New Beginnings

A friend sent me an e-book this afternoon: The Gift of Years by Joan Chittister. I’ve only read the introduction and I think I’ll love this book which is about old age. Growing Older Gracefully is its subtitle. The author questions in the introduction the general notion about life being one linear progression from birth to death. “What we did yesterday, what we do today, cannot be undone.” This is deadly thinking, Chittister says. It sets our future in cement by freezing our successes and failures in eternal measures. Fixed once and for all.

“My life has been nothing but a series of new beginnings,” she asserts. Every day can be a new day, a new beginning. This moment can be a new beginning.

As I was reading this part of the introduction, a parable from Tony D’Mello came to my mind. I’m modifying the parable a bit to avoid the hunting mentioned in the original. I don’t like the idea of anyone shooting down a bird. So I shall make it an innocuous ball.

A man was training his dog to do many tricks like fetching things. The dog was a good learner too. One day he took his dog to the nearby river and threw a ball into the water. He then asked his dog to fetch it. The dog walked on the water and fetched the ball. What! Is this a hallucination? A dog walking on water! He threw the ball again to make sure. And it was no mistake. The dog walked on water again.

Our man called his friend to the riverbank in order to show him a miracle. Once again the same scene: the ball in the river and the dog walking on water. But our guy’s friend didn’t seem impressed. He watched it all very indifferently.

“Didn’t you notice anything special about my dog?” The man asked finally.

“Yeah, the silly creature doesn’t know how to swim.”

Very often, our perspectives our straitjacketed. We know only one way for a dog to negotiate a river: swimming. Anything else is ‘silly.’

We get stuck to certain ruts and move within them day after day, year after year. Take your life out of those ruts if you wish to enjoy its many blessings, especially as you grow older. That is what the author of the book I mentioned earlier is telling us.

The parish church in my place celebrated its annual festival yesterday and the day before. On both days, in the evenings, the devotees take out a procession carrying special umbrellas or some symbols of their devotion. It is a colourful event. I can see the procession passing in front of my house on the first day. The route for the second evening is different. I have noticed that right from my childhood the procession takes the same shape. Same devotional songs, same kind of band troupes, same umbrellas and flags. Same rituals too. This time there was one change, however. Instead of carrying the statues of the saints on the shoulders, as done earlier, this time they were carried just above knee-height. The men were holding the poles in their lowered hands. The statues didn’t tower above the humans; instead, they were hidden inside the two rows of the marching devotees. Some change, at least!

A lot need to change, I reflected, for religion to make sense in 21^st century. Youngsters are shying away from churches because the much-needed aggiornamento isn’t taking place. Religions are the most straitjacketed things on earth, I think.

“There is no such thing as having only one life to live,” let me return to the book with which I started this post. We need to renew ourselves each day, perhaps. Learn and let our perspectives broaden. Miracle is nothing but a new way of looking at reality. Miracle is a change of attitude, as I always tell my students. Miracles are happening around us; we just need to open our eyes…

PS. I’m participating in the Write a Page a Day challenge of Blogchatter in Feb. I’m thinking of falling back heavily on Joan Chittister’s book for my daily blogging sustenance. Feb will certainly be different as far as my blogging content is concerned. I thank my friend, Rev Jose Maliekal SDB, for this inspiring gift.