Can our "beauty" capture the beauty that is in you?
Can our "truth" do justice to the truth of you?
Can our reason reason out the reason in you?
Can one man's theology lead another to you?
Is there one among us who knows the way to you better than you yourself do?
O Lord, have mercy on us, help us never to let our theology replace you!
O Lord, let not your light shine upon us in vain!
O Lord, let us, let us!
Face of Man
Jacqueline du Pre
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
A 27 secs street scene
Beggar: Brother, Can you spare a penny?
Passer-by: Here! (he gives him a penny)
Beggar: Thanks and God bless you!(so that he may continue to give)
Passer-by: Thanks and God bless you too!(so that he does not have to beg)
Passer-by: Here! (he gives him a penny)
Beggar: Thanks and God bless you!(so that he may continue to give)
Passer-by: Thanks and God bless you too!(so that he does not have to beg)
Sunday, December 13, 2009
What's in a name, Bishop?
"The Bishop of Breda, Tiny Muskens, wants people to start calling God Allah. He says the Netherlands should look to Indonesia, where the Christian churches already pray to Allah. It is also common in the Arab world: Christian and Muslim Arabs use the words God and Allah interchangeably."
Christian Arabs use the word Allah because it means God in their language.Christianity being older religion than Islam, it is obvious that Christian Arab used that word long before the Muslims. However, that does not make the word "allah" more appropriate name for God than the word "god". Bishop Musken,if you want to call Him Allah or Ishwar or Bhagwan or Laininghtou,or whatever, that's fine by me.Just don't expect me to follow your lead. And don't you be coming around with a proposal like "let's all celebrate mass in Arabic". I like to pray to God in a language that I speak. I like to listen to sermon preached in a language that I understand. I believe that God is the giver of all tongues. So, naturally,He speaks all languages. But I, on the other hand, understand and speak only one or two. So, when I call upon His holy name "God" He can surely hear me just as well as He can hear you call upon Him in Arabic. By the way, I, at times, feel that Islam is a vehicle for Arab hegemony.
Christian Arabs use the word Allah because it means God in their language.Christianity being older religion than Islam, it is obvious that Christian Arab used that word long before the Muslims. However, that does not make the word "allah" more appropriate name for God than the word "god". Bishop Musken,if you want to call Him Allah or Ishwar or Bhagwan or Laininghtou,or whatever, that's fine by me.Just don't expect me to follow your lead. And don't you be coming around with a proposal like "let's all celebrate mass in Arabic". I like to pray to God in a language that I speak. I like to listen to sermon preached in a language that I understand. I believe that God is the giver of all tongues. So, naturally,He speaks all languages. But I, on the other hand, understand and speak only one or two. So, when I call upon His holy name "God" He can surely hear me just as well as He can hear you call upon Him in Arabic. By the way, I, at times, feel that Islam is a vehicle for Arab hegemony.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
The blinds also see!
Blind #1: God does not play hide-and-seek with man.
Blind #2: On the contrary, not only does God play the game of
hide-and-seek with man but also hides in places where He
cannot be found.
Blind #3: No need to get bogged down with any debates and dialogues!
Just plant your faith, and He will give it its fruits.
Blind #4: We are all blind and God is thinner than air!
Blind #2: On the contrary, not only does God play the game of
hide-and-seek with man but also hides in places where He
cannot be found.
Blind #3: No need to get bogged down with any debates and dialogues!
Just plant your faith, and He will give it its fruits.
Blind #4: We are all blind and God is thinner than air!
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Because
Because I cannot speak
I try to write;
Because I cannot write
I try to feel;
Because I cannot feel
I am silent
Having turned into stone.
I try to write;
Because I cannot write
I try to feel;
Because I cannot feel
I am silent
Having turned into stone.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Origin of species via natural selection
Catholics ought to embrace Charles Darwin's theory on the origin of species by means of natural selection. After all, it is a process operating at every levels of animate and inanimate world and is as obvious as the back of one's own hand. Also, it surprises me when a Christian fundamentalist while vehemently denouncing evolution as an agent of creation of life and everything else, conveniently forgets that Gregor Mendel, the "father of genetics" was an Augustinian monk. In addition, a Jesuit priest by the name Georges Maitre was responsible for what is known today as "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe. Interestingly, both these contributions strike at the very roots of origin of life and the universe we live in. These men ought to be elevated to the status of prophet, for, indeed, it is to them that God revealed the wonders of His magnificent creation.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Thus
I went to the old market to buy some fish.
Out of many that I saw, I made my choice
Upon one as handsome as any salmon can be,
And asked the man to clean it for me.
While he was working the scales from head towards the tail
I asked if he would too sever its head.
Politely, he offered to crack mine open instead
and at no cost examine it, if there ever was a need.
I was told he was a neurosurgeon of great repute
(And he left practice of surgery due to a dispute)
Now offering his service for free,
While making a living selling fish.
Then, with the precision of a well-practiced surgeon
He brought down the cutting-edge of the knife upon
where it was meant to strike sharp
And in one skillful stroke thus
Separated irreversibly sanity from all insanity.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Dust
I sleep on the floor on a bed
Made from a firm pad of foam
On a 6 by 8 Afghan rug
From where I lay my head on a pillow
I can see a fresh layer of dust on the hardwood floor
I remember cleaning and wiping the floor not too long ago
There is dust everywhere on the floor on the wall and on my name
At this rate I will soon be six feet under the dust
If I understand infinity I understand it only through the omnipresence of dust.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Leaving my massacred city/ trying to escape
In the wider sense of things, every town is a big town.
My beloved city of vicious gunfights and brilliant poppy!
I will not forget of the days you nursed me to life
with water dripping from your festering wounds
You were once a city that rose from a field of dream, morning after morning,
Now you lay massacred in my arms.
Your drunken walls are falling over the bullet riddled streets
Every rundown street leads to the edge of some blown up field
And graphics of spilled blood left uncleaned for lasting effects.
So much bloodshed in the street, every time the traffic light turns red
I run for cover to hide my unknown face behind a wall of glass.
Be not angry with me, my maternal city, born of the rays of morning star.
I got to lay you down some place and I got to get me out o’here to some place,
Way beyond that untouchable space, if possible.
All I got is a bagful of cheap tricks learned in your whore houses
But not much education.
They take me so far, so far as the end of the street and not much beyond.
“Why walk when you can fly” is what others say. Too bad, I cannot fly!
I was born a fish with a pair of fins that for a while won’t be becoming wings .
Days of my life are numbered, although I do not know how many there are.
I believe Death will come soon knocking at my window.
I got to think up something before it is too late to worry about.
But when you got no education and the brain has no regulations,
It always dreams what it wants to dream.
And it often dreams of spilled blood in a blown up field of poppy.
And soon, I too start to bloom like a poppy without petals
at the bottom of a ditch which was once a city.
I like a bit of drama but this is much more than I can handle.
Time goes by and no amount of drama can stop it.
I am thinking of long and dry summer landscape
filled with stones in the dust
Wondering how not to find myself
at the foot of a busted rainbow.
My beloved city of vicious gunfights and brilliant poppy!
I will not forget of the days you nursed me to life
with water dripping from your festering wounds
You were once a city that rose from a field of dream, morning after morning,
Now you lay massacred in my arms.
Your drunken walls are falling over the bullet riddled streets
Every rundown street leads to the edge of some blown up field
And graphics of spilled blood left uncleaned for lasting effects.
So much bloodshed in the street, every time the traffic light turns red
I run for cover to hide my unknown face behind a wall of glass.
Be not angry with me, my maternal city, born of the rays of morning star.
I got to lay you down some place and I got to get me out o’here to some place,
Way beyond that untouchable space, if possible.
All I got is a bagful of cheap tricks learned in your whore houses
But not much education.
They take me so far, so far as the end of the street and not much beyond.
“Why walk when you can fly” is what others say. Too bad, I cannot fly!
I was born a fish with a pair of fins that for a while won’t be becoming wings .
Days of my life are numbered, although I do not know how many there are.
I believe Death will come soon knocking at my window.
I got to think up something before it is too late to worry about.
But when you got no education and the brain has no regulations,
It always dreams what it wants to dream.
And it often dreams of spilled blood in a blown up field of poppy.
And soon, I too start to bloom like a poppy without petals
at the bottom of a ditch which was once a city.
I like a bit of drama but this is much more than I can handle.
Time goes by and no amount of drama can stop it.
I am thinking of long and dry summer landscape
filled with stones in the dust
Wondering how not to find myself
at the foot of a busted rainbow.
Building Balance Sheet
Lines - struck out, words - highlighted
For emphasis,
Faces - erased from memory,
Strange words bringing life to my voice,
All daylong I edit in and I edit out the hours.
What I added to the morning,
I canceled it out in the evening.
See, how I play tricks with life, and it lets me
Get away with them, time and again.
But in the profit and loss analysis
My days look like one messed up balance sheet
Restated many times over for clarity.
A scheming being getting lost
In the labyrinth of his own design!
For emphasis,
Faces - erased from memory,
Strange words bringing life to my voice,
All daylong I edit in and I edit out the hours.
What I added to the morning,
I canceled it out in the evening.
See, how I play tricks with life, and it lets me
Get away with them, time and again.
But in the profit and loss analysis
My days look like one messed up balance sheet
Restated many times over for clarity.
A scheming being getting lost
In the labyrinth of his own design!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Let me grow dizzy
Twirl me, twirl me around your fingers,
O Lord, and let me grow dizzy in loving you.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Names
Kenneth Lay Enron Corporation Bernard Madoff Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. R. Allen Stanford Stanford Group Conrad Black Hollinger International Bernie Ebbers WorldCom Dennis L. Kozlowski Tyco International Jeffrey Skilling Enron Corporation Abraham Kennard Pastor Milorad Rod R Blagojevich Illinois Governor Al Parish Professor Charleston Southern University Lou Pearlman Andrew Kissel Barton Watson Charles Ponzi Theoneste Bagosora Rwanda Augustin Bizimungu Robert Mugabe Marion Barry Paul Greenwood Stephen Walsh Westridge Capital Mgmt Mark Bloom North Hill Fund Stephen Walsh Paul Greenwood W.G. Trading Co. Dr. Charles Smith Pathologist City of Toronto Madoff made off Dr. Cecil B. Jacobson Reproductive Genetics Center Ltd Dr. Quincy Fortier
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
What I heard in the Street
Those who kill themselves rarely live to laugh the last laugh.
And the nations that promote killing babies in the womb go into extinction before long.
Absence of evidence ain’t no evidence for absence. Therefore, God is true.
Snowboarding is a pleasure while waterboarding is a torture.
Nothing can uproot Hamas from Palestine but the people of Palestine.
A tiger, though a powerful beast, is ill-equipped to kill a fly. So, Israelis should change their war tactics against Hamas.
And that scientists are the better-evolved philosophers.
And the nations that promote killing babies in the womb go into extinction before long.
Absence of evidence ain’t no evidence for absence. Therefore, God is true.
Snowboarding is a pleasure while waterboarding is a torture.
Nothing can uproot Hamas from Palestine but the people of Palestine.
A tiger, though a powerful beast, is ill-equipped to kill a fly. So, Israelis should change their war tactics against Hamas.
And that scientists are the better-evolved philosophers.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
A Stone for Mother
Absence, an absence of knowing, hangs
like a thick veil over her aged face.
Her memory – graying and fading fast.
Mother is losing her memory.
She knew she was losing memory.
It began as one or two incidents,
of confusion and misplaced mementos.
Mother said it was only natural.
It was only natural for someone, like her,
who has lived well beyond her prime,
like an ancient star burning its last out,
burns up the old memories,
burning all the bridges
to one’s childhood and words.
She lived her prime,
prime of her life in raising,
single-handedly,
all of me to all of heavens,
her only child
from a marriage
that was undone
By a vague sentence left
unwritten between two stanzas.
O woman,
from the plains
of a certain sun-baked continent,
I can’t let you cease to be my mother,
even though, I stopped existing
in your vanished memory.
O woman, who lives
in a reality diminished by forgetfulness,
even though,
you exist forever beyond my reach,
as some benevolent deity,
you are still my mother.
From mother to daughter,
From womb to womb and
to the womb of the Earth,
at the end of the long sentence,
an amorphous stone with no inscription.
But the sentence is not complete,
It will not complete
Until I too pull the veil of absence
over my face ,
turning into silence.
O merciful God, giver of harsh laws,
if You had wanted her to be stone
why as a woman was she born,
to be my mother?
like a thick veil over her aged face.
Her memory – graying and fading fast.
Mother is losing her memory.
She knew she was losing memory.
It began as one or two incidents,
of confusion and misplaced mementos.
Mother said it was only natural.
It was only natural for someone, like her,
who has lived well beyond her prime,
like an ancient star burning its last out,
burns up the old memories,
burning all the bridges
to one’s childhood and words.
She lived her prime,
prime of her life in raising,
single-handedly,
all of me to all of heavens,
her only child
from a marriage
that was undone
By a vague sentence left
unwritten between two stanzas.
O woman,
from the plains
of a certain sun-baked continent,
I can’t let you cease to be my mother,
even though, I stopped existing
in your vanished memory.
O woman, who lives
in a reality diminished by forgetfulness,
even though,
you exist forever beyond my reach,
as some benevolent deity,
you are still my mother.
From mother to daughter,
From womb to womb and
to the womb of the Earth,
at the end of the long sentence,
an amorphous stone with no inscription.
But the sentence is not complete,
It will not complete
Until I too pull the veil of absence
over my face ,
turning into silence.
O merciful God, giver of harsh laws,
if You had wanted her to be stone
why as a woman was she born,
to be my mother?
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