A Human's Struggle to stay Human

Who decides my mode of Fast? My religion, Church, Society or me? Isn’t the core of these rituals or any ritual for that matter, to make humans recover the fragrance of humanity? Then why aren’t we respecting the autonomy of humans? This Lenten season I urge my readers to foster their own eccentricities no matter however foolish it may seem to be. Choose your mode of fasting by asking just one question to you and you alone. “Does this help me make a better me?” This reminiscence me Castaneda’s beautiful thought; Any path is only a path and there is no affront to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think it necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone, one question. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.   I have friends who have resorted to various kinds of fast viz, Carbon Fast, Cyber Fast and so on...

Christianity is the story of a carpenter being unconventionally qualified as a Priest. The world today tends to foster a false and over glorified notion of a Priest. They invariably attribute Priests with ordination. Story of Christ is the evidence that a priest is not determined by the virtue of ordination and vestments but by passion. Within thirty three years, the carpenter Jesus, turned the world upside down when the so called priests of the ages were of no avail. This gives a clarion call that Priesthood is something to do exclusively with vocation. Vocation is derived from the Latin word ‘vocare’ which means ‘to be called.’ The sense of being called is what matters ultimately and God’s call indubitably is unbiased. Priesthood is also about showing the nerve to be accountable. Book of Joshua 3: 1-17 explicitly proves this. We read there that the priests who carried the ark of God entered the divided waters of Jordan before the Israelites and stood there till the entire natio...

Sin is a concept which has been made to be exploitative in nature. The augmentation of sin consciousness among the faith community has always been directly proportional to the flourishing of the Church. Bring into your memories the greatest ecclesiastical vice of the Medieval Christianity – Indulgence.  Indulgence, to be precise, was the act of selling forgiveness initiated by the Roman Catholic Church. Leo X, the then Pope in Rome, to support his extravagant lifestyle and to raise funds for St. Peter’s Basilica resorted to the use of a new fund-raising scheme—selling forgiveness of sins. For a fee, the bereaved relatives could get a deceased loved one out of Purgatory. At the right price, they could also save up for their own future sins. Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, makes this explicit, “When a penny in the coffer rings, a soul from Purgatory springs.” It was predominantly against this systemic evil, Martin Luther protested, which led to the Protestant Reformation – a...

It is of little wonder that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem means ‘house of bread.’ This boy grows up and says to the world, “I am the bread of life”. Jesus equated his body with bread. What else could he have compared his body with in a poverty-stricken world? How else could he have conveyed his conviction in a world where people were and are impoverished by the dominant? Mahatma Gandhi reckons, “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” Christ affirms to be the bread of life. We may interpret this in a very abstract manner but to someone who cannot even afford a slice of bread to satisfy his/her hunger what sense does this affirmation make? Which hermeneutics would do justice to them? This affirmation of Christ then merely becomes a conjecture for them; something that which mocks the hard reality of the impoverished. Recently India, especially Kerala was petrified with the lynching of the tribal youth, Ma...

Miracle is the most misconstrued concept of our times. The lack of proper appropriation of this term has led to several contestations which have eventually sullied its essence. Miracle is usually attributed to supernaturalism. Traversing the Biblical text we see the word ‘Miracle’ has more to do with ‘Unconventionalism’; something that which disrupts and poses a threat to the prevailing dominant order or status quo.  When ‘Alternatives’ and counter discursive arenas are proposed, it qualifies to be termed as ‘Miracle’.  The gospel portion set apart for today according the Syrian Orthodox Almanac is St. Mark 2: 1-12 wherein which Jesus heals the paralyzed man in an unconventional form of forgiveness and initiates a Miracle. Miracles are not about transcending the laws of nature.  I would define Miracle as the revelation of possibilities in the practical life.  According to Jewish theology, illness or disease was the consequence of sin(s) and the only cure wa...

Churches have become the most fertile ground for conflicts. In the tipsiness of power the veracity of Church is being washed away. It is no longer the blood of Christ that sustains the Church but the terrorizing and the venomous spirit of denominationalism. Statistics reveal that there are over 200 denominations in India and beyond 40000 denominations all over the world. In this fray, what credentials does the Church have to speak about inter-faith harmony when they cannot even pacify their intra-faith incongruences? Church being built on the anamnesis of Jesus the Christ and qualifying herself as His bride is a disgrace today in the façade of denominationalism. Countering Empires from its inception the church is at the cusp of becoming an Alternative Empire with ferocious Imperialistic repercussions and implications.  Orthodoxy and heresy are no longer issues of faith but are defined in terms of the proximity towards denominations - after all any heresy could be converted to...

Christianity was born when a carpenter showed the nerve to challenge the then status quo by transcending the boundaries which hindered the human – human relations thereby human – God relation. He set forth with his chisel and hammer to shape the world which had been deformed by the sinfulness of the people. It was an attempt to make people encounter the truth which would eventually set them free and make their worship more profound. But then since the nature to be enslaved to someone or something was innate in us we crucified him and started venerating the cross.  How conveniently we sanitized the cold blooded murder of Jesus with the euphemism of ‘sacrifice’! The beautiful Jesus movement lost its beauty and fragrance when it was relegated into a religion which brought along with it dogmas, doctrines, laws, structure, hierarchy and so on and so forth. Steve Weinberg claims, “There are only two kinds of people; good and bad. While without religion good people would do goo...

I cannot afford to remember without tears the proverb “Behind every successful man there is a woman.” In a world where ‘success’ is considered to be the absolute perquisite of Man, who would dare to bother about the sacrifices of a woman? The excessive eulogization of Jesus, John the Baptist, Buddha, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Cappadocian fathers etc. is at the expense of the sacrifices of their mothers, sisters, wives etc. Who are these men without their women? Kahlil Gibran in his book ‘Jesus the Son of Man’ puts forth the complaints by the mothers of the disciples of Jesus, “Why should the milk of my breast be forgotten for a fountain not yet tasted? And the warmth of my arms be forsaken for the Northland, cold and unfriendly.” These are the agony of each women whose sacrifices go unacknowledged. Centuries ago Hannah prayed “Lord of hosts…remember me and not forget your servant…give to your servant a male child ” (I Samuel 1:11). Hannah specifically prays for a son and not a...