Fallen walls!

During the last one year, the walls in the different places in the property we live in, fell following the heavy rain-in eleven places to be precise. As the rebuilding has just started, Sasi our domestic helper, took me around for a tour of these places, where the walls fell at different times during the last nine months! 

In fact it is during the last nine months, I too had a fall from cordial relationships with people whom I have known even for twenty years! There were a few with whom, I thought the relationships would remain intact, because we were engaged in a mission to uphold values and good practices. But even this rather hopeful relationships fell apart!

So the physical walls and relational links fell apart, both around the same time!

In fact one person because of whom I was dragged into associating for a collective activity inspired me to be involved by quoting to me the Nehemiah story of rebuilding the wall at Jerusalem, stated in the book fo Nehemiah, in the book of the Bible. Instead of rebuilding, it ended up me being blamed for all the unpleasant events of the period of time when I was associated with the group. 

The wall collapses because the soil gives way due to the draining water exerting pressure on the soil!

The relational links broke down, because of pressure to conform and consent to practices or choices which were not the best of options in my overview! 

What does one do when relational links are broken down! 

The Mason who is rebuilding the wall in our compound spent the whole day removing all the parts of the broken wall and building from a new foundation. There is a pile of old stones gathered which according to him are unsuitable at least for this wall. The wall was built forty years ago and the stones bear the marks of wear and tear according to the mason! So the stones would need their surfaces to be chipped before reuse.  He even excavated the earth to get fresh mud to fill the wall! The new wine in a new bottle!

The relational links can be rebuilt only through personal realisation, mutual confession and common resolve to trust, no matter what might be the disagreements! 

During that season of intense disagreement lasting for almost a year, I wrote letters, spoke personally and took efforts to have small group meetings. I mad public confession of my acts of commission of which I was made aware of.  Even that was used against me ! So I withdrew from usual engagement with all the companions!

Watching the mason at work, I get a sense of the laborious and attentive effort to rebuild the wall and proof it from any damage the earlier wall suffered form! 

What then are the safeguards for relational links! Keep building relational links, with trust, truth, and openness as the ingredients! When this value based mutuality declines, it is important to dialogue and persuade and when it fails, step back and allow the space for each person to choose and follow his or her way in the journey! That is why we leave some relationships after a while and build new relationships. Between Jacob and Easu, in the Genesis story,  there were several years of separation following the initial break down of relationship before they met briefly to accept each other, only to choose to go their several ways after that!  All relationships are transitory except marital relationship and relationship with God, who is the substance of our being.

So in the journey of life, I carry some fallen relational links. Although with most of them, I have occasional contacts, it is social and casual !

Let me suggest at the end of forty five years of having been associated with seven organisations, with two of them from their initial period, regard relational link as an opportunity to serve and do good! In fact it is good to do good even more to those who cannot and would not reciprocate! This helps us to leave the marks of grace and not of expectation! 

I lament over the broken relational links, because, at some stage expectations and aspirations creeped in, which caused me to drift from my calling! Even the banquet, in the parable of Jesus of Nazareth,  finally ended up being the gathering of people from the streets, lanes and by-lanes, a suggestion about who ought to be our focus while offering to do good!    

As I commence to turn back and read the pages of years of history of my life that have gone by, I realise that there would be regrets, pain and confessions...

Cardinal Basil Hume, of the West Minister, London, seems to have said before his home call, about the Benedictine years of long training as a preparation for 'life, living, memorials,  death and life after death'!. 

So these reflections are both a summary and new learning !

A wall consists of stone and soil. The relational links are a confluence of seminal values and acts of kindness!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo) 

   

Anitta and Tinu!

Anitta hosted a lunch for the department yesterday. It was her way of remembering her time with all of us for two years. The department misses her. We remember her and her husband as they build their new home.  

It was Tinu's birthday yesterday, which all of us forgot till one of the students, Neville visited us in the evening to greet her. By then we were closing for the day. It is Tinu who remembers our birthdays and arranges a get together on such occasions. What a terrible act of omission on our part! 

With three new others going the department recently, there is a new enthusiasm and enhanced activity of planing and collegiality! There is a sense of togetherness and bonding. 

Th department is preparing for its sixth anniversary shortly! Something to look forward to! 

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)

Coconut palms!

My parents having migrated to the northern part of Kerala from the 'central Tranvancore' as it was known then around 1950, came to settle in a village, Keezhillm. They came to work in two schools, in response to an opportunity offered to them to work in a setting, where teachers were not easy to find and the schooling opportunities for children was less than what it was in central Travancore.  

Having lived in rented house for a few years, they bought a land, which was mostly barren. We still live in the farm house, which was modified a few times. For Ann and me it is cottage for us now. Their first effort was to plant coconut trees in the property. They brought the coconut palms to the village! It took another five years or more before others in the village felt assured of the prospects of growing coconut trees !

Th first generation of coconut trees is at least sixty years in our property. During the last five years, we have lost about thirty of them, due to disease, lightning, etc.

Yesterday, while this wood cutter was splitting the coconut stem, to make firewood, he recalled to me how my parents were keen on farming. His parents planted coconut palms seeing the palms grow in our garden. 

I was around five when this was happening. My earliest memory of the coconut palms is of my father showing me to make balls out of palm leaves! I played with neighbouring children cricket and handball with the balls made of palm leaves.

I looked forward to the coconut climber who used to come once in three months to pluck coconut, when he would drop some tender coconut! The tender coconut was not available on the road side then, as it is now. So it was a treat to have a drink of the tender coconut and eat the kernel inside! Usually my mother de-husked the coconut when she needed one for cooking. She kept the coconut water for me till I returned form school. It was a refreshing drink . 

We use the firewood now mainly to dry nutmeg seeds! The coconut palms in the compound would get used as firewood after their yielding season of coconut is over! The serving spoons we had then were made out of coconut shells. The shells were also used as 'mugs' in the kitchen to carry water. There was no plastic mug at that time. The mattresses we used were made from the fibre of the coconut husk. The left over outer bark of the coconut was used to burn as firewood or left in specially dug pits to keep the soil moist during summer months.    

Since Anna and I came to live in this cottage we planted twenty coconut plants. We are waiting for them to yield coconuts!

Every house in our village has coconut palms, thanks to the successful farming initiated by my parents. 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Fallen but bearing fruit!

This custard tree tree was uprooted in the rain about a month ago in our garden!

Our gardener, Sasi suggested that we wait to cut it! He saw the prospect of the tree re-rooting itself! He was proved right!

I noticed custard apple fruits in the tree last week!

It is a lesson of some significance!

However broken one might feel due to the demands and trials of daily living, there resides within us the potential to bounce back to live life abundantly. We are endowed with the grace to overcome!

We are rooted in the Giver of life, 'in whom we live, move and have our being"!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

Art in nature!

Every morning Anna and I take a walk when it is possible!

A walk into the garden in front of our cottage is a routine for me now. 

I owe this habit to my late father, for whom farming was his second profession next to his teaching, who persuaded me to walk with him in the garden from my early days. I remember this as I was not allowed walk into the garden once I was dressed and ready for school. So it was as old as six years of age! It was his habit to point out something special each morning. 

One experience I remember during one such walks was the experience with 'touch me not plants'. If one were to disturb the leaves by touching, the tiny leaves would fold up and open up only after a while!

I suppose the interest in plants and flowers was planted in me at that time. 

It was during the recent years I got further fascinated by the small things in nature of great significance that I was not aware of earlier! 

I watch the dew or rain drops in the rose plant laves almost every day! Th surface and the edges of the leaves of rose plants are rough because of which the water particles stay glued to the leaves. I notice that they evaporate in the sunshine sometimes only by the mid day (Last picture)! So, for half of the day when there is sunshine, the leaves are protected from the heat of the sun! The leaves of the rose plants droop  towards the evening, only to revive the next day!

I wonder whether this art of nature of hundreds of drops which get formed on the leaves, in the silence of the night, can be reproduced by human handiwork of an artist! I asked the artist in our college and he told me that this was one exercise they learned in the initial stages of training in painting! To reproduce the sight of water particles on leaves! According to him it is not reproducible in its original form even with the best of efforts!

So there are some things in nature that are distinct and unique!

It is awe inspiring, is it not! 

All things have an origin beyond human creation!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)  

A protest!

This rider decided to protest publicly by pushing his bike through the main streets in the town, against daily increase in the fuel prices. The petrol price is awfully high, the highest I have ever known! With the government leaving the price regulation to the petroleum companies, there is a rumour that there is profiteering!

There were protests by bringing bullock carts in a procession to the streets in the past. But this person decided  to make a solo protest peacefully, however drawing the attention of many in the streets. I found him reasonable and effective in his approach!

When would a protest be effective! I presume when it involves  personal inconvenience without inconveniencing anyone else!

I remember my first experience when I had to resolve this for myself! The interns in the Medical college where I was doing my internship decided to go on strike when their demand for increase in the monthly stipend from Rs 125 to 250 was denied by the government. Soon the residents and post graduate trainees also offered to participate in the strike, which meant that a hospital with 2000 out-patients and 1200 in-pateints would have its service derailed!

I felt compelled to dissociate from the strike and continued working for forty one days till the strike was called off! It was a trying time with friends persuading me to join the strike. I was willing to abstain from day time meals but continue working, which was what I did. To me inconveniencing patients was a compromise on our calling to 'give primacy of attention to patients'! I lost friends and companions for a while!

Subsequently while in post-grdaute training in the same college, there were three other strikes. About one third of the interns, residents and post- trainees dissociated from striking as a means of protest! 

It is good to find a way of protest to draw attention on matters of importance when all representations or dialogue have failed! In a democratic dispensation, it is good to find ways to have our voice heard and noticed on issues of significance! But the bench mark is: inconvenience yourself when you protest, not others at any cost!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo 

A hill far away!

A view of hill far away from the high way at dawn !

I usually pause at the sight of hills, whenever possible. 

The hills are symbolic in many ways.

For me on that day, this hill became a symbol for quiet presence!

I was driving alone after a stormy governing board meeting of an organisation! I felt the pressure to consent to conform to an option chosen by a few on a critical issue, where as an alternative and better option was available which would benefit many!

Having been in the governing board for a while, I sensed that the pressure that came upon me, was leading me to a breaking point! As I was driving back, it occurred to me that it was time to bring this association with the governing board to a closure. But then I felt obliged to continue till the end of my term, which was few months from then.

It was during such a conflict within, I paused to view this hill. Except the green canopy of  trees over the hill and some rocks between them, I was not able to get any details of the hill. But its quiet presence, a home for birds, reptiles, vegetation, stones, etc. drew my attention. It allows water to drain to the valley during the rainy season to supply water to the waterbodies. It even stops the rain clouds to allow the rain to fall in the valley! A hill is therefore is a a place of help and hope!

I did say farewell to my role in the governing board! It was then I realised  that I was carrying a load that was not my calling any more! I discovered a calling that was awaiting me for quiet presence and yet be generous with acts of kindness!

It is now ten months since that experience. I reached the retiring age since then, but was asked to continue to be involved in the department where I work at the medical college. It is during these ten months, I experienced some good turning points for the continuity and stability of the department. It became a place for quiet presence to bring help and hope!

It is from the valley we can look upto a hill! I was in a valley emotionally and relationally, when this hill drew my attention. That made all the difference since then! From a valley to a hill in my inner orientation!

I have a better insight now of what the Psalmist in the Bible meant, when he sang, 'I look unto the hill from where my help comes'!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)