Life and death is set before you....

Its a prophetic call to discern the divine will within written laws.
Letters of the law have power and they can be under the manipulative intentions of the powerful.
'You shall live' if we can listen to the voice of God, not to the will of the powerful.
Renounce yourself also include losing one's power over the command of letters one uses.
These letters can be customs, liturgy, traditions, and perspectives.

Losing oneself for finding oneself in Christ!

Here is the commandment of God,

Here is the Holy God,

What is the voice in the 'commandment o God,'

What is truly Godly in the 'Holy God?'

Life and death is set before you....

be a prophet to know and follow life

new Christianity

There is a new Christianity
which Christ never knew.
Christian flavour everywhere,
no virtues of Christ.

They keep holy ideals, but intolerant militants in approach
They speak of virtues, but moralist dictators.
We suffered wars over claims on the promised land,
Now 'son of God' just claims lands for making a peaceful world.
National security, international security all assured when 'son of God' rules.

Mammon stretches his wings to the far space,
and the 'faithful' sing Hosanna to the convenient Christs.

Fun of Peace

 'PEACE' has become a fun now.

Some offer peace as charity.

Emperors and colonial powers had extended peace since they 'did not want war,' but at the submission of you, your faith, and culture.
Now, peace is extended at the submission of oil, minerals. and water.

They say that some GOD was with them!

What comes out of us

 “From the abundance of one’s heart, mouth speaks.” To know what fills our hearts, we must know what feeds our hearts. Jesus often spoke about fruitfulness; fruitfulness, not in the sense of great number or large sum, but they were to be of quality. This quality depended on abiding in him, being pruned for a better produce, preparing good soil for producing thirty, sixty or a hundred fold. What Jesus spoke flowed from his heart, the words given by the Father; his words had authority, his words were truth and life.

What do we speak as a person and as a Christian community? What are we fed with in order to speak? Are we aware of the level of poison that enters us from the polluted water, air and soil? Some deny that. Similarly, we are unaware of the mis-information and half-truths we are feeding on. In such an environment, how are we to engage in an honest and upright conversation? Truth is more than the correctness of knowledge, but it is faithfulness and trustworthiness of a relationship. In this relationship, we enter the process of knowledge about the Father, about ourselves, about our times and their signs. It is a process of gradually being known. Our prayer, faith, and relationship with God, all these are to be in the gradual growth of being the children of God. Our conversations need to flow from these aspects, that we set our heart in communion with the Father and others, and we humbly be open for the truth being revealed in our life and our society. “We don’t possess the truth, but we belong to the truth.” 

Today, we are living a cultural phenomenon where facts are secondary to personal beliefs, emotions, and biases. So, truth is generated, often distorted, manipulated, or disregarded altogether. It affects our daily living environment, public conscience, interactions and social institutions. We have a great flood of information, and thousands of perspectives. We do not know what to trust. Just as we are vulnerable to non-truths and half-truths, knowingly or unknowingly we are also agents of misinformation and lies. 

When in conversations, what we speak about ourselves, about one who is listening, about our family, social and ecclesiastical institutions, are we speaking truth? We speak of problems, but we are rarely ready to see clearly what is the truth. Often, we go into defense or denial and go ahead as though everything is fine. We need truthful observations, critical and logical assessment to understand things. A good tree that bears good fruit stands in integrity in its life. The inner resources we gather must lead us to an integral form of life which manifests fruits from its resources. Whether we have seen ourselves within the communion with God, being in Christ, and being in communion with one another is an important question to be asked. Our own personal self, with its biological, emotional, intellectual, sexual, social dimensions is to be seen clearly and received as it is being known. Our true message is a response from this self in its entirety. We see that science, religion, and politics move away from truth and good will, and take perspectives. We do have perspectives, but we must make sure that we have not bought a divisive and politicised ideological perspective for ourselves. It does happen in religion, society and politics. We require an integral view of things, concerning faith, family, church, changes, relationships, troubles. Instead of seeing them clearly in completeness in their own structures and contexts we may approach partly and may bind ourselves to perspectives and ideological frames. As we are confined to these frames, our conversations cannot be free, honest, and upright. Then, our words do not carry truth and life. Our words are qualified with goodness when heart is filled with goodness.

In the parables of Jesus, there was a fig tree full of leaves but did not bear fruits, in Isiah 5, there was a vine branch carefully planted but produced sour grapes, in Ezekiel 17, there was a twig removed and planted on a river bed which grew but stretched its branches far towards other resources and securities. Each of these offers us feeding roots which frame our conversations. We might speak of the glories of ourselves and our history; in such pompous attires we make ourselves conveniently blind against crises and fruitlessness. We chose divisive securities and enclosed identities, and claim and proclaim them as divine. There is no good news in those words. We can easily manipulate the emotions and beliefs and reformulate in the name of God, causing the production of sour fruits.

Jesus listened to the Father, listened to the cry of his people and time. He was the truth that gives life to all, but the same truth of himself was seen disfigured in front of him. The nature of the kingdom he announced clearly shows that the truth of Christ was a gathering and embracing heart.  So, His words had to bring healing to the truths that exploited them. Religion and society had created truths, and they could not be challenged or questioned because they were declared divine. This divine did not qualify the Father, Jesus was speaking to. 

We cannot have our words lifegiving unless there is desire for virtues. The truth of our words grows deeper as our relationship deepens; both with God and others. The grasp of truth fills us with more compassion and openness. In a genuine conversation, there may be constant recognition of “your words are truth and life.” Those words have authority to heal and to forgive. A heart that seeks virtues considers something fully, not partly, and it takes courage to speak truth without seeing whether others are pleased or not. One speaks of oneself in humility and sincerity; and speaks of others in truth, compassion and charity, seeing good of all. In both, prudence is exercised in speaking what and how. Wisdom comes to the aid to guide the conversation, and the living of it.  The disciples on the Emmaus way asked later, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road and explaining the scriptures to us.” Lk 24: 32 Let us pray that our conversations touch the core realities of our lives, biological and genetic, emotional and psychic, social and cultural, philosophical and religious; not hiding, not pleasing, but strengthening, healing, and leading, interpreting our journey on the way in a new language of grace. 

“The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice. The law of God is in his heart; his steps never slip.” Ps 37: 30. 

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Flower of Time

Next year, by this time, we may be there, I may have a job, I will have paid back the loan, and we should have a house. My medications may be over and I may be well again. See, we are already in the future. There is an investment of time. This investment involves hopes, dreams, fears, anxieties, and disappointment. Among these moments, some are opening to further events. All of them have something to fill into our life. As the title of J.T. Fraser’s book stands, Time is The Familiar Stranger. Are we running behind an arrow of time, are we being carried on a wheel of time? Or are we creators of time?

Time is unprompted. If we reflect on the spontaneity of time through the thoughts of Henri Bergson’s philosophy, the nature of time is ‘duration.’ Duration is not a measured sum of time stretched out between certain ends. Time is not a series of quantifiable moments ordered in a line; rather, it is a living, flowing entity that we experience only intuitively. Time is lived qualitative inner subjective experience.

Time is ever same, and every day is yet another day. It is true. But we experience passages of life; passages of day and night, birth and death and so on. So, passages invite us to newness, not because we may be wrong somehow, but to move into a qualitative human living. Understanding time as a living entity we can cherish the spontaneous nature of our experiences. Each moment of our lives, no matter how ordinary and familiar, carries its own depth and significance. There is beauty in it. What may come is not known. It permits us to flow with time, finding meaning in the unpredictability and chaos of life.  It encourages us to liberate ourselves from a rigid grasp of time.

Even many spiritual traditions confine time within a horizontal-linear framework. Our craze for the predictability of reality makes time so determined that even God cannot escape from human predictable outcomes. There is sin and punishment, blessing and prosperity, morality, error, and righteousness, all in one line with their causes and effects. These impose limitations on the richness of time.  This reductionist view strips away the dynamic and spontaneous essence of time. They overlook the complex and creative interplay of moments that constitute our lived experience. They may fixate on goals and endpoints, neglecting the significance of the journey itself, with all its nuances and spontaneity.

Often, we value time according to its utility toward a predetermined outcome. What is the use of ‘wasting’ time like this? Here time has become transactional. There we miss the inherent beauty of spontaneous existence; the joys, uncertainties, and unforeseen encounters.  It is in the appreciation of simply ‘being,’ presencing that we can be in the fluidity of time. Michael Ende, in his novel Momo, introduces time as a flower blooming from our hearts. It gradually unfolds. Time is an ever-unfolding tapestry, where each moment is interwoven with the past and the future, creating a rich tapestry of experience that defies any form of calculated and quantified form of time. Time is what we have outpoured for others. We cannot measure it, it can be known only by intuition.

We must begin with courage and hope; we must end certain stories; there are changes inevitable in our lives; there are doorways or passages we have to pass through. There is something sacred about it. These moments are not the same as other moments. The Roman god Janus, god of seasons, time and change, is often depicted with two faces looking into past and future. While we dwell in the present, it is an active blend of all our experiences shaped by our history and aspirations. Though time is seen as abstract, the lived time is complex and layered, demanding a deeper reflection on how we picture our existence within it.

Taking the spontaneity of time leads us to a celebration of life in its most authentic form. There we stand with the unfolding freedom of our hearts. Embracing such a view enriches our understanding of our existence; and fosters a more profound connection with the divine tapestry of which we are all a part. This tapestry of grace carries our events most beautifully, and fully immerse ourselves in the beauty of the now, experiencing it as a sacred and spontaneous gift. The beginnings and the end mark gateways archways, and thresholds that lead us to peace. If there is no peace, there is no grace of time. Time is born of Terra and Caelus, the Earth and the Sky. Peace, grace, and beauty of time unfold as we have a harmonious living with the earth and the sky.

Time is a familiar stranger, but time has a name, Logos, the Word, the beginning and the end, the origin and purpose of all things. Logos is the passage through which all pass, the threshold at which everyone must make a transitional choice for peace, harmony, beauty and goodness. In Logos, every being unfolds and finds one’s truth. In logos one reveals and opens a petal of time. As the Word unfolds, so too does time.