is one thing for sure. I cannot use the first century language, or logic, to speak of Jesus Christ in the twenty first century. I need a new language and a new logic that will emerge only from a serious discontent with the old meaning.

The purpose of the writer, particularly in chapter three, as I see, is not to establish the superiority of Jesus over Moses. But he is speaking of a “new grace (from God)”. For him there is a new moment in the Jesus event. He is struggling to communicate this to the Hebrew people steeped in Moses tradition.

The writer is aware that all humans whether they lived during the time of Moses, or in his own time – to this I will add my own present time, the twenty first century – are prone to “stubbornness”, hardening of heart, when the call to “change”, or a new way of living is offered.

People, I have seen it many times, settle down in set patterns of living. It is not that easy to get them out of that settled life! These days I see this in the stores in the mall. At present only a few uses the new self-checkout electronic equipments in Super Store and Wal-Mart. These self-checkout stations save time providing “potentials for greater life”.

I am not talking about the benefits of electronics, or technology. But people have difficulty in making a shift. That was the problem during the time of Moses. And it was the same with the first century audience of the writer of the letter to the Hebrews. It is the same problem with people of my time. They are settled not to ask serious questions regarding spirituality. But these questions are urgent for retaining faith in the context of the rapidly emerging contemporary religious pluralism.

Losing and Finding

I have lost two things: self and direction! But that loss comes so late in my life!

On the other hand, I have also discovered a priceless gem and acquired, adequately, I believe, a skill that is so rare in North America. Jesus, with his stance to ‘non-conformity’ is, then, that ‘pearl of great value’. And the art of ‘swimming upstream’ like the salmon of the Pacific Rockies is that proficiency that came to me after a great, great deal of practice and many failures!

Crown of gold, earlier, was my goal! In school, and later in my search for, and sustenance of, a career, I was taught to work hard towards the crowning moments and direction for success, learning the skill of careful communication with those crown princes who enable an easy climb on the social ladder and control multitude of other affairs!

But too early in my life – may be I was around twenty years – I met the crucified one! And soon my eyes became familiar with that bright light that shone from his loincloth, who had earlier proclaimed that foxes have holes and the birds have nests while he, this man from Nazareth had no place to lay his head! This in a very subtle way suggested also my path!

I have never seen such brightness elsewhere. All that immaculate liturgical colours in the wall hangings in the cathedrals, churches and the clergy vestments appeared so dull for me compared to that ‘rag’ he was wearing! As for me, I concluded the Kings and Queens of today, or of those ancient days, are not adorned with such brightness!

Hence I did not delight in the crafting of those crafts beyond that Great Friday! Friday, I learnt from another Middle Eastern Source, also was the day when the invisible purusa, the primordial consciousness gave shape and form to the chaotic prakrit, primeval substance. That is the order, I soon became convinced, the self, willing to be crucified will eventually evolve, consciously create! For me, therefore, that persistent lie of the Sunday morning is the comical tragedy, which not only alienates the humanity from the power of powerlessness but also poisons the culture of the cosmos that is created to conserve compassion!

Losing self did not come that easily! For that self in me frequently went after power seeking magic that had many different names in the modern world. And the artful magicians knew how to transform the crucifixion of my Master for the conquering of the world! So I, prompted by the self’s desire for a satisfactory survival, joined the crew. Rather I drifted into that space of comfort, celebrating at every altar belonging to Baal! Serving Baal, served my self much better, I thought at that moment; in the sense it provided a quicker bloating into a bigger self.

Losing self happened only after I discovered that selfless-self Jesus lived. It promoted not a superficial sentimentalism but a probing of difficult questions. This man Jesus, who said to me it is all right to lose that self, had fire in his eyes. Wherever he went, whichever pulpit he climbed on to, he quickly set the place on fire challenging conformity to the rot in the then religious community!

Lordly Hand of Love!

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

Drink from the selfsame stream

Where the lion comes to drink.

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

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

Increase My God Consciousness

God to be God, God has to be more than just aware of our presence. Hence those immersed in God tell us that God knows us very intimately.

This is the basic message of the Bible too, from which we learn that God knows the exact number of hair on our head: “And even the hairs of your head are all counted” (Matthew 10:30). Elsewhere in the Bible we learn God has counted every bone that has been used to knit us together (Psalm 139:13-15). In that same place we learn that God also has all our days with all the happenings in his book (Psalm 139:16). In short, according to Isaiah the prophet, God has inscribed us on his palms (Isaiah 49:16).

All this is said to make me less anxious and worrisome about my present and the future. Hence I am encouraged not to be afraid. And I am reminded that I am of “more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:31).

The Bible is clear about God’s knowledge of all happenings, including that which happens to an insignificant sparrow. The Contemporary English Version of the Bible poetically proclaims, “Aren’t two sparrows sold for only a penny? But your Father knows when any one of them falls to the ground (Matthew 10:29).

These are said that I may put aside all anxiety by trusting in the providence of God. As my worry decrease my trust in God will grow. I trust in God not only for receiving my physical nourishment but also for the receiving of my spiritual guidance that I may have the right perspectives to see within and around me!

Even in adverse circumstances, the Bible encourages me to trust in the providence of God. Bible does not say there will be no adverse circumstances to live through. My faith in God, I know for sure, does not remove such “thorns” and put me on the “bed of roses”. But even when I “walk through the valley of death”, now I am learning, that I need not fear, or drown in anxiety.

Hagar, Abraham’s maidservant, the Egyptian slave, or the Egyptian princess according to the Islamic sources, did walk through, the “valley of death”. In that story Hagar after walking in the desert and she had run out of water was afraid that her little son Ishmael would die of thirst. She was utterly powerless to provide for her helpless son. Hence “Hagar put her son under a bush. Then she sat down a long way off, because she could not bear to watch him die. And she cried bitterly (Genesis 21:15f)”.

That story, however, has a happy ending! God heard her cries, or heard Ishmael’s cries and provided her with a “well” from where she drew water for her son and continued the journey. Muslims believe that the well in Mecca near the sacred Mosque of Kaba is that well from which Hagar drew water for her son Ishmael and it is still known as Zam Zam well. That well, we are informed, never dries!

As the intensity of my suffering increases, I learn from the story above, God’s nearness and providence too will increase. And this happens almost always in subtle ways that I often fail to recognize the nearness and providence that saves me.

I, like many others today, look for substantial and tangible evidence for God’s nearness and providence before I could establish trust in God. There are two very tangible boxes in my home that provide for me very quickly and mould me by dictating details! Here I refer to the television and the refrigerator that largely decrease my sense of dependence on God! These two provide me with tangible and substantial providence!

But God does not do that way! God’s ways are almost always subtle. God let Hagar see the well (Genesis 21:19). To see God enabling me to see I must increase my God consciousness. Deepak Chopra, one of the best selling authors on matters regarding spirituality and wellness, makes the same point when argues that this knowledge comes only by a “serious, diligent seeking – by opening a path to God-consciousness” (The Third Jesus, 2008, p. 76). For it is only through that God consciousness I see that nearness and providence of God.

I need to take time to reflect on my journey and the events on that path to be able to capture the nearness and providence of God in my life! Without that time and inclination to think I will miss the presence of God and his angels! So I pray to God daily: Help me to increase my God-consciousness, enabling me to multiply in my self that diligent seeking of your ways in my life.

Living in the Presence of the Unseen is Life!

There are many stories, both ancient and modern, reminding me that I am created, liberated, and guided continuously towards one single end of “living in the presence of the unseen”, enjoying the splendour of the unseen light and life. These lessons are an affirmation that all around me, and deep within me is a living and an exuberant presence that some conveniently call, God. In these poems I run into a strange “absence of death” in a world of decay.

Many men and women have told me that in Jesus of Nazareth they have found “the life” that cannot be bound by the chains of “death and darkness”. And that life, Jesus, cannot be found among the “dead”, or in “empty spaces”, but rather ought to be discovered among the “living people”.

Angels too announce, repeatedly, that Jesus should not be sought in empty tombs. But Jesus goes, continuously, ahead of me “to Galilee” (Matthew 28:7). Galilee in that ancient text is a symbol of “busy human life”. Matthew, that old tax collector, is very explicit in recording this. Matthew’s point is, if the women and men want to see the “life that cannot be bound by the chains of death and darkness” then they must go to Galilee, the cosmopolitan city, and a place of bubbling human activity (Matthew 28:7).

From Matthew I learn, to encounter the “Living Christ, the Ultimate, the Beyond”, I must go to villages, towns, and cities where men, women, and children are struggling in pain. It is there I will find that life and that life in abundance. Then, my business now, is to remind myself to go out there without seeking an ivory tower!

In Matthew’s story of a new and an authentic abundant life he reveals, brilliantly, both what I possess and what I lack! In that, miles and miles away from that scene Matthew depicts, in a province of black gold, an affluent North American county, I share a similar mental state with those two Palestinian women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Matthew 28:1) of different colour, class, and creed!

So, what did these two women have, and failed to have? They had plenty of anxiety. “Who will roll away the stone for us”. These two women were also fretting and sweating the small stuff. They “bought spices, so that they might anoint him” (Mark 16:1) – the dead Jesus. They had plenty of fear. And what did these two women lack? They lacked hope!

They lacked hope because they were ignorant! They were ignorant because they failed to hear “when the word was spoken”! They failed to hear because they did not listen! These two women did not listen, on the first instance, when they were told “the life that gives life, or the light that enlightens every heart” must “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31) before it gives “life that cannot be bound by the chains of death and darkness”! The same was repeated several times. Mark records this in 9:31 and 10:33 also.

Men and women, then, didn’t listen! People – both the writer and the readers today too – don’t listen! Or, to be very precise, people listen very selectively. Luke, Mark’s colleague, actually reveals the selective listening of these women when he says: “Remember how he told you he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again” (Luke 24:6f).

People, including my self, do not see, and do not hear. Or, if they hear, or see, they see and hear selectively, and certainly not “the events and activities” of the Unseen; seeing the unseen! That is the fundamental cause for my “anxiety and fear”!

However, I am not in a hopeless situation! Neither were those women. There is always an angel, sometimes a spiritual director, to bring, once again, that reminder. This was in the case of those two women, very early at the tomb looking for the living among the dead! It is not different to me. I too have another, and another, and yet another opportunity while I keep looking for the “living” among the dead “rituals of religions and deteriorating structures of the ecclesia”! But, if I keep rejecting the reminders it will be only to my own peril.

Seeing the unseen is a skill that I must, then, cultivate. Culturing that in my mind is what I call spirituality that is spontaneous like a great rain that rains to wash all muck away. But the unseen always manifests in what I, in pain, see in pain and struggling of the very ordinary men and women. And when my heart puts great effort to be in solidarity with those in pain then, I am spiritual, and I see the unseen, the purpose of my being here and now.