The designs in the petals !

 

It occurred to me from the close-up views of these flowers that they are more than petals, but exquisite designs. The designs are the expressions of the phenotype of each of the flowers ! The designs on the flowers reveal the inner essence of which they are formed!

I have been following the public debate from political platforms in India in the recent three months, ever since there is an increase in the frequency of street protests against many irregularities in the functioning of the Election Commission of India. This matter is in the Supremer Court of India, which would make up its mind on the authenticity of these impressions. 

What concerns me is the language of aggression, defiance, accusations and confrontational conversation style !

This has violated all good practices that a sound democratic set up would be known for! 

I feel that the single minded approach of the ruling party and the opposition parties is to be in the position of power to 'rule' over the people. The language of service has faded away. 

I feel drained of any hope for political morality to return as of now because the oldest democracy of the USA is currently in turmoil where  what we as the practice is exercising authority to impose decisions that harm others! Its attitude that is borrowed from the mind set of the Israeli prime disinter is to 'annihilate' Iran! 

The flowers above share with us another language of freshness, and fragrance amidst their fragility! Their genotype is, 'giving, sharing and fading away' after bringing the colourfulness to our midst!  

A famous saying attributed to Stephen Grellet (1773-1855), a prominent French-born American Quaker is : "I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again". 

That is the sound ethos for public life! 

If only the politicians and the leaders of the nations who govern the countries have such an attitude of humility and service, we would have lived as fellow travellers voyaging together in a boat !

I suspect that the Indian political climate is so polarised now that we are a fractured community, fighting against each other rather than engaging together for the common good! 

The politicians become humane as they are called to be, only when they feel the pain of the 'have-nots' and engage the resources to bring hope who chronically live disadvantaged in the periphery! 

I present these flowers from our garden as a symbol to live remembering, that each of us is a flower in the garden of life!  

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

The moon behind the dark clouds !

The above photos are of the evening at 5.30 pm around our cottage! The dark clouds hurried in which unsettled the avians, who were on their flight path through our garden on their journey to the night shelter. The darkness cast by the clouds was predictive of an impending heavy rain fall !

What was obvious was the hyper-vigilant birds and some in their chorus of hushed bird calls from different directions in the garden!

Anna and I waited in the courtyard with a frightened Dulcie, who needed to be consoled and was insisting to go inside to her safe corner. 

While we waited, we noticed the clouds moving away and the twilight falling on the trees, followed by the moon radiant in the sky! 

This is why poets think of nature as a theatre of dance and action! What a transition of surprise in about forty five minutes, from the darkened clouds to bright blue sky with moon in its romantic radiance!

The evening brought a mixed experience: the dark sky and stressed birds followed by the bright sky and the moon leading us to the night!

The heightened anxiety settled into a peaceful night fall! This was a good way to close the week on the Saturday evening, with a message for the week ahead. The president of the USA is still talking about war and the 'punishment' he wants to impose upon  certain countries! 

But the message from the evening events in our garden was hope of peace and ease of life on earth, under the canopy of God's protective presence upon all the creation who dwell on earth! 

As we moved back to  our cottage after watching the moon on the sky, we carried with us a message that humans do not determine the destiny of nations and their people, but God who accompanies us through the travails and turmoils of life! 

What dwells within us is peace, hope, and love because that is what we received from our mother, when each of us was born ! We only moved from the safe environment of her womb into her warm embrace when we were born! 

Jesus of Nazareth spoke thus in His Sermon on the Mount: "Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?' (Matthew 6:26).

We live in the shadow of a promise, provision, and protection !

M.C.Mathew(text and photo) 

 

Becoming present to the moment !

A pre-school child who visited our garden practiced his counting skills  till hundred, by counting the number of buds in the flowering plants in our garden. He had to stop at hundred as he had not yet learned to count beyond that. 

This surprised me as I had not normally counted the buds in the plants, although I was used to taking photos of buds in different stages of their opening !

There are hundreds of buds each day in the garden ! 

"How can these buds be counted? There are so many of them", They were the words of the child while giving up to count the buds in the above tree! 

He stopped at the desert roses and counted the buds and said, " A small plant with so many buds" !

Seeing the Sunbird gathering nectar from the flower, the child said, turning to me, " Look, such a small bird"!

That awakened me to the sense of wonder he carried with him! 

That was a message worth pondering upon during the day!

How much of sense wonder I carry with me while walking in the garden each day !

I confess that walking in the garden with a sense of presence and nearness to what I see or hear or smell has been waxing and waning ! I thought of many occasions when I reduced the walking to a physical activity ! 

Becoming present and feeling connected to what we see, hear or smell, takes us to another plane of awareness about realities around us! 

When I returned after watching the jubilant sense of discoveries the pre-school child made while walking in the garden, the sense of wonder he carried with him was resonating within me! 

This is the difference between living fully present to the realities around and staying pre-occupied with our thoughts. The boy transcended his thoughts to welcome the moment and its surprises! He  walked to see, hear, and smell! He turned that into an experience that touched him and brought a consciousness about the richness around him! 

Being present to the moment is the first step towards the becoming journey of being fully human! When we live with a presence to ourselves, our presence can bring freshness and awakening of consciousness to others!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

 

The space and freedom to live!

I watch this engaging sight most mornings in our garden. How a squirrel follows the same path for its arrival, feeding and returning to its shelter in the tree above! Its visual-spatial memory is phenomenal!

The planned and orderly way this squirrel follows its routines and rituals lead us into the macro-world of a squirrel. I remember watching squirrels in a distressed behaviour when a Greater Coucal is in their vicinity. The Mynah birds are also a cause of concern for squirrels. The squirrels move away hearing their chirps. 

The space for movements and excursions for squirrels is restricted because of larger birds and yet they have their own comfortable way of being present in the garden. They are climbers of trees and jumpers between branches.The quickness and precision with which they do this, is a species specific adapted behaviour.  

When the squirrel was at the water bowl, a butterfly and a Magpie robin arrived in its vicinity.

The squirrel paused and looked around before it had its sits of water!

The vigilant presence and behaviour, another species specific feature of the Squirrel family! 

What engaged me further is the space and opportunity each of these enjoy in a garden. Although they are not always fraternal, they live and flourish receiving the shelter and protection! 

I felt moved by a sense of awe and wonder over how a garden is a home for each of them ! There is harmony even amidst the non-fraternal behaviour of some of them! 

Peace and wellness is the norm!

I read in the newspapers last week about the bakeries being given permission to stock liquor. There was a visible resistance against this that the government had to withdraw this decision. I heard a politician speak against this reminding the government that the one common single factor for disharmony in homes is alcohol dependence! The way he spoke was in a gentle manner, feeling sorrowful about many broken homes! 

There were indications of resistant movements if the government did not withdraw that decision. It speaks of the longing of people for harmony and wellness in families! 

The garden and a home are both symbols of harmony! 

A photo artist specialises in taking photos to highlight harmony as the call in troubled times! His photo exhibition attracts many visitors. People live longingly to experience harmony in their lives!  

When life is lived in such an ambience, we move towards the calling of fullness of life!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

The collective unconscious !

 

The above photos of different behaviours of flowers in our garden following a downpour caught my attention yesterday.

The first two flowers look soaked with rain drops. The orchid has water drops on the flowers but was not drooping. The last two photos of flowers do not show the effects of rain. 

Each flower responded to rain drops differently.

In a heavy prolonged rain on my way to the air port yesterday, there was a traffic block of at least three kilometres. Most vehicles waited one behind the other patiently. There were few drivers using every opportunity to go ahead, although they blocked the vehicles coming from the opposite direction. They added to the blockage even more. The unmindful way of some of them brought out the habits that we live by under stressful situations! In a traffic congestion, most people behave in an orderly way and some others disregardful of others. 

What is that which helps us to live by a value system? Carl Jung, refers to this phenomenon as the collective unconscious. Each community or society reflects this collective unconscious in its attitude, behaviour and response to stressful situations. 

I came across a Paediatrician working in a town, who devotes one day in a week who gives special attention to developmentally challenged children and their parents.  The few children the Paediatrician welcomes gets special attention on that day. This Paediatrician mentioned of this as an act of supporting the stressed parents with conversation and suggestions to find a pathway for a home based learning plan for the children. This initiative generated interests in the other professionals in the hospital.  There is a new consciousness about creating more facility for such children in the hospital following this.  The decision of a Paediatrician influenced the collective consciousness, which then becomes the 'salt and light' to gradually evolve into the collective unconscious, which provides the moral grounding for people to feel rooted. 

Father Davis Chiramel, a catholic priest from Trichur donated his one kidney to  an electrician, Gopinathan, 48 years, in September 2009, to save his life following the kidney failure. This generous act created the a social initiative through Kidney Federation of India to promote live organ donation and help poor patients who suffer from kidney failure. There are many renal dialysis units which came up in different parts of Kerala, where economically stressed individuals get subsidised renal dialysis. It is one example of how the collective unconscious has been framed and formulated by an exemplary initiative of one person. 

Our behaviour is regulated by the ambience of the collective unconscious and the personal response arising from the awakening the collective unconscious creates within! 

The collective unconscious is an epigenetic influence modulating social behaviour!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

A flourishing family !

 

The foliage in the trees in our garden during this season brings a colourful look with tender new leaves, gradually turning green to match the rest of the foliage.

Amidst these annual growth cycle of trees, the undergrowth in the garden has another story to say. The breeding season of Butterflies happens  concurrently.  

The trees and the wild growth underneath go through the growth cycle of life. 

In a conversation with a family I discovered  how the  family has evolved an orderly structure in their home to promote adult growth and the childhood formation of their two children. I felt fascinated by their focus, on 'we grow up together' ! 

The daily de-briefing time the husband and wife takes before bed time is a way of supporting each other in this growth experience. Their motto of this de-briefing time is, 'In listening we become more close to each other'. I feel fascinated by their optic and experience of shared growth experience. 

As a couple there is a structure  for each parent to have individual time with each child regularly and a family time at least twice a week, for conversation, board games and listening! 

The family is grounded in the art and practice of listening! They nurture each other by inward listening. I heard the mother speaks about, 'heartfulness' and not just mindfulness alone while listening. 

The trees shed the leaves before they have shoots of leaves to give a new foliage cover for the next season. 

This is a pointer to the 'renewal' experience in family life where we go beyond the existing routines to find fresh and refreshing beginnings of communication, trustfulness and relationships. 

The trees and plants have their seasonal renewal experiences! One evidence of that is the flowering and fruiting season which follow on. 

The signs of an endearing family life involve, growing intimacy, attachment, thoughtfulness, giving, forgiving and belonging. 

To me, this is the wellness quotient in family relationship. 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

 

Living symbolically !

This fragile Lily withstood the wind and rain of the last two days and stays colourfully in the corner of our garden near the main gate! It is a gift of radiance in the garden! 

It occurred to me that it is a lamp of hope in the adverse situations! Its inherent fragile nature did not yield to the wind and rain! Even in that fragile state, it has its inherent strength in its being!

This is a message of hope and value for many of us who feel carried away by the wind of thoughts of anxiety, loss and stress amidst the chaos in different countries of the world to whom the nations of the world looked up to thus far as models of development and good governance! 

There is more to this flower cluster above, as one bud is yet to open!

I felt awakened to trust in human resilience in difficult times. 

What Apostle Paul wrote in the book of Galatians chapter 6 verse 9 (New Testament of the Bible) surfaced in my mind: "And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart"(NKJV).

The Lily above became to me a  symbol of the calling to live soulfully, heartily and mindfully !

Living quietly and yet symbolically!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)