Today's meditation
John 9
1
As Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth.
2
His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
3
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.
4
As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.
5
While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
Then Jesus healed him.
10“Please, Lord,” Moses replied, “I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since You have spoken to Your servant, for I am slow of speech and tongue.” 11And the LORD said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Or who makes the mute or the deaf, the sighted or the blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12Now go! I will help you as you speak, and I will teach you what to say.”
When your child has autism which is not a disease but a neuroatypical state of being Jesus comes along to comfort you and tell you the truth. He has autism not as a result of his sins or his parents' sins. God made him to display his work through Him. This rolls a big burden of guilt away from the shoulders of the parents. They understand their job is to be the light of his world, and they have been sent to earth for a purpose. When they feel unfit for the job, they can remember Moses. He was sent on or given a mission though he felt unfit.
If God could use Moses so mightily, though he stammered, to be such a mighty leader, without healing him of his stammering, God can use anyone. He can use parents, siblings, caregivers and helpers and caretakers and support staff. He can use science, doctors, nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists. He can use medicines and training and techniques. He works in and through them to help those who need it, overtime as it is still day and God works all the time doing only good things, as he showed Jesus so that we too can work, after seeing what he does and learning how to do it from him. When you struggle with thoughts of unworthiness or guilt or shame and are tempted to blame yourself or false beliefs or others for something others see as a curse or cross in your life remember God sees it as opportunity to bless more a person who is already a blessing and a crown where man only tries to find who to blame as the disciples did to Jesus as to who was responsible that the man was born blind from birth. They could neither heal him nor stop from wanting to blame and from Jesus they learned salvation is to stop blaming and start healing.
What God wants is availability, as someone once said, and not ability.
Movie report
I read Heidi long ago. To be honest when I started to watch the film I had no memory of any of it. However, I enjoyed the film. The story goes like this: there is a maker of church organs who makes his finest one for a church in Dorfli but as his daughter who used to sing beautifully falls in love with a man and runs away withdraws in anger and bitterness from playing anymore to his home in the mountain in the Swiss Alps and has no communication with anyone anymore, not even the priest. His daughter has a daughter she names Heidi whom she also teaches the songs she used to sing or Heidi picks them up by herself by listening but Heidi's mother and father pass away leaving her with her mother's sister. She tries to pass her on to Heidi's father's brother whose wife has died and lives with a governess and his daughter Clara who cannot walk.
When that fails she asks the priest to take Heidi to her grandfather. Her grandfather does not want her at first but Heidi makes friends with Peter, a goatherd who gives her a goat, and his blind mother who tells her her own mother was beautiful, kind and good. The grandfather softens to Heidi after hearing her sing. Heidi's father's brother comes to know of her and wants to take her to stay with him to help Clara have some company. He gets the grandfather to agree saying it will also get Heidi an education. The governess is in love with Heidi's father's brother. Heidi goes there and becomes friends with Clara after an initial fight, and the butler, the governess and her Dad's brother are all kind to her but she pines for her grandfather and Peter and his mother and the Alps. She asks to go back for two weeks and is taken there by the governess. The grandfather who is happy at first becomes unhappy on hearing she has returned only for two weeks. Peter is happy to see her again. On hearing why she wants to go back is to help Clara, the grandfather offers that Clara can come and stay with them. Clara is delighted. On coming to the grandfather's house Clara is one day left alone and starts to walk to get to her father who is coming to see her, bearing the pain. The grandfather gives her a huge stick to help her walk. The governess who was planning to go off as her boss didn't want to marry her as she is only a governess decides to stay and he changes his mind. The grandfather starts playing the organ in the church again. Heidi has miraculously healed his hurt, Clara, and also brought her father's brother and the governess whom she loves like a mother together, setting right all the things that had gone wrong in the past starting with her mother running off and her father's brother's wife's death by drowning, in which accident only Clara was saved. The movie also has a good character in the priest who refuses to give up on the organ maker and player who is the grandfather and main character in the story as in Jesus' parable of the lost lamb but finds him and brings him back.
The movie really took me back to a time when life was much simpler and people not so evil, when it was still possible to imagine and believe not only in a happy ending for one person but for all.
Switzerland, the Alps and the village is to die for, as natural scenery.
Promises Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم prompt January 12 poetry challenge.
Promises
lips
and temptation
and the promise not to yield
broken
bright eyes
and the promise
not to make them tearful
broken
try not to
make them
if every passing
whim
and fancy
takes you
like a storm
to not keep them
Lies January 11th 2022, Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry prompt challenge poem by Dr. Koshy AV
White sugar
coated
poison
Capsules of
death
Small sachets
of cocaine
Slope to a chasm
Weir for fishes
The mouth that smiles
after
when no one is looking,
born in the sewers
of the darkest labyrinths;
flowers of blackness that coil around once clean feet
pulling them down into swamps of defeat
from which none come out
strangled by conceit, and deceit,
their demise.
Un-riddle
Am I this?
Yes
Am I that?
Yes
Am I this and that?
Yes
Am I not-this?
Yes
Am I not-that?
Yes
Am I not-this-or-that?
Yes
Am I for this?
Yes
Am I not for this?
Yes
Am I not for that?
Yes
Am I for that?
Yes
Am I against that?
Yes
Am I not-against that?
Yes
Am I against this?
Yes
Am I not-against this?
Yes
Either- or
Neither-nor
Both-and
Am, Be
For/against
Not for/not against
Depends on who I/i am/is and is/am not
when it is taking place
who I am with
where I am then
why I am there
what for
how it is unfolding or emerging
whom all I am with
which, the outcome or goal?
relative- subjective
objective-absolute
non-belonging
non-being
When I wonder
why
I write
1000s
of poems,
God asks me
why
I think
he makes countless butterflies
Surprise January 10 Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم Poetry prompt challenge poem by Dr Koshy AV
Surprise in her eyes
when I kissed my baby tight.
Surprise, surprise
to exchange might for love.
Did we not plight our troth
many years back?
Why then this surprise?
Love is costlier than gold
Love simmers in dying embers
that look like just coals
and sometimes fans up in a blaze
And the flames, fired up,
on a sudden surmise
surprise, surprise.
After all these years
one day, love shakes off
cobwebs and enters
love's reprise.
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