The Pursuit of Knowledge

Have you observed something? The more Man pursues knowledge, the more closer he comes to understanding himself. The more he comes to understand himself, the more he understands his actions and choices. The more knowledge he searches the more meaning he finds in everything that he does. His life actually becomes all about ideas because it is these ideas that Plato talks about that fires up Man and which Man should rightly live for


And the more idealized he becomes trying to romance these ideas with his own limitations the more he realizes how sorry his state his that life is actually real and an idea cannot fit into reality the way an idea is. But his only satisfaction is to appreciate the purity of the idea and his humble opportunity to implement it imperfectly. He finds meaning in the imperfection created by a real world. Thus Realism has really given impetus and recognition to Idealism. Plato and Aristotle have reconciled in my little musings.


There is a greater demand of living life well if one has greater understanding how life should be lived well. If knowledge eradicates ignorance, then the suffering that was obscure and an ‘obstacle’ becomes known, challenging, charming and enigmatic. Suffering finds meaning in knowledge and knowledge finds pursuit in Man. Man finds purpose in Action.

The death of an expression?

Someone wrote in a comment on a blog that sorry’s and thankyou’s are not necessary. They either show a ‘vacuum’ in a relationship else people partaking in the relationship would not apologize or thank one another. Or they don’t have to do it because two friends understand each other if they are good friends and sorry and thank you become dispensable or a formality.


The point of sorry and thank you is an expression of a feeling. We do it with strangers because we think they are not obliged to help us, they can easily ignore. And yet, when they do, we are overwhelmed by their kindness and thank them incessantly.


With friends, I am afraid, that we 'presume' they are going to help and the closeness is something contrary to the strengthening of your friendship than what it seems.

One fellow says we don’t need to apologize as we can be easily forgiven if we are dealing with a ‘good’ friend. What he means to say is that, introspection, conversion of heart, guilt of hurting another person can all go for a toss. I don't do it, I really don't need it. I don't know or wonder that doing these things (introspection, expression of gratitude) can better the person I am and thus be appreciated better, loved better and hence enrich my friendship.


Perhaps people have too much pride or to less a humility to think something can be wrong with them. They don't see their conversion or 'turning a new leaf' as an answer to the problems with relationships and Mankind. Their notion of a better relationship or a better society is: Look, let me be, let me live, I am what I am, I live life on my own terms, please live your own. I try not to harm anyone and what else could anyone expect of me?. Such a ideology would patently find no reason to acknowledge a 'thank you' for someone touching one's life and a 'sorry' for disturbing another because of one's weaknesses, shortcomings and imperfections.


If only one had the humility to accept what one is with all his imperfections and faults could one be able to fathom how much one falls short of loving or accomplishing something. I say 'sorry' to acknowledge my mistake first, not only to be forgiven. So If I have wronged my friend, I say sorry in order that he/she knows I deeply regret it not because I know I will be forgiven and hence don't go to the sorry place at all. he/she needs to know that I am ashamed of the word or deed and that a heart is meant to love and my word or deed has worked contrary to it.


My friend requires knowing that I disapprove of my own conduct that has hurt him/her. This can only strengthen friendship. A ‘sorry’ conveys that I care enough to reprimand and reproach myself. That I care to keep my life in check and that I am accountable to someone and that I should treat a friend differently, more tenderly, more gently than a stranger.


The same applies to a 'Thank You' so I needn't go in detail. I am shocked that there are those that cannot see the essence of a thank you and a sorry. They are deep expressions of a human being that make us different from Animals. I can feel grateful at someone's act and I can feel sorry of letting another down.


This is an act of humbling oneself. To not experience this act of being 'humbled' and gratuitous, to expect someone's pardon because you have hurt another. To be immensely penitent because that hurt is towards a friend, not just a stranger. I am sad that many would think a Thank You and a Sorry are dispensable

Friendship with the Holy Spirit

what is friendship with the Holy Spirit but our sensitivity to His promptings, to put into effect His will, our obedience to His command, that is a whisper, like the sound of a bedbug or a gnat, so little but yet profound and clear.

Our surrender to His power and our body to be his instrument so that we can always do the Will of God and be preserved in the richness of our personality is essentially nurturing friendship with the Holy Spirit

Choosing Heaven

Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him¹

A few years ago, I asked one of my friends about the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. I was very anxious to avoid it. I was aware that some kind of recompense has to be paid in purgatory for the sins committed on earth for the purification of souls. I feared it. I inquired about the means to avoid purgatory which were ranging from prayers to good works which all came down to love. I also learned why the purification is necessary and whether I can be assured that purgatory is a transition to heaven and not hell. I realized years later, much with sadness, what C.S Lewis writes about too, in the Problem of Pain.

A good fellow starts a club for people he loves who also love him. This club has members who love the founder of the club and indeed their very membership is hinged on their amount of love. Their membership is revoked if their love for the founder is any less than what love is demanded. The peculiar thing about this club is that the founder is unheard of and just an ordinary man in the world.

No one would happen to know the founder until one seeks him. In direct contrast, everybody, including children, know all about the club. It is as old as Santa Claus or perhaps predates it too. The club they say, 'is the place to be in' in equal queerness. Surprisingly, they neither know a person in the club nor what it involves. All they know is that people in the club are happy and if they can't be in the club, they rather not be anywhere else.

People leave no stone unturned to enter the club but keep deceiving themselves. For, true membership is for those who try to love its founder. They can only begin to love the founder if they have any knowledge of the founder. People are neither interested in the founder nor the criteria he has charted. Everybody, everywhere and everyday claims to have seen the founder and reveal to others, the revelations the founder has made.

But it is plain from the founder’s charter that he expects lots of changes from potential members to be worthy of the soil of his club. But potential members are not looking or willing to change themselves but rather only wish to avail the benefits of the club. Those, that people have since time immemorial attributed to the club as eternal happiness, peace and life among others.

Man often treats God just like this founder. He chooses God not out of pure intention but because he fears hell. He wishes to be in heaven, the 'club to be in' because it is popularly considered to be a happy place. What exactly he expects to find in heaven as his happiness, he does not know. All he knows is a parallel, an analogy here and there or a notion suited to his way of life. Man enjoys women and wine and dine and fast cars and bull fights and excursions and poker and glory. Perhaps he thinks heaven is the continuation of this.

May be he did not have any woman and was advised by the doctor to not have wine. May be he was poor and couldn't afford the luxury of a car. So he thinks he's suffered enough in the world and when he finds out that hell is a place of eternal suffering too, he tries all his might to avoid it or thinks that because he suffered here, in heaven, he would have all that he was deprived.

From all of these perceptions of Heaven, of receiving what one was deprived, continuation of the worldly pleasures, there is a crucial thing missing: Love of God. Love of God and realizing that man’s truest happiness is to be found only in God and he may run behind women, fame, money, materials and other pursuits that are momentary and pass away like the wind but his heart will never be at rest until it finds its rest in God².

The day when man’s heart has taken its refuge in God, every other material thing he possesses will not suddenly be renounced or destroyed for making way for God. These possessions will neither become less sinful nor more virtuous but find its proper order and place in creation and in the mind of a human soul, the highest of Creation, who finds himself in love with God.

While for the man who chooses heaven in essentially choosing God on earth, God chooses heaven for him as a continuation of man's choice so he may rest in Him and His vision. You don't have to love any president, King or founder in order to enter the country, Kingdom or club respectively. This applies to any Kingdom but Heaven. Heaven is the only place where you have to love the master for entering it. And below is perhaps, one of the best arguments I can place for those who claim to be good, nice, kind, loving, living without harming others, minding their business, never interfering with others, peaceful and never really thinking of Heaven or Salvation or God while doing all these and yet think they are entitled to Heaven too.

Nobody chooses heaven and really gains it. It is the same as I can’t enter a house if I don’t know the owner. I can’t appreciate poetry if I don’t know what the Poet is trying to say. I can make of poetry what I wish but that still won’t be an objective truth. It will only stand as my perception. Nobody chooses heaven and really gains it. Unless God wished me to be in heaven against my will which is against God nature to destroy man’s freedom for that God is not a God of mercy and love but a tyrannical God.

We can’t really choose Heaven until we don’t choose what Heaven is all about and choose the source of its entire splendor. When a movie is a roaring success, the directors and actors are probed on how they shot one scene or the other. We all wish to understand how the graceful scenes actually got their nature of grace. How the actors converted their mere skill into a graceful scene . Understanding their reasons helps us better appreciate the movie.

Or think of the Band like The Beatles. There would not be many who devour their music without knowing who the band members are, how they came together, what difficulties they faced, what the songs mean, who their inspirations were and how their music evolved.

Love follows knowledge and knowledge is fostered by love³. When you enjoy the Band, you wish to ‘know’ more about the creators. And this makes you cultivate more knowledge in order that you can love it more perfectly. Knowledge leads Love and Love drives Knowledge. You can’t really choose Heaven until you choose the splendor of Truth of its own creator through Whom Heaven receives its splendor

A man who has never been in love chooses marriage as he has some idea it is a good thing. Two people in love don't choose marriage. Marriage chooses them for marriage is the continuation of their love. Another way it could be understood that a home owner hangs a painting according to how well it lights up the room. A painter chooses a room according to how well it lights up the painting. The home owner chooses the painting for he has some idea it is good but not like the painter choosing the painting because it is the continuation of his love for the paintings whether in the exhibition hall or at home. We should believe in love and in marriage and not only ‘take’ it up because it is believed to be good things.

There are consequences then of destroying the dignity of good things. Heaven too, should be chosen not simply because it is a good place or a good dream of fantasy to entertain. It should be chosen primarily because in Heaven lies the real purpose of life, the consummation and fulfillment of all the answers and the triumphant entry into the final purpose and vision of facing up to the Creator for the eternal life.

These same good things in Heaven can be lost if we destroy the dignity of good things here on earth in all that God allows us to choose in choosing Heaven. That is why for a lot of bitter things we undergo; we can await our answers in Heaven. For a lot of talent but not success, for a lot of success but not talent, for a life which had its own story and melodrama, the real purpose of how God uses us in accordance with our will, awaits its consummation in Heaven.

Heaven after all is the continuation of love you have for the love you show here on earth. God will make for you a house in Heaven if you make a little house in your heart for him on Earth. This is the promise of Jesus Christ when he taught the Jews. The Jews are the center of the act of Salvation and Jesus came to save ‘His’ People but yet implied to them that to every man who loves him and keeps his word, the Father and He will come and make a house in the man and dwell in him. Heaven then becomes the continuation of love we have for God here in our dwelling but achieves its fuller expression in the house that God builds for us in His dwelling, Heaven.

1. John 14:23

2. Writings of St. Augustine

3. Writings of St. Augustine

The Purpose of Man and the Nature of God

I have been learning to ride a bike of late. It has been quite a learning experience. I have often have had these airs about me: Rickson reads good books; Rickson watches critically acclaimed classic movies. Such little notions of self-pride are daily little struggles. In lieu of bike-riding, this is especially essential since it humbles me that I am no good. I look with envy at others who have mastered driving.


Finally, there is something, among other things, that I can struggle, not in the sense how we struggle with daily battles of nobility, purity or conscience but struggle in the sense, how a pupil struggles with his violin in his second class. I can struggle and pray that God helps me to be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect. For we try to learn one thing well or another, cook well or design well or paint well for there lies in us, a little glimpse of our Creator.


Somewhere deep inside us, we desire perfection. We desire not leaving a statue carved shoddily but to achieve beauty. Deep inside us, we desire beauty and desire perfection and God is beauty, God is Goodness and God alone is Perfection. We all have in us thus, an implicit, inherent desire for God for we desire goodness, we desire beauty and we desire perfection. And God is all this.


I don't want to thank God for giving me the opportunity to ride a bike as much as I want to thank him for nourishing my friendship through it. My friend has shared with me the woes of losing opportunities to get good deals, the excitement of checking a new bike, the anxiety of doing the payment, the keenness in fixing faults. At times, I have confessed, in my weakness and despair, to never be able to put the bike on its stand. He has shared my agony of being unable to do it. He has shared my helplessness of not knowing exactly what to do in order to learn it. I have asked God in prayer to learn it and today, when I could, he has shared with me the joy of achievement.


Today, I went ahead and thanked him for having taught me three things that he observed were wanting in my skill. It is then I realized what a fool I am. I believed I was being grateful and expressing gratitude for those three things. Can I really fully show gratitude for the innumerable minutes he has patiently waited so that I can put the bike on stand? Can I really thank him for sitting pillion and perhaps risking his life if he has an inkling of a judgment that I am not ready? Can I thank him for accompanying me for buying, bargaining, negotiating, testing, suggestions, tricks, ready reckoners and those innumerable little details that is a part of everyday friendship?


I could die out of exhaustion if I began to thank him. I rather come down on my knees saying, “Thank you, friend. My life is yours. May the best of my life be given to you for you have loved”


But I know now, how God works. He could have made a million little puzzles, amusements, thrills and machines and He has as he has made a bike. But He has made all these only so that through these we may learn to love each other. Through a house, we may learn to shelter, through hands, we may learn to hold and help and hug. Through money, we may learn to aid. Through words, we may learn to counsel and comfort.


God, the Good God is all this as the Bible expresses in various themes and events such as when Jesus is exhausted, God the comforter. When Moses does not know what to do, He is God the counselor. When Israelites are afraid of defeat, He is God the helper. When Israelites don’t know where to go, He is God the shelter. He uses these visible everyday miracles to bring forth his invisible love, grace and beauty of life. Some of his nature, the nature of his Goodness is reflected back in our everyday experiences.


And we desire more of these experiences, more of these friendships, this love and this bond. We don't realize that what our real desire, in desiring these ‘preview’ of the film is, God himself. God is the film. In desiring happiness and little comforts through relationships and things, we look for a satisfaction of a desire not realizing that all these should lead to the one desire as a river flows eventually into the sea. The desire of God is the stage of having no real desire for satisfaction of the desire but joy for having the desire itself. God creates the desire and we fail to desire the One that would lead to an end of trying to satisfy desires for to desire God would be to desire, desire.


We have all felt this when we love our mothers or love our children. We love them and it would be still OK if our child never gave us a little kiss. We love simply due to the desire to love unlike our professions and businesses. We desire God and us yet not know it. When we desire Him, we wish to glorify him in all things that happen for good to those who love God. Our relationships, choices, experiences take on a whole different meaning. We start looking at rain, shelter, food, money, teachers and friends, all as providence. We look at them, especially foreordained in our lives for God did not wish we suffer alone in the pursuit of happiness.


A mechanic who fixes your car doesn't simply remain an economic entity of the business chain of automobile industry. He essentially is an opportunity to glorify God that 'my car can be fixed simply because You have allowed the concept of a mechanic', 'there is a doctor because you want me to be healed so that through the doctor and his very existence and healing, I can glorify your providence, sovereign design and plan for Man and his salvation’


And this is where I begin to understand what the Church always has taught. Ask the church the purpose of Man and the Church says Glorify God. But a man works and a man loves and a man sings and a man writes. Where does glorifying God come into all this?

All things are made for the glory of God. I can never pay my friend fully for his love. This is essentially because it is not mine to give him and not entirely his to take. If a bike has helped me not so much to burn the road but to love my friend, the bike remains nevertheless a utility for all practical purpose but first to glorify God.


For God, through an act of desiring to buy a bike, allows me to experience what friendship can be. He teaches me how a friend can desire to will the good of the other through this friendship, which again is nobility. A nobility, which acquires its beauty by sharing in God's beauty, that he may be glorified through it.


And God is all this: his magnificence and love over pours onto earth and we get a iota of a notion of his love when we love in friendships, parenthood or brotherhood. God is all this, friendship, Master, lord and teacher. Anything can be enjoyed simply because God allows it by placing traces of Him into all things that we seek in purity and truth. Those that haven't understood this and still deem God as a judge, punisher of transgressions, and a cosmic force not only miss the point but miss life entirely.


This is at the Heart of Christian Hope and Christian eschatology. Today, as we enjoy the comfort of a house and can glorify God. We enjoy eating a nice meal outside and can glorify God for a hotel or for food as a delicacy and hospitality, an art. In reading a good book, that God puts great tales and fantasies into the minds of authors and allows them to recite it as a masterpiece.


The promise and Hope that all our little joys, if we glorify God through them for it pours out from His being as God is Love. All these joys will culminate and find its fullest expression when it ends in its source, God. That just as we can now enjoy hints of joy according to our senses, so also, these joys will find its climax in contemplating the face of God proper to our vision in Heaven.

The role of Conscience

We have to always lean on our conscience else we risk condemning ourselves. Even a person who is wrong but honestly believes he is right is bound to listen to his conscience no matter how erroneous he is in reality. He commits a wrong act by doing what his conscience tells him (because he has an erroneous conscience) but suppose he does not listen to his conscience, he becomes a transgressor.


For God judges us according to how much we seek truth. While each one of us is judged according to our understanding of things, one who does not seek what his conscience tries to tell him has already condemned himself, what judgment can he expect from God if he has already damned himself. So while an erroneous conscience makes you sin, we are still bound by the erroneous conscience abandoning which, will make us transgressors.


That was just a small gist on the conscience. The other day my friend made an interesting point. she said, my conscience should have not allowed me to enter the class as I know I am late. I do not believe there exists such a puritan sense of conscience of self-condemnation. If there is, there is an order to it. I can skip an accessory that is freely available to pick, given at an event because I did not attend that event. Here, it would be right to condemn yourself for I do not merit the accessory.


My conscience is operating towards justice. But this can still be mitigated. I could ask to have it even without deserving it and leave it to the event manager to decide. Enjoying the fruit of the award has not against my conscientious judgment of justice. I have asked the event manager to offer me not by the virtue of justice but by the virtue of compassion: as a gift.


In fact there are scenarios on which your conscience should desist you from eligibility to any fruit of life. If you are applying for a teacher’s job but you aren’t a certified teacher (you don’t have to means or knowledge to teach), your conscience is going to voice: why are you applying for the job? (Unless one’s heart is so hardened that one cannot see beyond the personal desire for money)


In such a case, you should refrain from going for the interview rather than leaving it for the interviewer to discern whether to grant you the job. The reason being, one, you are doing injustice to the students who expect a teacher who will teach them. The interviewer’s compassion towards me would be shocking as he is not applying any reason: he is violating the interests of his students by offering a job to someone who does not merit the job.


The role of the conscience is to administer the truth of the matter and urge us to seek it and follow it. For deep down in our beings, we are capable of hearing the voice of the eternal and discerning the law that the eternal has inscribed in our hearts, the moral law. The conscience identifies when I depart from truth and also identifies goodness in things. But the courage to uphold good and condemn evil comes from Human Will. After the fall of Man, Original sin has scarred the human will to choose good over evil. While Man was always made for Good and Man was and is made to love, he inclined to sin due to his tainted nature.


Thus grace that comes from God aids our will tremendously to choose goodness. This does not mean we are led by God’s grace but only encouraged by it. Eventually, it is we who choose the good. But God allows his grace to shine like light over an object that was veiled in darkness (of our ignorance and weakness) and this light paves the way for the dramatic entry of our choice. If I do not choose it, I reject the grace by God. If I know it is of good and yet do not choose it, I reject the grace along with transgressing my conscience.


Another poor example is when only 20 years and above are allowed to play TT. You may skip the tournament instead of asking yourself to be excepted because you are 20 years and a month. Appearing as a candidature may compound the problems of the authorities who may now have to allow everyone because of you. Either they allow everyone over 20 years and whatsoever months, to serve justice or serve only you and become a stumbling block to their principles and force them to ask you to be quiet about it thereby amounting to dishonesty.


In the case arriving late for class, the role of conscience is already done, I have acknowledged I am late; I leave it to the teacher to decide without being hard on myself. I know I do not merit to be allowed but I plead to her mercy, not justice. If I am on time, I would be pleading to justice. None of us condemns ourselves to hell because of guilt, do we? We confess our sins.

Seeking out our own wretchedness

The prostitute lay there on the ground and the Jews picked up stones to stone her to death. And Jesus said, “Anyone who has never sinned may throw the first stone” Each one started receding beginning with the Elders


I was helping a boy through the frenzy he found himself amidst. He was running amok from table to chair making calls, threatening people. He was expecting a parcel. I had inquired on the urgency of the parcel and was told that it is required at the earliest. Another friend contradicted the explanation saying,

"The parcel isn't necessary. The parcel contains a wire. He could use the wire from anyone else to do his work. He is just trying to get attention by bringing down the house. He wants others to see how miffed he can be. He wishes that others may see how big a muddle he finds himself into and his, is not an ordinary life but one he fights for. Through all this, he wishes to show that he is a no-nonsense guy who can yell at irresponsible and errant workers and fight like a man to get his work done”


As my friend shared this, I realized that I should not have comforted the person as the person only desired attention and I was assisting and thus being an accomplice in the self-indulgence. A similar situation engulfed me before. No sooner had I comforted my little nephew than I was reproached by my aunt for patronizing and encouraging the toddler’s unacceptable behavior. There ought to be compassion but compassion too has a time and a season


The following day, I resolved to confront and corner the person. My speech was ready: You are running after a wire that you can borrow from another instead of wasting your precious time, patience, tolerance and peace that has patently left you quite disoriented and ill-disposed to speak to anyone as you continue to fix a grim and gloomy countenance. It’s not worth losing your peace, joy and cheer. You are just trying to make yourself feel better by trying to get attention and yell at others to get your work done as if to show you don't take nonsense. Deep inside you crave attention


After a few moments of peace, I realized something. I desired to spew venom on him. The reasons can all be good. I wished to cut him to size. My intolerance that such a behavior should be patronized, acceptable and witnessed was more than his desire now to procure his wire. No, I wanted to set it right that I see through his game and he can just relax.


Learn to forgive was the inspiration I received. Forgive him; it is perhaps very easy to prove them wrong. It is an adventure for him to boost his ego of getting his wire, making scores of calls and reproaching people for their lapses. It has perhaps now become an adventure for me to unveil his silliness and ‘attention-desiring’ shallow ideals. I want to tear him apart so that he knows how wretched he is and consequently, I am only going to show my own wretchedness that I judged his wretchedness. I showed no mercy but wished to make him pay for his own wretchedness.


Forgive him, it will do my soul and interior life a lot more good than his own. He may be steeped in the vice of ‘seeking attention’ that it may be difficult to break out. But if I make a sacrifice and forego the taunt, or snide remark or some badmouthing, that he wasted his two hours; my soul only is more purified. I will forgive ten others after meriting an increase of grace for accepting grace for this act.


I am not saying there should be no correction. When the urge to correct, itself is a self-indulgence; When correction is no more gentle and charitable but turned into an evil, it takes the form of hatred, spewing labels, insults, hurling taunts. Consequently, something as noble as correction becomes hatred for another’s despicable actions. Such a correction, if it may be called so, ill-disposes a soul to peace and serenity but leaves the soul in a tumult of seeking correction as if ‘if I don’t correct, the person is damned’ such an outlook often brings out our own wretchedness.