When Life Isn't So Damn Daily

My dad was riding along the crazy, overcrowded, polluted streets yesterday, trying not to die from a heat stroke or an accident.

Suddenly he was flagged down by an overweight cop.

"Follow that bike!" shouted the cop (in Hindi, I assume).

My dad is always up for a challenge. So off he sped. Unfortunately the two wheeler my dad rides is not used to carrying two grown men, one of whom had the archetypal Bollywood Indian cop belly. So maybe 'sped' is an exaggeration. Still, it went.

My dad missed his turn, still chasing the bad guy. (We'll go with the assumption that the cop was the good guy.) How often does a guy get to be a part of a highway chase?

Finally they caught up. The cop jumped off, and caught his guy.

My dad returned to life as usual. He had no idea what the bad guy's crime was. 'His not to reason why/His but to do and die.'

*********

I got a call a few days ago. Wait, this is actually unusual. Either due to my introvert personality or my inability to process audio information, I hate talking on the phone. Texting or face to face conversations work much better. Most people know this, so they don't call. I wouldn't be able to tell you what my ringtone sounds like.

Anyway, back to the unusual occurrence of my phone ringing. I subdued my initial urge to ignore it.

"Hello?"

"Hi, this is Blank."

"Blank who?"

"(Nervous laughter) Blank Blankity, of course."

"Sorry, I know so many Blanks... What's up?"

"Nothing... I just wanted to talk to you about something. Could we meet? It'll just take fifteen minutes."

I hardly knew Blank at all. He was in fact a guy from my sister's past (past being the operative word here), and we had just bumped into each other after Mass the previous week.

Mystified, I agreed.

He turned up that evening, and handed me a fancy looking bag which contained a box of Ferrero Rochers. (I just had to look up that spelling, and found out that it's Italian chocolate.)

He sat in my living room for a while, while I talked too much. He said he was interested in supporting the volunteer work that I do for the church, since 'things were going well' for him. After he left, I reviewed. Random guy turns up, gives me chocolate and offers me a donation.

I do have an interesting life.

Of course, my suspicions were confirmed about his motives when he called my sister the next day to try to meet her, and after being deflected, TURNED UP AT OUR DOORSTEP.... WITH HIS MOTHER.

Fine, my sister's life is more interesting than mine. But at least I got the Ferrero Rochers.

(I need to exercise.)

Seven Quick Takes 3: Beauty and Good Stories

----1----

So I have come to the conclusion that my blog lacks beauty. I originally decided I didn't want to post pictures, because it's so much easier to post pictures than actually write. I know how tempting it is to post a cheery 'Here you go- A thousand words' to disguise my real message of  'I'm too lazy or sleepy to gather my thoughts and write a real blog post'. But then Grace said she doesn't read blogs without pictures, so I gave up my high-minded principles. Here's beauty (Free haiku included):

Outside my window 

Who would guess

Chaos lies below?

---2---

Something I usually enjoy getting from blogs I read are links to interesting or well-written articles... with a good description that gives me a reson to click on the link. Jennifer Fulwiler often does it, and even has another website completely devoted to links. 

So every now and again, I think I will do the same. Here's the first one- My $3 Lesson in Christianity.

Matthew Archbold doesn't usually write a lot of personal stories. This is an encounter he had with real Christian love at a train station in the South (of America). It's the kind of story you can't stop yourself from describing as 'heartwarming'. A real story, real people, real Christianity. This is where theology stops being something you read about, and something you start living. I wish more Catholics would write like this. I wish I did.

---3---

Speaking of telling good stories, nothing beats reading aloud to a bunch of wide-eyed, fascinated kids. Yup, it was story time with our crazy slum summer club children. I think I would like to be a professional storyteller. It's a little bit like weaving magic spells (you know, the good non-evil type of magic) and drawing children into another world. I love watching their expressions as they unconsciously mimic mine.

Notice all the brown-skinned characters I put in? Why do all our storybooks and fairies and princesses have white skin? Even 'skin colour' in crayon boxes is peach! Not MY skin colour!

---4---

Here's another great story- Stone Soup from Abigail's Alcove.

What do you do when you are out of food, and you're willing to be creative (and humble)? Throw a Stone Soup party, of course! This is an easily readable real life parable, and with a message so apt for people trying to follow Jesus: "I used to think that I had to put on my best thoughts and feelings before I talked to Jesus. Sort of like putting on a nice dress to go to church. I didn't dare talk to Jesus when I was angry, bitter, put out or feeling stepped on...."

"I gave Jesus my smallest, meanest prayer to have a better relationship with Person X," I said. "The poorer the prayer the more He responds with grace and spiritual gifts!"

I'm the queen of small, mean prayers, so I know exactly what she's talking about.

---5---

Okay, more beauty.

This is where I'm heading with my family to escape the summer heat. It's every bit as cool and refreshing and green as it looks. Oh yeah.

---6---

Here's an old favourite- The Story of a Friendship by Jennifer Fulwiler.

Another story about Christianity in real life with a helping of small, mean prayers- and 'the fingerprints of God are all over this situation'. Annoying kids who ring the doorbell as a prank to annoy tired mother. Who'd have thunk God could forge a beautiful friendship out of that?

---7---

What, we aren't done yet? Looks like I'm going to have start using my camera a little more often. Okay, number 7 is for you.

Do you have any favourite stories out there on the world wide web? The ones I've used are stories I saved years ago, and pulled out of my dusty 'Good Reads' folder just for you. Do you have any I can add?

And we're done! Head over to Jennifer's blog for more Quick Takes.

What's In a Hug?

I'm not a very physical person. Most Indians aren't. Spontaneous hugs are pretty unusual. It's not a part of our culture. Or most Indian family cultures. (Ooh look, I DO have something in common with most Indians.) I still remember a friend casually draping her arm around me when I was 14... and how strange I found it. 'Free Hugs' would not be a good idea on an Indian street.



Indians not only avoid hugs, but often even handshakes. At Mass, we fold our hands and bow slightly, in the 'Namaste' posture at the sign of peace.

There are people who hug. But some huggers repel me- because their hugs are fake. They don't mean what they're supposed to mean. Sometimes they create a false sense of closeness. I can't hug you if I don't know you. Or they remind me of air kisses. I can't hug you if you're just hugging me because that's what your social convention tells you to do. The kind of hug says a lot about what's in your mind. If it's brief, controlled, tense... it's not a real hug. Just say hi instead.

And then there are the creepy guy-huggers, who use hugs to force intimacy on unwary girls. Ugh. Keep away from me. Hugs from people who are not used to hugging as a healthy way of expressing affection are creepy hugs. I'd rather get an awkward shoulder pat than a creepy hug.

The wrong kind of hugs make me want to stay away from hugs. But also, I'm just not a hugger.

But here's the thing. We NEED hugs. I need hugs.

Well, we need whatever a hug really is. What is a hug? What's happens when one person envelops another in their arms?

Contact. Physical affirmation that I'm not alone. Connection, Intimacy. Touch. One-ness. Being drawn out of 'me' into 'us'. Community. A taste of being loved- One of the most basic human needs. A glimpse of heaven.* Being drawn out of isolation. An unspoken 'I'm with you'.

After my two nieces came into my life, I learned a lot more about how important meaningful physical contact is... for them and for me.

My three year old niece is not a hugger. She's kind of like me- does her own thing, will only love on her own terms, when she feels like it, how she feels like it. When I beg for a hug, she runs away and flashes that mischievous grin at me. She doesn't cling, or beg to be carried all the time.

But after a while she comes to me.

"Now I'll be your baby. With a blanket."

At first, I wasn't sure what the game involved. She curled up in my arms, her body cradled against mine, a bed sheet wrapped around her. And that was it. She stayed there for fifteen minutes, occasionally cooing a little. And then she continued with life as usual. Every time we hang out, we have to play 'baby' for a while. She found a way to soak up the love, the closeness, the physical reminder of a deeper truth- she is loved.

I need to find a way to get that more often. And give that more often. Even if it's not my default impulse.


Betty Duffy recently wrote an blog post called 'Strength for loving':

Before my husband leaves for work, I have recently begun asking for a hug. My husband and I both are life-long touch-me-nots. We've often congratulated ourselves on this feature in our relationship–” Aren't you glad we don’t have to touch each other all the time? How do people get anything done?”

Lately, however, it has become essential for me to be wrapped in someone and something bigger than myself. I just want to get to the core of us, where the presence, God-willing, sometimes is.  

 At the Resurrection Christ told Mary Magdalene “Stop hanging onto me.” And my husband occasionally follows in the footsteps of the Lord. “How long is this going to take?” he wants to know. He’s holding a cup of coffee, which I take and set on the counter. At this point I have often not dressed or brushed my teeth. I’m still wearing my glasses, and I can see that this is a great sacrifice for him to be receptive to this outside object interfering with his forward motion. Inertia is the enemy of love.

“Ten seconds,” I say, as he submits, possibly counting inwardly. “It’s good for me. It’s probably good for you too.”

I am recalling the Irish brogue of a priest I once heard talking about men who have forgotten how “to use their strong arms for loving.”

Strength is for loving. And those ten seconds supply me with most of my needs for the day. I recall this sensation, when the little boy with the lego tractor has been following me around the room. Anywhere I sit down, he sits down too. 

“Don’t you want to play?” I ask him.

“No.” He weasels his feet under my thigh, which feels irritating to me. Toes pinch.

So I put down what I’m holding, whatever it is, and hug him for ten seconds. Unlike some of my other kids, he doesn't protest. Then he slips to the floor, tractor in hand, and pushes it out of the room. (Read the whole thing here.)

Go hug someone today.

*"Heaven is a hug that lasts forever." Says Family Circus.
**"We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth." Says Virgina Satir, a psychotherapist

Tolerance Vs. Love

Always something new to learn in India: One of my ex-students applying mehendi to my hand

Tolerance is the highest virtue in India. I know that it is a reaction to problems between religious communities, riots, etc. So we learn during our Value Education class in school that we should tolerate different religions, customs, cultures, etc. You do it your way, I do it mine. No one is better, no one is worse. Unity in diversity. All that stuff.

Tolerance is good if it means accepting difference, and not expecting everyone to be a clone of you. India is blessed with diversity. There is always something new to learn, a dish to taste, a celebration to enjoy, an insight to appreciate. If tolerance means accepting that 'different' is not always 'bad', then yay tolerance!

But is tolerance meaning 'who can say what's right or wrong, so let's all just get along' always right? (Yes, I see the problem with that question- IS there even a 'right' in most people's idea of tolerance?)

Sometimes you need a little intolerance. Evil should never be tolerated. Nobody says, "I don't agree with it personally, but everyone has to make their own choices" when they hear about rape.

So I suppose what it comes down to is what we consider 'evil'. But at least the tolerance-preachers should agree that even they don't tolerate some things. Illiteracy, poverty, inequality, injustice, dowry-deaths, female infanticide, domestic abuse, yeah, let's not tolerate those 'differences'.

The other question is- is tolerance always loving?

Christians are called to more than tolerance. Tolerance is the lowest level of coexistence. I can watch people make bad choices, hurt themselves, and 'tolerate' them. That's actually a LOT easier than love. In fact, as an introvert who hates initiating social contact, tolerance sounds awesome! It's none of my business, AND LOOK, I'M SO TOLERANT!

Many years ago when I was a child, we had a watchman who lived with his family in a small shack next to our apartment building. He had a drinking problem. One night we heard his drunken shouting and the terrified screams of his wife as he hit her.

Tolerance said "It's his family, his life. We shouldn't interfere."

Love said, in the voice of my mum to my dad, "Do something!"

Some of the men from my building went with my dad, and stopped him.

If I really love my neighbour, I want what is best for them. Of course, most people say that we don't know what's best for them. As Christians though, that's part of our faith. That Jesus IS best for them. That if Jesus is true for anyone anywhere, then Jesus is true for everyone everywhere.

So love forces me to move beyond tolerance: to gently propose the truths of Christianity to those who are open to listening, to offer to pray for those who struggle, to listen to the questioners, to guide the confused, to speak and defend the truth lovingly, even when it's easier to opt out. I do not impose, I merely propose. I may not win applause for my efforts. But love means that I'll do it anyway.

Love trumps tolerance.

Being Three

Hanging out with my three year old niece is always entertaining. We were ‘playing’ in her room, which consisted of me lying down, and being alternately tucked in by her, and being commanded to “Wake up! It’s morning!” Finally she lay down with me, and the following conversation ensued.

She: It’s your birthday party. I’ll call all your friends.

Me: How many friends?

She (thinks): Two.

Me: Just two?

She: Three!

Me: Just three?

And so on, till she got the go ahead with 100 invitees.

Me: What will we do at my birthday party?

She: Eat lunch!

Me: What else will we do at the party apart from eating lunch?

She: Sleep!

She knows me too well.

Me: What will we eat?

She: Noo-dulls! (Accent derived from play school friends)

Me: Just noodles? What else?

She (thinks): Chicken!

Me: I like it. What else?

She (getting louder and more emphatic): ONIONS!

Me: What about dessert?

She: ICE CREAM!

Me: What will we drink?

She: BEER!!!

Lol.

Seven Quick Takes #3

 -- 1 --

So now procrastination has become the latest thing, what with Grace following in Jen's footsteps and posting the 7QT links in reverse order. Good thing today was the day I was too busy with real life to have an early edition of 7QT all ready to post at 12 am. Now the real question is, is it worth it to wait till the end of the day (tomorrow morning for me) to link this, or just deal with getting lost in the middle of the MANY linked blog posts? Decisions, decisions. #firstworldproblemsinthirdworldcountries (<-- that's definitely going to be a post some time.)

 -- 2 --

Has anyone NOT heard about Gosnell by now? Is there anything new to say? People are asking good questions already. I think my primary feeling is that we need to be storming heaven, because this could be the moment that could change hearts... or make monsters. 'If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.' I wonder how many Germans in Nazi Germany had to face this moment- when they realized the horror of what was really happening behind the smooth propaganda, and had to make a choice to get out (and face the consequences) or compromise their souls forever. Like Peter Singer and others, whose philosophy justifies infanticide.

I do believe that most pro-choicers don't really know what they're supporting. But maybe they do now, what with breathing babies having their skulls crushed, spinal cords snipped with a pair of scissors, dead bodies blocking up toilets, severed limbs, and other nausea-inducing details. And of course the question is going to arise- what's the big difference to doing it to babies outside the womb or inside the womb?

I was curious about what the mainstream media was now saying about Gosnell, and I found this NYT opinion piece, It ends with:

To respond effectively to the doubts about abortion that fetal snipping summons up, pro-choice advocates would need arguments that (to rephrase Senior’s language) acknowledge and come to terms with the goriness of third-trimester abortions while simultaneously persuading the conflicted and uncommitted of their validity, and that somehow take ownership of the “violence” and “gruesomeness” of abortion (to borrow Harris’s words) without giving aid and comfort to the pro-life cause. And in the absence of such arguments, the pro-choice response to Gosnell feels either evasive and euphemistic, or else logically consistent in ways that tend to horrify the unconvinced — and in either case, inadequate to the challenge his case presents to the cause of abortion rights. But of course it’s possible that those arguments are absent because they simply don’t exist.

-- 3 --

Something the Gosnell trial brings to the front of my mind, once again, is that evil really does exist. Sin exists. They're nor just accidents, or mistakes, or bad choices. We don't know each person's culpability, but hard, cold facts like this sure force us to lose the rose-tinted glasses that make us think we're all basically good people, and we're doing fine.

-- 4 --

I'm going to stop talking about Gosnell. But not thinking. Or praying. Okay, that's a lie. I'm going to start praying. Once I take a nap.

-- 5 --

I was reading an article about Pope Francis and there was a quote from 2011 that I found quite interesting-

In a revealing interview in 2011 with the news agency AICA, then-Cardinal Bergoglio was asked about the Catholic laity in Argentina, and he answered with these words: “We priests tend to clericalize the laity.We do not realize it, but it is as if we infect them with our own disease.And the laity — not all, but many — ask us on their knees to clericalize them, because it is more comfortable to be an altar server than the protagonist of a lay path. We cannot fall into that trap —it is a sinful complicity.”

Of course, he wasn't saying that altar servers are not doing something good and useful, but as one commenter put it, 'I understand His Holiness to be saying that it's easy to be an altar server, extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, Lector, Cantor, chorister (as am I - in fact I have been most of these) instead of proclaiming the Gospel in the workplace, our favorite bar/restaurant/social club, family friends and society in general. I think he's challenging me to not see the more or less "internal" ministries if you will, as sufficient. I might do all those things, but, I still fall short of my vocation as a layperson if I do not then, "go in peace to love and serve the Lord" outside the confines of my parish building - outside the relatively safe environs of the comfortable community, even while being a real evangelizing force even there, where so much complacency and dissent still prevails. My true vocation is less proclaiming the Word in the Church and far more to proclaim and live it everywhere else.'

I agree. Mission and service is more than reading at Mass. Especially in India, we tend to stay in our little in-group, and think we're doing good. Mission means 'being sent OUT'!

-- 6 --

Speaking about mission, I'm super excited about a short summer programme I'm organizing in a slum close to my home. In spite of cramped quarters, paint everywhere, crazy kids and an opportunity for everyone to laugh at my pathetic Hindi skills, it's been going well. You know how people say that Jesus came for the poor and the rich, that we should reach out to the rich too? Well, my theory is that you go to the rich... and take them to the poor. Both will be changed.

-- 7 --

I want to do more exercises in creativity with kids. In most Indian schools, uniformity is far more important than creativity. So 'art class' meant the teacher drew a picture on the blackboard, and everyone copied it as best they could. I kid you not. That was my experience through my entire school life. You ask most Indian kids to draw a picture, and guess what they'll draw? The SAME picture- hills in the background, sun peeping out, trees in the middle and river in the front. And blue clouds. (Why doesn't anyone look upwards and nptice the blue SKY and white CLOUDS??) Thankfully, we didn't get that today during our t shirt painting activity. We did however get two Angry Birds, one 'I love Michel Jackson' and another 'I love Miachael'. They know who Michael Jackson is? I guess I should be surprised I didn't get any Bieber fans.

Well, I guess those 'quick' takes didn't exactly live up to the name. Oh well, next time.

Grace once again is the enthusiastic hostess of Seven Quick Takes this week. 

Reason #1001 to Learn Hindi

So I don't tell the painter working in our house to close the windows.... because the fish might come in.

Machhar = Fish
Machli = Mosquito

Sigh.