The real and the edited!

The first photo is the real one captured by the lens of the camera.

The second is the edited version by a software.

It dawned on to me that the difference between the real and the edited version is truly contrasting!

The edited stands out and the real looks subdued.

The colour richness in the edited version is captivating.

It is a message of some significance.

Many things are made to look glamorous, which is popularly used in marketing and sales! In fact appearance seems to be equated wrongly to value and worth of a person. The glamour is the opposite of lowliness, which marks those who are humble in spirit.

So much so, the tendency is to seek after the glamorous and miss the real!

The glamour industry thrives and we decline from being real!

The real is what makes us authentic. All the glamour would be like the leaves that would become dry one day and fall off

It is teh real that makes us authentic.

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Stillness of a butterfly!

Some butterflies behave like statues by their stillness!

Thos who can develop bodily stillness for short periods of time can grow into interior stillness or silence, gradually which is the beginning of the experience of becoming fully present to oneself. Our thoughts and aspirations fade away and we feel near to ourselves. To feel near to ourselves and not just to our thoughts all the time is a liberating experience. It is the way into a deeper consciousness of intimacy with God of our lives whose presence we can experience in interior silence.

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Scavenger flies!

When we notice flies around, it is a wake up call to keep the environment free of dirt and waste!

The flies survive because of waste materials. From waste disposal the focus is shifting to waste recycling.

Each household is responsible to protect the environment. But it is only a notion and not a reality!

Anna and I know the efforts to do this in our garden. If only we can do more we would protect the environment and human health!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Hanging drops!

Even after fifteen minutes these water drops hanging form the guava fruits did not fall to the ground ! I lost my patience and moved on to continue my walk. Even after the third round of walk, these drops were still hanging!

It is a precarious existence for the water drops. Any movement would make the water drops fall off the fruits.

In fact I came across two teenagers during this week, a boy and a girl who were holding on desperately and trust fully to restore relationship with their fathers. One of the fathers I spoke did not indicate as much of longing for renewal of relationship as the son had. I felt moved by the hopeful waiting of the two teenagers of a new dawn in their lives,

That is what I felt at the end of consultations with five families yesterday. Each of them was holding on to their heavily burdened situations that a small event would be enough to cause an emotional disaster to them. 

I noticed how my colleagues were deliberately stretching themselves to be protective of the families to support them while they are holding on precariously!

The hurting people hold on because they trust and anticipate in a better future.

To be companions to hurting people is the calling of the caring profession!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo) 

Biased sight!

I passed by this flower pot several times in the last three days. What stood out in my sight was the flower, until on one occasion I noticed an ant crawling on a bud close to the flower. What was glaring was the colourful flower and it occupied my sight all the time.

This is the usual sight bias. We see what we  look for. We observe what interests us.

In a conversation with a teenage boy yesterday, I sensed how engaged and enthused he was about foot ball. His interest in foot ball was deep rooted in his consciousness that he dared to give secondary attention to his studies although his tenth grade examination is forthcoming. HIs struggle with Mathematics and History is distressing to him and his compensation is to divert his attention to foot ball. His parents who used to help him till 6th grade for home work and help in understanding of the subjects do not get enough time  to help him. Or is it they cannot help him! They feel occupied with work and are left with less space for a demanding engagement with their son!

A biased teenager and and pre-occupied parents! 

The bud is the future of the plant. The flower and buds are equal in their functions.

When parents get pre-occupied and a child gets biased, the outcome is distressing!

At the end of a 70 minutes conversation, I found the early steps of both the teenager and parents feeling connected with each other!

Both of them needed to be freed from their subjective orientation to see an opportunity if only they can collaborate!

One personal exercise that I find necessary is to visit my perceptions and choose to revise them lest my perceptions become a reality. Then it becomes a bias in my thoughts and attitudes! A bias is a preference to view a situation from a personal orientation of convenience or heightened interest.

Let me also confess that sights compete for our attention. In the following picture the butterfly captures our attention and other sights in the photo get visually subdued. 

To see the less obvious is an art of observation that need our auditory, visual  and perceptive senses !

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Birds of the morning !

Each of these birds is a resident in our garden.

We can find them somewhere in and around our cottage.

Usually these are the birds which are comfortable to be near human dwellings.

Their habits and rituals are fairly constant. They move between their different resident stations through the day. They are single birds as of now.

The barbet stays in the garden because it has found enough fruits in the garden, papaya, gauva, banana, chikoo, etc. 

The Racket tailed drongo likes smaller trees and shrubs. There are plenty of them in the garden.

The crow-pheasant likes to stay hidden and move between shrubs and grass on the ground. So our garden is a good choice for its residence.

But what strikes me is how each bird follows its own.ritual without disturbing the others.

That is a habit I suspect humans are almost losing. The conflicts in different part of the world is between communities of different ethnicity. Although advanced in civilisation, the ancient barbaric spirit of overcoming others or displacing or eliminating them is at work.  

I know this as a prevalent attitude among medical professionals. The professionals compete with each other so much that there is jealousy and undercutting of each other!

I wish the human instinct would grow to be, 'each for the other'!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Conversation corner !

Anna was able to design a conversation corner in the front portion of our cottage, with a good view of our rose garden in the front.

A conversation corner is preferably a place different from the drawing room, where we welcome and entertain visitors. It is usually a crowded place with the Television, music system, and furniture.

A conversation time is a special occasion in our home. 

There are people who visit us for different needs but there are some who seek to come to converse. 

Many people talk about news, information, read or heard stories, etc. But a conversation time goes beyond to share thoughts, needs or ideas and seek an engagement or dialogue or response. There is a deeper personal dimension in conversation time. 

I am not sure whether we are conscious of creating the ambience for conversations!

The ambience is both physical and internal.

Keeping a candle lighted in the central table is one way of drawing attention to be present physically to the space. In a warm and inviting physical ambience, one needs to be ready to listen patiently, openly and thoughtfully with no defences or pretences. Sometimes such times become occasions to listen with heart! The heart level listening is an endearing and comforting experience often leading to receive resonances to sense direction and depth!

The conversation times can become turning points in our consciousness and soul refreshing!

Every time I reflect on conversation time between ourselves or others, I sense how the conversation time is an enlivening experience for us and others. 

M.C.Mathew (photo and talk)

From fabric to Table clothes!

I stood watching in a state of utter surprise and delight, when Shanthi and Susan showed me yesterday what they designed and stitched-  two table clothes of different sizes from the fabric Susan gathered a few days back. Both the table clothes looked elegant, rich in colour and immensely impressive of its craftsmanship. This was done during the in between times of their regular work. 

Following this, I watched this lit candle on the central table, in preparation for our weekly meeting for de-briefing. The candle was handcrafted in the department during the Christmas cheer preparation in 2018.

I feel amazed at the creative skills all of my colleagues are endowed with which they bring out for the common good on different occasions. It is a joy to belong to an ambience where creative expressions are spontaneous!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Picture of the week!

I spotted this Magpie Robin three times this week at the same spot in the tree opposite our side entrance to the cottage! This is how some birds show friendly behaviour.

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

A night view !

A dragon fly looks different at night (above) from what it looks during day time(below)!

Does it not tell us a lot about the changes in perception of an issue that we can have depending on how and when we view the issue! So why quarrel! Both opinions can be true in its own context. 

But the whole truth when all perceptions are held together! 

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Between Barbet and Squirrel..!

We welcome birds and squirrels to the garden!

But they reach the fruits earlier than we can.

It is now several weeks that we did not have a fruit from this papaya tree!

I wish they would take one and spare the other for us!

But they are in the habit of munching on every fruit that is ripe.

They gain, and we lose!

This is the game of life. We gain sometimes and lose other times!

M.C.Mathew (texta nd photo)

The new ball pool!

This is the new ball pool in the department, waiting for the balls to arrive! We shifted the earlier smaller one to the sensory motor room and decided to have larger one in the Early Learning Centre

Every time we add a new facility for children, we realise how much more is needed!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

In search of Father!

Anna knitted the above woollen mat to offer it for Christmas cheer to the department where I work. But when I saw it, it made a significant appeal to me of its larger symbolic significance. 

This happened on a day when a teenage girl and her mother came to visit us for her learning related needs. In the conversation, the mother painfully referred to the longing of her daughter to have her 'father return to value her'! This was a moving experience for me as the mother shared the profound disappointment of her daughter in not being able to receive conversation and interactive times with her father. Her refrain is, 'why is not papa not wanting to talk to me'! The mother justified the father's behaviour by referring to him as a socially reticent person. But for a daughter, this would mean that she does not have the acceptance or approval of her father. It is a picture of absent father in her life.

It was with this grieving mood, I returned home to see this mat which Anna had woven.

The moment I saw it, it became a symbol to me of the millions of children of the world represented through each knot in the mat in the central area. Surrounding that is the red circle which represented to me of all those who are called to surround children in a protecting role.

In the case of this teenager, the protecting role of her father was negligible.

I felt equally moved that since the beginning of ASHIRVAD in 1983, Anna and I had an opportunity to be in a protecting role for children who were neuro-developmentally challenged. I remembered almost hundred former colleagues at Chennai, Nagpur, Vellore, Pondicherry and now in Kolenchery who have been partners with us in our journey to belong to the protecting role of children in need.

What kept this consciousness grow even more that evening, was the three photographs of the a flower in our garden.

The bud when it first appeared did not express fully its potential appearance, colour, fragrance or elegance.

Even in the half open stage, the fullness of the flower was left to imagination.

But when the flower was in full bloom, it transcended even our expectation or imagination. 

Till the flower bloomed the plant needed to be taken care of!

At the fullness of time, the flower bloomed fully !

This is the mystery of childhood. 

All children would need that protective environment to bloom at home, school, society, sports and athletic environments, art, music, dramatics, music, etc.

The woollen mat is now on the bulletin board facing me in the consultation room. The other picture facing me in the opposite wall is a painting gifted to me by a 12 year old child in 1991, who came a few times to ASHIRVAD Child Development Centre at Chennai for his medical needs. His view of Jesus of Nazareth in a protecting role of children is well portrayed in the painting.

All children are in search to find his or father,  mother and his or her own child within.  In the psycho-development process designed in Transactional Analysis, this personal discovery of father, mother and child within is an essential inward journey through which we become the intimate companions to our true self, the soul within.

For that teenage girl that I referred to earlier, there is a dual journey- discovering her physical father and returning to him and finding the father within her who shall become a companion to her soul!

In both these journeys most of us make sometime or other, as adults, teenagers, or children, there is a need of a protective environment. 

In our inward journey, we shall meet with the darkness and shadows in our lives along with the true self and the authentic 'me'! These discoveries are associated with ups and down emotionally and existentially.

It is for this reason, all of us need a protective covering of our soul and existence so that we are always discovering ourselves to grow into our fullness in a safe emotional environment.

This is why we are to be guardians of the 'souls' of others and not just friends or acquaintances!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Fellowship times

One high light of spirit of the team in the department, where I work is the attention the team pays to find time to have fellowship times. 

Anna and I feel grateful for the occasions we receive  their thoughtfulness and visit at our home.

In fact Dulcy was happy that she was almost ready to go with some of them who came to visit us recently! 

To make the work place a setting, where each person is happy to come to and feel a sense of belonging is indeed a challenge! Looking back over the last seven years, this has been more or less possible!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Christmas Cheer 2019

The Christmas cheer of 2019, planned for 10th December is is now the leisure time activity in the department. It continues later in the evenings after the working hours.

The forthcoming would be the sixth annual event which brings considerable expression to the creative instinct of different members of the professional team.

We look forward to it because it brings many from the institution to visit the department and the contributions help us to get educational equipment and learning materials for children.

The lasting joyful outcome of this annual event is the encouragement and participation we receive from medical students and nursing students, faculty, staff and the administrative officers.

Every time we light this candle made in the department, we remember all the efforts of the staff in the department past and present for their generous gift of time and efforts to bring cheer to others at Christmas time !

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Change of season!

Most of the trees in our garden have tender leaves. This is the early announcement of the end of monsoon.

Farmers have garden festivals during this season. It is the time to plant vegetables, paddy, etc.

The cycle of planting and harvesting begins now.

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Jack fruits !

The tender jack fruits although they are erect now would hang because of its weight when they grow!

This is one way nature celebrates the monsoon and produces fruits!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Feeding time!

Watch a Magpie Robin on its feeding exploration!

One of the three young magpie Robins was on its feeding exploration. I saw it on the grass and then on the ledge of the wall picking up food, It seemed settled on the ledge of the wall but what  followed was regurgitation of the food.

They too have their feeding problems.  It stayed on the same spot till it recovered and returned to the grass to find its feed.

A Magpie Robin is an overcomer!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Three siblings and parents!

The first three Magpie Robin birds are probably siblings of the family of the a pair of the Magpie Robins in the last two pictures. 

The two adult birds stayed on their stations, one on a branch of bush and another one on the cable at a close distance from the three young birds,  watching them take short jumps and flights and search for their food in the grass,

It is now three weeks since I have noticed these birds in the morning in a nutmeg tree and often in the grass. I suspect that they have their nest in the hollow of the nutmeg tree.

It is the different tuneful bird calls that alerted me today evening when it was almost getting cloudy.

This is the second family of Magpie Robins I noticed nesting near our cottage during this year.

I noticed how both the adult birds flew down near them when a wood pecker arrived on a coconut tree close by,

The adult birds had their protective eyes on the three. 

Birds brings some message or other all the time- today it was something on bird development process. Both parents equally watch over the young ones during the early period of their lives! 

I wonder whether birds are more dedicated than humans in this role!

M. C.Mathew(text and photo)