The World Literature Blog

 on the other side of...

January 8 Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم challenge prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV

on the other side of midnight...

there is the first streak of the light of a new dawn

and on the other side of doubt

there is rest from feeling torn

broken and always forlorn

on the other side of the grave

is a world without hurt or harm

Fall January seventh Koshur Qalam poetry challenge prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV

I fall to pieces

I fall into your arms

In the fall

I rise to fall

I fall to rise

Part of my never-ending novel

Come with me, said Jesus, and I will show you...

I met Jesus at the crossroads.

Jesus, I said, I want to follow you. I want to be like you.

He laughed. He had a full laugh. The man of sorrows had a laugh that was different from that title that someone had given him. One more hat to wear and throw away, no one could box anyone in into being only this, that or the other.

Come, sit down here with me, he said.

Then he did a surprising thing.

He took a small needle from the pocket of his robe, the smallest I had seen, and a thread and told me: thread this needle and you can follow me.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle sometimes than a thread. I tried and tried but could not get it to go through the needle's eye. The thread seemed to grow thicker and thicker and the slit in the needle smaller and smaller.

Then he took the needle from me and put his eye to its eye and

laughed. His eye could be seen through it.

Then he threaded it.

Then he stepped through it and vanished.

After a couple of seconds he came back out of the needle.

Do you really want to follow me, he asked.

Yes, I said.

Even after this?

Yes, I said. I want to be like you at all costs.

It's not easy but it is simple, he said. It is a matter of practice.

Learn to do these three things. And you will automatically become like me. Thread the needle. Look through its eye and see what I see. Then go through it and come back.

I shall try, I said.

After trying a lot more times, I managed to thread the needle finally.

From easy to difficult first, he said.

He was smiling.

What did you learn?

To not give up, to never give in, to keep trying, to not get upset or angry at not getting it right the first time, or many, many times, and patience, I said.

Yes, he said and persistence, endurance, long-suffering, and perseverance and... He laughed.

And what?

I don't know, I said.

Humility, he said. You can't even thread a needle, then how do you expect to become like me?

Then I laughed too.

Aye, aye, sir, I said.

Now to the next two things.

Yes, he said. Before you go through a door you need to see what lies behind it. On the other side. Beyond.

I looked through the eye of the needle. The slit was so small but the world beyond was so huge it seemed to stretch away to infinity.

Wow, I said.

He smiled.

If you look, you will see. Alter your perception. And you will get clearer vision. You will see the unseen that others don't see.

I began to understand.

And the last thing?

That will take you some time. But come with me and see. First. Then you will pick it up. God is the God of the impossible.

How long did it take you?

Many years, he replied.

We both smiled at each other and set off. I left everything behind in a flash. No regrets. This was what I had been looking for.

(To be continued)

Today's meditation: It says "Jesus was faithful as a Son over his household" in the book of Hebrews.

Today morning Reuel came and knocked on the door. He cannot have his tea made for him or make tea for himself. I rubbed the sleep kinks out of my eyes and went down and said "ok Reuel make your chai." He was so happy being impatient as it being a Saturday we were all tardy to get up. He has no such tardiness being young and full of joie de vivre and not knowing what day it is probably. So we made chai together with the usual ups and downs. Then he made his egg by himself. I went upstairs and when I came down he was making his next dish the way he likes it and has been taught to. However it got a bit burnt and to my surprise he threw it all out as he did not find it to his satisfaction. Then I made him the same kind of thing. While I was watching him the verse about Jesus came to my mind. Reuel does what he has learned from Anu, Danie and Jo and Abi, and others, quite well even if by himself when no one is watching and is true to the spirit of what he was taught. He does not forget and does not regress and tries to be perfect at it, does the best he can, though he does not always succeed. He does this when supervised but even otherwise.

Jesus was faithful to God in the same way as Reuel is to his mentors, in God's presence he was faithful in heaven before he came down and in God's seeming absence on earth as an invisible being, and it is this hidden life of his, in his thoughts and unrecorded actions and deeds and works and reactions that pleased God to make him who had been made a little lower than angels for a time on earth the only human being to have the power to resurrect himself from the dead even after three nights and crowned with glory. Hindu yogis know a dead person can be resurrected after a few hours, if only a few have gone by as Jesus did, but none know anywhere in the world how to bring themselves back to life, especially after such a long period and proving it by doing it. Jesus is the only one who did it. We know that that was God's reward to him for his faithfulness to make it clear to all men that he was His Son who had been faithful over all his household in heaven, over God's celestial beings we call angels and over all who came into touch with him on earth, and even when he went into paradise after his death and Sheol or hell to preach the gospel to those there who had not heard it in Noah's time and to get the key to hell and to eat of the fruit of the tree of Paradise, mystical truths only those who understand things of the Spirit will understand even as I say them. A whole lifetime of being faithful to God in the hidden life gave him all authority and power from God over all in heaven and on earth. Down the ages, he has shared this glory with a few in each time and place and country and from each creed and language and ideology or philosophy or worldview who like him are faithful even to the death in obeying God accepting their sonship or daughterhood as of the family of God. To want to be in that number is not pride but good sense. The difference between him and others is that he wanted to be like "God who is light in whom there is not darkness at all" whom he knew as His Father but not through any shortcut or robbery as others want but by making himself of no reputation, when found in fashion or appearance as a human being, and humbling himself even to the point of death, death on a cross as someone cursed by mankind and as a common criminal of his time. Thus, it became a symbol of salvation, of the crossing out of the ego, not before man but God, a total refusal to do one's own will and only God's will instead, and bear God's yoga which makes one meek and lowly and learn of God bringing rest. This rest will also lead to resurrection not just spiritual in that your name will live on forever (even though you did not want it) but physical, not after three days but in the first or second resurrection and it was this hope that made St. Paul, for example, strive on relentlessly to see if he too could somehow lay hold of it, a kind of insanity to all, but not to ones who understand the inner life it calls one to as it leads to blessings for millions of others on earth as they suffer by lessening the suffering of others.

I have come a far distance from where I started which is about Reuel but to sum up my desire is very simple, to learn from Jesus and Reuel to be good in my inner life, thought life, and hidden life when no one is looking and not even or only when others are and one is forced to conform to society and so is not a bad person. Reuel does it naturally but I need to learn it. To not seek the honour of men but the honour that comes from God only.