About this blog !

It is only occasionally I come across in our garden five flowers in a stem of this variety of Lily, as in the above photograph. It made me pause and reflect! An uncommon sight has its appeal to arouse thoughts. 

Having crossed 5100 posts in this blog in 13 years, it is time to pause and express gratitude to all those who visit the blog regularly. I do this because the comments that I receive bring me encouragement and endorsement.

I made this blog biographical and reflective. I started writing to create a personal conversation within. It has become a space for becoming present to others. It is a journey inward that I make when I write the reflections. 

I feel grateful for the deepening of consciousness about life and its calling and the insights about life and living, which this daily exercise of writing brings to me. The inner journey is a sacred and solemn experience. It creates awareness about the direction of daily living-towards confessing, loving and forgiving! 

I wonder if I can request feed back from some of you who visit this blog, on its content, readability and its personal appeal! 

That you for your response!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Inclusive Living!

The Flowers in the garden survive the heat of the day and present themselves colourfully and elegantly!

They carry a vigour and exuberance which the heat of the day cannot suppress. 

They get rejuvenated in the cool of the night and with the fresh supply of water to the soil every evening! 

They have a short life. They live that season colourfully! They overcome adversity!

Generosity in grief 

A family who lost their daughter Aaslin Sherin Abraham, to a road accident at ten months of age, became the youngest organ donor in our state with the family offering to donate her liver, kidneys, cornea and heart. Her funeral took place two days ago. The parents while suffering the grief had mental space to think of other children waiting for donors of organ to continue living! A death gives lives to others!

(Photo from Times of India, Ernakulum-Cochi edition of Monday February 16, 2026 )

This news has moved and awakened the medical community that even children can be organ donors. 

Giving as a response 

Father Davis Chiramel in 2009 donated his kidney to restore life to an electrician, Gopinath and went on to found the Kidney Federation of India, which functions from Thrissur. This became a movement for live organ donation voluntarily! 

Living has an altruistic mission! One's significance is not so much in acquiring to possess but in giving even when it involves a risk! Father Davis, while addressing his congregation and public audiences comes across as a person in whose heart there is a large space and feeling for those who suffer! 

I recently heard the story of a child at middle school, who donated his savings of birthday cash gifts he received annually from his family, to help a child with muscular dystrophy in his school to buy a motorised wheel chair! 

Taking without giving 

While the president of the USA in the recent months turned trade to amass wealth through inflated tariffs, we come across some others who show the way by giving even when it hurts! It is because of such goodness and benevolence, we feel moved and touched to live mindfully of others. 

Car seat for children 

During my latter yers at professional work, one desire I had was to engage parents to use dedicated car seats for children, especially  for children below six years. One way I promoted to buy it was by offering to help them to choose a seat once they were in a shop, by responding to the suitability of a seat to allow safety for a child. Watching a child in the seat was a prerequisite to decide if it was safe and comfortable to a child. I have had some parents converted to consider a car seat as an essential safety measure for children. 

The awareness about the need of a car seat for children is rather low. The health car professionals do not take it seriously to make it as a campaign. It is disturbing to see children travel in motor bikes seated between parens without a helmet or infants, toddlers or pre-schoolers travel in motor vehicles seated in adult's lap without protection. 

I wish that just as  wearing seat belts are  compulsory for adults, the car seats would become an essential feature to promote safety for children in motor vehicles ! 

The flowers in the garden offer the message of fullness; human act of self giving sensitises us to live with a humane orientation! 

How comforting and delightful it is to know that even in the young mind there is a desire to be self giving! 

This is the hope that revives us to live in peace and hope!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

 

The growth trajectory!

The guava fruit has its origin in a blossom. One of more suits might emerge form the blossom. The second photos is of a guava fruit that is moving on to its ripening stage. The third photo is when it is still ripening, eaten by Barbets. 

The flower to fruit is a bout three months of growth process. 

One reason why we have some fruiting trees in the garden is to attract birds to the garden. We do not tie guavas to pluck as most of them would have already been eaten even before it turns mild yellow when ripe!

As I reflect on this process in the garden, I get a sense of the silent events in the garden! A flower becomes a fruit often noticed! The soil nourishes the tree and the process of growth goes on during the day and night !

Finally a fruit becomes an offering to birds. 

Just as the garden is the setting for plants and trees, a home is the setting for children to grow up. A mother with her fifteen weeks old baby made a discovery that the more she sang and engaged the baby, the more the baby became alert, attentive and responsive. The smile of the baby became the delight for the parents. It is this baby who will be turning over, holding the neck, sitting support, creeping and independent in sitting. The baby gains these developmental stages and offers the developmental progress to parents in response to what he or she receives from parents. 

How important it is to give attention to children to blossom! I feel from the stories of parents, that children when accompanied during the early years, the response from children brings refreshing returns!

In a larger sense, children are our offering to humanity ! Each family on earth perpetuates life in the community by the children, whom parents offer! When they grow up to be adults they lead the affairs of people in each community! 

It is as much as children grow up to be men and women of character, conviction and calling, the society becomes a virtuous home to bring wellness to all ! 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

 

The giving vocation!

The cashew tree in our garden is colourful to watch with cashew fruits in different stages of development. 

The tree with its blossoms appearing in November has since been with young and ripening cashew fruits. The guava tree is also with ripening fruits. The squirrels feed on them. 

A tree gives its fruits !

A plant gives its flowers and fruits. 

The garden is a place where this giving is full expression!

I experienced how giving can be refreshing to receive! While visiting an ENT consultant recently, I experienced how the giving was spontaneous, warm and caring, in the way I was attended to. I felt that giving was with a desire to help, affirm and guide!

During two telephone calls yesterday, I experienced how both of them were truly giving by listening and guiding! 

To give is to encourage and affirm! 

The journey path that we choose in our lives can be sometimes met with unforeseen obstacles and demands. It is then a word in season or an act of kindness can make all the difference to someone who finds the going weary and draining! 

When Anna and I returned home yesterday after a week of travel, It was special to experience the giving behaviour of Dulcie and  Daphne. They wanted to stay close to us and hoovered around us with canine behaviour of affection! The giving behaviour is natural to them! 

To live giving is a way of becoming present to others!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Small, beutiful and elegant !

I noticed a pair of Cinereous Tit in  our courtyard yesterday, one gathering hair and fibres from the kennel yard and the other perched in the cable above and watching over its mate. 

Both of them flew to a tall nutmeg tree close by. It is the season of mating and nesting for many birds. 

With the day temperature soaring to 37 degree celsius many birds who were regular visitors or residents in the garden seemed to have moved away. The feeding station is no more occupied with their frequent visits. 

The one perched in the cable is likely to have been the male bird as it was giving away its bird calls. 

The Tit pair above timed their visit to the garden after the hair cut of Dulcie that there were strands of long hair on the ground, which the Tit was able to gather.  It highlights its observational and finding skills. 

A Tit , although small in size is immaculately groomed all the time to keep its body, flight ready! 

A small bird, but it too has its place and provision to live well!

This is the richness of the environment we are part of! There is a place and opportunity for every bird to live in its own way, although they have to be strategic to survive and avoid predators from hunting for the eggs in their nests! 

It was a pleasant sight to watch this pair of Tits preparing for their mating season! 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Wellness within !

Anna and I happened to meet Dr William Cutting at the Christian Medical College, Vellore  this week, during a short visit. At 92 years he was visiting places in in India which had become part of his formative years. His great grandparents worked in India in Varanasi; his parents worked in ChikkaBallapur and William and Margot worked in Jammalamadugu. 

It was while working in a mission hospital, he felt the call to be involved in promoting child health of children living in disadvantaged situations. After his formal training, he worked along with Professor David Morley at the Institute of Cild health, London in evolving the road to health chart which later became the growth monitoring tool globally.  

Dr Cutting was a regular visitor to India in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Dr Rachel Chacko, professor of Cild Health at the Institute of Child health at Chennai was well known to him. It was she who introduced Dr William and Dr Margot to us. During one of his visits he spent a day with us at the Child Development Center at Chennai, and returned by saying that the facility that we offered in 1987 had a resemblance to what a Child Development Centre would offer in the United Kingdom. Since then he kept in touch, encouraging and sharing his thoughts about advancing the facility to be a training facility for Paediatricians in child development. 

During his next visit in 1994, he had met the director and the Medical Superintendent of the Christian Medical College, Vellore to encourage them to invite us to come to CMC to start a unit of Developmental Paediatrics. Dr V.I.Mathan, invited us to CMC, when he became the director, to start the Developmental Paediatrics Unit through a MOU with ASHIRVAD. That is how the child development Centre at Chennai got incorporated to start the first academic unit of this speciality in a medical college in India in 1997.

Dr Cutting at 92 years has phenomenal memory. He did recollect the season of three years of conversations with CMC Vellore to facilitate the starting of Child Development facility at CMC. Following the home call of Dr Margot in October 2025, It was his desire to visit India to places that he was associated with. His children decided to accompany him for visiting places and people that he had association with. 

Anna and I had an opportunity to visit Dr Cutting and Dr Margot in Scotland in 2021 during which time we had opportunity to recollect many experiences of involvement in child development. There are many memories and recollections that stay with us of that visit. 

What might fascinate most people who know Dr Cutting is the way he got immersed in the care of  the elderly by advocating movement as a way to stay well, after his retirement from his regular work in child health. He published three books and disseminated wellness measures for the elderly. He himself has movement related limitations now. But his inner wellness and zest for life inspired us when we met him during this week. 

Anna and I felt  moved by the way he lives the 'fullness of life' which he attributes to God and the experience of His presence in his daily life! His children and grandchildren make it possible by their encouraging support to him. 

One highlight of our visit to Vellore was meeting him and the accompanying members of his family!

Our wellness transcends physical limitations. Our wellness is an inner attitude and experience!

M.C.Mathew( text and photo)

From categorisation to wholeness !

The usual pattern in this family of Lilies is that each stem will bear four flowers, as seen in the photos above.  

The exceptions are that some will have only three flowers as in the above four photos; and  some bunches have five flowers as in the photo below. This is occasional. Even two flowers are noticed sometimes. I am yet to see a single flower alone in a stem!

This distribution of four flowers as the common pattern, three and five as occasional and one or two are rare ! This makes me think that this distribution from a statistical point of view is the normal distribution of occurrence. 

The five flowers and three flowers are outside the common pattern of the four flowers when viewed from the frequency of occurrence! 

The flowers with three or five add to the spectrum of the Lilies in a garden. 

Most of us categorise them as common and uncommon. 

But a better way is to appreciate the uniqueness each flower bunch represents! 

The tendency to label something as normal and anything different from that as abnormal is a pattern of thinking we develop as we have a tendency to classify what we see or hear into different categories. 

We categorise people based on nationalities, economic standing, religion, language, etc. 

The division of people as normal or handicapped prevailed for a long time till in the recent twenty-five years. Now those with special needs inherit a different status as those who are 'differently able'!

I wish the tendency for categorisation of people into different subgroups will gradually fade away! Instead,  to be able to see people groups forming a mosaic of humanity for us to dwell relationally and collaboratively is a calling !

How distressing it is to watch the subtle underlying spirit of white supremacy influencing the political thinking in the United States of America. That country was a hospitable home for migrants from all over the world, who came to pursue their aspiration in a climate which promoted opportunity for all !

I wish the differences between people will get subsumed under the umbrella of acceptance and cordiality because all of us live sharing the resources of the earth given by God, the giver all good gifts! 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)