Be good!

 

Devil - the hard worker

Most often, the Devil is cited as evil incarnate and that he/she has no good quality or virtue. The devil is said to be the absolute negation of good. 

However, perhaps he does have one virtue and that he is really good at it (perhaps there could be more such virtues). It is the virtue of hard work! 

None can deny any of the following: 

1. The devil is always at work.
2. He is consistent in his goal and mission. No concessions! 
3. The devil is creative and inventive. 

So there is something after all that we can learn from the devil! 

Making others feel at home

 A couple of days ago the readings of the Mass spoke of the only widow who was helped in Israel; then the only leper who was healed on the Jewish soil, and that too him being a Syrian, a non-Jew. The Gospel of the same day speaks of Mary as the chosen one to be the mother of the Messiah. 

What was special about the widow of Zarephath who was helped by Elijah?  What earned her a miraculous supply of food till the next harvest?  Her generosity towards a stranger. In spite of being hungry and well aware that sharing the only morsel of food she had, would result in the early starvation of her son and herself, she chose to offer the last morsel of food to a total stranger. She sacrificed.  She shared.  That too for a stranger. 

What was different about Naaman, the leper, that resulted in him being the only person to be healed by the Jewish prophet? He was open to the advice of everyone. He listened.  He listened to the advice of a slave girl who recommended that she visit the Jewish prophet to get rid of his leprosy.  He listened to his servants when in a rage he wanted to return from the doorstep of the prophet's house.  In spite of him being the army commander, he was open to kind words of others.  

Most importantly, even his servants felt comfortable to share with him their views.  They did not feel frightened or scared of him.  They respected him and hence wished him good.  This would have been  possible only because he was genuinely good to them!  

Young people

Two news titles caught my attention today... both of the UK (BBC) 

End of hedonism? Why Britain is turning its back on clubbing

Wonderful teenagers helped my son on Halloween

Two specific reasons: 

Both focus on emphasising that young people are not as bad as most often people tend to think they are. There is always a great amount of goodness and kindness that young people are capable of living and sharing. 

The other fact is that young people are an energetic lot. They are not usually satisfied doing the minimum.  With the right ambience and support, young people tend to achieve far more than what they themselves set out to achieve. 

Spread the good

 One of my favourite anecdotes: 

There once was a farmer who grew award-winning ‘corn’ (maize). Each year he entered his corn in the fair-competition conducted at the state-level, where it won a prize. 

One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him. Among the many great practices that this farmer had adopted, the reporter also learned something highly interesting about how this farmer grew corn… … and which made him to win a prize every year. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn… his best variety seed… with his neighbouring farmers! 

“How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbours when they are also entering into competition with you?” enquired the bewildered reporter. “Why sir,” replied back the farmer, “didn’t you know one of the important realities of life? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. 

If my neighbours grow inferior variety of corn, the cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn as well. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbours grow good corn. 

This is the reality of life that I have realized: In order to get the best out of life, I need to give my best to the other!”

The good Zaccheus

The episode of Jesus meeting Zaccheus is always an interesting read.  Somehow it has a certain simplicity and earthiness about it. Perhaps it has to do with Zaccheus climbing the tree - a joyful, children's play.  

However, contrary to popular belief that since Zaccheus was a tax collector and hence certainly a corrupt official, I think that he was basically a good and honest person, all along. First of all, to believe that all - everyone? - tax collectors were cheats, would be too much of an exaggeration.  Not fair! There certainly would have been some kind-hearted ones - at least a handful in a whole nation! Secondly, for one to immediately have a change of heart, that too so radically is not really possible.  That the confession and repentance was genuine, we know from Jesus' interaction with him.  Jesus would have called his lie, if Zaccheus wasn't speaking from his heart.  So Zaccheus would basically have been a good man, with perhaps some illegal dealings once in a way;  and that dishonesty would have been stirring his conscience over time.  The encounter with Jesus actually is the tipping point.  

And practically speaking, if he were that corrupt, repaying back all those whom he cheated, four times over that too after giving away half his property to the poor, would have made him an utter destitute! He would have had to borrow in order to repay them all!! 

Being good

Being good by virtue of one's merit is one way of being good.  Another way, though not the best, is to ensure that one is better than the others.  That way one 'automatically' becomes good - when in comparison to others.  Another way: in order to appear good, make sure the others around appear bad! 

The Gospel of the day, wherein we read the prayer of the Pharisee and the Publican, we hear of another way of being good:  making our best effort and asking God to help us be good.  The Publican does that and is appreciated.  The Pharisee too is being good but at the cost of making others appear bad! The difference could as well be between appearance and being. 

However, cannot really blame the Pharisee.  He was actually keeping all the laws that he was taught and all the religious practices that he was indoctrinated with.  So in that sense taking pride in doing what is told and from centuries has been practiced and handed down cannot be negated outright.  The downfall however is in putting down the Publican.  Being good oneself does not require a quantitative measurement of the others goodness - unless one only wishes to appear good, among others.  

Understanding health

The last few days have been a strange meditation on medicine, trees, fruits and health!  Even this morning, my mind was all about medicine and health and trees!  Where it ultimately led me to is to see how I perceive evil and that perception deciding how I deal with it.  It's difficult to explain since there are several things floating in my mind and it feels like a baniyan tree with not just one clear trunk and a couple of branches.  It is all a jumble of branches, trunks, roots...

However, one of the things that has been coming up over and over again in my mind is the notion of health.  Most often we associate it with physical wellbeing.  Sometimes also add mental well being.  However, we think of health as something delicate, something that needs to be preserved and safeguarded.  We rarely cherish it.  Even when we say we're healthy, we mean that we are physically fit.  But I think that's a very narrow understanding of health.  Health is to be measured by growth, not absence of illness.  And by the standard we measure health, so will our approach to it also be.

The same applies to evil - whatever that means and includes.  Rather than try eliminating evil, why not strengthen the good?  The medicine that we take when we are ill, if it is meant merely to attack the virus, is a very substandard and instant remedy.  Rather if it strengthens my immunity, already existing capacity, then those antibodies within me do the work of tackling the virus.  A twin achievement: strengthening the good and destruction of virus.  The former achieves only the destruction of virus, leaving my immune system still weak and vulnerable.  

An echo chamber

Read an interesting article on Aeon today: Why it is hard to escape an echo chamber?

As I read this article all I could think, at every instance or para of it was the present grip of Mr Modi on the Indian electorate.  The BJP that is presenting itself is very different from that of the BJP represented by Vajpayee or even Advani.  The former, was distinctly clear about its agenda, course of action and vision.  It made no veiled presentation of itself.  Everyone, not just members of the party, knew what its aims and objectives were.  Not so with the present BJP.  What it has succeeded indeed is turn the Indian mind into an echo chamber.  In doing so it has not blocked itself from 'other voices', merely branded them untrustworthy, corrupted and therefore not worth anything.  Far from doublespeak, or even momentary epistemic glimpses, the echo chamber sounds rational, interested in the truth, active throughout and resonates with voices; but merely endorsing its own principles.  Even the contrary voices somehow are so manipulated (not by changing their content, but by changing the mind of the listener), that they endorse the principles of the 'ghetto'. 

The solution out of this echo chamber?  Trust!  There are numerous voices that resonate in a society.  However we know not whom and what to trust.  Unless we begin to trust a voice and that voice proves itself trustworthy, we will only further entrench ourselves in the echo chamber. 

To be more fair to the reading of the article, I can even look at my own Catholic upbringing as a echo chamber.  However, as long as one is willing to look at, evaluate and even trust other contrary sources, is open minded about the authority of sources other than Catholic sources, am willing to be won over by the goodness I observe, acknowledge and appreciate in others, especially non-Christians... I would think I'm not an ostrich in an echo chamber.  

Beginning from Jerusalem

Jesus appears to his apostles and assures them that He is not a ghost.  He shares a meal with them and then explains the Scriptures and its fulfillment in him (may not have been the best time to do so, especially after a meal, but given the circumstance, I'm sure they were all awake and perfectly attentive!).  The gospel of the day concludes with these words of Jesus

Thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

Three weeks ago was Easter.  In these three weeks much water has passed under the bridge, especially in world politics.  Syria has just been bombed.  What course of action - or reaction - would follow is awaited.  And that is not the only tension and confusion in the globe.  Practically every part of the world is plagued with unrest and war-like situation.  Even the very place mentioned in the gospel is at the heart of some unrest.  In such a situation, it is ironic to hear that 'repentance, forgiveness of sins' would be preached to all nations, that too beginning from Jerusalem!  Really?

However, hope is always there to assure us of things different.  But hope is not the only thing.  There is the ground-reality of goodness too.  While media, national and international, trains its lenses on the war-games, deaths, scandals, and every sort of evil one knows and at times even of those unheard, there are the untold stories of good deeds being carried out by ordinary folks all over the world.  Perhaps there are too many to be spoken of or broadcasted and that's why the media chooses to ignore them or offer some only by way of closing notes.

And so we live, by hope and trusting in the goodness of humanity...

The marketplace: when good is bad

The gospel of the day witnesses Jesus driving out all those doing business in the temple and claiming the temple to be the presence of His Father (Jn 2: 13-25).

Honestly if Jesus were to take a moment to consider, he would not have been angry on those poor businessmen in the temple.  After all they were earning a livelihood, perhaps some more than what they should earn but still their livelihood.  Surely people coming from afar would not come with animals and birds for the sacrifice. Where on earth are they going to hunt and search for them. And unless they were sacrificed, how would they ever worship Yahweh.  Their whole visit to the temple would be futile.  So these businessmen selling doves and animals and offering exchange currency were just aiding the worship of believers.  They were doing good.  They meant no harm.  Not all of them would have been fleecing the devotees - at least no more than what happens everywhere! 

In our lives too this can happen: where worship in its existing form can actually prevent us from savouring God's presence.  What was initially meant to bring us close to God, and is still good, but actually leading us only to a perceived sense of sanctity and holiness rather than an experience of God.  We can very well "feel" holy while being far from being actually holy. 

Lent is a good time for us to review not just all our vices but our good actions and habits too and see how they help us in our journey towards God.  Most often, it is our good actions that prevent us from experiencing God rather than our vices.  

Feeling bad about doing good

This season of Lent so far has been a very nourishing time by way of reflection on my own relationship with God.  One of the most "haunting" thing that I've been meditating on these days is my own actions and their connection with my relationship with God. 

I grew up in a Catholic ambiance all through my life.  I was told by my parents, teachers, priests and religious that if I did 'this and this' it would show that I loved God.  All of these prescribed actions were good.  Going for Mass, doing penance doing Lent, being king and good to others, helping those in need, not being violent... Engaging in these activities meant that I loved God.  However, over the years I've discovered that merely doing all of these, while being beneficial, really did not help me know or come close to God!  I felt good about myself.  I was appreciated by others.  But within me it did not always help me develop my relationship with God.  Perhaps these activities had become an end in themselves. 

I slowly began to discover that if I inverse the equation: not, activities and therefore God but love God and from there flow activities, it was very liberating.  However, there is at times a sense of vacuum, a gap.  A time comes when you give up certain activities you have been doing all your life and are in the process of thinking what would flow from my personal relationship with God.  That gap period is a sort of uneasiness.  An uncomfortable phase.  You are no more doing the old activities that made you feel good. Neither do you want to do them because they really don't stem from your love for God but out of a habit, ending in itself.  Am I doing the right thing?? 

On the other hand, it is also a liberating feeling when you do things for love of God and not merely continue tradition to make oneself feel good - however good or noble they may be.  Perhaps that's the meaning of Lent being a season of spring, new life!

Among beasts and angels

Yet another proof of the way we need to see the whole world and not just bits of it and pass judgement about the whole.  The gospel of today speaks of the abridged version of the temptation of Jesus, from the gospel of Mark. In the short passage, there is one simple sentence which caught my attention this morning.

He was among the wild beasts and the angels were with him. 

My first thought was why have the wild beasts if they are unable to do any harm because the angels are protecting him.  Best would be to do away with the wild beasts and there would be no need of angels at all.  But then it struck me that Jesus would be all alone.  Nobody or nothing with him.  Taking away the beasts would mean taking away the angels too. 

Good cannot exist all by itself.  So does evil.  Taking away all evil would mean elimination of all goodness too.  That does not mean, evil ceases to be evil. We live our lives surrounded and intertwined with the goodness and evil.  What sometimes is good could actually be evil in the long run and what seems evil may turn out to be good.  At times what was seen as good would itself be seen as evil.  In all of this what's common is that one does not exist by itself.  

Building on the existing good

The Parish celebrated the feast of Don Bosco today. During the Mass the parish priest spoke of the life of Don Bosco. When he spoke of Don Bosco first meeting with Barthalomeo Garelli, it struck me that Don Bosco started with what was good in the boys.  The only thing Garelli could do was whistle - Don Bosco is happy with that for the first meeting!  He slowly builds on that rather than straight away infuse in them some of those virtues or qualities that he thinks they ought to have.  The starting point is not the intention of the educator or the formator but the existing good or virtue in the beneficiary.

Seeing this from my perspective as a formator, I was wondering how justified am I in demanding a level of intellectual calibre in the formees.  Whatever and however great and noble my intentions and motivations, if I do not start from what the students are already good at, then I will be riding against the tide all the time.  The student will see himself facing an insurmountable task without seeing the qualities he already has as an investment.  Now that's a challenge for the formator, especially if the number is large and the pupil of diverse backgrounds.  To understand each individual, find out his or her strength and then help them use them as a launching pad, is indeed a tall order.  But if I have a personal rapport with each of them, then helping them in their intellectual struggle will be easy.  On the other hand, judging them on the basis of their intellectual standard alone will be my short coming as a formator.  

Self-taught faith journey

The feast of the three kings, that Epiphany celebrated, post-Christmas has a very different touch to it than the rest of the Biblical history preceding it.  In a way it is a foretaste of the Acts of the Apostles, wherein the message of Christ is not restricted to the Jews or the land of Judah but begins to spread across the whole world.  (Or is it?  There have always been non-Jewish 'interpolations' in the Biblical history, right since the origin of the Jewish race. The story of Ruth, for example.)

Of the many things interesting in the narrative of the three kings the one that caught my attention yesterday was the part where the kings come to know of the birth of the messiah from their knowledge of astronomy.  There is no mention of an angel appearing to them and announcing the birth of Jesus, as in the case of Mary, or the shepherds.  There is no 'God-telling-them' as such!  However, they read the signs of nature and infer and based on this knowledge they come to experience the child Jesus.

This has an important lesson for us all: one's faith journey need not necessarily be strewn with divine revelation!  If one is open to the other, and willing to be led by signs other than ones approved by men, there is a great possibility that one encounters the divine along the way.

There is no mention of the kings prior to the event nor after their visit to the child Jesus.  Some wish to believe that they went back as different men, just as they took a 'different route' back home - I doubt it!  They would not have been very different from what they initially were.  They already were good, they only continued working on their goodness.  

Socrates' three-filter test...

Socrates' three-filter test...

News - Reality - inverted

Ever wondered why our news bulletins or newspapers begin with the most sensational 'bad' news?  Not just sensational but it has to be serious, mostly bordering shock and surprise, not pleasant, almost always about politics... All those events which do not qualify with the above characteristics are either not considered news or at the most given some page 12 corner space or the last one line announcement before the weather report.  And if it is a really really good act of some individual affecting someone's life in a very meaningful manner, and if at all the editors decide to air it, or print, it would be a once-a-way exception to conclude the news bulletin - "Oh, so cute and fuzzy!"

Well, one might say that it is how it has always been.  However, news is not merely about what happens, but how what happens is presented to have happened.  Most of what we hear, see, read and come across in our 'official' news channels is all coloured, biased and filtered.  No doubts about that. But why has it to be always so depressing and worrying.  Makes the world, the reality, as a whole, appear so.  Where is the balancing and good-will factor that overweighs it all?  Media not only presents reality, it builds reality in our minds.

Imagine a news bulletin which begins with the heroic, meaningful acts of some individual or a group, which positively alters the lives of others, either individually or in large numbers. Imagine if the depressing and shocking news is offered as a tailpiece.  What if the paradigm is inverted? Imagine what news reporters and journalists would then be after.  What would be the focus of the camera lens and the pen of a journalist?  Would it also not be the focus of the viewer, the reader and the consumer?  

It was good

The first reading of the day is about the creation narrative from the book of Genesis, where we read how God created the fish, the birds, all the animals, reptiles, cattle and finally the human beings.  After each phase of creation we find the author state that 'it was good'.

As I read this passage, it made me appreciate the goodness of nature.  The beauty, the grandeur, the intricacies and the magnanimity of creation. We breathe, eat, drink, move about and live every moment of our lives in the cradle of nature and hardly do we even bother to step back and see the whole picture.

It is refreshing to feel this goodness.  It is great to be part of this goodness.

Human obligation

From Waymarks (Dag Hammarskjold):

Your obligation is "to --."
You can never save yourself through "not to --."

The closest interpretation of this would stand to say that human obligation must be defined in positive terms.  Being good does not necessarily mean, avoiding evil.  Goodness demands more than abstention, or merely being good; it has to have beneficial acts, doing good.

It is indeed a good lesson for this Advent, as we prepare for the coming of our Lord, who choose 'to' and not 'not to'.

Doing good

From the book of Dag Hammarskjold, Markings:

A modest wish: that our doings should have a somewhat greater significance for life than a man's dinner jacket has for his digestion. And yet a good deal of what we describe as our achievement is surely only a garment with which we seek on festive occasions to hide our nakedness. 

This is not the first time I've come across this analogy of the dinner jacket and digestion. I remember reading a passage from one of Anthony D'Mello's books and him speaking of religion.  Can't remember it exactly but something to the effect that 'Religion does to a man, as much a dinner jacket does to one's digestion.'