Making sense of the world.
Posts tagged Loud Thinking
Sleepless God
Sep 10th
The clock shows 10.20 in the night. My eyes are drooping after a full day of wakefulness and work. My daughter has exams in another three days, and trying desperately to study. In the 16 flats in my residential building, families are getting ready to sleep. Sandwiched between my building and another residential block is a small time church. Their hall window is about six feet away from my bedroom window and I can look inside their small auditorium and even hear their whispers. The amplifier is full on and a male voice is shouting “Hallelujah!” on the mike. He begins almost in a whisper and builds up to a crescendo. Maybe he thinks God is deaf. I’m told God does not sleep, but human beings do, for that is the way he made them. He made them male and female, and he also made them sleepy at night.
Is spirituality all about high volume hallelujahs? Or is spirituality about common courtesy, about doing to your neighbour as you would have them do to you?
Now they have started loud singing, or what passes for singing. And in the nearby colony, another set of speakers is blasting away. They are treating their deity to Shakira doing waka waka (or is it wakeup wakeup), this time for Africa. I do wish divine blessings on Africa, but for me, this is the time for slumber land. At least this noise will subside before midnight, hopefully. The Church of Maximum Volume will continue, week after week, drowning out the still small voice, and the cries in the wilderness, until the day the Prince of Peace comes and switches off their power.
Earlier in the evening, there was news of another small time American church leader, with a big time title, threatening to burn the holy book of another community. In any civilised and multicultural society, such behaviour should have no place, except in a mental asylum. However, for me right now, among God’s peculiar people, the nocturnal and noisy ones must top the list.
Atonement.
Sep 7th
It happened almost 25 years ago in erstwhile Bombay! The memory however is still fresh in my mind. A group of visually impaired friends used to meet in a small room for an informal time of fellowship on Wednesday evenings. I was one of the volunteers, helping them with reading the newspapers or helping them with their studies.
There I met a young man named Prem. He was in his twenties. He was not a volunteer but a visitor in that campus. Whenever we met, we would exchange casual greetings of hello or hi and would move on. I did not know anything about him and we never talked. I could not get to like this guy at all. His very sight would put me off. Deep within I had some kind of hatred towards him. Whenever we met, I would put on a smile and say ‘hello’ to him, resenting him at the same time. This went on for several months. Face is not always the index of the mind!!
Time went by. One evening. I was at the Mother Teresa’s ‘Home for the Destitute & Dying’ at Byculla. The watchman opened the gate and I saw a yellow-black taxi pull into the courtyard. I was surprised to see Prem. He got down from the taxi. This time we did not exchange any greetings. He seemed to be in a hurry. I saw him open the back door of the taxi. There was a dirty bundle on the seat. With care he carried that bundle in both his hands and put it down gently. More >
You Know Jack!
Oct 20th
© Joe Tyson | Dreamstime.com
“Change can be a good thing if you have a plan” says Jack to himself. He is thinking out loud as he always does on Saturday afternoons. He looks outside his window at all the people walking by. He sees the pace, but no purpose. “What is the meaning of all this? Where is everybody going?”
In the heat of the day, he gets up to leave the room and realizes he is forgetting something. It is purpose – once so evident in his eyes but now replaced by longing. A deep longing for a life he only sees in his dreams, far from the real world.
“One fine day” he reassures himself “it’ll all work out.” He steps out under the sun and blames it on the weather. It’s always something. Something that he has but doesn’t need or needs but doesn’t have. ¬He feels quiet remorse for the life he never had – for the choices that were made for him. Not realizing that these choices made him the man he is.
He struggles from within underneath a putrid frustration, one that he is familiar with. There is too much at stake. He can’t afford to lose all this. Everything he has worked so hard to accomplish. Deep down he know these are just hollow shells of glory from an empty past alluding towards a pointless future.
His reason for waking up day after day in this futile existence is hope – that which no man can rob him of. Hope is his muse and his song. It carries him to places he’s never been.
“Change can be a good thing if you have a plan” says Jack to himself. He is thinking out loud as he always does on Saturday afternoons. He looks outside his window at all the people walking by. He sees the pace, but no purpose. “What is the meaning of all this? Where is everybody going?”
In the heat of the day, he gets up to leave the room and realizes he is forgetting something. It is purpose – once so evident in his eyes but now replaced by longing. A deep longing for a life he only sees in his dreams, far from the real world.
“One fine day” he reassures himself “it’ll all work out.” He steps out under the sun and blames it on the weather. It’s always something. Something that he has but doesn’t need or needs but doesn’t have. ¬He feels quiet remorse for the life he never had – for the choices that were made for him. Not realizing that these choices made him the man he is.
He struggles from within underneath a putrid frustration, one that he is familiar with. There is too much at stake. He can’t afford to lose all this. Everything he has worked so hard to accomplish. Deep down he know these are just hollow shells of glory from an empty past alluding towards a pointless future.
His reason for waking up day after day in this futile existence is hope – that which no man can rob him of. Hope is his muse and his song. It carries him to places he’s never been.