To cast a spell on the world

I write a poem knowing little what a poem is,
Knowing little what it is I want to write about.
I pick up a dictionary, as if it were a telephone directory,
To look up all the words and their addresses.
I spell out all the words, one by one, starting with alpha and arriving at omega,
Looking and feeling for the word to describe what I do not know.
And out of blue sky, words begin to fall, as drops of rain --
Self-contained and mercurial.
They fall heavy, as heavy as waves, upon the shorelines of my forehead,
And together, they flow out into the open space as a deluge.
Must one always seek to find oneself in a widened horizon?
Does water seek the wider expanse of itself in the ocean?
I ask and continue to ask for advice from the river, wind, sky, everything.
I ask, as one who is lost in a foreign city,
In a broken version of the vernacular which is foreign to me.
Perhaps they do not know what it is I want to know.
How can they tell, when I myself do not know what it is I am trying to know?
Once I found myself looking at the middle of a blank page,
And it looked back right into my face with the white of its eyes.
There was horror in that two dimensional emptiness!
In fright I spelled out an uncertain word and it became the pupil in the eye.
I saw my desperate plight in its abject whiteness.

I am desperate!
I say to myself: write whatever it is, write,
Write to seduce the world with peace,
Write to intoxicate the world with peace,
Write so that we may come closer to the Word
Which is greater than the sum of all infinities,
Write, write to cast a spell on the world
So that it may forget how to hate and be spell-bound by a lasting peace.

The last three paragraphs

Homosexuality in the eyes of J. M. Coetzee
“Youth” p79: the last three paragraphs

One evening he allows himself to be picked up in the street, by a man. The man is older than he – in fact, of another generation. They go by taxi to Sloane Square, where the man lives – it would seem alone – in a flat full of tasseled cushions and dim table-lamps.

They barely talk. He allows the man to touch him through his clothes; he offers nothing in return. If the man has an orgasm, he manages it discreetly. Afterwards he lets himself out and goes home.

Is that homosexuality? Is that the sum of it? Even if there is more to it than that, it seems a puny activity compared with sex with a woman: quick absent-minded, devoid of dread but also devoid of allure. There seems to be nothing at stake: nothing to lose but nothing to win either. A game for people afraid of the big league: a game for losers.

Faith and Reason

Reason is a product of human intellect
Human intellect is limited
Therefore human reason is limited
One journeys to God through reason and
Only as far as reason can take and not beyond
Common sense reason is Newtonian Mechanics of spirituality
More than enough for most of us mortals, though.
Mysticism, on the other hand, not approachable
Through common sense logic,
With reason all turned topsy-turvy, is
Spirituality’s Quantum physics.

Does the Catholic Church Need an Extreme Make-Over?

In the search for deeper sense of identity in Christianity, one tends to oscillate between two choices: to adapt the way we live to the Church teachings or tailor the Church teachings to fit the way we live. Which choice do we identify with? If we allow our way of living to influence the church teaching, as the way we live changes from age to age so will the teachings of the church. In a few years such a church will find itself with teachings which are diametrically opposite to what it taught a few decades ago. That day will demonstrate that that church teaches no truth but only a changeable doctrine of convenience. Then why church at all, government can do that for us?

Church is not a simple administrator of code of social conduct. It is much more than that. It is a vehicle to reach the divine, a place of worship, a place of gathering in prayer and unity in time of crisis, a place where one can come face to face with God. In the Catholic Church, we practice our faith in continuity with the faith of the apostles. Therefore, if we are wrong today then they were wrong then. However, nearly two thousand years of history of the faith, our spiritual heritage passed down to us through saints, mystics and simple believers testify to the contrary. Therefore, many among us adhere fast to the root of our faith not only because it is rich and ancient, but also it contains fuller truth of the divine Christ. So why do we attempt to dilute the truth of our spiritual heritage to fit the way we live today?

Church is a bridge between God and man who lives in the society. In the eyes of many, Catholics and non-Catholics, Roman Church seems to have lost touch with reality. It seems so from time to time. That is because man wishfully thinks that God would adapt to his whims and fancies. He would like to worship God according to rules set by him and not by God and he wants the Church to understand his many needs. Therefore, the Church is caught between God and man. But man by nature is prone to change his views and opinions. What he professes to be as true in the morning, he rejects it as false in the evening. He is here today and gone tomorrow. So knowing what it knows about man, Church rightly and wisely adheres to God who is unchanging and eternal. It is not the Church that has lost touch with social reality of the day it is some of us who have lost touch with eternal reality of the Church.

Search for deeper sense of identity should be a sincere exercise to understand why we do what we do as a Church and not to dismantle the fabric of our rich faith. Yes, the Church does not always fully grasp the truth about natural reality. But I believe it has the Truth about God. That Truth is neither a fossil nor a line in the sand. It is never out of fashion. It does not need an extreme or partial make-over.

(I am neither a theologian nor a sociologist nor a church historian. I am just a practicing Catholic. What I wrote in this post, I wrote from the perspective of an ordinary church member. I may be totally, totally wrong.)

To Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI

Welcome to America & Happy Birthday!!
What are 81 years, we wish you many more productive years in the service of our God.
Christ is forever, therefore, Catholicism is forever!

Trees in general

At the instant of our birth, yours and mine,
You chose to be an olive tree and
I with a coat of stars and stripes couldn’t be anything else but a Jaguar.
We are blessed, each in our own ways --
I with feline mobility and you with grounded stability.
I left, I had to. You knew I would come back,
As one returns to one’s roots, as always.
Since then, every day I live, I live hunting shadows and illusions.
Even with sharp claws and fearsome fangs,
Even with all the agile forms and symmetries,
Life in the jungle is often hard and freedom is not cheap.
This is life as encoded by genes and determined by genetics, I guess.
I only live for myself, day in and day out.

You, on the other hand, tall and beautiful in your simplicity,
You are rooted deep without splitting the earth --
Deep with knowledge of yourself and beyond.
And such tranquility that a forest fire can not extinguish!
If I should in hypothesis try to tear you apart with my sharp talons,
I know you would let me shred you into pieces instead.
And if I should try to rob you of your riches,
I know you would let me plunder your granary.
Satyagraha, ahimsa, satyagraha, sunyata,
You are almost Jesus in bark and branches!

All these years and year after year,
Through your xylem and phloem, out of the rich earth
You have brought the elements of the earth and the air
As fruits and flowers and other gifts to the world.
All you do, you do for others. You bloom for others,
You prosper for others, others, others, others,
Your whole botanical being for others.
In them you attain your immortality although you die.
You,
As I see through the eye of a needle,
Are the Tree of Life within,
A reflection.

I knew it would happen someday.
And that day arrived from lichen-covered stones
Drenched with jungle dews and it brought a hard message.
So, I came back,
I came back to the dense foliage of jungle memory
Ready to lose my stripes and spots.

Upon finding a rusted key on the side-walk

I
Upon finding a key rusted by time and dirt
On the side-walk of a busy street, I wondered
What a strange place for a key to be,
A key with such sturdy features and reliable outlook!
It might have, once upon a time, opened
A whole range of mountains or an archipelago.
No one can ever tell for sure.
I decided to save it as a memento.
One day, I may invent a history for it
And reunite to its many mysteries.

II
There are many ways to God.
And to Him is drawn
Each one by a road paved
In a manner differently from all others.

A verse for every man,
For every man there is a verse written,
In the Book of Life.
When armed with that verse,

Alone and with nothing else,
Man can cross the Sahara barefoot and
Lift the earth into the realms of heaven
Without lifting so much as a little finger.

III
I say:
Love first, then knowledge.
And again, I say:
Love more than knowing.
Lead, O love, to that abundant knowing
And abundant union.

IV
Though fully clothed, I am naked.
Where I stand, space has no dimension,
Or should I say infinitely dimensional?
Although I have a name it is only a formality here.
If one speaks it is without substance.
Silence is the lingua franca around here,
Being rich in vocabulary.
But, love, I am told, is a language which needs no speaking.
O love,
Is this key, rusted and soiled by time and dirt -
The sum total of my annihilated being,
The key to that love among ruins?

O Africa

O Africa, O Africa,
Impoverished princess among the southern climes!
I can not say if the Lord is in the midst of your suffering,
But if the world should turn a blind eye to your afflictions
Then I know for sure, as sure as the sky,
That Lord is no longer in our midst.

i am all wings

i am all wings without feathers
i am all eyes without vision
i am all i am without i am.
!
It is time,
It is time
i take up my cross.
My cross, my cross,
Carry me kindly
to the journey's end
where all things are new again.

You (Another Version)

Being revealed in all things,
How have you become invisible!

I would like to know you.
I like to know you as you really are
And I like to know you
As reflected in all things.
By what thread of equation
Can I weave the invisible
Out of your many mirror-images?

Knowing all things
Should I be?
I,
Made ignorant by too much knowledge,
Should like to know you instead
Without knowing things of the world I live in.
Through knowing you I shall know all things,
As all things are made known through you.

To be with you is to be truly omnipresent,
Being present everywhere.
But it is you I want to arrive at
Without having been anywhere else.

And,
All things though unfinished
In the world circumscribed by my blinded eyes
Are complete in you
Already
As complete as a newly hatched stone.