The War Of The worlds: Justice and Charity

My friend urged me often to not abdicate your rights and be indifferent. He was talking about rickshaw drivers taking us for a ride. I always observed my friend fighting for this cause and it never caught on. Until one day, I myself realized that I may not be able to reform all drivers across the city. I thought he was right. We can do it one fellow at a time.

Initially, it began with enlightening drivers about our rights and how they cannot do what they want. Often this didn’t work as they didn’t give two hoots to be awakened about our rights. Next began coercion, using law to intimidate him: if you do not wish to go then take me to the nearby police station. This gives them few indications that we are not going to take it lying down. But two can play that game. Often drivers prefer playing ‘who will blink first’ and say: fine! let us go to the station :)

True, he doesn’t really wish to face the cop but even we don’t really wish to take them there. Often my friend never got out of the rickshaw until he took him where he wishes. I too resorted to such means, lost my temper, threatened them with the consequences of being penalized, concocted a story of how my father is a cop and he will beat him up. I wondered often, where is the line between persuasion and coercion?

I love Jesus Christ not only as a Catholic but as boy who adores his teachings. Mahatma Gandhi too adored Christ’s teachings. Gandhi was so exemplary that many often were so aghast at his means to righteousness and justice that they considered him a threat to their comfort and way of life. Indeed, many were and are used to arm twisting, resorting to violence and manhandling to get their work done. Gandhi changed it all. Gandhi, in a conversation with a doctor in Africa remarked: I now understand what Christ meant by saying ‘if they strike you on one cheek, offer the other’. He meant, that if they oppose you and attack you, do not give up. Offer another resistance. Offer resistance until they realize you are convinced for your cause and are ready to suffer for it

We all have ideologies in life. If your ideology is success, then you wish to reach success perhaps, in the shortest, fastest, and easiest way. If your ideology is happiness, then you may wish to reach it in a way that gives you utmost joy. Now this means you are ready to undergo endless strife. But that’s not a problem as your ideology is utmost happiness without constraints. Inspired by Christ, and wishing to be an exemplary Christian, my ideal in life is to be charitable: charitable in action, words, conduct, character and spirit.

And in comes the obstacle. What about justice? What about fighting for causes? If you are in tune with my ideology then you will realize our first problem is what do we do when it comes to seeking justice? Take the rickshaw drivers incident for one. I tried being expressive and assertive. But some of them displayed hooligan behavior to have any hope of budging. The predicament is that if you leave him (and his rickshaw and take another), you conclude that, he got his way and he will keep getting his way if he wishes and there is nothing we can do about it. Or I arm-twist, threaten, intimidate and take him to task, everything that admittedly opposes charity. No one can lie that after taking someone to task, they have been calm enough to engage back in charitable atmosphere. There is resentment in the air that you got your way by force and ill-will.

There are chances that you may leave the rickshaw and forget your cell phone in it. Now the driver has a reason to keep your phone. This is not the same as stealing as much as it is ‘vengeance’. Clearly, you have been uncharitable and he seeks revenge. I understand keeping the phone is not justified as it is not related to hiring a vehicle by your right but you understand where I am getting. Not showing charity does not inspire people. Even in a brawl, it is the one who keeps patience, calm and composure that is admired. Many may come to the rescue of one who does not raise his hand but only his opinion.

Also, let us for one moment forget virtue of charity and stick to reason. If one is forced to obey the law, it means that he has no freedom to break it. If there is no freedom to break the law, it is not a law but tyrannical force. If there is a penalty to break the law, there is implementation of it. Because the means to appeal to this implementation is poor, one cannot take law in one’s own hands and force someone to accede to the law. If the driver has no freedom to break the law, he has no free will. The irony is that the customer trying to fight for his right is now the hooligan.

This brings me back to ideologies. Pursuit of transcendental virtues is not the same as pursuit of higher education. You cannot always expect a positive outcome in the latter given the right inputs. This does not apply to virtues, especially transcendental ones. One has to remember that it is ‘I’ who choose to practice virtue and it should be at the expense of my own life not another. If I wish the other to act in a just way with me and I resort to means that oppose charity, what have I achieved? The one thing I wished to show him, Charity, I have not, only because I wished to extort justice from him.

Justice by definition means fair play. What is owed to you is due unto you. But charity is not the same. You may be at the losing end all the time and still be a winner as you have shown charity. At the same time, no one tells you not to punish people for not playing fair. Gandhi understood what charity is and he tried to teach the country overnight. What he forgot was that developing virtue is a deep conviction and often the trade-off is, time. Indians, during the freedom struggle looked at charity as a “strategy”. We won freedom and soon lost charity. The strategy was only to serve a purpose, it seems. Gandhi lost in turn as cared more about building a humane independent nation as opposed to an independent nation. He did not connive a plan to be charitable as if it was a tried-and-tested way to win independence. It is quite patent, it is the worst. He did not stumble on to the Bible which gave him a master plan for independence. He realized that it is more worthy to be right in the eyes of God and get your way than to use wrong means to get your way and lead others astray.

Charity and justice will often collide. Charity seeks to move the person by touching his heart and making him seek his conscience. Justice makes a person bypass his conscience and compels him to toe the line by showing him the baton. While justice seeks one’s own good, Charity seeks not its own. Charity is the highest ideal. The bible says: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love¹. It is our scarred human nature that does not wish to lose or be wronged or suffer that seeks justice and forsakes charity. Justice serves well-being of this world. Charity seeks God. Each of us decides where our loyalties lie. Whom do I wish to serve?

1. 1 Corinthians 13

NAME PLACE ANIMAL THING

As a child I used to adore my cousin. She was very kind and loving. A few years later when I met her, I did not see in her those things that I so easily appreciated. Did she lose those things? Had she got corrupted by the trials of life? My conclusion simply was: I do not find in you those things that made me love you so much. If this is my conclusion then the next logical conclusion is: and so I cannot love you now.

This is the predicament many of us put ourselves in. we do not understand how love works. We enjoy how love feels. We don’t really enjoy love. Most of our lives we are motivated by how we feel and because love gushes in feelings we say “love binds us together”. Once the feeling is gone we shallowly say, “I don’t think I love you anymore” whereas what is really wrong is you never really loved the person [perfectly] but only loved what you felt while you thought (or really did, I don’t discredit) you were loving the person.

Name. A simple analogy is of a friend. It is the bond of friendship that keeps two people together. We confuse many things when we decide what really got us into befriending a person let alone what will encourage us to continue endearing the person. For example, if I you are asked what do you like in ‘X’ and you make the mistake of saying because X is honest and kind. If tomorrow X ceases to be honest and kind, do you then cease to be a friend of X? Your friendship is not a bond rather it is a pursuit.

You pursue honesty and kindness in X and because you feel strongly about them it attracts you towards X. what if after many years X evolves and the fuel that his honesty and kindness powered your relationship with is falling short? It is better if we define friendship by love and not “names”. So that when someone tells you ‘rickson’, you do not remember a manifesto or a common minimum program which you signed with him to be friends until upheld. What if you cling too hard on the manifesto and your friend has changed for the better and you are still reluctant to grow.

I have often heard so many of my friends say: you have changed so much. Perhaps what they are saying subtly is, “I don’t think I can relate to you the way I used to and because you have so abruptly and drastically changed, you are not the same person to me and I may feel it rather uncomfortable to share the same things I used to. So our friendship will never be the same again”

Place. Instead of finding a place in my friends heart, may be my friend only fell in love with certain traits I had years back. He may have found those traits very convenient or beneficial to his well-being. Now if I have adopted different ideologies and world-views, and when he remembers the “name”-Rickson, he just does not find it in him to love me because he cannot find it in me the traits that he did before. Friendship then really is making a place for a person in your life.

I have a friend I often meet and enjoy spending time with. But I do not find myself as concerned about him as I do with other friends. I realized this is because I like this friend because he is very intellectual and a thinker. Again, I am making a mistake of only pursuing in him traits that I appreciate. He is truly my friend when I make a place for him in my heart. This has nothing to do with traits. This has everything to do with love. If he gets twice as smart in a year, it may motivate me to spend more time with him.

Is that friendship or just I pursuing things according to my preferences and tastes? Will his doubly smartness develop a concern in my life if I get to know he has experienced a crisis or setback in his life? Where will my concern arise from? Where will I find suffering in me to be in communion with his suffering so that his cross can feel lighter? Can my appreciation of traits find me suffering for him? I doubt. Appreciation of each others traits is just the beginning of beginnings. If you do not take it farther than that, you may be just pursuing your own self through others.

Animal. What separates man and Animal is rationale. Man is a rational Animal. Giraffes often have sex if they are tensed or intimidated. They are not rational creatures and they cannot think or introspect or deal with situations. They do as they feel; they push if they are pulled. They run if they are chased. They attack if they are invaded. We humans think a lot. Often we think so much, it crosses the line into scheming. We scheme and conspire, plan and judge. Something we hear quite typically about marriage is: Before marriage he was so adorable and impressive. After 20 years he is a different person. Most of the people end up saying: I don’t know what went wrong. We both changed so much.

Change is here to stay. Change is the most unchangeable thing. It is the only constant and permanent thing in life. Thus we should have more respect for an individual who we enter into a relationship with than change demands. We should have respect solely for the sake of love and not change. Change is reality, love is a choice. All of us are influenced by different things. If you have stayed with your wife for 30 years, how come both of you’ll haven’t got adjusted and exposed to the same things to such an extent that both of you’ll find yourselves successfully compatible? What is the cause of fights then, as friends have things in common are very compatible. This is the basis of fraternities in colleges.

We have to remember -I love the person now. His traits, that I fell in love with, were a lure towards the river. Now the river itself has to lure me. I do not need to look at the shimmering light on the river water or the comforting greens beside it. The river itself has to quench me. We cannot scheme or reason now. We have to lose rationale¹ like animals and love the person as someone whose traits give him an identity. It would be amusing to think we love traits which are housed by a body of a person.

Things. I am not so idealistic to think that we should be incapable of loving things in people and only love the person. Countrymen make the country. Students make the school. A man is what his ideologies are. But this is the difference pursuits and love. Our pursuits are according to our ideologies. But love surpasses pursuits.

It is a choice to love someone unconditionally or at least that loving this person has no agenda others than what loving will achieve: the hope of making a world for another person through you. You do not get to choose what your brother or sister will be like, do you? What happens to ideologies then? We are lost for choices to bond. Only love remains…

1. By saying, one has to lose rationale; I did not mean you should not bother to question why you love the person until you continue doing. St. Thomas Aquinas says the origin of love is our affections and emotions and our reason. Love is emotional when the person concerned is unable to live without the object of his love and it is governed by the dictate of reason when the person lives what he grasps with is mind. We should love in both these ways, with our will and with a heart. From the emotional and sentimental points of view we realize how much we ourselves need help, protection, affection and happiness. At times these very deep feeling can and should be a channeled for seeking the people we love: friends, lovers, mothers, brothers and sisters for telling them we truly love them. If our actions were the result only of cold and rational choices, or if we tried to ignore the affective side of our being, we wouldn’t be living our human life to the full. At times, we may perhaps feel cold and listless with our heart unresponsive, our feelings fluctuating unpredictably. We shouldn’t then make do with the feeling of following love unwillingly like swallowing an unpalatable medicine. (IN CONVERSATION WITH GOD 4, ORDINARY TIME, WITH ALL OUR HEART)

NATURE: CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD?

“And in the beginning there was Man.” We have heard this in the Bible and many narrative movies. But what eludes us is if God made them or Science. I do not wish to discuss the pros and cons of Evolution or ponder on Man’s origin. All I want to throw light on is God and Nature. If I have to believe the likes of Richard Dawkins, contemporary Darwinist, even for a second, I will then be forced to state that we all are children of Nature. We have no God, Nature is our God. Otherwise we can go with the teaching of the Church which says whether evolution or not, Man was created in God’s love and not as some random fusing or mutating or chemical or metaphysical reaction. Now whether God chose it through evolution or any other way is for Science to unfold. Gravity already existed even before Newton threw light upon it. Newton’s discovery of what is gravity doesn’t force God to repudiate His claim to designing it.

I wish to speak about love. When I move out of my home and board a train swarming with people who are peeved at each other. When I walk the street and observe that not many find it worthy to fight for another’s cause. They either play the spectator or walk briskly ahead as if nothing happened. When someone is in need of a favor from me and the ball is in my court or when I need a favor and wonder what can convince him to oblige? Should I smile or rather make him smile by bribing him?

What can motivate us to love others? Where do we find love in a world that our elders define in the following ways: ‘wait to help someone and you will get duped’…’think about others and others will not bother to think about you’…’as long as he is of help to you, be on good terms with them’…’you try to be a nice guy and the world will make you pay’…’everyone lives for themselves in the world and no one is different’

Such ideas perpetrate a gross pessimism in which Love cannot thrive. If I have to calculate my loss of time or money or comfort before helping someone, surely nothing much is motivating me to love. Why isn’t a man’s suffering out of an accident not motivating me to pick him up and take him to the hospital? Why don’t I look at a man trying to con me or not being proper to me as I am to him, with sympathy and compassion on the man’s weakness?

I believe it roots in our worldview of existence and origin. Love starts from our choice of our deepest belief. Love goes back to God. Pachomius was a secular young man, he volunteered as a soldier in Constantine’s army. Some soldiers were camped outside a little village near Thebes and could not be supplied with food. The citizens of that community were friendly Christians. They took care of the soldiers with kindness and courtesy. Pachomius was impressed. He asked for an explanation of this kindness and was told about Jesus Christ. He was stirred awake. His life was utterly changed¹.

This is the principal difference between a child of Nature (CON) and a Child of God (COG). A CON has no reason to feel motivated to love. He can live just like Evolution tells him: be fit enough to survive. Why should he bother about ethics or any other aspect of life that impacts another? Even so a CON may and often does live ethically as a responsible citizen or an honorable person but this too is a means to live in harmony with society or to abide and maintain the highest standards in society. In other words, love of self or betterment of Society motivates it.

If ten people on the boat have reached their maximum capacity and one is left on a burning ship, a CON would not know how to weigh the life of a man hanging on the choice people in the boat make. He may be ethical but because its nature we are talking about and not God, he probably is clueless to the respect for each man’s life. He would mathematically decide to weigh the life of ten people, more important than the life of one left there in the ship to die.

Even if I have to concede that a CON does show sympathy. It is my sympathy in fact with all those people who show sympathy without ever questioning: where does this sympathy come from? Why do I feel this sympathy to another helpless person? Is it because he needs love? And why should I give him that? As no one else would? A CON will stumble upon truth but never reach the complete truth. His kindness to the helpless fellow helps him (the fellow) to better society but there is no contribution from Nature as a parent to motivate him to love. It is just his gratitude for his own life and reflection on the way the helpless fellow is suffering compared to him.

A COG is also motivated by love if not general sympathy. Seeing the helpless person as God sees him and remembering that Christ said: Love one another as I have loved you so that the child can show his love for God and love his neighbor as he would love himself. Loving God motivates us to love others. I do not know one person who has felt motivated to love others because an inanimate vague nature has said so or the radiant beauty of nature motivated him to be kind to his neighbor.

A COG may err and fall into wrong doing. But because the child has his reference as God, and God knows all and in principle can never be confused. The child is aware that either he is right or wrong. There is no middle ground or anything subjective in the sense that is alright for him to do but not others and others to do but not him. For God can neither be deceived nor be in a dilemma. Thus the COG, though commits a wrong, acknowledges it as his weakness that he did something wrong and hopes God would have mercy and help him ahead to be more courageous.

A CON doesn’t see wrong doing as an act whose consequences is perpetual or something he will have offer an explanation to. A CON is not obliged to think that his action is transcendental. So in an event that he commits an immoral act or perpetrates wrongdoing, he may just approach it as…”well, everyone does it, I had to survive…had to stay afloat…no point telling the truth if it doesn’t serve my purpose.” Values and ethics just serve as a means to an end for a child of nature. A child of nature expects others to be ethical when it serves him like paying ticket to board a train and may not be ethical himself while overcharging a product because he is just doing it to protect himself and his business. There is no reference. A CON is lost in the confusion and relativism of the world

The final point is that a CON can only do so much. He can love all he wants but what he achieves is just…”every one of us will live in harmony and brotherhood.” Such pursuits are only to the betterment of society and so that we all can co-exist peacefully. This is a very subtle and subconscious selfishness, actually. A COG just loves because God is love. He loves as Love is an end in itself. Thus our love for god reflects in our lives as we try to bring God to others. If God truly enters our lives, it bends us and breaks us and makes us new moulds into clays the Potter decides. All virtues that are instilled in me, all gifts, and all graces are God’s will and generosity. A child of God has nothing to claim as his own. There is much to hope to be a COG. Alas, the child of nature leaves the show at the time of death. For the Child of God, the show has just begun, banquet that awaits him for running God’s show.

1. Living Love, a Treatise by Francis de Sales on the love of God

THE HONEST SOUL

A smile has fragrance

That the other can smell.

A smile costs a little more dearly

Not so much as to sign with a president’s pen.

Little bit of honesty, a little bit of truth

Little bit of humanity every day in this world uncouth.

A little bit of love and service to bear.

You will find the world changing

The chance is everywhere.

Sing a song, tell it all

Make your intentions clear.

To get your all, you spoil their hope.

Hiding one self and living in fear.

Let people know you by your tongue.

They take a chance and are left in despair.

Because we only care about ourselves

I make humanity but no humanity I share.

Nowhere to run, nothing to hide

I am clear in my soul.

If this be my test, will I stand about You?

I have loved You with my whole

Para 1:

It is easy to smile. So much so, that we fool people in our smiles. Our dishonesty is veiled in our smile. A real smile is one that says you love that person in all honesty. This ‘real’ smile, no one desires to offer. This smile takes more effort than for a president to sign a bill that makes a nation’s law.

Para 2:

The author says that every day we talk very vaguely about humanity and goodness. Real humanity is something as ordinary as loving a person next to you and being honest with him. We get these opportunities everyday and in every walk of life be it in the bus with disgruntled passengers or in a queue.

Para 3:

We often use so many euphemisms, subtle ways, stories and alibis to suit our purposes. We keep hiding and finding cover under lies and deceit.

Para 4:

Let your words be a precursor and the sign of your identity. Let others believe you by your word. To trust another, is a noble way to measure humanity. In order to serve our purposes, we give others hope that their purposes are being served too. Once our purpose is fulfilled we leave them in despair. We all are a part of humanity but there is nothing so ‘humane’ we share with others. Instead we justify our actions everyday by saying-everyone does it (dishonesty) or this is the way the world works.

Para 5:

Misery and worry makes us lose our health. A man who has no debts, a clear conscience and good health is then the happiest. This man even goes on to believe that his soul is not in sin and awaits the judgment of God in hope. He knows he must have paid a price to choose to be so. He only hopes that if having a clear conscience is the test God asks us to take every day, then he has loved humanity with all his efforts. God made all of humanity and the world and this man has loved God by all his strength.

INTROSPECTION

There are a lot of gifts in me

If only I discover

But all I do is look at the world outside of me

Overlooking the joy that is near

Between me and my peace

Lies a certain kind of fear

That tells me not to carry

What means to me so dear

I seek a joy that is fleeting

Running away from the knowledge of myself

This world has joys my heart is after

And my soul cries out instead.

It is difficult to let go

Once what has done my senses in

Does my life have any purpose then?

If senses all but end in sin

Am I really free to be?

They say you can do what you please

If my conscience cannot prick me

I am enslaved by the darkness, no light to see the breeze

I seek what is easy

But gain is only for the brave

I can try many things lest I be a fool

Sickness leaves my soul deprave.

So put my heart at peace

If pursuit of pleasure is so vain

What for is pleasure if so deceiving?

Why don’t You fill me with your grace instead?

WILL AND CONVICTION

WILL AND CONVICTION

Dave and Mikhail were walking in the park after studying Geometry together. Dave seemed disturbed and wasn’t walking at the same pace as Mikhail was. Dave was left way behind and Mikhail stopped. Dave realized how far he was left behind and leaped ahead.

Mikhail: What is it, Dave?

Dave: Mikhail, I try to avoid indecent pictures and movies and all the media attention to sexuality and suggestive videos.

Mikhail: I understand and the problem is?

Dave: The problem is that I try to have strong will power to avoid all the trash but eventually end up right back where I started. I devour the pictures and enjoy them because they are enjoyable. I try to be strong and strengthen my will power, keep myself busy but I fall.

Mikhail:

Dave, Will is the courage Machine. They say, where there is a will there is a way. The way can be walked precisely because there is a will. Do not confuse it that because you are building your will, a way too will build on its own. Even if the way had to build itself, at every halt, it will ask your will, how much do you believe that the way is right? There will be no answer from the will. The will cannot think. The will can only be strong. Someone else is trying to make it strong. That ‘someone’ will have to answer the way. As the way does not find an answer, it halts and consequently the will does not know why it is being strengthened and stops persevering and you go back to old ways. The will here, is like a human bull dozer that can try to demolish a wall but takes a beating on the impact with the wall but does not know why it needs to demolish and it buckles under the pain of the impact.

There is no conviction. Only if you are convinced it is wrong will the willpower know to what end to strive towards and what is the price to pay if there is lack of will. The human bull dozer does not know why it has to pulverize and doesn’t think the pain of hitting the body on the wall is worth the pain. With every hit the pain is acute and it(will) weakens.

You have to be convinced that what is wrong should be refrained from. Although instincts and impulses that incline us to them (the wrong), they incline us to them because our nature is designed so. Similarly our intellect, our capacity to reason and knowledge is what is telling us that although we feel inclinations towards them, the inclinations should be kept in check. It is a different thing if even after being convinced you find it difficult. This is weakness and you have to try harder. You may still base your joy on those things (wrong) and hence it is difficult. It is like a dog that has become loyal to his master but the master may think it right for the dog to leave. But the Dog keeps returning. Loyalty to the master is what it (the dog) places its joy in and weakens the dog.

If you are convinced what is wrong should be avoided is the beginning of will power. Will power is not a huge drum to be filled by water. It rather is a huge drum with a hole underneath. The water keeps seeping but your conviction keeps willing towards filling more water. If human weakness makes you fail, it is precisely because all good things in life are worthy to be fought for and no good character comes easy. Falling is easier than picking oneself again.

PEACE

Mikhail and Dave are returning from the Annual Strawberry Carnival.

Dave says: Mikhail, look at all these people trying to enjoy themselves.

Mikhail: Trying?

Dave: Well, Yes, Mikhail. Do you really think they are happy?

Mikhail: I wouldn’t know. In the deepest place of their mind they know if they are. God too can look through their deepest desires.

Dave: I wonder whether we are and we can ever be. What are we doing actually in this world?

Mikhail: What do you mean?

Dave:

We keep struggling. We keep trying for this. Then try for that. The pursuit continues like as if to win trophies. Then we find out we are good at this or that. We get success at it, make money. Then we realize what money can do, what it can get us and how others too play along when you show them the money.

And life continues, problems come, some you solve, some are not solved but covered up but they haunt you. Then you run away from people and places, time and truth. This keeps going until you meet new people and lament not having the old. The new people become old and you long for novel things.

And you feel life is just one year repeating itself countless times, birthdays come and go, anniversaries, fortnights, leap years, kid’s sports day and then you forget some. You mourn and regret them. You love people and hurt them. You sing in joy and when lonely, sleep with them. You struggle everyday and you long for night’s sleep. Tomorrow morning you run out of bed thinking all those people who are expecting things from you and you wonder when you will ever get your life all by yourself.

And when you do get it for a moment, you cannot stand the silence and loneliness and quickly want people to surround you. When people are not doing that, you try to get into their lives and later want to escape out. These things continue for some time and in all this you try to find and still keep the pursuit on for the primary: Happiness. So tell me Mikhail then, what is Happiness?

Mikhail:

This is what I prayed to God today, “Thank you for your peace today. What is happiness but your peace today? For the want of peace makes me believe I am not happy and I am not happy because I think buying things and taking refuge in novelties and activities will bring me joy instead it is peace that I lack and I seek. Whereas if I have peace I would believe I am happy

STICKING TO DEFINITIONS

Mikhail visits the library to observe a new phenomenon. A book is reserved by a student if he doesn’t find it. This book cannot be then further renewed/re-issued (by another student who possesses the book) beyond the specified duration as it is reserved and will be pre-empted. One other student brings a book to the librarian who knows there is a huge fine on this student for defaulting the renewal/return of the book. Now, the Librarian is in a predicament. The student has come to the librarian to find the status of the fine (not necessarily to return/re-issue it). Every day that passes without renewing it multiplies the fine exponentially which only bolsters the library funds.

Now this student is present before the librarian with the book. Before her, stands another student who has reserved the book and needs it. On the other hand, if she allows the student to go without forcibly taking away the book, the library receives a huge amount of money.

The librarian wonders: It is only a matter of days, the fine will keep multiplying until it’s time to take the book from him for it is reserved.

Mikhail wonders after this incident. He thinks:

Shouldn’t we be sticking to definitions? What is a library? Isn’t it a place where a student can view, read, list, search and borrow books? How did it suddenly develop a commercial hue? Why wasn’t the student who had reserved the book get preference or rather be justly treated where in priority was given to receiving overwhelming amount of fine money (even if it is for a day) over his need for the book?
This makes me question certain things? Do we stick to definitions? Whom and what do definitions serve? Who should a library serve? Does it serve a student if a student is the subject of its definition or can the subject of the definition be compromised when wads of money come into the picture?

LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY

LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY

Dave: Mikhail, What you are doing?

Mikhail: I am trying to relate Love and responsibility.

Dave:

What a co-incidence. Yesterday sasha told me that I don’t think she is important to me and if she was, then I would give her my time and love. She made me feel as if I should be responsible towards her. So what are you writing about Responsibility. Can I read? Dave reads. And Mikhail has written:

We are assuming here that Responsibility is something that Man repels or dislikes to suit this deduction.

(We don’t have fight this assumption too hard, history of this world is enough to observe that Man does not like Responsibility or fulfils it out of ‘compulsion’. Thus here, I wish to prove something very ordinarily fascinating: Love means responsibility)

WHAT HAS TO BE PROVED----------------> LOVE IS RESPONSIBILITY.

IF YOU LOVE SOMEONE YOU HAVE TO RESPONSIBLE ABOUT THAT LOVE AND IN SHOWING RESPONSIBILITY IS LOVE SHOWN.

We start with a reference point. This reference point is priorities. We all know that priorities help us to better understand and value our time. If we have a vision, like Responsibility, Vision too has to guide our goals. If someone calls us to play and our vision is to be a good student, then our vision should prioritize our goals and thus vision should guide our decision to yield to the offer or continue studying. Thus I have chosen Priority as a starting point.

1) Responsibilities becomes easier with priorities

Why do we have priorities?

Because you learn to discern between Love and self-indulgence¹

(To love others is to be ready for others, to offer your time, your life and energy. To love oneself is self indulgence. )

Thus Responsibility becomes easy with priorities and priorities navigate by Love

2) Responsibility thus, becomes easier with Love.

How?

3) As Love has higher priority.

How is Responsibility getting easier just because Love has higher priority?

We are first stating that Responsibility becomes easier with Love. If they are directly proportional it means Love has higher priority. How do we determine that giving Love higher priority is easing Responsibility? Priority always culminates into a trade-off. If you give priority to play-time, the trade off is low grades. Thus giving love higher priority is easing responsibility because the trade-off here is that your self-indulgences (what priority tries to find love and separate from) are more tamed.

You are not allowing self- indulgence to be an obstacle as you wish to give priority to love.

What is exactly happening that by giving priority to love, Responsibility is getting easier?

For one, there is no obstacle by self-indulgence. Second, giving Love priority is hailing Responsibility as supreme as only in Responsibility can Man be fruitful essentially to others more than himself. Even self-indulgence can be fruitful to oneself but Man wishes to be fruitful to others.

Why do you wish to be more fruitful, especially to others (as to oneself, is self-indulgence)?

The minute, Man wishes to be more fruitful (to others) as a pursuit, he does it because he wishes to love.

So what have we got?

Responsibilities becomes easier with priorities (from 1)

Responsibility thus, becomes easier with Love. (from 2)

As Love has higher priority (from 3)

Giving Love priority is hailing Responsibility as supreme as only in Responsibility can Man be fruitful

Man wishes to be more fruitful as a pursuit, he does it because he wishes to love

RESPONSIBILITY->easier with Love->Love so that responsibility is desired-> Desired as Man can be more fruitful->fruitful because Man WISHES TO LOVE.

Thus Responsibility is Love.

When you are responsible of someone, it shows you love them. If you love them then, you should be responsible about them. Thus you can be responsible about something and yet not love it (e.g. Job but it won’t get ‘easier’ from above explanation) but you cannot escape responsibility if you love someone.

You will observe some of the most responsible jobs are not perhaps being the president of a country or a nuclear scientist. It is being a mother or a father. Governments fall and nuclear warheads are stolen and sold. But when a mother nurses and cares for a child, we say it is her responsibility. The word responsibility has a ‘work’ connotation. Responsibility involves work and lazy Man does not like work or at least prefers less work for more, more comfort to more adjustment, good sleep to less sleep.

We forget that a Mother loves. When she loves she fulfils her responsibility out of love. When she fulfills her responsibility out of love, she enjoys the responsibility and in this, Responsibility loses its ‘uneasy’ and discomforting connotation. Time and again, People have said, like the

Beatles –ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE.

The Bible-

· I may be able to speak the languages of human beings and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell. I may have the gift of inspired preaching; I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have the faith needed to move mountains-but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may give away everything I have, and even give up my body to be burned-but if I have no love, this does me no good.

~1 Corinthians 13:1-13

· Above all else, guard thy heart for it is the wellspring of life.

~Proverbs 4:23

· Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
~Song of Solomon 8:7

• Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
  ~Corinthians 13:7-8
  

• Let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
  ~1 John 3:18
  

• Love is patient, love is kind.
  It does not envy.
  Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude;
  It is not self-seeking, nor easily angered.
  It keeps no record of wrongdoing.
  It does not delight in evil,
  But rejoices in the truth.
  It always protects, trusts, hopes, and preserves.
  There is nothing love cannot face;
  There is no limit to its faith, hope, and endurance.
  In a word, there are three things that last forever:
  Faith, hope, and love;
  But the greatest of them all is love.

~1 Corinthians 13:4-7

A father in his busyness thinks it trouble that his son’s grades are slipping and he is busy with meetings and clients. But he takes up his son’s studies. Now he may do it because he knows his son’s grades is his responsibility. His son is his responsibility.

But responsibility is an objective truth. It is like running someone down your car and now you are responsible for the treatment of the victim for his injuries. Responsibility is objective in nature. How would responsibility look if it had a face? What would responsibility be if it was personified? How can the father fulfill his responsibility well whether his sons’ grades improve or not? It is by love. The subjective truth of Responsibility is Love. Love is responsibility personified. God is love. That is why the Bible also says:

1 John 4:8

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

So the next time anyone tells you “it’s your responsibility”. The next time anyone says “you say you love me but you have no time for me” or you wonder, “Who are the people I love and how do I show and do it?” Think only responsibility. And not responsibility by sweating it out forcibly let Love guide it. Let love be responsibility

TRUTH AND JUDGMENT

TRUTH AND JUDGMENT

Mikhail and Dave had a training day in School. They all had to work hard cleaning their classrooms and corridors. Dave sees several school officers speeding past the hallways bumping into people in frenzy and shouting to be excused for their rush. He starts thinking, with his broom continuing to swab

Dave says: Mikhail, Nothing is ever right or wrong, black or white. There are always shades of grey.

Mikhail Why is that Dave?

Dave: Circumstances. You can’t tell a woman she has wronged in
aborting a child because her circumstances made her do it.
Circumstances provoked her to do the wrong thing.

Mikhail first, you say there is no right and wrong, now you say she was
provoked to do the wrong thing. So are we accepting here, that a
wrong thing has been done?

Dave: No, because she did not do it

Mikhail
Dave, there is an objective truth to everything in the world. If a man has died, a man has died, whether he was killed by reckless driving or because he came in the way of a vehicle is just the motive. It is dealing with the subject. But the objective truth is a man has died. You cannot change that fact but you can change the penalty on the vehicle driver (subject) depending on the motive.

So, are you trying to say, an objective wrong has been done but not a subjective wrong as circumstances provoked her and so she cannot be held guilty, hence she is not wrong? The question here is who is going to own up for objective truths? Objects look for subjects to correspond to, to give them realities over their own physical realities. Like a stone that is moved, true, a stone has moved and it is in the objective nature of the stone to move.

The greater question would be who or what can account for the movement of the stone? Who can validate the nature of the stone to move only when provoked? Who is ready to take the subjective ownership of the action? Else are we to believe that buildings can just move or fall without any provocation. if a stone that in its objective nature can move but no one is ready to seek the subject of the action?

So why can’t I tell the woman that she has done something right or wrong?

Dave: Because you are not empathizing with her circumstances by
doing so.

Mikhail But what if I don’t empathize with her circumstances and yet go
ahead to tell her if she is wrong?

Dave: But you should empathize with her circumstances.

Mikhail But what if I don’t consider her circumstances?

Dave: I guess, that would be judging her.

Mikhail: Judgment eh? So I am not supposed to tell her that she is right or
wrong because that would mean being apathetic towards her ‘circumstances’?

Dave: I guess, because Man always acts according to circumstances.

Mikhail

Does a circumstance make Man what he is or the choices Man makes? Circumstances demand man to act proper to its requirements, if he is late, run. If he is tired, relax. But Conscience demands that he act proper to what is right and do justice to it. Man always excuses his limitations by circumstances, where as sympathy demands others to asses for me that I failed due to my circumstances. But their sympathy does not justify or rule that I invariably act according to my circumstance.

The larger question here is where does judgment begin? Does it begin at-‘telling her she is wrong?’ Is that judgment? Or does judgment begin at-‘The consequence of judgment’ does judgment begin, in other words, at the content of her action I open her to or, some pre-supposed material, that no sooner I tell her she is wrong, she precociously realizes that she will have to (the pre-supposed material, the consequence) face, reply, atone, amend, admit and acknowledge, accept and suffer people’s reactions?

Dave:
I guess, yes, it would sort of make her think that telling her she is wrong automatically qualifies her to be categorized inferior to the rest. Man always strives to be good in principle but she acted against the principle. In being reminded of it, will patently inflame her and reveal to her there are going to be ‘consequences of acknowledging wrongdoing’

Mikhail So where then does judgment begin (as evil)?
Is it in correcting people and confronting them on objective truths (deceit, harm, lies, dishonesty etc) or in mentally manhandling them to own up and banishing them, thereafter into a inferior, metaphorical prison to be shared on an island with other wrongdoers?

Dave: The latter I guess.

Mikhail:
This is where compassion comes in. to correct people, is not being judgmental, as political correctness or character assassination or glorifying Circumstantial Man would have it. But have compassion to understand that she has to have knowledge on the consequence of her action and not necessarily imprison her identity with ‘action’ as the sole witness to their crime.

Compassion demands to give individual and his identity another chance where another action will speak in favor of his identity. Man goes to prison, after all, to be reformed and set free. The only eternal prison then should only be God’s Judgment. Until then we are called to correct and be compassionate.

CAUSES AND EVENTS OF JOY

It is the end of the mid-term tests. The school is indulging in usual revelry at this time of the year aftermath the exams. Mikhail has a radiant smile on his face. Students are bustling out of their class. Dave too leaves from one of the classes.

Dave bumps into Mikhail on the stairs. He walks with him until the first storey and then explains, “Mikhail, I am so happy, the pain is over. The exams are history, a thing of the past. It is only joy from here.” Mikhail has a modest joy on his face but it is not one consistent with the joy Dave feels. Dave wonders, “Whats wrong, Mikhail, Aren’t you overjoyed the exams are over?”

And Mikhail says:

Dave, I am happy that exams have come to an end. But my joy is very different from your joy and it is rightly so because of the boys we are, the lives we lead and what it means to both of us. I am joyful at your joy but I apologize, that I am in a little contempt at the joy you seek or that has found you. I do not look down upon your joy but I am hopeful that if I explain my reason for my joy, that you would know that your reason for your joy is not joy but like an exam, only a figment of the life you lead. I would have to be brutally honest; you are my friend, so please allow me to be.

Dave: Yes, Mikhail, Go on, I trust your intentions.

And Mikhail says:

Joy is Cause oriented and Event oriented. The cause of my joy is not the conclusion of exams but myself. I am the cause of my joy and hence my joy is ethereally meaningful. I feel proud of the efforts I put in. I worked diligently towards my goals and respected my studies that being a student is my first obligation and carried it out in all sincerity. My joy is Cause-oriented, the exams are but an event in time which will fade away into history like you said, a thing of the past. My goals and pursuits in life are to cause my own joy and the examination is but an opportunity to realize them.

Dave, you have shared with me the deepest sense of your being. You have told me how you slacked around all semester and got your projects and assignments done from outside. You compromised examination preparation, barely scraped through journal submissions with not a little help from your class mates and friends who filled in either for your absenteeism or your part of the work and role in the group. I apologize I cannot mince words with you

If you admit what I say is true, your joy corresponds to an Event oriented joy. An event has taken place-Exams are over. You have surpassed the event and it brings you joy to think- this has passed too. Seeking joy from events is not innate in the nature of joy to last. This event of exams perishing and you surviving may bring you joy but the memory of these exams may not bring you joy. You will only look back and heave a sigh of relief, Thank God those times are over!

When you seek joy in events without working hard so that you may sow of what you reap, you will only be at the mercy of events, they will come and go. You will thirst again in want of events and when they come you will take refuge until the event has passed but Man will always need joy. His heart will always be restless. In an event, there is struggle and in the end, it may dangerously culminate into glorification of surpassing or being victor at the event in the case of Event oriented joy. There is nothing to feel proud about in it for oneself. It’s just the event but the event goes, the cause stays.

THE SHADOW ANALOGY OF GOD

A hot sunny afternoon, in the scorching heat, Mikhail and Dave are walking up the street. They have missed their bus and prefer walking home. There is long silence and sweat trickles down their faces. Dave breaks the silence… “Mikhail, how would you put for me in simple words God’s impact on Man?”

Mikhail replies: But Dave, there could be a thousand ways one could say “And God is this” and “And God is that” and “God is all this”…”God is all that.”

Dave says: Mikhail, anything that comes to your mind now, anything, think of us today, think of now.

And Mikhail says:

Dave, Think of this street that we are walking on. It is rather unbearably hot day. We both are sweating sea of water. But apart from all that, Can you see our shadows that follow us? These shadows that are formed are peculiar in the sense they are not there all day and they aren’t present anytime we wish to see them. The Sun shines, the shadow appears. We cannot see the shadow if there is no sunlight.

God is that Sun who makes us see things beyond our capacities. The things we cannot see, feel, experience, grasp or understand are ubiquitous but God shines his light often to make shadows of things that we can perceive. By his light, we can see a shadow of himself in all things that can be understood and experienced, visible and unseen. The same shadow that we can see now, due to the light of the sun, often God takes away to demarcate God and Man.

VIRTUE AND IDENTITY

Mikhail bumps into Dave on the Science class corridor. Dave is embarrassed and looks defeated as if someone gave him a thrashing.

Mikhail asks, “Dave, what happened, I seen you talking to Ms. Luten whom you usually don’t speak to?” Dave says, “Mikhail, she told me a terrible thing. I was just saying nice things to her, trying to be warm for a change but I really meant it. She told me that I don’t need to be kind and I should just be myself. What is strange is that she made it sound as if being kind was incompatible with my identity, as if kindness was independent of my identity and I could never be my identity and kind together. She made it feel like I cannot pick and implement kindness like picking and buying groceries in the bag. What is my identity, Mikhail? Am I just trying to add/have virtues to my identity and what happens to my identity?

And Mikhail says:

We all eat the same fruit. The same energy, from the fruit is expended to serve different purposes. Your eating of the fruit is for you to teach me to learn, that guy on the building up there, his eating, is to construct. And that lady in the corner doing a reconnaissance of the building, her eating is to design. But it is the same fruit that makes all possible, that we eat from over which our identities are formed eventually in what we do and engage with.

Virtues are like those fruits. While we all try to be honest, it is the role and manifestation, the pursuit of honesty plays into the specific dynamics of our lives with specific situations and circumstances that all aid in defining our identity. Some pursuits are compromised; some are sacred to us until the end. Some don’t see the light of day and some are kept alive like the breadth of our lives. In the surge and ebb of the tide (of our lives), there always shines forth one tree that defines us no matter what fruits they bear, Identity.

THE ABONDONMENT OF GOD

Mikhail meets Dave in the morning before school. Dave is looking confused and bitter. After much persuasion, Dave shares, “Mikhail, I know you are very devout and I learn a thing or two from you, but I don’t understand God sometimes. Yesterday, I was in a fix. I had to run many errands. Things were not going my way and people who had promised me help were not delivering at the 11^th hour. I kept God in my thoughts all the time and went on but still felt rather very abandoned. I do not understand why God apparently abandoned me when I needed him the most?

Dave says:

A week back I went to hospital to visit my aunt who is a nurse. She was in the children’s ward. There I saw a boy sleeping peacefully on the bed. The boy is 4 year old and has blood cancer. I cannot understand God’s will sometimes. The boy cannot understand his own suffering or the gravity of it. His age is just an opportunity for utmost grief for everyone around.

When we struggle and things don’t work for us, we wonder where God is in all this. What role his he playing and why with so many petitions and yearnings he does not respond rather eagerly. Every stage of the struggle, every potential donor that refuses to donate or does not oblige, you wonder how God will make a way (or if he even does) or will send us to one extreme of helplessness until we find help so as to remind us, “But I will not take you where my Grace cannot reach you”

Many of us amidst the struggle eventually by every minute of hopelessness forsake petitioning God and carry our own stuff, our own strengths, our own skill, our own ‘contacts’, our own will, our own peace and our own frame of mind. We snap at people and leave ourselves bitter when refused aid. We say: Look, things are not working for me, so you better co-operate and not vex me. Actually, what we are saying is: Look, nothing is working; even God has left the room and is not listening, so now it is up to me to do it and if I fail, it will fall entirely on me, so you better remind me of things and people I can do and count on not God who right now I don’t know is doing what and cannot afford anymore wondering about what mysterious plan he has about withdrawing from me and my ordeal.

I guess this is what we typically go through everyday rather implicitly in a struggle. You can imagine that after already establishing that God has abandoned you and now you are taking refuge in your own strength, that if you still receive God’s Grace, then it is only out of his Love and mercy. You did great initially by ‘keeping the faith’ but soon were cornered by circumstances apparently so unbearable that someone invisible and seated far away observing your plight and means to the end is too far-fetched to believe. But God knows Man and is immensely patient, if not, He would have abandoned us too. We never understand ‘why God has abandoned us’ whether momentarily or otherwise or why his will is not as noble and just as our own cause and fight? When we don’t understand this, it all the more perplexes us and starts a new game altogether right in between of our grief: Is God even worth believing in?

When our schooling is over, we realize what its purpose was. When our parents die we understand their value and how much more we could do just by being obedient, nothing extra ordinary actually. When our struggle is over, we assess all the things we could do, how we went out of our way, Those, whom we called on, whom we tried to reach to, what we learned, and that, Good somehow always triumphs over loss of hope and privation of Good. Now God becomes a little clear, his patient observation and his mysterious plan now take on a much greater cause and fight than our own need of its understanding.

Much of the strength of our faith is not how much we believe in our convictions often but how much we are ready to persevere when the times is not conducive to conviction and everything is chaos. Much of our faith is how we see through sunrise and sunset ‘keeping the faith’ when the wind is blowing the other way. When we are on the brink and God is now having faith in us to not give up. It is this faith that God has in us, to never stop loving Him and finding Him that is the faith of our faith that helps us. It keeps God’s grace going. Whether it is strength to battle on, perseverance to see failures or just comfort to return home in peace to a new sunrise. Some of the reasons why God plays truant will be more far reaching than all the help we tried to gather on our own steam. If all things have to be accomplished, this too, we will have to keep the faith in.