captalk: welcome to the Franciscan world!

Francis the true man ( Message)

2006-10-02T17:19:00.000+05:30

Francis is a unique man. No one can truly express him in words, no film can capture him to his essence, and forgive me, and not many will be able to walk the path he did, the way he did it. But still, he remains as the simple man-saint. The beauty of God lies in the creation of such people. It is a blessing for the humanity in its own kind. The coming generations will even doubt such a person’s existence. Is it possible for a man to live here on earth, they are sure to doubt. Then never our history textbooks and hagiographical records will suffice their quest. They are sure to search for answers around.

Some say Francis died. I do not believe it, I saw him even today!
Tell me how can Francis die? He just cannot die, for man ever needs god’s symbols!
As long as you and I live, Francis cannot die. As long as a tiny flower remains, he lives. He is the man, who raised the dignity of the nature to such a heights,
ever after the event of creation and Christ.

Yes, I see Francis today, he is all around me….
In my brother, and in the nature…..
Wish you a Happy Feast.

Br.Ferdinand OFM cap.
(Message for captalk On line)

Happy feast of St.Francis of Assisi

2006-10-02T08:00:00.000+05:30

Captalk wishes all our esteemed readers
a very hapy feast of st.Francis of Assisi.

Awards….calling....

2006-08-02T13:54:00.000+05:30

Bro.Sunil C.E bags yet again a literary award.
This time it comes in the form of second prize
for his short story entry in the Assisi Magazine’s
annual literary contest-2006.

We are happy about your achievement, Br.Sunil!

Provincial visitation of the Friary ends….

2006-08-02T13:00:00.000+05:30

The provincial visitation of the friary came to an end today.

Accolytes & Lectors

9 brothers of the third year batch received the acolyte ministry and 12 bros of the second year batch received the lectorship, from Rev.Fr.Provincial, at our chapel today.

Onam celebrations

2006-08-01T14:00:00.000+05:30

Hi,
we are in the Onam mood, with lots of celebrations to mark the festival.
more photos and news to follow...

The onam came with lots of fun and happiness, despite the heavy Academic schedule.
we thank br.martin jeremias IVDei who shouldered all the heavy burdons of onam ceelbtrations!!!.

Onam Onam come agains....

STAINED GLASSES

2006-07-03T17:44:00.000+05:30

“People are like stained glasss window. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within”. – Elizabeth Kubler Ross.

The need of the hour was to engage in cooling. I just trusted me relying on some tried recipe which I have seen others doing deliciously well. The dishes are ready and after having tasted it I came to my senses thinking that there can be another ingredient that could be added or omitted that would make all these more tasty. Trials and errors continued and the persistence and consistency in experimenting the same dishes caused it to reach the other day with a luscious taste. Needles to say that, this tester slowly is turning out to be a chef de cuisine. The salient point is that I could carry this to the seat in the chapel only to apply to life.

We were all a lump of raw material at our birth. To attain a shape there need to be some stewing happening within the self only to be altered into a tall personality. Who can be the chef? No one can claim to have an exclusive apprehension of the other, than the one himself. Descartes’ famous use of introspection in the cogito argument is noticeable. According to him, nothing, not even an evil genius could undermine the evidence of what he is thinking was the prime matter. Meanwhile take not to what happened to Thomas Edison. He was labeled as the slowest learner of the class by his own school teacher. Over his life time he registered a marvelous 1093 patents including the invention of light bulb and the phonograph. Was he comprehensively understood by the teacher? Never. All the more Edison seldom gave ear to it. Les Brown would say “Other peoples’ opinion of you does not have to become your reality”. The greatness in one’s life stems from the time he engages himself to draw an awareness of himself. So stewing the personality is a very personal work.

How determined and bold Anil Kumble is? As he overtook the Windies Legend Courtney Salsh and became the fourth highest wicket taker, he was found as focused as ever. “I am a senior and a key member of the side having played for this long. The pressure is on me to lead the way.” Result of a rare discovery of a self. The self engraves a genius. (Doing easily what others find difficult is talent. Doing what is impossible for talent is genius – Henri Frederick Ameil. After the discovery of the inner self, make the bold steps forward knowing what to be. We can’t act with integrity if we don’t really know what we are.

Search out the ingredients available in our own self, review it and then start cooking a basic recipe. “Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your finest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you remain true to them, your world will at last be built” – James Allen. Each time we rework the recipe, it advances in taste. Make it grow as something that is power within, fire within or light within.

We need to respect the potential and uniqueness of every single person as their birth right. Rather than enumerating strategies for making a good person, let us go to encourage the review of the self. When in the innate goodness and wisdom of each person’s special is known by himself. This is the power within, fire within or light within. I humbly quote Anthony Robins, “There is a powerful, driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream or desire a reality”. The inner spirit as the flame that can translate a set or raw ingredients into a final dish and keeps on cooking every time we change the recipe, until such time as we accept that we already are the perfect dish. So I say, take time, know the self better, review it well, chart it out ‘who am I’, and ‘what can I be’? And this is the real light within, fire within or power within. Seneca says ‘when a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind”. We have to learn to tap into our deepest, most personal resources, only to become all that we truly desire and deserve. The greatness lies in each one striving personally in his own discovered world. It is not what our friends and enemies discover but what we ourselves discover, the review of the self.

The hidden well-spring of your soul must need rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scale to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line
- kahlil Gibran ‘The Prophet’

surprise post by G. F. Xavier.

We denounce the terrorism…

2006-07-01T13:38:00.000+05:30

We condemn and denounce the acts of terrorism
that shocked Mumbai last week.

We share in the agonies of all the afflicted brethren.
We are totally against the use of modern technology for such evil purpose.

But we also strongly protest the current ban of ‘Blogspot’
and other similar blog services in India.

It is as senseless as banning the entire post-office system,
because somebody planned a murder through letters.
or it is as thoughtless as banning all e-mail services
because somebody uses e-mail to plan a murder.

Look! the medium is not the evil.
It is the man, who misuses it.
Save the media Freedom!

My India, the Greatest!

-captalk-

Please Note:
We regret the due to this current ban of Blogspot in India, we are unable to do fresh postings regularly. We will make alternative arrangements soon. Thank You.

Modern trends in Christian fiction

2006-06-20T22:33:00.000+05:30

The modern trend in Christian fiction is nothing other than the influence of postmodernism. Today, there is a war between the modernist and the post modernist. To the modernist, the choice is between truth and myth (or falsehood), whereas the post - modernist, giving up the pretence of a direct line to the truth, sees the choice as between different truths, or to put it another way, between myths and stories that are creative and liberating, and those that are destructive and debilitating. According to Tolkien, History often resembles �myth�, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff.

Ironically, therefore, it is fictions critics who have been overtaken by events in the Bible. Behind their instinctive antagonism lies on uncomfortable sense that here is a coherent fictional critique and an alternative, in every major respect, to the exhausted myth of modernity which has so far underwritten their own professional status, and worse Christian fiction is a popular one.

The modern writers (both Christians and non- Christians) highly depend on the spiritual language of the Bible. For they foresee that the spiritual world of middle - earth is a rich and complex one. It (Bible) contains both a polytheist communist theology of �natural magic� and a Christian (but non - sectarian) ethic of humility and compassion. Every writers clearly felt that both are now needed. The war against mystery and magic by modernity urgently requires a re-enchantment of the world, which a sense of earth mysteries is much better - placed to offer than a single transcendent deity.

Though technologies have developed the writers take their pen together with Bible. Gregory Bateson says, when the loss of a sense of divine immanence in nature is combined with an advanced technology, your chance of survival will be that of snowball in hell. But the Christian dimension of fiction and ultimate dependency on Bible exemplified by Frodo is the best answer to modernity�s savage pride in efficiency, and self - sufficiency of its own reason. Rising above the dogmas of Christianity, our writers have thus made it possible for our readers to unselfconsciously combine Christian ethics and neo - pagan reverence for nature, together with a liberal humanist respect for the small, precarious and apparently mundane. This is a fusion that couldn�t be more relevant to resisting the immense and impersonal forces of runaway modernity.

Today, every fictions written whether in Malayalam or in any other languages is closely in touch with the social, natural and spiritual aspects of our life and in turn their crucial overlap. That is where their heart is to be found and any meaning found in or derived from his work must embody all three concerns to be considered essential. Taken together, they comprise the whole implicit project of their literary mythology and a remedy for pathological modernity.

If you ask to any Non - Christian writers, why they are so much attached to the Christian images they will say that �God is love� and �Christ is love covered with flesh ea our flesh� We too say the first premise i.e. �God is Love�. The Christian writers have not gone into the depth of the Bible. Today, though there is a war between �isms� the non - Christian writers as well as the Christian writers easily influenced by the great mysteries of Bible. The spiritual realities, the ideas of which the forms perceived and chosen by the writer are significant, are in the last analysis attributes of the absolute spiritual reality, which is God. In a way we can say that the unbroken contact with the Bible is the modern trend in Christian fiction.

The animals in the New Testament

2006-06-15T22:46:00.000+05:30

In N.T Jesus doesn’t give clear teaching regarding the animal world.

But N.T speaks of God’s care for animals, birds like sparrows (Mt 10: 29; Lk 12:6) and plants such as lilies (Mt 7:28-30). Some ask a question whether Jesus was indifferent to animals and plants. Jesus in cursing the free which don’t give fruit and allowing two thousand swines to hurl into the sea. To this argument St. Augustine says, Jesus was not punishing or blaming the swine and tree; Jesus only communicates that we can do with them, as we like.

There are also passages, which shows Jesus’ relation with animals. In Mk 1: 13 we see beasts giving company to Jesus during his preparation for his mission. This happy association pf Jesus with wild beasts shows the restoration of paradise proclaimed by prophets (Is 11: 6-8; 65: 25; Hos 2: 18). Jesus’ harmony with the animal world is also part of the kingdom mission. In John 10:7-9 it narrates that “I am the door of the sheep… if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in an out and find pasture”. “I am the good shepherded” ( Jn 10:14) the view of the Christian as good shepherded should be extended to embrace the entire creation. Again in the scene of cleansing the Temple, we see Jesus is Presented as reacting so violently against the trade in the Temple ( Jn 2: 13-17). Jesus drove them all out of the Temple, cattle and sheep as well… and said to the pigeon-sellers: Take all this out of here and stop turning my Father’s house into a market. Even in this violent action we do not see Jesus taking up an action of destruction on the nature, or animals, or on man. Man exploits nature and the house of God for his selfish gains. Jesus says don’t make my Fathers house a market place, here the Father’s house is, this whole of universe.

We also see Jesus attitude to animals appear to be positive in Mt 12: 11; Lk 14: 5, where Jesus refers caring for animals even on the day of Sabbath. St. Paul also refers the legitimate freedom that animals enjoy (I Cor 9: 9-10). All these explanation regarding the animals in the New Testament are not explicitly seen in the Gospels. Therefore we have to reach the conclusion that, the New Testament neither cherishes any cruel attitude towards animals nor does it take into account animal’s right.

Godfrey

The stewardship of the earth

2006-06-15T22:41:00.000+05:30

In relation to ecological problem usually one question is asked : to whom does the earth belong?

In Ps 11: 16 it is said, “the highest heavens belong to the Lord: but he earth he has given to man”. Here the balanced answer is that the earth belongs to both God and man. In this regard we can say the earth and human beings are mutually related. In the book of Genesis the word Adam is used and which comes form adamah (earth) but this is in order that he may emerge from it as the master to whom God has confided it,. He is to rule over it (Gen 1:28) and it is like a garden of which he is appointed as steward (Gen 2:8, 15). The life of the Israelites people is intertwined with their land. The vision of land is promised in the elections of Israel (Gen 12: 17; 13:15) they grow fond of their land in the years of captivity (Ps 137: 1). Israel is conscious of being a people of the land, and of the fact that the well being of the people and the land is interconnected.

In relation to the biblical notion of blessedness and fertility, it would be reasonable to say that human responsibility towards the earth must begin with the recognition that God, not human effort, gives fertility to the earth. The life of human beings depends completely on the fertility of its soil. The Israelites has in mind that the land is God’s and they are only caretakers and therefore God assures his blessing (Deut111: 14-15). In New Testament we read “ God loved the world to such extent that he sent his son” (Jn 3:16). Even though exegetes may not be fully agree to the translation of world into earth, one could say that earth also includes in the notion of the word, world. The Pauline idea supports that the whole creation partakes in salvation or redemption by Jesus. It shows that Jesus obtained the reconciliation between man and God on earth.

With regard to the stewardship of earth Joseph Sittler says that “use and throw away” mentality is to be avoided in our relation to earth. Democratic justice questions human position with regard to the nature that he is only a minority in the vast universe and he cannot overrule the majority. The best thing humans could do is, to let thins be and to treat lightly and reverently. What is needed is the inculcation of the idea that we have to love the earth as we love a neighbor. However care must be taken not to fall into pantheism and naturalism. All these analysis reveal the fact that the future of this world is in our hand.

Godfrey

Sacramentality and theology of inter-relationship with Creation

2006-06-15T22:36:00.000+05:30

Sacramental approach to creation leads one to stewardship, to preserve every thing with its own value, goodness and worth, theologically this approach can be called as inter relationship.

Everything in creation is not for man’s usefulness, but for God’s glory. By preserving the nature in its sacramental character man should know that everything deserves to be revered for what it is in itself and for what it potentially reveals. Stewardship is also a kind of appreciation. One who sees the beauty of the world sees the form of God’s appearance everywhere. Creation has an inherent value outside of human utility. It is because of its co-celebration with God. Sometimes man develops an exploitative attitude towards nature because he considers it as an object for his use alone. Since God reveals himself through creation the human being should have a special reverence for the creation.

we have seen that man’s life is very much related to the nature and without nature man cannot live. Since God is immanent in the nature it helps man to grow physically and spiritually. Here we find relationship between nature, man and God. When man becomes part and parcel of the cosmic world. In the gospel of John 1:14 we see Jesus says: “this is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you”. The love demanded here is a boundless one extended not only to the whole humankind but also to the whole creation. This implies that a true Christian has to love and respect also his environment and the whole nature and remain consciously integrated with Jesus Christ and finally with God. For we cannot love Christ unless we love also what is his. In fact, Jesus claims the whole creation as his own: “everything the Father has is mine” (Jn 16: 15).

Godfrey

Was Francis of Assisi a deep ecologist?

2006-06-15T22:31:00.001+05:30

Was Francis of Assisi a deep ecologist?

2006-06-15T22:31:00.000+05:30

St. Francis of Assisi was a perfect model in the Christian tradition especially in his treatment of non-humans. He considered all forms of life and even inanimate things to be part of the fellowship of God. For Francis, all creatures are equal and interrelated. Francis insisted that wild grasses and flowers should be untouched so that they would announce the beauty of the creator. For Francis the existence of other creatures and wild plants should be valued for their own sake; they also have intrinsic value. Francis was against human greed which injures other aspects of creation.

Francis loved the creation because of the fact that in it he found the Lord. The nature spoke of God and from it, he could rise to Him. Sometimes we see Francis climbing up mountainsides to give himself over to contemplation of the only one. Francis was not content only with praising God for his creatures, but he lived with them all. He knew no sun, no wind, no water, no fire, etc., but “Brother sun, Brother wind, Sister Water, Brother Fire.

BROTHERWOOD AND SISTERHOOD WITH CREATION

Jesus came to this world as the brother of humanity and taught us to call God “Our Father” (Mt.6:9; 23:9; Lk.11:2). Francis as the true bother of Christ joyfully addressed God as his father. Francis always used the word “Brotherhood” to express his relationship. He felt he had brothers and sisters throughout nature. He believed that everything was sacred because everything came from god and spoke of God. Since Christ Himself Was born in the midst of creatures in Bethlehem, this made Francis to respect and show reverence to creation. He saw the goodness of God in them, and listened to His Voice in them. Therefore, he could speak even to the trees of the forest and birds of the air. Francis invited all creatures to praise the Lord just as though they had power to reason.

Francis had the realization that the Father in Heaven is not only the Father of human beings but also of all other creation. Therefore the whole creation is filled not with creatures but with brothers and sisters. Francis had the urge to protect all and help all both animate and inanimate. Thus he established a blessed harmony in creation. There are numerous examples, which prove Francis’ love for the created things. Once he washed his hands and, he turned aside so that the drops, which fell, could not be trodden underfoot. Over stones and rocky ground he went with special care. To the brother who cut wood in the forest, he ordered to leave a part of the tree standing, so that there might be some hope of its putting forth branches again. Fire and light seemed to him so beautiful that he never could endure having a candle extinguished or a lamp put out. He built nests for turtledoves. In winter, he put honey into the beehives for the bees to feed on. Once a rabbit caught in a trap and it was brought to him alive, and Francis asked the rabbit: why did you let yourself be trapped that way? Once Francis was preaching and that time the swallows were twittering so noisily, so Francis made request of them: “my sister swallows, it is time now for me speak too. So far you had spoken. Now hear the word of God and remain silent”. Oneday some people were carrying brother lambs to the market for slaughter, seeing this Francis cried, “oh, no not that take this mantle I am wearing in payment and give me the lambs.” There is also an incident of Francis relation with wolf of Gubbio. This wolf destroyed the life stokes and killed many people. No one could go near, and all wanted to kill the wolf. Francis went near the wolf and said, “Brother wolf, I want to make a peace between you and these people. They will not hurt you any more and you too should not hurt any animal or man.” From then, it is said, brother wolf went everyday from door to door fro food and people fed him till death.

Once Francis saw an earthworm lying on the road and he removed it from the path to prevent it from being trampled underfoot by passerby. He used to order all who had oxen or asses to feed them well especially at Christmas. Even wild and dangerous animals were included in his moral community. Francis loved all the creatures, so he readily understood the overflowing goodness of God as God’s love and caring for all creatures. For Francis the crated world is a network of relationships. That is why Francis is appreciated more. When he found an abundance of flowers, he preached to them and invited them to praise the Lord as though they were endowed with reason. As a sensuous person Francis experienced the vibrancy of creation around him. He believed that in their very act of being, all creatures could give praise to God by recognizing and affirming the roles of, and relationships among, the divers elements of nature. Francis played an important role in giving a spiritual narration of the interdependence of ecosystem.

Godfrey

FRANCISCANS: THE GUARDIAN ANGELS OF THE ENVIRONMENT

2006-06-15T22:28:00.000+05:30

If Francis of Assisi were here today, would he not lament and weep over his little brothers and sisters – the birds, animals, and the flowers? If he were to preach to the birds once again would he not be sorry for the missing species of the birds and would he not search for them? As Franciscans and admirers of St. Francis it is high time for us to reflect on this matter. We are called to cherish and nourish creation, nature and environment, and not to allow it to perish. We Franciscans have to treasure, preserve and safe guard the world from destruction. We have to visualize the world as Francis did. To put into practice this aspect we have to be aware of the ecological crisis.

Therefore, let us be aware of certain principles of ecology like:
- The earth community is a complex and interdependent system and all the diverse parts of the system are essential to its functioning and beauty.
- Every human being has the right to a healthy environment in which one lives. At the same time the human beings have a special responsibility to preserve life in its integrity and diversity and should avoid destructing attitude.

- Life is a gift, given equally to all; therefore respect must be shown to other creatures.
- The interdependence is the basis of communion and harmony within the human family as well as with the cosmic community. Authoritative attitude must be avoided and do no harm to anyone.

When Franciscans practiced these principles they become a true steward of God. Each one can become a co-creator as St. Francis of Assisi was. Once we become the co-creator it is easy for us to lead others into the state of stewardship. We can also use different methods for guiding others into stewardship.

godfrey

sickness unto life: conclusion

2006-06-04T18:30:00.000+05:30

It is not a hitherto unknown field. Even in Malayalam there have been some phenomenal books on this subject. Dr. Raja Krishnan, K.P Appan and Iqbal are the pioneers in this field.

K.P Appan is investigating the relationship of sickness with men of genius. Dr. Iqbal’s study is on clinical researches. This essay never made use of those materials, as the essayist liked to have a fresh start. However minimal and naïve it is. Susan Sontag is the first to make use sickness as a metaphor. She along with Thomas Mann structured the background of this essay.

The genre of the book can be questioned as many genres sprang up in the course of discussion. Surely this essay betrays more of an aesthetic quality than ethical. Aesthetic is the better medium to discuss this subject, as there is no compulsion to pass judgment. But god is the ultimate column upon which this essay is based. He is the one who helps to win over death.
Now we are heeding to certain resolutions. We can lean back and sketch the journey we have done. This essay had a process of development whereby each phase bursts in to an internal antithesis that makes for further growth. Man is a mixture of life and death, silence and communication; it is that we said in the introductory section. We had almost everything along the journey: body, mind, history, biology, suffering, illness, death and life. Somewhere certain melancholic gaze hushed us. Somewhere we were reduced to mere nothingness. We met people with groans in their hearts. We the sky, which lost its splendor and twittering, birds. One man perplexed us with his extreme notion of suffering. We understand that the end result such extremism is suicide. He did do that. Is their truth in him?

“Truth is to walk on peripheries,” wrote Heidegger. People who walk on peripheries behave unusually. So we suspend judgments, which is our ethics. They were the people edged out of our systems.

At one point we were co-travelers of Camus. What a genius he is! You might have noted his perpetuating spirit of revolution. Revolt is his shaft with which he harpoons human hearts. We were surprised to see that even this rebellious and nihilistic spirit thirsted for hope. He sanctions and argues for it: “if there is no hope, we must invent it”59. He provides balm to our exhausted spirit.

Our next co-traveler was Thomas Mann. It is with him that our essay became a story. He told us the story of sickness and death, but it was a disguise, actually he was telling the story of life and love. We need to bend our head before this genius that taught us that “death is lust not love, and for the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts”.

Then we plunged into suffocating thoughts of sickness. This sections clearly lacked sufficient oxygen. On the way many great men saluted us, they were willing to speak with us. These habitators of underworld mocked our civilization of Neon bulb. Didn’t you feel shudder when they spoke about the immanent catastrophe that awaits human heart? Boudlair wrote for them:

“His reason quitted him,
The brightness of that sun
Put on a cloudy pall,
Primordial chaos rolled through that intelligence-
A living cell once, ordered and opulent,
Whose lighted halls had seen such feasting and paradise.
Then silence and darkness come
To keep house in him.
As in a closed cellar to which the key is lost.
So he lived on, the like of some masterless cure”.

Fortunately, they didn’t remain with us long. Yet they taught us some fierce lessons of humanity, which is caught up in the struggle of good and evil. Can you imagine that the book, which contains highest praise for God also contains highest will of devil: it is John Milton’s Paradise Lost where devil says in the zenith of egoism, “evil be thou my good”.62 Are we not like this book?

We resumed our journey, from the den of these bigots and destroyers of the self-keeping only reverence. Death was our next milieu. With the help of Heidegger we looked at it. Man is an ailing animal and this ailing is our process of death.

“ For each of us the world comes to an end on the day of our death. And it is true, with a particular truth, that the none of us knows the day or the our when the sun will goes out of our life, when the moon will cease to bathe hedge rows of our childhood, when all at once the stars will sink in to the immense darkness. He history of the world will be revealed in countless individual histories.”

So does death win? No, though somewhere we said it. But went on to disprove it. Death is very sensual, power and immensity. But the essay stands for life sickness and death shall not overpower man. Each of our tragedies should teach us to love life more. Death seems to be unforgivable only when we think about our individual histories, not when we think of our collective history. It goes on carrying life. These thoughts again shall not take our angst. Our relation to death is a love-hate. We still search a way to master it. We still speak o f people who are tormented to death. “Ah! God; what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his own bloody nails in his palms.”

We both reject and accept death. We reject it because it is lust. We accept it because it proves life. This essay derived the notion of life from death. Sickness is spiritual. Illness is a highly dignified human phenomenon. In spirit, then in disease, resides human dignity of man; and the genius of disease is more human than the genius of health.

We hailed life not forgetting death, but accepting it. Our approach was different. We traveled to life through sickness and death. We reached a point where we affirmed disease and death, as necessary route to knowledge, health, and life. There are two ways to life :one is regular, the other is bad, it leads through the death, and that is the way of genius. The essay avoided the regular and direct way and took the difficult way of sickness and death to reach life, the way of genius.

We ended our essay affirming life and love. The essay likes to have a prayer at the end. This prayer formulated by shillebeecx, with verses from scripture, is special to the essayist as it express man’s anguish, fear and sorrow that taints his existence. It doesn’t finish there, but waved new leaves of hope and trust in God. in whom our questions are answered.

Suresh

Sickness unto life

2006-06-04T18:27:00.000+05:30

“By myself I cannot be free, nor can I be a consciousness or a man; and others whom I first sow as my rival is my rival only because he is myself. I discover myself in the other, just as I discover consciousness of life in consciousness of death, because I am from the start a mixture of life and death, solitude and communication, which is heeding to its resolution”.

French philosopher Merleau Ponty wrote it. His transcendental sense overcomes the immanent tragedies of life and death. Consciousness of death is actually consciousness of life. With death the broader line of my personal history is blurred and ‘I’ am a burst of meanings.
We have seen how illness positions our death. The whole of our existence is thirsting for colours to break into it. He who knows the body, life knows death. And that is not at all; it is, pedagogically speaking, only the beginning. One must have the half of the story, the other side. For all interest in disease and death is only another expression of life.

Diseases, health, spirit, nature, are these contradictions? Are they problems? No, the recklessness of death is in life, it would not be life without it. An in the center is the position of Homo Dei, between recklessness and reason, between life and death. In this state he must live gallantly, associate in friendly reverence with him, for only he is aristocratic, and the counter positions are not at all. Man is the lord of all counter positions, they can be only through him, and thus he is more aristocratic than they. More so then is death, too aristocratic for death-that is the freedom of his mind. More aristocratic than life, too aristocratic for life, and that is the piety in his heart. We should not allow death to have mastery over our life, allowing anguish and allowing mastery over our thoughts are two different things. For therein lies goodness and love of mankind, and in nothing else. Death is a great power. One takes off ones hat before him, and goes weavingly on tiptoe. He weaves the stately ruff of the departure and we do him honour in solemn back. Reason stands simple before him, for reason is only virtue, while death is release, immensity, abandon, desires. Desire is lust not love. Death and love they actually don’t go together. Love stands oppose to death. It is love not reason that is stronger than death. Only love, not reason, gives sweet thoughts. And from love and sweetness alone form can come: form and civilization, friendly, enlightened beautiful intercourse-always in silent recognition of the blood sacrifice. It is embodied in Christ.

So we need to keep faith with death in our heart. Yet will remember that faith with death and dead is evil, is hostile to human kind, as soon as we give it power over thought and action. “For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts”.52 We never get away from life, even after death. Perhaps God may call our death, life. Sickness is in evitable as we are in time and space. They are the tragic elements with which our life is constituted. Heidegger is right when he called man, a being unto death or towards death. He also accepts resurrection in an immanent sense. So this sickness unto death should become sickness unto life. How is it possible, Roland Barthes has something to speak about this purple passage: “The first would permit me to say whom I love… to say whom one love is testify that they have not lived, and frequently suffered, for nothing… These lives, these sufferings are gathered up, pondered, justified”.

And yet what if it is for life’s sake that we must die? In truth we are not individuals; and it is because we think ourselves such that death seems unforgivable. We are temporary organs of the race, cells in the body of life, we die and drop away that life may remain young and strong. If we were to live forever, growth would be stifled and youth would find no room in the earth. Death, like style, is the removal rubbish, the excision of the superfluous. Through love we pass our vitalities on to a new form of us before the old form dies; through parent age we bridge the chasm of the generation, and elude the enmity of death. Here, even in the river’s flood, children are born; here, solitary in a tree, and surrounded by raging waters, a mother nurses her babe. In the midst of death life renews itself immortally.

So wisdom may come as the gift of the age, and seeing things in place, every part in its relation to the whole, may reach the perspective in which understanding pardons all. “If it is one test of theology to give life a meaning that shall frustrate death, wisdom will show that corruption comes only to the part that life itself deathless while we die”.

Three thousand years ago a man thought that man might fly; and so he built himself wings, and Icarus his son, trusting them and trying to fly, fell into the sea. Undaunted, life carried on the dreams. Thirty generations passed, and Leonardo Davinci, spirit made flesh, scratched across his drawings (drawings so beautiful that one catches ones breath with pain in seeing them) plans and calculations for a flying machine; and left in his norms a little phrase that, once heard, rings like a bell in the memory- ‘there shall be wings’ Leonardo failed and died; but life carried on the dream. Generation passed, and men said, man would never fly, for it was not the will of God. And then man flew. Life is that which can hold a purpose for three thousand years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. “The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageable goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, attaining and longing.”55
Here is an old man on the bed of his death, harassed with helpless friends and wailing relatives. What a terrible sight it is-that thing frame with loosened and cracking flesh, this toothless mouth in a bloodless face, this tongue that cannot speak, this eyes that cannot see. To this pass youth has come, after all its hopes and trials, to this pass middle age, after all its torment and its toil. To this pass health and strength and joyous rivalry; this arm once struck great blows and fought for victory in virile games. To this pass knowledge, science, wisdom: for seventy years this man with pain and effort gathered knowledge, his brain became the store house of varied experience, the center of a thousand subtleties of thought and deed; his heart through suffering learned gentleness and his mind learned knowledge, seventy years he grew from an animal into a man capable of seeking truth and creating beauty. But death upon him, poisoning him, chocking him, congealing his blood, gripping his heart, and bursting his brain, ratting his throat. Death wins.
Outside on the green boughs birds twitter, and they sing hymns to the sun. Light streams across the fields; buds open and stalks confidently lift their heads; the sap mounts in the trees. Here are children: what is it that makes them so joyous, running madly over the dew-wet grass, laughing, calling, pursuing, alluding, and panting for breath, inexhaustible? What energy, what spirit and happiness! What do they care about death? They will learn and grow and love and struggle and create, and lift up one little notch, perhaps before they die. And when they pass they will cheat death with children, with parental care that will make their offspring finer than themselves. There in the garden twilight lovers pass, thinking themselves and seeing; their quiet mingle with murmur of insects calling to their mates; the ancient hunger speaks through eager and lowered eyes, and noble madness courses through clasped hands and touching lips. Life wins.
Love justifies our life and sufferings. Love is not reason but creation. Let us mind what Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat fall and die, it remains same.” 56It explains the life and its perils. We will go through decay and peril only to bear fruit.
There is always the possibility of far voyaging. Is their any security? There is the security of word as it should be, and as we all feel it could be, if it were governed by faith, hope, and love. We are ending this essay with a poem of Ceslaw Milosw, a great catholic poet of Holland. He won the Nobel Prize in 1980. This poem embodies the oldest dream of all, underlying our most primitive infant memories- that the universe not a charnel house but Godlike, and our Father’s. Since this dream is the mystical projection of a faith in being, of a hope for reality, and of a reciprocal love, the poem stands firmly as essay in archetypical forms, as a prediction of the deepest values, and as an anguished personal memory of an incinated culture. This poem, the most radiant and sacred of the sequence, is called ‘Recovery’; it must be remembered that it was written in the devastated landscape of Warsaw in 1943. The father speaks:
“ Here I am- why this senseless fear?
Soon now the day will come, and night will fade.
Listen: you can hear the shepherd’s horns, and their
Look how the stars pale, over a trace of red.
The path is straight, were almost to the clearing.
Down in the village first bell chimes,
And roosters on fences have started crowing.
The sleepy earth, fertile and happy, steams.
Here it still dark and you see fog pour.
In black swirls over the huckle berry knolls.
But dawn on bright slits wades in form the store.
And the bell of sun is ringing as rolls”.57

Sickness unto death

2006-06-04T18:25:00.000+05:30

“It is in the face of death that the riddle of human existence becomes visible and most accurate. Not only is man tormented by pain and by advancing deterioration of his body, but even more so by dread of perpetual extinction”.

Camus? Sartre? Heiddeger? No, these words are taken from a document written by the fathers of the Vatican Council II, speaking to the world about its own idiom. The same document goes on to claim that the Christian teaching on death provides the answer to the anxiety that man experiences in the face of death. Even for Karl Rahner, death is a humiliation. It reduces the individual to the total impotence. It removes every bit of self-delusion. One important truth about death experience is that it is faced utterly alone. There is no family, club, national, or even religious accompaniment or means to moralize the event. It cannot be faced in the costume of deception, as symbolized in the funeral directors lies and pornographies. At the moment of death we will be alone and morally naked, uncomforted any specious slogans, fads or devices. But the ‘we’ in the preceding sentences is misleading. In every case it is the ‘solitary’ who undergoes death.

Then just as the child grew more rapidly the younger it was, so the old man ages more quickly with every day and just as the child was protected by insensitivity on its entry in to the world, so old age is eased by an apathy of sense and will, and nature slowly administers a general anesthesis before she administers time’s scythe to complete the most of operations. As sensations diminish in its intensity, the sense of vitality lapses; the desire of the life gives way to indifference and patient waiting; the fear of death is strangely mingled with the longing for repose. Perhaps, then, if one has lived well, clearing the stage for a better play.

But if the play is never better, always revolving about suffering and death, telling endlessly the same idiotic tale? Ther’s the rub. And there’s the doubt gnaws at the heart of the wisdom, and poisons age. Here is shameless adultery and brutal calculating murder; and well, they have always been, and apparently they will always been. Here is flood, sweeping before it a thousand lives and labor of generations. Here are bereavements and broken hearts, and always the bitter brevity of love. Here still are the insolence of office and the laws delay; corruption on the judgment seat, and the incompetence on the throne. Here is slavery, stupefying toil that makes great muscles and little souls. Here and everywhere is the struggle for existence, life inextricably enmeshed with war. Here is history, seemingly a futile circle of infinite repetition: these youths with eager eyes will make the same errors as we, they will be mislead by the same dreams; they will suffer, and wonder, and surrender, and grow old, and die.

For Kirkegaard life itself becomes a form of death. There is his inborn melancholy in this understanding. He wrote in his book Either/Or: “I die death itself. My soul is like the Dead Sea over which no bird can fly. When it gets half way, it sinks down spent to its death and destruction”.

Heidegger called man, a being unto death- a sein- zum- tode. Death becomes the remarkable phenomenon of being which may be identified as the change over an entity from daseins kind of being to no- longer dasein. The disease has abandoned the world in terms of being. The dead can be closer to us more actively with us, more fully a part of our being, than the in terms of being than the living. They show how the death of an individual is very often a modulation toward, resurrection in other men’s needs and remembrances.

So death man lives in a respectful solicitude. “No one can take the other’s dying away from him. Of course someone can go to his death for another.” But this always means to sacrifice oneself for the other, in some definite affair. Such dying for can never signify that the other has thus had the death taken away from, in slight degree. Dying is something that even dasein itself must take upon itself at the time. By its very essence, death is in every case mine in so far as it is at all. And indeed, death signifies a peculiar possibility of being in which the very being of one’s own dasein is an issue. In dying it is shown that ‘mine-ness’ and existence are ontologically constitutive of death. Dying is a sort of an event. It is phenomenon to be understood existentially.

Death is a way to be, which dasein takes upon it as it is. Death is in the widest sense a phenomenon of life. The possibility of dasein depends upon the impossibility of dasein (death). “Angst is the taking upon oneself of the nearness of nothingness, of the potential non-being of one’s own being. Being toward death is in essence, anxiety. Those who robe us of this anxiety-priest, physician, and mystics-they insult us from a fundamental source of freedom.”

suresh

The Spiritual Sense

2006-06-04T18:21:00.000+05:30

Personality is not immaterial mater of spirit, and of mind nor yet of culture. Our conception it is one, which takes us to the sphere of the mystic and elemental, in to the natural sphere. But nature is not spirit; in fact, this antithesis I, I should say, the greatest of all antithesis. Nobility is always natural. People are not ennobled, that is rubbish; they are noble by birth, on the ground of their flesh and blood. Nobility then is physical: on the body and not on the mind all nobility has always laid the greatest stress. That may explain a certain stain of brutality which has always been peculiar to human nobility, in view of which does not disease appear precisely as an aristocratic attribute of heightened humanity?

It follows then that he phrase’ natural nobility’ is no pleonasm after all; that there does exist another kind of nobility besides that conferred by nature on her favoured sons. Clearly there are two ways of heightening and enhancing human values; one exalts them up to the Godlike and is a gift of nature’s grace, the other exalts them up to saintly, by grace of another power, which stands opposed to her and means emancipation form her, eternal revolt from her. In the same way disease has two faces and a double relation to man and to his human dignity. On the one hand it is hostile by overstressing the physical, by throwing man upon the body, it has a dehumanizing effect. On the one hand it is possible to think and feel about illness as a highly dignified human phenomenon. It may be going too far to say that diseases is spirit, or, which would sounder tendentious, that spirit is disease. Still the two conceptions do have very much in common. “Spirit is pride, it is willful denial and contradiction of nature, and it is detachment, withdrawal, from her. In spirit, then in disease, resides the dignity of man, and the genius of disease is more human than the genius of health.

Spirit is that which distinguishes from all other forms of organic life this creature man, this being which is to such a high degree independent of her and hostile to her, and the question, the aristocratic problem, is this: is he not by just so much the more man, the more detached he is from nature – that is to say, the more diseased he is? For what can disease be, if not disjunction from her? The will is the spirit; the nature is by way of being mild and easy going. Grace is beauty not given by nature but produced by her subject itself. It is the beauty of the form under the influence of the freewill, it is the beauty of those particular phenomenon which the person himself determines; the way beauty does honour to the author of nature; the grace dose known to him who possess it, that is gift, is a personal merit. The sons of the spirit make personality a matter of spiritual impression. It is an effort. An effortless nature is crude, effortless spirit is without root or subject.

Nietzsche called man: “das kranke tier?”What did he mean, if not that man is more than beast only in the measure that he is ailing?

For Schiller, pain was the great bell with which he summoned people to the highest banquets of the soul. So he says, “to be healthy enough to be to have great feeling, to be able to disregard the physical, to cease feeling it”.

In this sense one might call man romantic being, in that he, spiritual entity, stands outside of and beyond nature, and in this is emotional separation from her, in this his double sense of essence of nature and spirit, finds his own importance and his own misery. Does not all our love of our kind rest on a brotherly, sympathetic recognition of the human being well high hopelessly difficult situation? Yes, there is patriotism of humanity, and it rests on this: we love human beings because they have such a hand time and because we are one of them our self.

suresh

The Artist as a Suffering Hero

2006-06-04T18:18:00.000+05:30

we will discuss two writers who passed through the path laden with suffering and death. First let us discuss the journal of Cesare parese.

Cesare Parese began writing around 1930. His style is flat, dry, and unemotional. One remarks the coolness of Cesare Parese fiction, though the subject is often violent. This is because the real subject is never the violent happening but rather, the cautious subjectivity of the narrator. The typical effort of Parese hero is lucidity; the typical problem is that of lapsed communication. The novels are about the cries of conscience, and the refusal to allow the crises of conscience. A certain atrophy of the emotion, a elevation of the sentiment and bodily vitality is presupposed. The anguish of the prematurely disillusioned, highly civilized people alternating between irony and melancholic experiments with their own emotions is indeed familiar.

The journal gives us the workshop of the writer’s soul. And why are we interested in the soul of the writer? Not because we are interested in the writer as such,
“But because of the insatiable modern preoccupation with psychology, the latest and most powerful Christian legacy of the tradition of introspection, opened up by Paul and Augustine, which equates the discovery of the self with the discovery of the suffering self. For the modern conscience of the artist (replacing the saint) is the exemplary sufferer. And among artist, the writer the man of words is the person to whom we look to be able best to express his suffering”.

The artist is an exemplary sufferer because he has found both the deepest love of suffering and also a professional means to sublimate his suffering. As a man he suffers, as a writer he transforms his suffering into art. The writer is the man who discovers the use of suffering in the economy of art, as the saints discovered the utility and necessity of suffering in the economy of salvation.

The unity Parese diaries is to be found in his reflection on how to use, how to act on, his suffering. Literature is one use. Isolation is another, both as a technique and for inciting and perfecting his art. And suicide is the third, ultimate use of suffering, but as the ultimate way of action of suffering.

Thus we have the following remarkable sequence of thought, in a diary entry of 1938. Parese writes:
“ Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: you cannot deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching your reaction, and steal your secrets by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your moral flow… the other defense against this in general is silence as we muster strength for a fresh leap forward. But we must impose that silence on ourselves, not have it imposed on us, not even by death. To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship…those who by their very nature can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. This is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice: submit to it, a justification for suicide”.
The diaries are in effect a long series of self-assessment and self-interrogation. What parese has to say about love is the familiar other side of romantic idealization? Parese discovers, with Stendhal, that love is an essential fiction: it is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially a mistake. What one takes to be an attachment to another person is unmasked as one more dance of the solitary ego. However, the error remains a necessary one, so long as one sees the world, in Parese’s words, as a ‘jungle of self interest’. The isolated ego doe not cease to suffer. “Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic”.

Many of Parese remarks on love seem like case history of supporting the thesis of Denis De Rougement and other historians of the western imagination, who traced the evolution of the imager sexual love since Tistian Isolde as a ‘romantic agony’, a death wish. Susan sontag on her part does not see this cult of love as a part of the Christian heresy (Gnostic, Manichean, catharisist), as Rougement suggest, but expresses the central and peculiarly modern preoccupation of the lose of feeling.30 For life begins in the body, as Peres observes in another entry: and continually gives voice to the reproach, which the body makes to the mind. If civilization may be defined as that stage of human life at which, objectively, the body becomes a problem, then our moment of civilization may be considered as that stage at which we are subjectively aware of, and feel trapped by, this problem. Now we aspire to the life of the body and reject ascetic tradition of Judaism and Christianity, but we are still confined in the generalized sensibility, which that religious tradition bequeathed us. Hence we complain; we are resigned and detached; we complain. Peres’ continual prayer for strength to lead a life rigorous seclusion and solitude (the only heroic rule is to be alone, alone, alone) are entirely of piece with his inability to feel. Here is where the modern cult of love enters. It is the main way in which we test ourselves for strength of feeling, and found ourselves deficient.

Every one knows that Christian society have a different and much more emphatic view of love between the sexes than the ancient Greeks and Orientals, and that the modern view of love is an extension of the spirit of Christianity, in however alternated and secularized form. Christianity from its inception (Paul) is the romantic religion. The cult of love in the west (Christian) is an aspect of the cult of suffering. Suffering as s the supreme token of seriousness (the paradigm of the cross).31 We did not find among the ancient Hebrews, Greeks and the Orientals the same value placed on love. Because we do not find there same value placed on love and suffering. Suffering was not the hallmark of seriousness; rather seriousness was measured by one’s ability to evade or transcend the penalty of suffering, by one’s ability to achieve tranquility and equilibrium. In contrast, the sensibility we have inherited identifies spirituality and seriousness with turbulence, suffering, and passion. Thus more often, it is not love which we overvalue-more precisely, the spiritual merits and benefits of suffering.

Marcel Proust is the author writer in whom we cannot distinguish between sickness and health. He lived his life on memories. What inspired Proust in the face of death also shaped him in his intercourse with his contemporaries.

The thirteen volumes of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance Of The Things Past are the result of an un-construable synthesis in which the absorption of a mystic, the art of a prose writer, the verse of a satirist, the erudition of a scholar and the self consciousness of a monomaniac have combined in an autobiographical work. The conditions under which it written, were extremely unhealthy: an unusual melody, extra ordinary wealth and an abnormal disposition. This is not a model life in every respect; but everything about it is exemplary. The outstanding literary achievements of our time is assigned a place in the heart of the impossible, at the center- and also at the point of indifference of all dangers, and it marks this great realization of a lifework’ as the last few a longtime. The image of Proust is the highest physiognomic expression, which the irresistibly growing discrepancy between literature and life was able to assume. This is the lesson, which justifies the attempt to evoke this image.

The provocative, unsteady quality of the man affects even the reader of his works, suffice it to recall the endless succession of remembrance, by means of which an action is shown in an exhaustive, depressing way in the light of the countless motives upon which it has been based. And yet these paratactic sequences reveal the point at which weakness and genius coincide in Proust: the intellectual renunciation, the tested skepticism with which he approached things. “Proust approaches experiences without the slightest metaphysical interest, without the slightest penchant for construction, without the slightest tendency to console”.33 Proust that aged child fell back on the bosom of the nature not to drink from it, but to dream to its heartbeat. One must picture him in this state of weakness to understand how felicitously Jacques Riviera interpreted the weakness when he wrote: “Marcel Proust died of the same inexperience which permitted him to write his works. He died of ignorance of the world and because he did not know how to change the conditions of his life which had begun to cruse him. He died because he did not know how to make a live or open a window”. And be sure of his psychogenic asthma.

The doctors were powerless in the face of this malady; not so the writer, who very systematically placed it in his sense. To begin with the most external aspect he was perfect stage director of his sickness. For months he connected, with devastating irony, the image of an admirer who had sent him flowers with odour, which he found unbearable.

Even as a writer of letters he extracted the most singular effect from his malady. “The wheezing of my breath is drowning out the sounds of pen and of a bath which is being drawn on the floor below.”
But that is not all, nor is it the fact his sickness removed him from fashionable living. This asthma became part of his art, if indeed his art did not create it. Proust ’s syntax rhythmically and step by step reproduces his fear of suffocating and his, ironic; philosophical, dialectic reflection invariably are the deep breath with which he shakes off the weight of memories on a larger scale, however, the threatening, suffocating crisis was death, which he was constantly aware off, most of all while he was writing. This is how death confronted Proust, and long before his melody assumed critical dimensions- not as a hypochondriacally which, but as a new reality, thus new reality whose reflections on things and people are the marks of ageing.

For the rest, the closeness of the symbolism between the particular creativity and this particular malady is demonstrated most clearly by the fact that in Proust there never was a break of that heroic defiance with which other creative people have risen up against their infirmities. And therefore one can say, how another point of view, that so close a complicity with life and the course of the world Proust would inevitably have led to ordinary, indolent contentment on any basis but that of such great and constant suffering. As it was, however, this melody was destined to have its place in the great work process assigned to it by furor devoid of desires or regrets. For the second time there arose a scaffold like a Michelangelo’s on which the artist his thrown back, painted the creation on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel: the sickbed on which Marcel Proust consecrated the countless pages which he covered with his handwriting, holding them up in the air, to the creation of his microcosm.

suresh

The history of sickness

2006-06-04T18:16:00.000+05:30

It is the original sin from the point of Old Testament. First parents were eating along with the forbidden apple, sickness and death. So illness was a desire. Their desire to knowledge and immortality resulted in illness and death. It is also evil but according to St. Augustine “evil has no nature; evil is not something. Evil is not matter, evil is not substance.”

Then illness is something different from evil, as it has substance. But the primitive man considered illness as an evil; its part is almost shaped by Old Testament understanding. Illness if we follow St. Augustine should be considered as a corruption, which is the result of mortality. This mortality is surely brought out by original sin.

According to Hindu Philosophy illness is the result of the Goddess Durga. It is a blessing to the earth, when she saw that the earth is perishing due to immense population. Mother earth pleaded to Durga, and out of Durga’s sweat came a Goddess with yellow hair. Her body contained every sickness imaginable. Greek myth says the same story; sickness came out of Pandora’s box.

These are mainly rational symbol. They carry only an orthodox meaning. They are not biological knowledge nor juridical. Now we are moving to Biological knowledge, which again hypothesis in the same way as the origin of life is a hypothesis. But we stress here one point that it was a ‘desire’. Bible says that it was man’s desire to know the foreign or hidden phenomenon, which God prohibited. Creation was God’s love and man responded to the love with desire. Desire is a claim- Desire tries to conquer love. Desire moves to lust, which makes spiritual a matter. This matter condemned knowing decay. Buddha’s prohibition of desire then is quite a right way to salvation.

suresh

The body in the context

2006-06-04T18:14:00.000+05:30

We are irresistibly drawn to the frontier that is what we said in the introduction. But at the frontier, is there a decay of the body? If so, then what is body?

The body, this individual and living ‘I’, is a monstrous multiplicity of breathing and self nourishing individuals, which, through organic conformation and adaptation to special ends, had parted to such an extent with their essential individuality, their freedom and living immediacy, had so much become limited to sensibility toward light, sound, contact, warmth; others only understood how to change their shape or produce digestive secretions though contractions; others again developed and functioned to no other end than protection, support, the conveyance of the body juice, or reproduction.

The act of fructification, the sexual merging of two cell bodies, stood at the beginning of the up building of the every multiple celled individuals, as it did at the beginning of every row of generation of single elementary forms, and led back to itself. Such was the multiple state of life, sprung from the union of two parent cells, the association of many non-sexually originated generations of cell units; its growth meant its their increase, and the generative circle came to fall again when sex-cells, specially developed elements for the purpose of reproduction, had established themselves and found the way to new mingling that strove life on afresh. “ Thus, by the very rhythm of its development, each line of life follows a process of alternate contraction and expansion. It takes on the appearance of a series of knots and bulges, stung like beads, a sequence of narrow peduncles and spreading leaves.”

The more we study matter the less we see as fundamental, the more we perceive it as merely the extremity of energy, as our flesh is the outward sign of life and mind. “ In respect to action physics has tan the bit in her teeth and has insisted on recognizing this as the most fundamental thing of all,” says Eddington. A Hindu physicist, sir Jagadhish Chandra Bose has shown the fatigue in metals- their inability to continue the normal reaction to certain agents beyond a certain time- and the disappearance of the fatigue after rest; and he has demonstrated the sensitivity of materials to excitants, depressants, and poisons. These experiments have been repeated and verified on three continents. The expression ‘ life of the matter’ meaningless twenty-five years ago, has come in to common use. “We now see physicist and chemist groping after biological idea; the extension of biological ideas to the whole of Nature may be much nearer than seemed conceivable even a few years ago.”We hear the ‘evolution of the matter’: the atom, it seems, is born, develops, loses its vitality, and dies.

This modern physics of energy invites us to reformulate the old problem of materialism vs. spiritualism. Which aspect of the external world is more fundamental- the spatial, extend aspect, which physics defined as ‘matter’, or the activating, moving aspect, which we name energy? Is this energy itself a spatial and extended thing, a material substance? We cannot conceive it so., any more than the we can conceive thought be spatial and material. In the heart of matter, giving it form and power, is something not material, possessed of it is own spontaneity and live; and this subtle, hidden and yet always revealed vitality is he final essence of everything that we know.

What then is life of the body? It is warmth, the warmth generated by a form preserving instability, a fever of matter, which accompanied the process of ceaseless decay and repair if albumen molecules that were too impossibly complicated, too impossibly ingenious in structure. It was the existence of the actually impossible to exist, of a half sweet, half painful balancing, in this restricted and feverish process of decay and renewal, upon the point of existence. It was not matter and it was not spirit, but something between the two, a phenomenon conveyed by matter, like the rainbow on the waterfall, and like the flame. Yet why not material? It was sentient to the point of desire and disgust, the shamelessness of matter become sensible to itself, the incontinent form of being. It was a secret and ardent staring in the frozen chastity of the universe: it was stolen and voluptuous impurity of sucking and secreting: an escalation of carbonic acid gas and material impurities of mysterious origin and a composition. It was a pollution, an unfolding, a form building of something brewed out of water, albumen salt and fats which is called flesh, and which became form, beauty, a lofty image and yet all the time thee essence of sensuality and desire. For this beauty and beauty were not spirits borne; nor, like the beauty and form of the sculpture, conveyed by a neutral and spirit consumed substance, which could in all purity make beauty perceptible to the sense. Rather was it conveyed and shaped by the somehow awakened voluptuousness of matter, of the organic, dying-living substance itself, the reeking flesh.

suresh

Colourful Images and Tranquilities and Broken Tranquilities

2006-06-04T18:08:00.000+05:30

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as tree
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast
A tree that looks at God all day /and lifts her leafy arms to pray

Nothing will ever overshadow these images for us, no matter how profound a study we make of these epochs. Colourful images are the supreme expressions of the noblest human emotions; it is some of love and friendship, of awareness of the infinite value of life and courageous acceptance of its transitoriness, bitter losses and trials. Colorful images are small masterpieces and that they are so many that one simply cannot give preference to one over the other. All the images that appear in poetry are as equally as important.

The tranquilities and broken tranquilities are well expressed in the Bible; especially in the wisdom literature all most all the books of Bible are in its poetical style. E.g. Job, Psalms, proverbs etc. the broken tranquilities of Job fill our imagination, Psalms are souls of our Christian poetry and proverb is an inseparable part of our mentality and of our very life. Tranquilities as well as broken tranquilities must follow you and me. For they show the meaning of life and they clear the way. Sorrow, suffering death is but expressions, occasions and victories of love. So the Christian poetry today embraces all sorts of tranquilities and broken tranquilities that give way to the meaning of existence. For the cruel age of our planet is not yet cover and it may be that cruelty is more refined today than it was in Christ’s time. So broken tranquility occupies a place in Christian poetry.

The Power of Imaginations in Gibran

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The Imaginations of Gibran is the product of soul. A mystic like Gibran has no philosophy in his writings. The mystic has no ideology, because he has the truth itself. His ultimate goal was total freedom in expressing himself. According to him, for eg to take on bath is to decorate the body, is to believe in the body, and the body is nothing but bones, blood, flesh, everything rotten, just covered with skin. What is the point of taking a bath?. He is always with the idea that you (me) are not the body, but a consciousness, which needs no cleanliness because it cannot become unclean. He is the one who wrote about romance in a different way. Those who read Gibran will fall in a special kind of love, which is of the soul. The powerful imaginations are well expressed in ‘Sand and Form’

“Even the masks of life are masks of deeper mystery”.
We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells
with windows and some without”.

The thoughts of Gibran runs like this. That is why it is called the product of the soul. The much discussed book, ‘The Prophet’ wherein we come to know the enlightenment Gibran. For him enlightenment is simply the process of becoming aware of your unconscious layers of personality and dropping those layers. Gibran could find out the original face of imagination throughout ‘The Prophet’. As we go through the pages of ‘The Prophet’ we come to the conclusion that Enlightenment is nothing but the discovery of the original face.

In his second work ‘The Wanderer’ which contains his Parables and his sayings is an extraordinary collection of his eternal thought. It is a simple process of discovering ourselves. In this work he paves the way for such understandings. As your eyes rests on the pages of ‘The Wanderer’ you realize that you are not the container of any journeys either to eternity or to the material realms but you become the content and thereby a wanderer. All wanderers are outsiders.
In his seventh work ‘Martha’ we see a vision of Gibran that how a woman has to be in the society? How soul is to be? How a heart is to be?

“Martha reached the age of sixteen years. Her soul was a
polished mirror reflecting all the loveliness of the fields, and her
heart was like the wide valleys which threw back voices in echo”.
The meditation creates those waves of ideas in Gibran. It is the mind together with soul reflecting the inner world of Holy Virgins (any woman).

In his most celebrated work ‘The Broken Wings’ we see a different approach to Jesus, Mary Magdalene etc. He declares that he has been greatly influenced by the Byzantine pictures. It is not intellectual revolution of thought that he communicates in ‘the Broken Wings’. Some of his expressions show the power of imagination. “The sorrowful spirit finds relaxation in solitude”.

sunil

The war between Flesh and Spirit in Zakis

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Nikos Kazantzakis holds the view that every man is a half God, half man; he is both spirit and flesh. The struggle between god and man breaks out in every one together with the longing for reconciliation. The stronger the soul and the flesh, the more fruitful the struggle and the richer the final harmony.

“No matter where you touch a Jew, you find a wound” Zakis knew that body is the way to soul. Zakis’ Christ says to Salome, “it is right and just in that you should care for the body. The body is the camel on which the soul mounts in order to traverse the desert. Care for it, therefore, so that it will be able to endure”.

Annihilation of body was chief characteristic problem that Zakian genius sought. “With the body you are like God, without body too, because God is both For Zakis, heart is the neutral area, an area that doesn’t belong to either the body or the soul. He wrote, “My heart is the arena where spirit and flesh continuously fight”. But the transformation takes place when the heart becomes the soul. “You sit still and your heart is quiet, but if you hear so much as sparrows song, your heat no longer has its former peace”, says a monk to Zakis. And it is this broken peace that leads to the transformation of the heart.

“Some people become heroes through God’s decree, some through their own struggle, I struggle”, said Zakis. Suffering and tortures of the body place an important role in Zakian characters. These tortures transform the body to the soul. And it is this suffering is the magnetic road, which leads the humanity to the desired heaven. According to Zakis there is no other way reach God but to follow his bloody tracks. We must transubstantiate the man inside us into spirit.

Again in ‘God’s Pauper’ we hear the prayer of the poor Francis who sees his own body as an ass. “I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me lest I rot. Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. Overdraw me, and who cares if I break. Instincts of the body had an important occupation in Zakis, he believed that who ever uproots his instincts uproot his strength. For with time, by discipline this dark matter may turn to spirit.

Solitude is fatal to any soul, which fails to burn with a great passion. If, in his solitude, a Monk does not love God to the point of frenzy, he is doomed”. It is in the deepest solitude of soul that Zakian characters here the God speaks, and God cures. They are trying to escape from this solitude, but more they fall into it. Zakis travel from place to place, mountain to mountain, God to God and hero to hero and asks who can answer my solitude. Even Buddha the great-incarnated form of solitude could satiate him. Then he meets one man who comes to him and says see I am chased from place to place and temple to temple, secure me in your heart.” Zakis realized that he is poor as he, as desolated as he: that was Christ. The solitude of the soul the Zakian characters hear the cry of the ancestors. A visible example is seen in Jung’s psychology. Jung’s concepts of collective soul had an influence upon Zakis. Our soul inherits the feelings and tastes of our ancestors. As they cry out in our soul they also feel the solitude. So our soul carries the cry and whims of our thousand of ancestors and at the same time the shipwrecking solitude of them. In this context how terrible it is to be man.

sunil

MODERN TRENDS IN CHRISTIAN FICTION

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The modern trend in Christian fiction is nothing other than the influence of postmodernism. Today, there is a war between the modernist and the post modernist. To the modernist, the choice is between truth and myth (or falsehood), whereas the post - modernist, giving up the pretence of a direct line to the truth, sees the choice as between different truths, or to put it another way, between myths and stories that are creative and liberating, and those that are destructive and debilitating. According to Tolkien, History often resembles “myth”, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff.

Ironically, therefore, it is fictions critics who have been overtaken by events in the Bible. Behind their instinctive antagonism lies on uncomfortable sense that here is a coherent fictional critique and an alternative, in every major respect, to the exhausted myth of modernity which has so far underwritten their own professional status, and worse Christian fiction is a popular one.
The modern writers (both Christians and non- Christians) highly depend on the spiritual language of the Bible. For they foresee that the spiritual world of middle - earth is a rich and complex one. It (Bible) contains both a polytheist communist theology of ‘natural magic’ and a Christian (but non - sectarian) ethic of humility and compassion. Every writers clearly felt that both are now needed. The war against mystery and magic by modernity urgently requires a re-enchantment of the world, which a sense of earth mysteries is much better - placed to offer than a single transcendent deity.

Though technologies have developed the writers take their pen together with Bible. Gregory Bateson says, when the loss of a sense of divine immanence in nature is combined with an advanced technology, your chance of survival will be that of snowball in hell. But the Christian dimension of fiction and ultimate dependency on Bible exemplified by Frodo is the best answer to modernity’s savage pride in efficiency, and self - sufficiency of its own reason. Rising above the dogmas of Christianity, our writers have thus made it possible for our readers to unselfconsciously combine Christian ethics and neo - pagan reverence for nature, together with a liberal humanist respect for the small, precarious and apparently mundane. This is a fusion that couldn’t be more relevant to resisting the immense and impersonal forces of runaway modernity.

Today, every fictions written whether in Malayalam or in any other languages is closely in touch with the social, natural and spiritual aspects of our life and in turn their crucial overlap. That is where their heart is to be found and any meaning found in or derived from his work must embody all three concerns to be considered essential. Taken together, they comprise the whole implicit project of their literary mythology and a remedy for pathological modernity.
If you ask to any Non - Christian writers, why they are so much attached to the Christian images they will say that ‘God is love’ and ‘Christ is love covered with flesh ea our flesh’ We too say the first premise i.e. ‘God is Love’. The Christian writers have not gone into the depth of the Bible. Today, though there is a war between ‘isms’ the non - Christian writers as well as the Christian writers easily influenced by the great mysteries of Bible. The spiritual realities, the ideas of which the forms perceived and chosen by the writer are significant, are in the last analysis attributes of the absolute spiritual reality, which is God. In a way we can say that the unbroken contact with the Bible is the modern trend in Christian fiction.

Jesus, the Friend

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We all are pilgrims on earth, traveling to the kingdom of God. And the first propagator of the kingdom of God on earth in Jesus. (MK 1:14).
In the first chapter we saw that friend is a person one who moves in frond and one who is moving in frond is a leader or a guide. As an explanation to the word meaning leader we have seen the qualities of a leader too. Leader must know the destiny, know the way; leader must have the quality of light in darken situations, and must be strong.

Here by preaching about the kingdom of God He proves the first quality that He knows the destiny, the kingdom of God; more than knowing the way to the destiny, Jesus tells that I am the way (JN 14:6). Having the quality of light, Jesus says that He is the light (JN 8:12) and finally more than be strong Jesus tells that He himself is the life (JN 11:25) and he proved it by bringing Lazarus to life (JN 11:38-44) and by His resurrection. (MT 28:6).

Immediately after the proclamation of the kingdom of God He calls the first disciples (MK 1:6). And this call was not merely to follow Him but the companionship and friendship. Because He was talking them with Him wherever He went. He took them in joy and sorrow alike, to Cana – the wedding and to the Gethsemane- most painful time (MT 26:36). He stayed and He was at the table with them (LK 24:30) He taught them to pray (MT 5:9) and He took along with Him when He went for prayer. As friends He revealed all the secrets about the kingdom of God to them. (JN 15:16).

He gave the freedom to call His Father as their Father (MT 6:9) same way pointing out Mary, His mother, He said to John she is your mother. Thus Jesus and His disciples became ‘ Changathi’, as we saw in the first chapter, the half of heart, friends, and He called them friends.

He took them along with Him as the part of Him, wherever He performed any miracle and its climax when he restored the life of a girl (MT 9:18). He taught them many things including the Golden rule. And in the first chapter we have seen that the leader, the friend must have a responsibility to protect the friend or followers. When the Pharisees criticized His disciples, the friends, saying that His disciples are not fasting on Sabbath day, He defended his friends asking another counter question to the Pharisees (MT 9:16). Same way when He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane He called the soldiers that if they are looking for Jesus of Nazareth; I am the one and let these others go. (JN 18:8). Thus He showed the climax of the protection too.

He gave the power and authority to heal the sick and cast out the demons as sharing of His power and authority over all creatures. (MT 10:1-2). Even though He knows that His friend Judas was going to betray Him (MK 14:20), as a symbol of giving himself completely to them he gave them a loaf of bread, His body and a cup of vine His blood at the Passover meal (MK 14:22-24).

Off course a leader’s life is a sacrifice for the followers, a friend’s life is a sacrifice for one’s and it is a challenge and risk. As we saw in the first chapter He had a quality of Mithram the friend of every one, too. In his friend there were Jews and Gentiles without looking caste and creed, tax collectors (MK 2:14) and fishermen (MK 1:16-18) without looking the occupation, poor and rich (LK 19:2) without looking the financial background sinners, without looking the character (MK 2:14), children and old (MK 10:14) without looking the age, including women considering the sex (JN 11:15).

Finally as He said to them that, “ known has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”(JN 15:13). He laid down His life (MK 14:20) as climax his friends.

Thus the three years of Jesus’ friendship with the disciples He ended, his life on earth as a human being. He taught them what is a meaning of relationship, friendship in the word and deed. And the purpose of his friendship and teaching of his life was to reestablish the broken relationship (Gen 3:24), the friendship between mankind and God the Father, the creator of heaven and earth. In that case Jesus is the and only ‘kooetukaran’, the cause of relationship, the friend, as we see him in the first chapter. He is the cause of friendship between man and God.

RV Capuchin

Theological Reflections on the Christian Iconology

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Trinity is represented by a triangle in iconology. Circle represents God without beginning or end. Two fingers of Christ represent the two natures of Christ. Square represents the four elements of the creation of the word. Thus in Christianity iconology communicates Christian morals, theological values and truth. Times have proved that Christian art and paintings have communicated the cultural, religious and liturgical dimensions of Christianity well. Faith can be sustained and promoted through the images borrowed from the Bible. In Christian sculpture relationship with God is highly projected. The only concern of the ancient drawings and paintings were to relate God. During the modern period the field of art was mixed with abstract and vague elements of God, were to a certain extent reduced and God was made a more tangible reality.

How to be successful?

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Every individual was put on this earth for a purpose. Every person was put here to become a success. Every human ought to enjoy the sweet taste of success—to find peace and happiness—to live an interesting, secure, and abundant life! And in order that all might—if willing—reap such full and abundant rewards, the Creator set in motion actual, definite laws to produce that desired result.

Many of the laws and methods described for success in the above passages, may look simple. Of course, it is simple. But all simple things are not easy things. What is easy to get is easy to miss too. The only way to true success is not a formula being sold like merchandise. You can't buy it with money. It comes to you free—without money, and without price. But t here is a price for it—your own application of these definite laws. And this application of this law demands life from you. Your life is the price of success.

Take the case of any man who achieved a remarkable success. In his/her life we see the ‘nail mark’ of hard labour and rigorous practice. We cannot forget the nail marks imprinted on Jesus while we depict him as an achiever. His success consisted in moulding the life the people in the image of His Father. For this purpose he had to lay down His life. He gave his life as a ransom for many. In that process of making life successful he had to receive cross and nails – a sacrificial death. Success is nothing but the fulfillment of one’s life and its purposes even by accepting a redemptive death.

This we don’t get in a day or all of a sudden. It’s a constant practice- an every day practice till your ‘last day’. The touchstone of success is not the effect of your work, but rather the effort you put forward to achieve it. There is a saying “God does not look at the effect, but to the effort”. According to Bible it is not those who have done well, but endured till the end succeed. Perseverance is the pillar on which your success remains.

Finally as the Scriptures says success flow from the abundant goodness of the Lord. We need to tap the energy from that Source in our day today life. Number of gates open before a person who trust I God. God is the answer for every thing he encounters in his/her life. A disbeliever finds success only in gain. But a believer is capable of finding success in pain too. This is like the prophet Habakkuk says, “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the folk is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will exult in the God of my salvation. God the lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights”(Hab 3:17-19).

How to be successful in life?

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How to be successful in life?

2006-06-04T14:12:00.000+05:30

Inner healing: Spiritual Perspective

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Christ said, “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Success in life is bringing about fruits. Spirituality has a great role in healing of an emotional wound too. A close analysis will make us clear how psychology and spirituality are inter-connected. Forgetting or ignoring this connection can make both psychology and spirituality really dangerous.

The process of healing using psychology or religion is the same. It has to be, since we are dealing with the same human nature. We are only using different means, which God has put at our disposal for our well-being. Hence it is not at all unusual that some people who have not been healed in religious centers of healing get healed in a counseling workshop. There are also cases of people who fail to get healed in counseling centers achieving peace of mind n religious centers of healing.

The point is that physical health and healing are at least to a great extent dependent on true peace of mind. Healing always involves a change of perspective and rarely a change of the situation or of other people. We can use religion or common sense to change the perception and to view things more objectively and healthily. When we use common sense, we call it psychology; when we use religion, we call it spirituality. Which approach is better? What works better for any one person is better for that person? After all, Sabbath was made for man and woman.

This psycho-spiritual approach is specially true in Christian spirituality. The first step is to realize that all of us are wounded and need healing.38 St.Paul speaks in the name of all humanity when he says: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. (Rom.7, 15-19).
God is the one who helps us in this mastery over self and healing is the greatest victory according to the scripture. Christ tells: He (God) has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and… to set at liberty those who are oppressed. Luke 4,18-19.

Recognize the areas of wounded ness
Christ came into the world to show us the way to truth and peace. The scribes, Pharisees and priests of the time of Christ witnessed the many miracles He performed. He taught them personally the way to healing and salvation. Yet most of them failed to recognize Him and find salvation. Why? Because they were self-righteous and failed to see that they were on the wrong path.39 Hence He says:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones… So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (Mat 23,27-28). Through out the gospels we see many of them remained unaware of their wounded ness.
Apostle Paul says that the power of evil in us prevents us from seeing the truth about ourselves: In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from the light… 2 Cor (4,4)

According to St Paul this power of evil prevents not only the “wicked’ from seeing and admitting their own wounded ness, But even the apparently holy and pious often fail to recognize who they themselves are and what they are doing.40 ‘No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light’. So it is not strange of his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds (2 Cor 11,14).

To be spiritually blind is perhaps the most serious block for healing. It is easier to show the truth to one who knows that he is a sinner than to a self-righteous person.

Healing the heart results in healing of the body.
In miracles after miracles we see Christ leading people to repentance before He heals the body. To the paralytic He says, “Take heart son; your sins are forgiven.” It is only after that He heals him physically. All centers of religious healing emphasize the importance of repentance and forgiveness as a pre-requisite for physical healing.

Healing does not change the situation
Out of jealousy, his brothers sold Joseph to the Egyptians. Years later when they came to him in search of food not knowing that their brother had become the ruler of the country. Joseph told them: “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or be angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life… So it is not you who sent me here, but God.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them…(Gen 45,4-15)
The fact of their treachery had not changed. But Joseph looked at the whole event not through purely human eyes, but through God’s Healing always takes place through a change of perspective.

Have a strong desire to get healed
To the Jews who come to hear his preaching, John the Baptist says:
Do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father… Bear fruits that befit repentance. (Luke 3,8) The Jews ask him, “What then shall we do? These Jews own up their wrong ways and want to change them. The woman of the city who was a sinner and who came to Jesus when He was having a meal with Simon, the Pharisee, that woman certainly owned up her sinfulness. She was prepared to do any thing whatever to change her life (Luke 7,36-50)

Healing implies accepting reality, mourning and forgiveness

It was the acceptance of the inevitable reality of His death that brought peace to Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. The woman caught in adultery had to accept the reality of her past. She had to mourn her past life; namely, painfully give up the desire that her life had been different from what it was then. Thus she was able to forgive herself. The best example of forgiving that heals oneself is that of Christ on the cross when He says, “Father, forgive them; for they know not want they do.” Such forgiveness cannot tolerate any rancor or hurt in the one who forgives.
Acceptance of reality, mourning or letting go and forgiveness create in us a state of peace and serenity.

Sharing pain with God

What then is the difference between the process of healing in psychology and in the religion? In psychology one uses one’s common sense and reflection on the life experiences to bring about the shift in perspective. In religion one does not exclude reason and reflection on life experiences. But over and above these, one brings one’s pain before the Lord in faith and prayer.44 Such sharing slowly gives the wounded person the emotional awareness that he is not alone, that his God is actively present in him, strengthening him to bear the burdens of life courageously, that his God has a plan for him and that even his suffering is a part of his master plan and that he is not a helpless victim even in his suffering. Hours of sharing with his Father the pain of the impending crucifixion bring Christ peace. He experiences emotionally that.

Healing the inner child

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We each have many different sides: the grown-up side, the professional side, and the childlike side. However, the way we feel emotionally doesn’t change. The frustration we felt, as a two year old is the same frustration we feel at forty. we just cover it up and express it differently. We may sink into feelings of hopelessness, overeat, drink too much or lash out at loved ones.

The inner child is a personification of one’s feelings, perceptions, and behavioral reactions that developed in early childhood but were never integrated with the more mature feelings, and thus comes to more adult ways of responding to life situations, one can often experience oneself reacting as though one had learned nothing new in twenty, forty, or even sixty years. Following are some of the parts of the child you might find inside.

The Abandoned Child: this child part that has been left in some through divorce or adoption or just left because the parents were kept busty working. This part is always fearful that it will be abandoned again and again. This part of the self is starving for extra attention and reassurance that it is safe and wanted. This self is very lonely.

The Neglected child: the child self that was always left alone without much nurturing and love. It doesn’t believe it is lovable or worthwhile. It finds it difficult to express and doesn’t know how to love. It is depressed and wants to hide and cry.

The Playful Child: that self that is naturally playful, creative, spontaneous and fun, the loving child. This part longs to play. Many of us have forgotten how to do this and be free without guilt or anxiety because as adults we must be doing something that is ‘worthwhile”.

The Spoiled Child: that part of us who wants what it wants and it wants it now, and if it doesn’t get what it wants, it throws a temper tantrum.

The Fearful Child: this part has been overly criticized when young. Now it is anxious and in panic much of the time. It needs lots of encouragement and positive affirmations.

The Disconnected Child: this Inner child part, which never learns to be close to anyone. It is isolated and dissociated. Intimacy feels alien and scary. Trust is a basic issue.

The Discounted Child: this is a part of the self that was ignored and treated as though it did not exist. It feels invisible. It doesn’t believe in itself and needs lots of love to assist and support it.

The Spiritual Child: this part of the self-searches for answers from higher realms.

These are all possibilities of the different Inner child parts that might be inside. They and us need Support, which will allow us to embark on a journey of profound healing. In order to make one’s life successful he/she needs to give attention to his /her inner child probably might have been neglected through various reasons. Now you need to consciously give attention to your own inner child. The love, care and concern, fun and many things probably might have been lost for this child should be given now in all the ways possible. This will give you an emotional growth. It will enable you to adapt to the situations well. It will open your heart to love and to receive love. You will become a man/woman who can touch others with your love. Following are the certain steps to make your inner child active and creative.

Characteristics of healed persons

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One of the signs of truly great people is that they are free of compulsive behaviours. They are healed people. They are not stuck in a rut as most of us are. They can react to situations according to the need. Such were Jesus,Buddha, Gandhiji, and Lincoln. Jesus could get frightened and bold, sad and serene, warmly friendly and detached, simple like a dove and shrewd like a serpent, at ease in a crowd and in lonely prayer as the situation demanded.33 Research study of people who survived extremely difficult situations has shown that they were also free of compulsions and hence enjoyed a great flexibility of character that helped them to adjust themselves to varying situations.34

The ‘healed’ will take corrections gracefully; they will speak their minds in discussions; they will abide gracefully by the decisions so arrived at whether these decisions are according to their liking or not. They will let others – children and wife/husband in a family, students in a school or college, employs in an organization, novices and juniors in a religious congregation – speak their mind with freedom whether they like these opinions or not. They will tell others politely if they have anything to tell them and not grumble or criticize behind their backs. They will be team players; they will agree to disagree without personalizing the issue. Their presence will bring peace and cheer in the family, community and work place. They will appreciate and encourage more than scold or correct. They will not be normally be victims of moods. They will be easily accessible for others and others will not be afraid of them even if they hold very high positions. They will like and be liked by children. They will take responsibility for their lives and do whatever they can to improve their lot and not wait for others to come to their rescue. In short they will not be an emotional drag on any group or community; rather they will bear their share of burden and a little more to move themselves and the group forward.

Some basic steps in healing

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In the healing process there are some definite steps, which may follow one after another or they may overlap. They are:
a. I admit that I need healing.
b. I own the responsibility for my present behaviour.
c. I strongly desire to be healed.
d. I’m willing to take small or big steps, as needed, to get healed.
e. I change my thoughts and behaviour in such a way that I shift from a victim position to that of a winner.

a. Admit that I need healing

In some types of wounded ness the person will easily admit that he has a problem. Such are phobias, over-dependency, anxiety, excessive fear of others, etc. The reason is that these problems create anxiety in the person. Such problems are called egodystonic, that is, they create a dissonance between what the person feels and would like to feel in reality. There are other problems, which are egodysntonic that is there is no such perceptible dissonance. Examples of such problems are antisocial, passive- aggressive, histrionic, narcissistic, obstinate and some other character disorders. Such too are wounds from cultural and religious conditioning. The antisocial who have no conscience do not feel guilty about what they do. People belonging to high castes cannot see that their hurtful behaviour towards people of low caste is wrong. Whatever may be the problem, all should accept and admit that they need healing.

b. Take responsibility for your behavior

We behave in unhealthy and compulsive ways because of the wounds we received in the battle of life, either as children or later, or again, because we grew up in a particular culture, yet the present behaviour is ours, not of our parents or of a faceless culture.20 If we do not take responsibility for this, that is, admit that we are the ones who behave thus; we will continue to play the game of blaming. Instead of using our energy of changing ourselves, we will waste it.
All those who refuse to change are putting the blame on others and wanting those others to change, instead of taking responsibility for their behaviour.

c. A strong desire to change

Once we recognize our wounded ness and own responsibility for our present unhealthy behaviour, we would or should want to get healed, and want it badly.21
In the counseling sections counselors sometimes pretend not to take the problems of their clients seriously and ask, “But why do you want to stop this behaviour? Is it such a big deal? The strategy is to make the client fight the Counsellor and make the Counsellor see that it is a serious problem and that he/she really wants to get rid of it.

d. I am o.k. and a winner

If we really want to get rid of a habit we will be prepared to do whatever it takes to do it. Basically it means a conscious, persevering and gentle effort to change our negative thoughts and behaviour.22
Wounded ness makes us feel like victims, pawns in the hands of a cruel fate.23 Yelling, aggression, cheating, crying are ultimately irresponsible and futile ways to overcome this victim feeling. Healing takes place when we feel that we are worthwhile and lovable and that we don’t have to get even with others or weep over the past to feel that we are O.K., that we are winners.

e. Awareness heals

This shift from victim to winner position is brought about in ever so many ways. We need to feel that we are O.K. whatever be our drawbacks. It is finally a question of deepening our awareness, which shows to us our goodness. We realize that our games or one-upmanship just make us less and less good. Dropping of the negative thoughts and behaviour brings us back to the authentic self we are, which is basically good.24
So what heals is a deep emotional awareness that the wounded behaviour makes us disgusting to ourselves. We begin to feel that we can be a far better person without that.

dany

Relax lest you get a heart-attack!

2006-06-04T14:00:00.000+05:30

Not only these comparatively minor diseases are partly the consequence of stress. Even very dreaded ones like cancer and heart attack can result from emotional wounds that are not taken care of. Research studies have shown that more than fifty percent of cancer and heart attacks occur within six to eighteen months of a serious and unresolved emotional stress.

Peace of mind, the best medicine

If we can get rid of our emotional hurts we will get sick less often and if sick, will recover faster, even miraculously. Some studies seem to indicate that if people could completely give up hate and grudge our hospitals will lose half of their patients. Harward psychiatrist Dr George Vaillant studied the lives and mental and physical health of a group of Harward students for a period of thirty years. He found that mental health was the most important determinant of physical health. People with immature coping styles, that is, those who had not learned to face crisis in their lives in healthy ways, became ill four times more than those with healthier styles.18
Most cases of spontaneous remission are the result of a change in the mental attitude of the patient. We would call this change a healing of the emotional wound from grudge or fear or guilt of whatever.

Late Dr Karl Menninger, one of the leading psychiatrists of the second half of this century said, “If we can love enough… this is the touchstone. This is the key to the entire therapeutic programme of the modern psychiatric hospital… Love is the medicine for the sickness of the world.”19 This makes sense. Almost two thousand years ago John, the Evangelist, wrote: Perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.

We could say that perfect love casts out fear, inferiority feelings, guilt, hate and unhealthy grief. These emotions create emotional tension, which reduces the power both of the immune system and of the recuperative power of the body.

Healing of the Emotional wounds

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Forgetting a hurt or wound does not heal us. The pain is only forgotten and thus pushed away almost spontaneously from our conscious awareness into the unconscious. This process is called repression. Until the wound is healed we would be influenced in unhealthy ways by the emotional wound. Our parents may have been hot-tempered and we may have been hurt often badly by their hot-tempered behaviour. As a result we become hot-tempered too as we grow older. It is possible that we, now as adults, enjoy excellent relationship with our parents. But we will continue to be hot-tempered until the wound is healed.

Healing takes place when one shifts from a victim to a winner position.15 One is a victim when one feels helpless, confused and overwhelmed. In a victim position one does not feel O.K., as one is. Compulsive behaviours are unconscious, irresponsible and ineffective ways of getting rid of this victim feeling. Thus for example, the victim identifies himself with the aggressor’ and becomes hot-tempered like one’s father. One may take to blaming others for one’s plight. There are hundreds of ways in which this game is played out. When one shifts emotionally to a winner attitude, one feels O.K. just as one is and competent to deal with the challenges of life in healthy ways. One begins to be concerned about one’s fellow beings as much as of oneself. Since they are not themselves hurting, they will not hurt others.

Inner wounds

2006-06-04T13:56:00.000+05:30

What is ‘inner wounds’?
Inner wounds or Emotional wounds are hurts that cause a person deep emotional pain either in childhood or later. As long as these wounds have not been healed, the person will behave in unhealthy ways in a compulsive manner, hurting others or oneself or both. We can say that: When a person hurt others or oneself or both in a repetitive fashion, the person has an unhealed emotional wound.7 The classical example of such behaviour is that of Paul, one of the later disciples of Jesus. Paul wrote autobiographically. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate … I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do (Rom 7:15-20).

dany

The Christianity as the Way: Babu

2006-06-04T13:47:00.000+05:30

Jesus with his death and resurrection closes his salvific way in Jerusalem, but the disciples are appointed to continue this way of salvation from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. As we see in Luke Jesus proclaimed the Good News of the kingdom of God from Galilee, Samaria and all throughout Judea up to Jerusalem (Lk. 23:5). The disciples are asked to continue this great mission in a reverse order from Jerusalem-in all of Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth (Lk.24: 47; Acts 1:8; 23:11). It is important to note that chapters 8-28 of the Acts are presented as the missionary travels of the apostles and the disciples, which are closely parallel to the missionary journeys of Jesus in the gospel of Luke. 51

According to Luke, the Christian discipleship is pictured not only as the acceptance of a master’s teaching, but also as the identification of oneself with the master’s way of life and destiny in an intimate, personal following of him. Therefore, we see that parallel to the way of Jesus, Christianity, that preaches the way of salvation and through which one obtains salvation is presented in the Acts as “the way” (Acts 9:2).

The ministry of Jesus as ‘the Way’ : Babu

2006-06-04T13:46:00.000+05:30

St. Luke depicts the whole career of Jesus as a course or way. This view of his career appears to be rooted in the pre-Lucan tradition, which refers Is. 40:3 to describe John the Baptist’s role in the desert, that is, “making ready the way of the Lord (cf. Mk. 1:3; Lk. 3:4; 7:27). “The specific meaning of the “way” (hodos), which would have had in John’s career, becomes for Luke a special designation for Jesus’ salvific mission.”49 Thus both Jesus and John are closely related through the details of the Lucan geographical perspective to the Father’s salvific plan.

In the infancy narrative itself we see different journeys to Jerusalem and Judea. Mary who received the Good News journeys from Nazareth to Judea in order to visit her cousin Elizabeth (Lk 1:39). Joseph has to go from Galilee to Judea (Bethlehem) for the census (2:4). Later, Joseph and Mary go with child Jesus up to Jerusalem in order to present him in the temple (2:22). So also the 12-year-old Jesus goes to Jerusalem with his parents in order to be in his Father’s house (2:41-52). At the beginning of his public ministry Jesus led by the devil goes to Jerusalem to be tempted (4:19).

The public ministry of Jesus in Lucan writings is presented in the framework of a journey narrative (Lk. 4:14-19:46). This travelogue has two parts, namely, journey in Galilee (Lk. 4:14-9:50) and journey to Jerusalem (9:51-19:46). Towards the end of Jesus’ Galilean ministry, “he went on through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the Good News of the Kingdom of God” (Lk.8: 1). The various travel narratives and journey situations in this section depict Jesus as a wanderer towards his Father.50 The very core of Jesus’ mission and ministry is stated at the close of the journey section. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Lk.19: 10).

Christian Response to Violence: antony ka

2006-06-04T13:38:00.000+05:30

As Christians we seek in the Bible and especially in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ Clarity about how we have to go about in a world of violence. Ultimately, Yahweh is a God who is Merciful (Ex 34:6-7). In the Psalms God curses those who love violence and war. In Amos, all those who practice unnecessary violence even against enemies, who attack pregnant woman, practise usury and oppress the poor come under God’s malediction. In the figure of the messianic king warlike images give way to peaceful ones. The ideal king comes seated on an ass, symbol of humility and peace, rather than on a horse, which suggested power and war. Finally, there is the song of the suffering servant who accepts violence with no counterviolence and in whom Christian saw Jesus prefigured.

We have clear evidence that Jesus did not use violence on behalf of the weak, the poor and the suffering against the powerful even though he identified himself with the former and found them lending a ready ear to the Gospel, nay, he himself suffered the unjust violence of the powerful to the point of dying on the cross.

The NT prohibits not only revenge but also any form of grudge. Love of enemy is not just a divine commandment for all; it is the heart of God’s own economy of salvation, fully manifest in Jesus Christ. Consequently, it is a central dimension of discipleship in the footsteps of Jesus and in the image and likeness of the Father. Life in Jesus Christ is unthinkable without an active and creative love of enemies, with the hope to rescue them and be reconciled with them. The victory of Jesus’ reconciling and redeeming love was won, in the midst of a hostile and extremely violent world, by his prayer on the cross “Father, forgive”. Jesus who has shown this love to us, who by our sins were his enemies, does invite us to share in this love and live it in our relationship with our enemies. Only by accepting this call, do we offer the world an idea of true faith in God who is love and compassion.
Christianity thus stands for non-violence even in the transformation of society. Christianity is not against a such, since revolution need not necessarily be violent. Revolution is no more than a special way of changing conditions, structures and institutions to Man’s advantage. Bearers and instruments of peace, heir to the messianic promises, Christians do not believe in violence. Violence shows that the influence of God’s kingdom is still minimal.
The basic principle of non-violence is respect for the personal conscience of the opponent. Non-violent action is a way of insisting on one’s just rights without violating the rights of anyone else. In many instances, non-violence offers the only possible way in which this can be effected. The whole strength of non-violence deepens on the absolute respect for the rights even of an otherwise unjust oppressor, his legal rights and his moral rights as a person.
` Non-violent resistance is the Christian way par excellence to resist evil. It remains the ideal. But this ideal cannot always be realized owing to sinful circumstances. Non-violence as a strategy will work only so long as people concerned agree to be reasonable. Reasonableness means that one is ready to take others’ views and needs into consideration, an acceptance of the fact that many minds and many viewpoints are needed to assess the realities of any situation and to decide and appropriate courses of action.

The ideal of non-violence will have to be met amid the risks and anguish of day-to-day politics. But they can never be worked out if non-violence is not taken seriously. Even when involved in an avoidable conflict, Christians still have to retain element of reconciliation between groups that are distressingly separated and opposed. A susceptibility to the absolute appeals of the Gospel gives the Christian a definite preference for non-violence. He does not allow himself to be carried away by revolutionary impatience.

Church’s teaching on violence: antony ka

2006-06-04T09:11:00.000+05:30

Violence has many meanings and there are quite a few ethical problems regarding violence. Nowadays, the most discussed is that of revolutionary violence or the use of armed violence to bring about revolutionary change in society, or at least to overthrow a manifestly tyrannical regime. But when this point is examined, especially in Christian tradition, several others crop up, particularly the morality of war. Besides, there is need of maintaining an overall perspective regarding the basic Christian attitude to violence and the main ethical principles to evaluate the morality of different form of violence.

Scriptural Background

The God of the OT permitted and sometimes enjoined His people to take up the sword. Christians will always have to face the fact that Yahweh, not only sanctioned wars, but also actively assisted the Israelites in their military charges. It is hard to overlook the harshness with which the chosen people treated their foes (cf Deut. 20:15-18). We also see the fury, which the Levites unleashed against the people who worshiped the Golden Calf (Ex. 32:25-29). Even some of the NT writers do not hesitate to extol the zeal of OT figures who wielded the sword (cf Heb 11:32-34).

Allegorized interpretations have been attempted to explain the cruel wars of the OT, but they are not always credible. While this violent trend of the people of the old covenant has been clearly superseded in the New, Christian writers will often the cite the precedents of the Old in discussing the Christian stand regarding violence.

The NT appears as a message of peace. From the angelic greeting at the birth of Jesus (Lk 2:14) to Jesus’ submitting himself to the violence of his tormentors during the passion, the pervasive spirit of the Gospels is that of non-violence and peace. Jesus’ injunctions about “turning the other cheek” (Mt 5:38-39) propose a new ideal for his followers. However, there are a number, to say the least of, ambiguous texts. Jesus did not ask soldiers to abandon their career. He had high praise for the centurion at Capernaum (Mt 8:5-13). The Precursor, John only asked the soldiers who wanted to know what they should do: “Rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages (Lk 3:4)”.

The strong and frequent military metaphors, especially in Paul, could not but have and impact on later thinking. The coercive role of temporal authorities was explicitly approved by Paul: “The authorities are there to serve God; they carry out God’s revenge by punishing wrong doers (Rom. 13:4)”. The States’ role in maintaining an ordered society, which was not without coercive means, is clearly accepted in such texts as 1Tim 2:1-2,1Pet2: 13-17.

Before the conversion of Constantine, the predominant view of Church writers was pacifist. The declining of military service was often motivated by the implication of idolatry or emperor worship. But there was a deeper reason for condemning warfare. Many writers find bloodshed even in regular war incompatible with the following of Christ.

According to Tertullian, even if soldiers came to John and got advice on how they should act, even if the centurion became a believer, the Lord, by taking away Peter’s sword, disarmed every soldiers thereafter. We are not allowed to wear any uniform that symbolizes a sinful act. Again in the opinion of Cyprian, when individual slay a man, it is a crime. When killing takes place on behalf of the state, it is called virtue. Crimes go unpunished, not because the perpetration is said to be guiltless, but because their cruelty is so extreme.

However, many writers take military service for granted. Some even support the war of the pagan Roman Empire to ensure wider peace, although the Roman rule was often most oppressive. As Constantine, as gradually triumphed over the church’s persecutors, the attitude of Christians towards warfare began to change. From the fourth century, the pacifist position became a minority view. Many identified the interests of God’s kingdom with those of the empire. Idolatry and emperor-worship were no more an issue.

Cannon 14 of Hippolytus, a late fourth century compilation of laws, upholds the principle that Christians should stay out of arm bearing, unless compelled to by someone in authority. St.Basil does not exclude warfare, but enjoins abstinence from sacred things on those who were engaged in violence. It is above all St. Ambrose and St.Augustine who faced the issue of living up to the Gospel ideal of non-violence while being responsible for managing affairs of state.

St. Ambrose openly supports warfare against enemies, although he has abhorrence for civil war. He was not confronted with the situation of the oppressed rebelling against the violence of oppressors. According to Ambrose, a man fighting for personal gain deserves condemnation, while one who risks his life for the welfare of the country deserves praise. It is much more commendable, to protect one’s country from destruction than to protect himself from danger.
Under the condition of libido dominandi (the law of domination), God has provided the civil order as a means of preventing wrong doers and restraining evil. Surely it is not in vain that we have such institution as the power of the king, the death penalty of the judge, the hooks of the executioner, the weapons of the soldier, the stringency of the overlord and even the structures of a good father. All these have their own method, reason, motive and benefit. When they are feared evil men are in check and good enjoy greater peace among the wicked. Augustine hears two voices in the scripture: the voice of correcting evil and the voice mercy. Acts of necessary coercion should never be governed by the spirit of cruelty and vindictiveness. One must always be on guard against this.

Thus Augustine did not find necessary violence and inner spirit of love mutually exclusive. Military duty (militia) need not imply malice of the heart (malitia). The example of Moses’ violence against the Israelites who had worshiped the Golden Calf came his mind. He does not find any difficulty from the injunction of the Lord “to turn the other cheek”. This text does not forbid punishment, which serves as a correction. In fact, that kind of punishment, which serves as a correction, is a form of mercy.

The church tried to mitigate the horrors of violence. Two typical measure were:(1) Peace of God by which violence in certain places and by certain persons was forbidden; (2) Truce of God by which fighting during certain periods like Lent was banned. At the same time, just war theory, building on foundation of Ambrose and Augustine was gradually evolved.

Background of violence and Uniqueness of Jesus: antony ka

2006-06-04T09:10:00.000+05:30

One of the major reactions to colonial exploitative situation of Palestine was that of violence. In different measures all the reactions to colonialism, namely communalism, fundamentalism, injustice, corruption, fanatic interpretation of religion, extreme legalism and discriminations implied violence either physical or an ideological level. Physical violence was promoted by zealots. Ideological violence was advocated by different groups and sects, especially Pharisees and scribes. Jesus had no slant on any of those various streams of reactions. The uniqueness of Jesus is evident exactly in this that he is totally against violence in any form.

Gospels say that Jesus made a whip of chords and drove the money-changers and the cattle-traders out of the temple premise allotted for the gentiles that was illegally occupied by these businessmen, Jesus got into some quick action of cleansing. It is unrealistic to hold that it was the violent action of Jesus his mostly grasp of disciples, which forced the money- changers and the cattle traders out of the temple. Rather it was moral stance that could not be questioned by the avaricious men that brought out the cleaning of the temple. “The whip of chords” was at the most two or three chords of rope held together in order to drive the cattle away. The real focus of the text is not Jesus’ physical action but messianic zeal for the temple, which should be the house of prayer not only for Jews, but for all people.

In a number of occasions Jesus actually points out the futility of relying upon military power or physical strength or recourse to violence to provide security. He denounced the disciples’ wish to call down fire upon the Samaritan (Lk 9:54-55). In denying the charge of satanic possession (Lk 11:21-22) he pokes fun at the inordinate reliance upon armour or weapon. He reiterates the same lesson when he orders Peter in the garden of Gethsemane sheath his sword (Mt 26:52). Now one may be quickly reminded how at the last supper Jesus himself asks the disciples to sell their mantle and buy swords (Lk 22:35-38). “Sword” in the words of Jesus cannot be understood literally, for he was the one who preached and practiced non-violence all through his life. In fact, this is not the first time that he uses the word “sword” symbolically to refer to strife on account of the good news.

VIOLENCE IN THE BIBLE : antony ka

2006-06-04T09:08:00.000+05:30

Usually, the allegations that the Bible teaches violence feed upon the passages in the OT relating to the ‘violent’ liberation of the people of Israel from Egypt (NRSV. Ex. 7: 14-12:36; 14:19-30) or the ‘outrageous’ occupation of the promised land (Deut.2: 26-6:12; Josh.6: 12) or the practice of military ban (herem) that accompany Israel’s conquests (Duet. 20:13-18; Josh. 6:17,21,24; 8:24-29) or the oracles of doom that wish terrible things upon the enemies (Ps. 137:9) or in the NT to certain actions and the words of Jesus which appear to be advocating the use of violence in certain situations (Jn.2: 15; Lk 22: 36).

Violence in the Old Testament

“Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (Ps. 1137:9). No one, however have-hearted, can avoid shuddering on reading these lines for the first time. Does Bible teach us to which such terrible things upon our enemies? Whoever knows the background of this exilic psalm and is familiar with the Hebrew idioms, custom and manners would say “No”. For it is not so much a curse against those who wantonly destroyed and desecrated the city of Jerusalem and their only temple which was their life-line, but an application of lex lalionis. Lex talionis is a Hebrew way of measuring the crime and meting out a proportionate punishment, so that the desire for revenge does not replace the desire for justice. So, we have “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.” Therefore, these words should be understood as a cause of measuring the gravity of the sin committed by the Babylonians. Beneath this imaging of the extent of their crime, the psalmist actually expresses his grief, bitterness and longing for Jerusalem, the sacred sanctuary of Yahweh. And so with the other oracles of doom.
The next group of violent text concerns the practice of herem. What is herem? Herem is the terrible military ban on the captured city in the primitive world. It means a total annihilation of whatever is left over of the enemy by sword or by fire after the conquest in war. In order to appreciate this, one has to have some understanding of the customs of the primitive tribal people. Culturally, the primitive tribes, especially the ones small in number, practiced strict endogamy in order to maintain the purity of race. Therefore any contact with the aliens was avoided and any possible mingling with them was scrupulously nipped in the bud, even if it meant genocide. From a religious point of view, during the tribal age each tribe owed allegiance to its own tribal god. The entire life and activity of the tribe was centered around their tribal god who gave the tribe concerned its typical identity, so much so, that fight between tribes was considered fight between their respective gods. In that sense every war was considered a holy (jihad) by those involved in it. And, since the victory is given by God, spoils of the war belonged to God and not to the tribe. So if not all, at least a good portion of the spoils were offered as a burnt offering to the tribal god. This was valued as military renunciation.
But with the advent of the monarchy and the expansion of the tribes into kingdoms, the distribution of the booty (salal) became the prerogative of the king, who naturally enjoyed a major share in every plunder. The king gradually assumed the place of God and soon the economic considerations, the religious ones. For a modern believer such customs seem out of place in the life of the people of covenant through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed! Any ethical approach to the understanding of herem must take into consideration the evolution of morality achieved on a global plane at the period of the history.

There is a future important implication to all this: that one can find security only in Yahweh and not in armament; that fighting, avenging, punishing, etc., are the sole prerogatives of Yahweh, for He says, “vengeance is mine” (Deut. 32:35); and that man is not supposed to resort to violence in any situation, but only trust in God. This is, in fact, what the Bible teaches us through the historical books. Surely, its rhetoric is military violence, but its meaning is spiritual courage and total abandonment into the hands of God in times of tribulations and catastrophes.

Violence in the New Testament

Jesus represents a radical shift in the understanding of violence in the salvation history. Jesus’ teaching and life made earlier patterns of the OT obsolete and outdated. The progressive process is from the understanding of God as violent to God as non-violent. Jesus is the final climatic moment of evolution of salvation history, which may be identified as the evolution from the violence to non-violence. How Jesus taught and lived perfect and all-embracing non-violence? Jesus’ teaching and example shows that old patterns are to be abandoned and this new pattern is to be followed.

Religious Theories of Violence: antony ka

2006-06-04T09:04:00.000+05:30

According to the Encyclopedia of Religion:

Violence may be religious in form, an end in itself, or a dramatic symbol. It may be enacted with awe, as if its instigator or perpetrator has encountered the “mysterium tremendum”. Violence as means may serve religious values or, more typically, a blend of religious and economic or religious and political ends… violence may be rationalized by the perpetrator’s claim to have exhausted the alternative of social negotiation.

How does religion transform an individual’s thinking? How is the fear of his own death, and anxiety to kill the other overcome?
The Encyclopedia suggests that in a religious environment, there are three steps in the ritual development of the courage to act violently despite anxiety:
(1) acceptance by the worshiping community of members on the basis of their intrinsic, not achieved characteristics;
(2) achievement of solidarity among the members; and
(3) encouragement of activities that engender and release effect in support of religious values.
Martyrdom is basically a political act affecting allocation of power between two centers.

The Maccabean Revolt, which offered early and paradigmatic martyrs, was the action of small community struggling to achieve local cultural independence. Similarly, the Christians of Asia Minor in the first two centuries offered martyrs to the Roman authorities against their power to coerce particular expressions of loyalty. It shows that martyrdom is attempted to break through the ideological and social boundaries between the conflicting groups with hierocratic, religiously based power. The streak of violence and non-violence is distinctly visible in Christianity, as is true of other religions. The justification of violence is as significant in the Bible, even in the NT, as its negation. If Jesus got himself Crucified in its superbly non-violent manner, the Popes lauded the ‘assassins’ and the ‘crusaders’. Even primitive Christianity, which conquered ostensibly with the slogans of love and the technique of non-resistance, destroyed pagan temples and hounded their priests.

The ‘just war’ tradition of Western culture is a product of the influence of abroad variety of cultural sources over a long period. No doubt it’s a religious grounding is too obvious, yet its secular roots are no less significant. Christianity’s popular image of pacifism is attributed to the non-violent crucifixion of Jesus. No doubt it had a radical streak even then which got prominently articulated the overtime thus leading to the formulation of liberation theology.
In Islam, on the other hand there are no such phases. The notion of Jihad, which can also mean ‘fighting’ for the just cause, is as old as Mohammad. The Jihad is the verbal noun of the Arabic verb Jahada which means ‘to endeavour, to strive, to struggle’. In religious contexts it can mean struggle against one’s inclinations or an effort to uplift society or towards the spread of Islam.
In Hinduism, violent destruction of evil is also permissible. It may appear in the form of Shiva’s tandava nritya to set in order the cosmic disorder, in Vishnu’s becoming the Narasimha to kill Hiraniakashyapa, Rama’s killing of Ravana and the most elaborate discourse of Bhagavad-Gita, inspiring Arjuna to wage a holy war, dharmayuddha against his ancestors, teachers and cousins. Such a holy war is the last alternative to seek justice and freedom.

It is not violence per se, which is condemned, but the ultimate goal, which determines its character, as good and desirable or evil and detestable. It is in this sense one finds continuity of this theme with the earlier ones. It is the principle of universal goodness that brings together the secular and scientific theories of violence with those grounded in the religious theory and practice. All the major religions of the world have had their sojourn with violence.

Nature: a sacrament

2006-06-01T22:39:00.000+05:30

In the book prophet Is 6:3 we read that the whole earth is filled with God’s glory. God’s presence is found everywhere. It shows that we are always in the presence of God and we cannot go away from his presence. If God is present, then all things of the eco system acquire divinity, sacredness, sanctity and Go is adored in them. St. Basil says “I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear remembrance of the creator”.

The created world is the symbol of the spirit. Everything in the world is exists in God and God in everything. It is an awareness of he presence of God in the world and the presence of the world in God. In the exodus experience of the OT people, the natural phenomena wee not mere spectators. The sea, the mountains, the hills, the rivers, the springs, the wind, the cloud, the fire and the desert responding to God, participated in the redemptive act for the people of Israel. It shows God’s differentiated presence of God the spirit, in the many.

Godfrey

2006-05-29T22:15:00.000+05:30

welcome to the new interface...

2006-05-29T21:27:00.000+05:30

Hi everybody,
we are back ....
this year you can read our articles here in this blog...
pls do come back after a week...
we look forward for a great academic year 2006-07.
okay,
bye for now...

this years academic calender

2006-05-02T09:11:00.000+05:30

this year's academic calendar...

Sacramentality and theology of inter-relationship with Creation

2006-01-15T22:36:00.000+05:30

Feast of St.Francis

1990-10-02T08:00:00.000+05:30

Captalk wishes all our esteemed readers a very hapy feast of st.Francis of Assisi.

sickness unto life

1990-06-01T18:11:00.000+05:30

It is always there in us, as a panic of breast, that we are at the doorstep. Pathos can cover us head to toe within seconds. One day we will drop dead and will close our eyes leaving the sky to its splendor. Death grows both out of our concern and evasion. Illness is a metaphor, reminder and vehicle of our mortality. We oscillate between a mortality and eternity. Illness decides our mortality and death our eternity.

When illness visits our existence, we become different, fell up on our own resources and we are gathered around a perplexity.

This is an enquiry into the theological dimension of sickness. The essayist is interested in sickness and death as he is interested in life.
We cannot decipher life without feeling the skin of death. Nobody can stop the sky from becoming the sky and human heart from becoming cold. A slumbering coldness will eventually smother every heart.

How this coldness sweeps through our heart? What is the content of man’s history of heart? We shall never forget that every body carries the bacteria of tuberculosis. We are trying to find out some answers. In this prospect our first intention is to understand the body, the sinking material of corruption. Then we will move to the avenue of mind. There discussions will allow us to step in to the primordial hush called death. Surely we are going to discuss about life only at the base of this column.

suresh