Love Matters

Losing the people we love is the greatest pain the Human heart is ever called to bear. Nothing is more crushing. Either by circumstance or death those we give our love away to are torn out of our lives leaving us emotionally crippled.

 

But Love as such is pure, divine and breathtakingly beautiful. It grows even in the vilest of hearts .Yet for all its wonders it is dangerous. Nothing else I’ve known can render even the strongest of us defenseless and bring us to our knees.    

 

In its very purity and beauty lies its danger .It is a hopeless irony that the most wonderful thing that can happen to our heart, can also with deadly effectiveness destroy every last shred of peace and happiness known to us.

 

I can’t understand this infernal emotion. I am both awed and terrified by it. Awed by the magnitude of sacrifices one is willing to make on it’s account and terrified by its ruthless capacity to breakdown every wall of defense that I build around myself. I try to dodge it but still want it. It really is, at least to me, unfathomable.

When I Fall

When I fall,

Before those around me notice

Your Hand reaches out to me,

Helps me stand.

And leads me through the Pain.

Who are You?

 

When I cry,

Your love surrounds me,

Wipes my tears away

Yes I feel You,

Standing right beside me,

Who are You?

 

When I return,

After running away,

Hurt and bruised

Sore from walking alone,

Your heart still forgives me

And takes me as Your own.

Who are You?

 

Your anger passes like the breeze

Your love lasts for an Eternity

You form the Beauty that surrounds me,

The sky, the mountains, the seas.

Flawed though I am,

Insignificant midst a million.

You notice me

O, and Love me

You’re my God, my Saviour

My Father and my Friend.

Storm

Tears run down, trickling…

Into the ocean of misery

That surrounds me,

It’s waves crash and roar

Tossing the Boat,

Threatening to swallow it.

Drown it,

In it’s merciless depths…

Doubt thunders,

In my ears.

Booming, it declares my loss

Deafens my Faith.

Muting it, killing it.

Trying to destroy it.

Shaken by the Storm,

Silenced ,overwhelmed.

I wait…

With a dying Faith.

For the Mighty Voice of Heaven

To calm the raging waters at His feet.

“Not all who wander are lost”

This is a continuation of sorts of my previous post. I recently had a ‘discussion’ with my father about what I’m going to do with my future and how instead of spending every waking moment planning for that far away day, I was, O horrors! Relaxing. During my vacations. Ah…I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details and move on to what I have to say .For both our sakes.

 

The point I’m trying to come around to making is this; why plan, down to the very last, minute, microscopic detail for a future you’re not even promised of?

 

All we do is march forward, our eyes set on the proverbial mists of tomorrow, never seeing what today has to offer. For all you know, so focused were you on getting there, following your compass of ‘plans for the future’, walking straight ahead, that you probably missed that little signboard that said ‘turn left’.    

 

Now don’t jump at me and say “You think one shouldn’t ever plan for the future?” I never made such claims. But we could try not to plan to an extent we banish our present into oblivion.

 

Sadly, this very moment that could well be our last is forgotten in that scramble to the future. Which by the way moves further and further back as we move forward. After all tomorrow is another day away.

 

I will never ask anyone, including myself to stop thinking of the future or preparing for it. But to spend every minute of the present arranging things for that one perfect moment you define as the “Future” is surely something that stems from our misguided notion that we can, control and etch out the rest of our days on earth exactly as we want. We can’t and we never will be able to.

 

To make a Star Wars reference (yes, my all time favourite set of movies ) ‘Be mindful of the future, but not at the cost of the present’

 

I would want each moment of my life to be lived to my hearts content as much as possible, not spent in preparation for a tomorrow that’s always an eternity away.

 

We can make decisions about the future. We must. But we can also wait for that moment when life gives us the best cue to help us make that decision. Until then (another proverbial reference) do stop and get a whiff of those lovely roses (and at the rate our biodiversity is vanishing they might just become extinct)

 

  I hope that by now you’ve got why I put up that particular quote as my title.

Of Means And Ends

Aristotle believed that man always seeks to achieve some good either as a means or an end .All our actions are meant to achieve a certain purpose .They have a definite direction and a preconceived result. This result is met either at the end of the said action or during the course of it.

 

Wise words. He has described Humanity as it is. We always need to have a reason to do something. That is to say, what we do must achieve a purpose and if it fails to do so then the action is considered useless. A waste of time.

 

I’ll give you an example so you can clearly get what I’m driving at. I wanted to take ‘Principles of Immunology’ as my General Elective paper in College. Now I’m a Fine Arts student. “Why do you want to take this? What good is it going to do for your course?” was my Mother’s question. Fair enough. And in all probability nothing much. But for me it was knowledge simply for the sake of knowledge that made me want to take that paper.

 

Sadly, not many agreed with me on this. Apparently Knowledge for its own sake doesn’t amount to much. It has to be subordinated to a higher cause. So silly of me not to realize this. 

 

Sarcasm apart, I would like to know why we always suffer this immense urge. It seems to have become an established law of actions. An enterprise without a cause is time wasted. But, why not do things for the sake of doing them? Why must things always achieve an end? Why can’t the means be an end on it own?

 

So often we spend our time in getting somewhere, moving towards a particular goal and adjusting everything to ensure this, that we forget to live life simply because we have one.

Morality and Religion

 

 

This is based on something a friend of mine put up in his blog. He mentioned a certain charming individual who claims that Atheists are in fact amoral:- that is, they do not have any morals to speak of. I beg to differ,simply because morality as a concept is only partly influenced by religion and is by no means defined by it.

 

To quote the Oxford dictionary morality is; the ‘principles concerning right and wrong’.Now right and wrong is based on our sense of judgment which in turn is based on our beliefs,and our beliefs often, in a way, transcend religion. This is because our beliefs are not always completely based on our religious doctrines. Some of it maybe, but not all of it. So when religion is not the only element of belief then it cannot be the sole baseline for morality.

 

Having said this, I’ll go on to say that the idea of right and wrong after a point is highly subjective. What may seem right to one person maybe immensely wrong to another. Religious doctrine on the other hand is established. It is not relative. For example that Christ is the Messiah is accepted by all Christians alike. Within the religion at least it is not debatable. Whereas an action being designated as right or wrong is.

 

So when religion is constant and the notion of right or wrong,variable. Religion on its own cannot drive morality.

 

Agreed,religion lays down what is right and what is wrong,but it is not the only factor that creates our idea of the same. Though people do come to the erroneous conclusion that religion defines morality because of today’s society ,we need to realize that Religion is more often only the excuse for the laying down of ‘moralistic’ laws than being the dictator of it.

 

Thus,to say that an Atheist knows no morals is unfair,as after all what they have lost is not their capacity to judge, but faith, in a Power beyond them.

 

This isn’t to say that I myself believe in Atheism. I’m very much a theist,very much a Christian. Nor am I trying to promote the idea of Atheism. But I do believe in giving them a fair bargain and in not branding them with baseless labels that are not grounded in reality.

 

Beyond the Dark

I still gaze at the stars

Yearning for answers

To the questions from my past

And doubts about the future,

The present holds, to these,

No clue.

But only vexes me

With it’s uncertainties

Blessed, I have been

Shown a path, I was,

But a path with so little light,

That to where it leads I cannot see

Does it wind its way where I want it to?

Goes it to the place I would find joy?

But then I wonder…

Must I really see?

Is it my call, to know

Or to believe? 

Faith:Believing Against The Odds

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”

Hebrews11:1

 

 

 

This line made me understand what faith really is, it’s very essence. It sharply contrasts a popular belief ; ‘seeing is believing’ .I’ve realized that I have unwittingly been living by this concept. This verse has shown me that what faith actually is, and the faith that  I’ve had are different from each other.

 

 Going by what this says my faith cannot be completely defined as faith at all. Often I feel, overcoming the impossible is hardly likely, I need a situation to have at least the tiniest hint of possibility .so I look for signs. I find myself telling God “if this happens I’ll believe”

 

But real faith is this; that in the darkest, bleakest moment you can still believe. It was this faith that brought about the miracles mentioned in the Bible. Jairus’ daughter who was brought back from the dead, Mary’s brother Lazarus who rose from the grave; these are all incidents of human faith and Divine Power at It’s best in the worst of situations. So deep was their faith and so Great is our God that even Death had to bow in submission.   

 

So faith is basically, believing against all the odds. Yet the faith I have  is nowhere near it. When I feel I might be losing something precious to me, when everything around me suggests that I will lose it, can I believe even then, that I won’t? Do I have the strength to face such a situation?

 

My answer is that for now, I don’t, because even the thought of such a situation frightens me. The pain it would bring is not something I’m ready to take on. But I know I should. Because it’s only then that miracles really happen. That is the power of faith.  

 

So when the verse says “being…sure of what we do not see” it tells us  that tribulation will blind us, and though you cannot see that things will turn out the way you want them to, you still believe it will.

 

This is our only defense.