A quiet time!

It was around 9 am yesterday, sensing that it was hot already, I looked at the thermometer, which showed 37 degrees celsius. The forecast for the day was a mid-day temperature of 41 degrees. 

I looked outside into the lawn in front of our cottage and spotted a Myna gathering whatever it can find from the grass. That made me to look into our bird bath and the feed area. The bowls were empty. I refilled them. 

While being at the lawn I turned to the cashew tree, which had fruits ready to pluck as well as tender cashew nuts. It amazed me because, the cashew tree is still flowering.  The first fruit in this season was in December. It is the first time, since it started yielding fruits, three years ago, the fruiting season would exceed six months. 

As I stood watching the cashew tree, my attention turned to the edge of the lawn, where I noticed the flowers which bore the brunt of the summer heat and humidity, swaying in the breeze as if they were calling me to visit them!

I took time to go near each of them. 

When I came to the jasmine flowers, I felt the fragrance in the air. That made me to go even more closer. 

That was when I noticed two spiders, one on the jasmine bud and another on a leaf. I stood watching for any movement towards making a web between the buds and the leaf. 

 

As I kept looking around for any movement in the garden, I spotted a squirrel coming to the cashew tree to search for fruits. A crow flying between trees adjacent to it chased the squirrel away. The bird movement in the garden is now infrequent since summer has set in. Even the resident Magpie robins, Bulbuls, Sunbirds and Kingfishers are not around. 

I felt moved by the sight of life in the garden, where the Myna and spiders find a home in the garden for themselves, in the summer time. 

I was away from home for a week and was recovering from a viral illness. It was after two weeks that I was taking time to move around in the garden to feel near to the plants.  

I felt an unusual awareness of their presence, not just because of their colourfulness or fragrance alone. The green grass in the lawn was as much communicative as the flowers and fruits. It was from the grass the Myna found its food. The grass is least regarded ordinarily in a garden. Often they are regarded as weed and removed from the soil. Even the least noticed, also has a purpose to fulfil!

I do not remember manuring the lawn grass at any time in the recent years. They are watered in the summer months. 

When Daffny is out in the garden, it is to the lawn she runs to roll on the grass. Dulcie treats the grass as a carpet and stretches herself on it. The cool feeling the grass offers to the bare feet is refreshing to experience. The elegant look the grass offers is special.

This time in the garden, was an educational experience for me to feel the value of small things or experiences, which do not often receive enough attention as much as other experiences. 

Thanks to the Myna in the lawn, that I was given some quiet time to travel inward and experience the refreshment the lawn, a bird, spiders, plants, flowers and fruits brought! It became an uplifted time of grateful awareness of God, who is the giver and provider!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

 

A wider view with a focus!

While visiting a mountain range, the landscape brought an exciting sight to behold. 

From seeing at the distance scene, when I turned to look little beyond, a  colourful tree in brown shades caught my attention. 

When I looked closer to where I was standing, I spotted two spiders resting on a flowering stem. 

From the distant to the near is a journey towards being present to the immediate situation. 

During the electioneering a national leader repeats his dream of seeing India as the largest economy in the world; now it is nearing to be the third. 

The down side of this dreamy pursuit is that millions of youth are not employed in India and this is causing distress. 

I know of families who spend their years toiling ambitiously for the financial security of their children, but not available to be a companion to them in their growing up years. The pre-school children have often found the third parent- the visual media to occupy themselves. 

I know of a father who turns to his four years old son to help him to access the u-tube site that he wants to find. 

I grieve over this paradox- parents think of the future of the children, while children need their parents to be near to them to accompany them in their social and emotional journey. 

A panorama from the mountain top is a desirable experience; what is of contemporary value is focussed attention to the immediate context of the growing needs of children. 

I almost missed spotting the tiny spiders; the landscape captured me. 

Let me say to young parents. What you are not or cannot be to your children during their pre-school years, make parenting incomplete and leave children in a void without intimate relationships. essential to their personal formation !

I heard one parent say recently, about their pre-teenage daughter: 'We do not know our daughter enough. Is it because we left her with her grandparents from the age of 2 years till 12 years'?

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

The overcoming resilience

 

During a visit to a historic place recently, I noticed that two which trees cut,  were sprouting again. 

In the Book, The Gardener, a Spanish best seller, the author Grain, who published two other books, Beyond the rainbow and the Path of Life,  narrated  story of a gardener, who noticed a recently cut olive tree in the hills. 'Grieving over the lack of sensitivity of the tree's owner capable of cutting off in an instant the life of a tree, many centuries older than himself, the gardener sat down on a rock, remembering the powerful aspect of the tree, swaying in the wind with its silvery leaves'! (p44).

When he visited the hills sometime later, noticed new shoots in the stump, growing vigorously upwards. 

'Stroking the tender shoots of the old live, he whispered: there exists a stronger will that that of man! Who, old live tree, can triumph over the will power and desire to live'!

Seeing the two trees cut with new shoots growing out of them in the photos above, I recalled the above story, narrated by a trained psychologist with profuse involvement in music and theatre in the book, The gardener.

What captured my attention while walking in the woods, was the river at the edge of the property, winding its way all along the boundary of this property. Although the forty feet wide river looked shrunk to look like a stream in summer, it is an overflowing river during monsoon months, but not flooding, where people gather to fish and have picnics at the river bed. 

The above trees would have roots spreading in the subsoil to distant places to find their nutrients. 

To my surprise I noticed the roots of a small uprooted tree in the wooded area, which fascinated me. The root system looked larger in bulk than the trunk itself.  

The roots steady a tree and allow it to grow and sprout again when the stem is cut. The teak trees which were cut in our garden, have new shoots sprouting from the stem. 

This is precisely the reason why there is lot of attention needed for children in the early years of their childhood to have rootedness in the family ambience to feel emotionally secure, feel loved, protected and provided for and grow up with an inner readiness to grow, live,  relate and become their beings. When they experience the rootedness in a loving and affirming family, they grow up with fulfilling attachment behaviour that would steady them during troubled times and story scenes of life. On such occasions they feel protected from post traumatic stress, due the inner resilience that hey have grown up with,  to develop the emotional quotient arising out of rootedness in the family, experiencing sense of belonging and flourishing relationship. 

The trees have resilience to return to life! Humans too have such strength to overcome! 

For that to be a reality, the pre-school period is to be years of experiencing rootedness in the soil of an affirming family ambience!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

We belong to each other!

On a cloudy dawn last week, I felt fascinated by the golden hue on the horizon, when the sun was faintly visible behind the clouds. 

I heard some  sounds of movement behind me. They were two families of hens and chickens, on their morning stroll. 

The two hens with their families in a fraternal mood! 

It was in the pervious evening, I heard the prime minister of India speak in an election rally, when he referred to a particular community in India, as those with too many children!

I felt shocked and grieved and got up in the morning with a hangover of that distressing reference to a particular community in a denigrating way. 

It was therefore a consoling experience to watch two families of hens and chicks moving together in a relational way.

The fellowship between communities is a common feature in India. It is the politicians, who bring a wedge between people based on religious differences.  One political party, which practices and advocates majoritarian perspective based on the religious affiliation of people, has done great harm and disservice to fraternal attitude between people. This resurfaces during the elections. 

Yesterday when Anna and I went to vote in the national elections, we witnessed people talk and relate in a cordial way, although there were people from three different religious groups waiting in the queue. 

What connects us to each other is not a political ideology, but humanness rooted in respect and regard for each other!

I hope that the light that the Sun brings at dawn to dispel darkness of the night, would be a symbol of enlightenment we need in India! We are humans and fraternal beings and not divided because of our religious or political traditions.  

Le the cloud of suspicion fade away; let light bring enlightenment!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

 
 

A new observation !

I returned after a week of travel yesterday night. It was after a long time I was away from home for a week at a stretch.

It is the longest time, since I posted my reflections in this blogspot in the recent years. 

I missed being with Anna and felt lost without the habits and rituals that we are used to every day, from the time we get up each day, beginning with  coffee and reading time at day break. It was a joyous occasion of being together again when I returned at night. 

On my return I realised that Dulcie and Daffny were also waiting for me to return, seeing their body language and friendly gestures.

When I got up this morning, I had walk in the garden and found the lawn was fresh and green looking refreshed, by a few showers since I left. The plants and flowers looked festive. Some trees had blossoms readying for the fruits and the cashew tree had new nuts and some fruits ready to pluck

A week is long in sensing the changes in the plants and trees that one is the near to and is fond of. They looked different and changing their profile of colour and appearance with a few summer showers of rain. 

I paused to consider what changes have occurred to me within myself,  when I was on this travel. 

One experience might summarise that. 

A child, little older than a year was being fed. The mother brought her phone to show the screen activity of animations in a cartoon, while she was being fed. This girl pushed away the telephone and kept looking towards her father and mother. The father knowing her discomfort with the screen, started singing some rhymes. All this happened for about twenty minutes, while they were seated opposite to me. The child turned to the father to watch him singing and turned to the mother to receive the next spoonful of food. This was a day after I spoke in a meeting about protecting infants toddlers from screen time and allowing only about an hour in a week for older pre-school children.

To see this toddler, preferring to listen to her father sing than watch the screen, brought immense encouragement about the natural instinct of a toddler, when she was growing up in an environment of stable attachment behaviour between herself and her parents.  

I suspect that parents impose the screen time on infants and toddlers, because of which, they drift to want it more. If parents were to bathe the visual and hearing environment of children with activities which bring cheer and encouragement, they would resist the pressure to stay screen passionate. It is not the child who begins this deviation of childhood behaviour, but the parents. 

This new consciousness was indeed a lesson for me to reccaiberate  my thoughts on screen time for infants and toddlers. 

Coming to the garden around our cottage, it receives attention to allow the plants, trees and the grass to grow and flourish. Our domestic helpers have a fondness for them. Anna takes enormous interest and gives regular attention for their upkeep. 

A nourishing environment brings life into its fullness!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

The strength in fragility !

 

I walked through our garden after the windy rainfall yesterday. 

What surprised me was the sight above, of the fragile leaves and flowers remaining intact, although few branches of the tall trees were blown away. 

The plants are almost at the ground level and the tall trees take the brunt of the fury of a storm. The weak stem of the Lily sways in the wind but is seldom broken in the wind!

The protection that comes from the tall trees for all plants and shrubs in the garden! 

That gave me something to dwell on! 

Our wellness is a result of care and attention that we receive from all around us. On our own, we are vulnerable!

When the washing machine broke down yesterday, the mechanic arrived in a short while to attend to it. Although the repair would take a few days, his arrival gave me a message, that there is provision to add to our wellness through the thoughtfulness of others. 

I wish I can stay with this view of interdependence! We are weak and prone to feel helpless, but for this protective cover which is all around us. 

In psychological language, each of has our grounding skills in a protected environment. 

I confess that the sound and fury of the wind yesterday made me anxious. What if there is power breakdown and one has to go without the fan in a hot and humid day!

When I saw the plants and flowers survive the wind, I felt encouraged about the protective cover that is all around us. When we feel affected in spite of that, there is still something beyond, which would still be protective. 

Oh, that we would stay hopeful is spite of the stabbing incident in Sydney that a killed a child and mother and Iran threatening for a war with Israel!

The sound and fury of all that is ugly is all around us! But I wish I can stay anchored in the sight of the fragile leaves and flowers survive the storm!

The abiding presence of God to keep our hope alive is best experienced in such vulnerable situations!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

The morning chant !

 

The two Magpie robins perched about 150 meters away from each other, on coconut palm trees in our garden, engaged in bird calls at twilight.  It was likely that the first one was a male bird as its tuneful singing was different from the hushed brief calls of the second one in the photograph. 

I remember hearing the reciprocal calls of Magpie robins from elsewhere in our garden on another two days during this week at similar times. 

The bird calls are the earliest indications of stable friendship between birds which might lead to courtship. 

The call is a hearty response to each other. 

During this election time in India, the news is all about how harsh and critical one can be, while speaking about the candidate from the opposition party ! It is a competition to win voters by criticising other candidates standing for election!

Do we have to drag the other person down and invent stories to denigrate a person! Instead, what if a  candidate can speak about his or her agenda of action for the next five years! I wish the language and tone would be motivated by the good work that one has in mind rather than attempt to score a brownie point by talking about acts of commission or omission of the other candidates. 

The Magpie robins bring another message at day break! Offer something of yours to others!

I wonder whether the thoughts and aspirations of people are driven by selfish pursuit of taking pleasure by hurting others!

The Magpie robins had a hearty language of giving and taking!

I kept thinking on this theme during the day. One can bless others with words! The words of James, in the epistle of James in the New Testament of the Bible, came to me while pondering over the language of communication. " For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well" (James 3:2) ! Later in the same passage, James, stated something in a moving language, " ..tongue is a small part of the body, and ...behold how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire" (v5) !

The Magpie robins had a language of hearty communication between themselves!

I carry that message within me!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Growth and the environment!

The first photo in both the set of flowers were taken about two weeks ago. The second photos were taken about two weeks later. 

I did not anticipate to see more flowers, but new buds kept appearing and opening to make both the bunch of flowers different at the end of two weeks. 

During the two weeks the plants received the regular care-watering and protecting them in shade, as the temperature soared high during the day. 

 

I have recently been disturbed by the hurried conclusions parents come to about their pre-school child with regard to their behaviour, attentiveness, social and communication skills. 

Most pre-school children in many homes are used to long hours of watching cartoons in the mobile phone or in the TV. Even the feeding is done while the children watch the animations in the screen. 

With so much of domination of visual and auditory overload to the brain, brain growth which is developing to form the different functions around 2 to 3 years of age, gets deranged. Instead, children have more of visual and auditory stimuli with less exposure to social engagements, language interactions, motor activities of movements, and play, exploration of the environment, story and singing time, or play based entertainments! 

No wonder they are less interactive, communicative or explorative! They were conditioned to be different by the way we altered their growing process by the prolonged hours of exposure to the screen time. In fact, parents notice that their child's language is cartoonish in composition, accent, semantics and pragmatics. Most of the programme that a pre-school child watch is in other languages than the language spoken at home.

The message I share with families in such situation, is based on the two flower patterns above. In two weeks time, in a normal environment, there were more flowers in the blossoms. 

Let me suggest that, instead of parents becoming anxious about the delay in development of some skills of their pre-school child, if only they can begin to interact with the child with gradual reduction in the screen time, by about three weeks, parents are likely to observe a change in the behaviour of the child, with incremental interest in play, moving around in the house and outside to explore and get more tuned to a structure and plan!

Let me recommend that there is lot more in a pre-school child, which can be brought forth, when we take away the screen time and fill the day time with activities in which children ought to be engaged in normally. The surrogate parenting with the prolonged screen time is an aberration, which although looks comfortable to 'get the child out of the way' for parents to pursue what they want to do, is robbing a pre-school child of his or her childhood experiences essential  for normal growth and development!

In two weeks, more flowers were added to the few that were in the beginning! It is an object lesson to parents about child development. If only we can turn the environment of a preschool child to be play based, activity oriented, socially interactive, exploratory, participatory with plenty of time to develop the attachment process between the child and parents, most parents would find dramatic changes in the orientation and behaviour of their pre-school child in about 4 to 6 weeks. 

A child is born with an endowment of abilities, skills, and growth and development trajectory. It is for the parents to create the environment at home for that to unfold. The social milieu is what is needed for this to happen  and not a screen dominated ambience!

The picture of the flowers above would stay with me as a message about who a pre-school child can be, if he or she had a parenting environment, instead of the screen environment! Many children get indulged in the screen time because parents substitute their presence to their child with screen time. 

I write this with sorrow and grief, having seen scores of children every month in the recent years, more so during and after the COVID season. Parents engaged their child with screen time, when they worked from home during the COVID season. Older children had their on line classes, which legitimatised the screen time for children. The infants and toddlers by default got used to the screen time!

It is time that parents undo this by a proactive planning. 

All pre-school children are to be occupied in play based activities and not by the screen time! We limit the development of a pre-school child with over exposure to screen time and think of him or her as having a developmental dysfunction. That is exceptional. What is more likely is that parents deranged the developmental process of their child inadvertently by offering screen time as a  substitute for their interactive time with their pre-school child!

I get a feeling that parents are aware of this and a change process is in sight!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo) 

The strain of the day!

The flowers above inner garden show the brunt of the summer heat. Their dull, and worn out appearance make them stand out, among some other flowers below, which seem to withstand the 39 degree celsius of the day. 

A garden is a living demonstration of how the existential situations leave marks of stress!

The lawn below, has withstood the heat and humidity to some extent and still looks green and inviting. Although it receives the sun for most part of the day, its ability to withstand the scorching heat is worthy of attention. The brownish tinge is noticeable only in portion of the lawn. 

Some flowers bear the marks of summer heat; some stay fresh as before and the grass on the ground has an in between appearance. 

I became aware during my walk that our life experiences are similar. We feel the adverse impact of some experiences and withstand many. We have also mixed experiences of delight and strain. 

The way, I tend to process them, is by auditing the journey marks on my mood and behaviour, if possible on a weekly basis.

It was a child of seven, who helped me to see this in a new light. While he was playing in the sand on the beach, his parents offered him roasted ground nuts, which they bought from the vendor, who came selling it. The boy, said,' I need to wash my hands before I can eat'!

His awareness to follow a routine gave me an insight about the good habits we need to cultivate for our emotional wellness. 

Almost every conversation or engagement leaves some marks of awakening or weariness within us. They accumulate to create a bag of  pleasant and unpleasant experiences. I felt that I need to create time to open the bag weekly, to process and be emotionally revived to go on. 

This personal de-briefing is a restorative exercise for protecting our emotional quotient to stay open to welcome experiences ahead of us. 

Our life, at home, work place, social settings, and in the neighbourhood gives us first hand experiences of the joys and travails of life! It is when we process them, they get integrated as meaningful pathways to lead us on to a life of learning and growing!

That is why contemplatives recommend from their life experiences  times of solitude, as an occasion to travel inward to become familiar with our inner world of thoughts, feeling and inclinations. 

We become who we can be, when we grow in intimacy with ourselves. It is during such times  of interior silence, we become our own friends. It is then we discover that God loves us and is waiting for us to experience the fullness of life!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)