Meal time conversations !

A lot happens between birds during the feeding time at the feeding table. These two Mina birds were engaged in reciprocal bird calls. 

After a long break, Anna started lighting a candle at our meal times. A burning candle has many symbolic meanings. 

A meal gives food for our body; a candle points us to the light we receive from each other for our journey in life!

Anna and I have been engaged in a major decision making process during the last two weeks. It was the conversations during our meal times, which helped us to converge towards a choice we felt ready to make. 

The conversations times became a path finder!

The meal times bring a sobering and refreshing ambience to listen and to process matters which have multiple strands. 

The Mina birds were in conversation during the meal time! Seeing this, I was able to recall our conversation times at meal times and feel refreshed by the warmth and feeling of nearness the meal times bring to us !

M.C.Mathew ( text and photo)

 

Memorials and beginnings !

 

I am used to prune the rose plants only after the dry petals have fallen to the ground. I find the process an emotional experience- thankfulness for their presence in the garden! At any time there are plants with memorials of the flowers in them. 

This is an in between time for the rose plants. After a flowering season, the plants prepare for the next crops of buds and flowers. 

The dried flowers too have a biography. They were buds once and became flowers, opening themselves to share colour, fragrance, and to give nectar and petals as feed for caterpillars. The flowers fed insects and bees to keep them alive. 

The flowers left behind a significant contribution through their presence. With dried flowers falling to the ground, they made the soil nitrogen rich. They keep the plant cycle alive. 

So they are memorials of self giving presence to nourish life in the garden.

The garden has new beginnings all the time. The  shoots, foliage and buds ready to be flowers usher in the new life in the garden!

The beginning brings promises for the future. However they remain vulnerable to insects and caterpillars who make the shoots, foliage and buds as their food to survive.  

Most plants survive the risk and buds become flowers !

The new beginnings bring new colours, fragrance and ornamental look in the garden. 

But for the beginnings, the garden will be bare without foliage, buds and flowers. 

The memorials and the beginnings bring a message that life in the garden is sustained by the soil underneath! The plants thrive and flower. The soil receives them back to itself when the petals fall to the ground. The soil nurtures another cycle of growth and flowering!

The soil is the home for plant life! We watch growth, memorials and beginnings in the garden!

A family is the home for humans. 

It is in a family human life begins on earth and leaves the history of beginnings and memorials!

How sacred is a family and a home on account of this!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Rising up when fallen !

 

The branch of a rose bush was inclined towards the soil beneath and the weight of the rain soaked rose flower dragged it further downward. But three buds are turning upward. 

Another rose bush has a drooping flower and two buds turning upward. towards the light! A lynx spider is resting on it.

I remember occasions when events or pressures on account of unresolved issues pile up, to feel a traction towards discouragement. It can be like the feeling while watching the drooping flower and withering petals- the end of the road! 

The flower offers hospitality to the spider even in that stage. It raises a new horizon in thinking! No situation in life can be so weary that we loose a sense of worth and value to be in a serving role towards others! Even in our weakness, we can be a prop or support to others!

A senior citizen, frail and weak living alone in our village visits families taking some vegetable or eggs from the farm where he lives! He brings cheer and encouragement to others. He invites children to come to his garden to pluck and eat guava fruits! He lives his missionary calling! 

Many live each day weary and drained of energy and purpose. I am familiar with such experiences in my own life during different situations. 

The sight of the three buds in one bush and two buds in another turning upward bring the direction to choose when one is feeling depleted! There is hope and purpose beyond  the current situation of stress or uncertainty. 

The thriving buds give out a message of growing upward even when dragged downward by the drooping branch ! Soon there will be two three flowers in one branch and two flowers in the other, instead of the ones fading away!

What sustains us in weary situations is hope and prospects in the horizon!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

The passage of time!

Each morning when I wake up, I feel enthused by the thought that it is a new day of many experiences awaiting!

There are days, when the inner spirit is cloudy with a weight !

That is how I felt today, since we discovered yesterday in the evening that the wall cupboard in the kitchen is partly damaged by white ants. The carpenter who came to inspect found a way to get it back into order. 

The drooping rose flower was surrounded by three buds. That is how it is in nature. New life emerges all the time! 

Yesterday two friends dropped in and engaged us in conversation of many happy memories. Although they could spend only short time as they were on their way for an engagement, they brought cheerful memories. Anna and I have known them from their student days  and had regular contacts with their parents. So we share a history of about fifty years with them. 

That meeting and conversation was a refreshing experience. 

Those friends recalled our yesteryears and revived us with memories that were upbuilding. 

One flower droops, but three others are there to blossom !

That is how it is in life. Our life is a continuum of new beginnings and awakening! 

The journey is through peek and valley experiences, where the joy of living is an ongoing expereince !

We live in the present sandwiched between our past and future! 

M.C.Mathew ( text and photo)

The twilight scenes !

The garden on this Sunday morning carried a celebrant look witnessing to the fruits of the giving earth!

While I was absorbed in this enchanting sights, Daphne entered the feeding table for birds, unnoticed. When I gave her a forbidding call, she decided to leave without a protest. Ever since Daphne had her surgery for malignancy six months ago and is showing signs of spread of the malignancy, she has a less enthusiastic exploratory walk and coffins herself to the courtyard and the front garden. Her desire to please us in different ways is evident even when she copes with the illness. 

It was after these pleasing sights in the garden, Anna chose to sing the following  hymn:

"Father I pace into Your hands

The things I can't do,

Father I place into Your hands

The time's I have been through

Father, I place into Your hands

The way I should go,

For I know that I always can trust You.

Father, I place into Your hands

My friends and family

Father I place into Your hands 

The things that rouble me

Father I place into Your hands us 

The person I would be

For I know I always can trust You..."

The garden is a witness to the goodness of God upon earth. The goodness and mercy become the ground on which we live and have our being. 

I felt that the plants, buds and flowers bring us awareness of the nearness of God !

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

The avian parenting practice!

The just audible bird call of a juvenile Magpie robin in our courtyard alerted me to go out to spot the bird. 

At the other end of another cable an adult Magpie robin was responding to the call. It appeared to be guiding the juvenile bird in its movements. 

The juvenile bird found a prey and perched itself in another cable.

I noticed the earlier adult bird now perched to have visibility of the juvenile bird. 

Another adult bird was on another cable above the feeding station attentively listening to the bird calls and observing the movements. 

This scene was a good illustration of parenting practice of a Magpie robin family!

The parenting presence of adult Magpie robin birds to a juvenile bird!

What a message of enabling and watchful accompaniment!

For a few days now,  there were movements of Magpie robins in our courtyard. When I watched the sight above, I wondered if they nested in our garden. 

I remember seeing three Magpie robins perched in the clothesline in our backyard to feel protected when it was raining one night!

These experiences bring delight while living in a cottage surrounded by a garden around. The avians find the garden as their home. 

A red vented Bulbul at the feeding table was attentive to the bird calls and tracking the movements of the Magpie robins in the garden !

The juvenile bird was in its weaning phase of finding its own rhythm of movements and self feeding. But the adult birds were keeping a vigil!

This was a good way of beginning a day!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Seeing a flower in a bud!

 

The flower above is from the plant in the first photo, taken on an earlier occasion. 

Now the rose bush has a bud in its early stage. To think that in about three weeks that dormant bud would be a flower like the one above brings a sense of anticipation !

I can choose to see it as a small bud or see in the bud a flower in formation !

I have wondered whether I have such an optic of seeing about what is ahead or used to stay occupied with the present alone!

In an engagement with parents a few weeks back, I had an exercise with them to dream about their child five years from now! From the feed back, I realised that their focus was converging towards academic performance. There was a minority who envisioned for their character, hobbies, relationships, responsible living, friendships, and life at home!

It is a temptation to view our children from an existential prism; but it is necessary to view a child as a person in the transitional journey of becoming!

It is by a vision of seeing them as a whole person, parents would be able to create an ambience at home to foster them to blossom to be what they can be!

The children become what parents help them to become!

I wonder parents can shift their focus from seeing a child ' only as a bud' to seeing a child as an emerging flower!

Such a consciousness would reorient parents to offer primacy of attention to children to facilitate their formation! They do not become what we have not envisioned for them!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)