This Guava tree in our courtyard has many fruits during this season. It is a home for birds and squirrels. We get to harvest only some fruits as birds and squirrels find them before us.
We have seven mango trees in our garden but none gives us fruits. But we have one Guava tree, which gives us fruits throughout the year.
Each plant and tree has its needs, patterns and seasons.
I have received greetings and gifts for my birthday during this week. There were few greetings from a few that surprised me. They were not friends with whom I have been recently in touch.
I took time to look forward at this turning point. It was eight years since I had my by-pass surgery. So I was living because of extension I received through that surgery.
The last eight years were years of gratis!
I had to share a reflection yesterday in a meeting. My theme was, 'I have quieted my soul' from Psalm 131: v.2.
Let me quote from a book, Spirituality and the Awakening Self, a sacred journey of transformation by David Benner, a Brazos press publication, about how we are view human soul (p.121):
"Soul is the reflective space between a person and the events of his or her life. Soul allows us to transform these events into experience and makes meaning possible. It allows us to be present to ourselves, our world, and our experience. It is the doorway through which we must enter in to life if we wish to live it with depth and passion. Soul is the middle ground between body and spirit that connects us to our materiality and to the external world. It is also the place where we learn to hold experience, not simply respond to it. A rich ongoing interaction with this soul is essential if we were to live with roundedness, creativity and vitality.
Souls thrives in reality but withers when we chose to live in places of illusion or denial. Soul calls us to be so grounded in the ordinary realities of our life that the meaning of our life can be found in these mundane experiences....Soul translates the rhythm of ordinary life into liturgy of a richly meaningful existence that is created within the community and shared by all who participate in it".
I have had a few occasions to share some reflections on this theme with groups of enquirers. During my preparation to share my reflection it occurred to me that my soul space is needing renewal as I felt crowded by events left without giving attention to the messages they carry.
I felt that soulful living is living in the fullness of integrating soul to the body, mind, and spirit. What needed for me was to revisit some convoluted events and happenings, which remained as 'raw material' for me to find in that substrate a substantial meaning to redirect the soul to find its own pasture.
I realised that my thoughts and dreams about the unresolved experiences had a common them. Knowing that God is 'giving and forgiving' is the starting point to begin a journey to free people whom I kept imprisoned in my rigid thoughts. As I resolved to let them be free in my mind form the fetters of expectation, disappointments and resentments, I felt that the darkness surrounding my soul got rays of light to create a 'table of forgiveness and to bring in the experience of journeying into healing'!
Soul's well being is integral to integrated living.
The quietening of the soul is therefore an inner journey to meet with the ghosts and pyramids we created to defend and justify ourselves. That is why Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu jointly created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when the South African apartheid ended and a new nation was born. A hurting and bruised South Africans needed a soul space of confession and forgiveness to find soulful living for restoration and integration of communities in their nation.
As I look at the guavas in the tree, I feel touched by its fruitfulness. It is free to bear fruits to give them away.
Fruitful living is the vocation for all of us. It is good to know that fruits are for others.
This brings a new orientation to living! Whom are we to live for! It is certainly not just for ourselves. Who are the others! Friends, family, neighbours, critics, enemies, and those who mean to harm and hurt! Some would come to ask of us and others would come to steal. Both are alike. They are seekers to find a new direction in life. We are to be pathfinders even for them, who are not our natural allies.
The freedom of living by giving and staying open to live with hospitality is true soulful living! God is the immediate companions to all those who choose this way of living!
It is with these thoughts, I enter into another year in my life!
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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