Jim Lovell: The Apollo 13 astronaut

 I read the sad news of the death of Jim Lovell, the famous astronaut of Apollo 13, who mouthed the iconic words: Houston, we've had a problem. 

As I read about his death, I came across the following news article on BBC: Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 astronaut, dies aged 97 

Very inspiring story of the man Jim Lovell was, right since his childhood.  How he pursued his dream right from the early age of 5.  How he made sensible choices in order to fulfil his dream.  

Jim Lovell, the captain of Apollo 13

It was interesting to note that even though he never managed to land on the moon, he lived contented that he did his best.  He got to live his dream: that of being an astronaut.  

I liked one of the lines in the news article, describing the Apollo 13 space mission: The mission was Nasa's greatest failure and, without question, its finest hour. 

The crew of the ill-fated Apollo 13: Jack Swigert, Jim Lovell and Fred Haise

Goes without saying, the movie Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks continues to be one of my favourite movies! Of the many good and great aspects of that movie, is that the movie shows the whole rescue attempt of Apollo 13 as a team work. While the three crew members did best what they could, their whole back up team here on earth, spared no effort.  The movie does not miss out that effort of the back up team either.  

Proof of Concept (POC)

As part of our discussion today about revamping our approach and outlook of one of our skill training centres, I learnt some new technical aspects of the IT world.  

Most importantly I heard of the IT equivalent of what I've been blabbering about in my own broken English or religious language; namely, the idea of starting small, gaining experience and riding on the success of that initiative, scaling up or evolving it into something bigger and wider. 

In the IT market I learnt the same procedure is referred to as POC, Proof of Concept!  

Meaning of success

 Some interesting quotes from Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the mole, the fox and the Horse.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Kind," said the boy.

 

"What do you think success is?" asked the boy. 

"To love," said the mole. 

 

"What do you think is the biggest waste of time?"

"Comparing yourself to others," said the mole. 

 

"One of the greatest freedoms is how we react to things"

 

"Often the hardest person to forgive is yourself."

God saw their efforts

The reading from the book of Jonah wherein he preaches God's wrath to the people of Nineveh and they repent, ends with this particular phrase.

God saw their efforts and relented. He did not destroy the city as he had threatened. 

In our Christian teaching and preaching not much is said about efforts.  Most often, as in the competitive society, we focus on results.  Only a result which is a successful or profitable is considered good and worthy.  The efforts alone do not count for anything much.  But for one on a journey, the effort itself is valuable.  The experience and the learning from the journey is as important, if not more, than reaching the destination.

God certainly counts our genuine efforts, irrespective of the outcome.  Like in all matters of education and evangelisation, to do our best is what we are called to.  Whether someone does actually become a scholar or gets converted to the faith is the job of the Holy Spirit. 

God's failure

God always does the right thing. His choice is never wrong.  Therefore he always succeeds.  Wrong!  Just because He does the right thing and his choice is for the good, does not mean that God always succeeds.  He does fail.  

The choice of Saul is a perfect example.  Yahweh chooses him from among all the Israelites to be the first king of the Jews.  Yet he does not complete his life-long tenure.  Within a dozen years (biblically and historically there is no definitive proof of the exact period of his reign) he is ousted by David, again chosen by Yahweh himself.  Saul a chosen protege of God does not live up to His standards and is therefore replaced by David.  One might state that it is Saul who failed, not God.  But couldn't have God chosen a better person, someone who would not fail so quick?  After all, when God did choose Saul, he was the best in the whole of Israel.  But was he? 

We often think that God chooses the best.  Therefore they are not bound to fail or fall.  The truth is far from it.  He actually chooses the most unlikely of all people.  His choice is based not on who they will be, but who they are at that moment.  And most certainly, his measurement of 'best' is way  different our human standards.  Moses was not a real prince.  Daniel a commoner.  Saul was an obedient son.  David was a simple shepherd.  John the baptist, a mendicant.  Mary, a nobody.  His choice and assignment of responsibilities empowers them with greater possibilities of actualising their potential.  God lets them be.  He does not circumvent situations and manipulate events to prove his choice right and best all the time.  He lets the one chosen chalk out his or her way, merely assuring them His abiding presence:  "The Lord is with him/you!"

Jonah is 'religiously' upset

Jonah goes and preaches to the people of Nineveh and he does a great job.  He delivers God's message to the best of his ability.  He understands what it means and communicates it effectively to all the people.

Unfortunately he appropriates the job and the message as his own!  It is a familiar scenario.  When one gets so involved in a task, even though it is not of one's own responsibility, one is likely to treat the task and everything involved in it personally.  So naturally when God changes his mind and does not bring about the destruction he has promised, Jonah is upset.  Perhaps if I were in his place, I too would have felt the same.

Take the unlikely scenario of God carrying out what he initially planned to do to Nineveh.  Destroy it.  Then naturally Jonah would go about saying, "See, I told them so!"  He would have happily taken the credit. That's how we humans normally work: quick to take credit for success but reluctant to acknowledge failure.

What Jonah suffers from is a typical sickness of religious and priests.  Taking God's work as one's own, leaving nothing to God!  The former part of the process is good, not the latter.  We need to realise that God is incharge.  It is primarily his work that we are upto.  

Overcoming obstacles

One of the pitfalls people over forty fall into is thinking that it is too late. It is an old cliche but the simple fact is that it is rarely too late for anything.

Some years ago a man over sixty was offered US $ 200,000 for a restaurant-motel-service station business that he'd spent his life building up.  He turned the offer down because he loved the business and wasn't ready to retire yet.

Two years later, at age sixty-five, he was flat broke with no income to look forward to but a small Social Security check each month.  The state had built a new highway bypassing his business and he lost it.  Most people would have been crushed by such a blow, but he refused to give up.

Instead he took stock.  There was one thing he knew how to do - fry chicken.  Maybe he could sell that knowledge to others. He kissed his wife good-by and in a battered old car, with a pressure cooker and a can of specially prepared flour, set out to sell his idea to other restaurants.  It was tough going and he often slept in the care because there wasn't enough money for a hotel room.

A few years later he had built a nationwide franchised restaurant chain called Kentucky Fried Chicken.  The man was Colonel Sanders.

Daily commitment

No honourable feat is the result of a single spontaneous instant decision. It precedes many such small decisions for that one great act to appear spontaneous.  So is a grave mistake or mortal sin.  No one makes such a sin, without previously indulging oneself in petty mistakes and compromises, which eventually lead one to the 'big error'.

So how to achieve great merit or virtue?  Or how to avoid landing in the 'big error' or 'grave danger'? Mind the small, daily decisions and acts.  What you decide at each relaxed, calm and serene moment is what you will eventually decide later when under duress or strain.

Make hay while the sun shines!

Motivation and Success

Extracts from 'Williams driven by a deeper purpose' by Matthew Syed in The Times of February 1, 2017 (p. 60)

We are motivated to do amazing things not when we are within our comfort zone, but when we seek a wider purpose, often (but not always) discovered in adversity. As Orson Welles put it in the Third Man: "In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had fiver hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." 

As Frankl put it: "Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself."

Read the full article here.  

Dealing with success

From Markings, of Dag Hammarskjold...

To rejoice at success is not the same as to take credit for it.  To deny oneself the first is to be a hypocrite and a denier of life; to indulge oneself in the second is a pleasure for children which will keep them from growing up. 

Praise... the right kind

I came across a very interesting and highly educative RSA doodle about the link between praise and learning.  The basic premise is about what are the success indicators, the educators or adults endorse? We may praise a kid for being smart ... and possibly ruin his future efforts or praise the kid for his effort and keep alive the innovative streak in him.  It is ultimately important to challenge and help children try different and difficult tasks and all along praise the effort, not the results or the already gifted skills.

Some profound insights from the video: 

• Praise the process rather than intelligence itself.
• The latter leads children to a performance or achievement oriented direction; the former (praise for process) leads to further efforts, even if the child suffers setbacks or failures.
• The focus is to help children stay engaged and eager to learn, rather than achieve results.
• When a child says 'it is boring', it actually means the child is afraid to try!
• Convey a value system to children (that hard work is more valuable than rank; that effort is more fulfilling than appearing smart; that honing one's skill is better than resting on one's talent...)
• Keep alive the learning curve... learn at all times and at all costs.

Insights from the Parable of the Vine

This morning we had a reflection and sharing on the parable of the vine from the gospel of John.

In the whole episode, something which is evident is that all along the vine is in touch with the garden and the gardener. Whether the branch is yielding or not; whether dead (burnt in the garden) or alive (with the vine). The gardener is also in touch with the vine... pruning, cutting, watering, manuring. Good lesson for all: Everyone is good and in the care of the Father... depending on our response to the care of the Father, is the treatment of the Son (pruning, cutting, harvesting...)

Abide in me... 
It is a natural human temptation – and an increasingly growing tendency among religious – to 'launch out', jump to action, engage oneself in activities. Because these are visible and tangible. These bring glory and name, among people and in the society. However the invitation is to 'abide in me'. Now that's difficult and a very risky affair. Risky because it involves a gruelling transformation. No escape. No dodging. No shortcuts. It turns you inside out and not at all comforting! Human as we are, we easily give in to the temptation rather than strive for transformation.

(In the light of the Chapter, a small distraction: We have ample opportunities to make this inner shift and we do go through them all – in fact, insist on fulfilling them all at the individual level, community level, province level. However without the real will)

Those branches which yield he prunes with care 
It is the tree which bears fruits that gets stoned. A sign of suffering and difficulty is that one is doing something worthwhile and different. If one were not to do anything, nothing is going to happen.

He cuts those branches which do not yield...
It is not enough just to be with Him but one needs to be productive too. Productivity is not necessarily an automatic outcome of being with the vine.

Success indicators

Our success indicators are all along the lines of finance and status. But none of us would state – leave alone acknowledge – this truth. We would die and kill to retain the tag of 'poor and abandoned'. The tag is merely to milk donors and benefactors... not for our own living style nor as a yardstick for policy-making.

Why always tie-up ministry with finance? I understand that finance is required for ministry, but not compulsory. We have somehow grown with the idea that if we do not have money, that if we do not have benefactors, that if there are no projects, nothing worthwhile can be done. I wonder how much money Jesus had when he went about doing good? I wonder when, where and how Jesus would have carried out his ministry if he too were to have been dependent on finances as we are.

Sick of the ongoing discussions, I started preparing a 'word cloud' of the morning discussions - that's when I was not reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:
property, new capital, cbse, expand, big campus, land, sustainability, use, money, earning, change according to the times, professional centres, facilities, finance, strength, funds, model,

Teaching - Marks assured!

Teaching philosophy - or for that matter, any subject - to a group of seminarians is perhaps the most unrewarding task one can engage oneself in (with the exception of what benefits one derives personally from the effort one makes, not much can be expected of the students). Most of the students 'go through' the curriculum only and only because it stands between them and ordination.  If this stage were to be side-tracked in any legal way, there would hardly be a handful choosing to study at all!

So I'm thinking of  a proposal:
Offer students the choice of earning 45 marks (40 being the pass mark) by merely opting out of the class. That would mean they need not attend classes, no assignments, no reading requirements and no tests and final exam either.  The alternative is to stay in class, go through the grind of study, fulfill enough and more requirements of the course and EARN the 40 marks, or more as per one's effort. Of course, prior to making this proposal, I first need to assure and promise them that there would be no repercussions, whatsoever, from anyone or any quarter at all, for the choice they make.  That's primarily to put to rest the conviction that most of them carry about in their heads that passing in the exam and subservience are two requirements for promotion to the next level of formation.  So if this is assured, then only those who are really interested in LEARNING, will stick on. Oh what a joy will such a learning - and teaching - be!  

Saying prayers vs Praying

Another beautiful point that I purposely dwelt long enough during our discussions in the Brothers' Congress was the whole lacuna between practices of piety and prayer. I was in a way happy that before I could raise it up in the general assembly it featured in one of the group discussions and so I latched onto it.

The distinction is basically the whole crux of the problem.  The divide is so real and wide but one can easily miss it or deny it altogether. The fact that we say our prayers does not mean that we pray!  So how does one bridge this divide, I asked.  Some of the answers that came up on the floor were the following:

• a sincere and personal experience of Jesus
• reflective silence (something slowly evaporating from our Salesian houses and customs)
• rechecking our success indicators by which we grade ourselves and others
• re-evaluating our value system

Success Indicators

One of the challenges the Brothers' Congress posed to its participants was about the whole notion of success indicators in our Provinces, communities and individuals.  It was primarily Fr Jose Kuttianimattathil who raised this point during his presentation and challenged the group if we were ready to change our success indicators.  Most often we have achievement of good marks and ranks, profit-making technical schools and farms, or award-winning apostolates as the role models of all our activities.  He asked, how about grading each other or collectively as a Province, on the scale of sanctity or holiness? Granted that it is not something as easily measurable as other 'corporate structure indicators', nonetheless we still can ask ourselves if holiness is a criterion we look for and work towards at all? 

Try growing up

I was watching part of Chariots of Fire this evening and was quite amused by the passion driving two young men for the same purpose. And just before I stopped the movie for the day, was the following conversation.  The context is Abrahams looses to Eric Liddelle and he cannot reconcile himself to this fact.  He's speaking with his girlfriend Sybil.

Abrahams (in childish desperation): I just don't know what to do!
Sybil: Try growing up!

That really is quite a challenge one must offer oneself once in a while, especially when faced with failures and difficulties.  As it is said, the quality of a man is tested not when he is successful but what one does when faced with failures. 

Three temptations

Again another insight from the book Jesus' Plan for a New World, especially in the light of what is happening back in my own community (with respect to my own role - or absence of it) and my own reflection on the Preventive System of Don Bosco, which was the theme of the retreat I attended last week...

These three demons are in all of our lives: the need to be effective, the need to be right and the need to be powerful or in control.  Until those demons have been faced and exorcised you will very likely not preach the Gospel; you will preach your own self.  (118)

Formation in the wider - or real - context

During the meeting in Goa one of the points that emerged and I'm glad was seriously taken note of, was the following:  that formation takes place more outside the formation houses than within.  Most often people think that the initial formation houses of aspirantate, pre-novitiate and philosophate are the ones that 'form' the young salesian religious... now no more!  They - and others too - are more 'formed' by what goes on outside the so-called formation houses... the Province at large.  They are smart and see that what is presented in the formation settings is the ideal but no one really is expected to live the ideal... that's what the message the whole Province, individually and collectively lives it without saying it. So a young Salesian or formee, knows that time in the formation house is only a matter of time!  Real life has nothing to do with what is said and done in the formation house.

I'm glad Fr Doss Kennedy raised this issue and questioned the gathering as to what are the success indicators, as Provincial and leaders of communities and as a Province we uphold.  It is by these standards and indicators that young Salesians tend to mould themselves.  Another way of looking at the same issue: what is the culture of the Province?  What are we looking for? Is qualification (be it ecclesial or secular) the apostolate or one of the means of effective ministry?

Lots to think and reflect about! 

Success is all about risks