Profound alteration!

A Journalist's 'actual responsibility' was the title of the news article I came across in the Deccan Chronicle of today. I read the article for the title caught my attention. I thought the author, Roger Cohen, would speak of something that is typically professional. But it turned out he was speaking about transformation - primarily of oneself!! He begins saying:

... that to be a journalist is to bear witness. The rest is no more than ornamentation. To bear witness means to be there - and that's not free.

He speaks of his stint in Iran and has this to say:

I confess that, out of Iran, I am bereft. I have been thinking about the responsibility of bearing witness. It can be singular, still. Interconnection is not presence. A chunk of me is back in Tehran, between Enquelab (Revolution) and Azadi (Freedom)...

Yesterday as Fr Palli left the Provincial house after the meeting of the pre-cap commission, we got into a conversation regarding Hungary and David's murder, in the light of the new animation material from Rome (on the Salesian work with the Gypsies). Palli was not happy... "they are happy doing 'welfare' works, not really touching the lives of people and empowering them... standing by them in their pain and anguish... we are only applying balm..."

Being truly involved cannot leave us the same. I just cannot claim to be involved in any apostolate unless, I cannot live without it. The other day I came across the summary of the movie Goodbye Bafana:

...the true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner's name was Nelson Mandela.

Now that's what I call involvement... commitment... 'profoundly altered' beginning with oneself!

The incomplete parable of the Good Samaritan

While reflecting on the Parable of the Sower and the seed last night, remembered the goodnight that I gave to the students of Philosophy at Kondadaba in the year 2000. Distinctly remember sharing with them my mixed feelings about the perhaps the greatest of all parables: the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Somehow, I feel that it is an incomplete parable. Jesus merely spoke of the good Samaritan as a 'do-good' guy but I thought what use is that one act of charity. Surely it would mean a lot to the one Jew whom he attended to but did the Samaritan do anything worthwhile to ensure that another traveller does not meet with the same fate? Or would he be there for all those hapless victims? The more I think of it the more muddled it gets. May be he ought to have done something about the bandits. But what? Would he then still be called the 'good Samaritan'? Or perhaps he ought to convert the bandits - after all they are the cause of the whole mess down the valley. So you tackle the cause and you no more have innocent people falling prey to their looting. Perhaps good to think of this parable at different tangents!