Sunday, February 15

"Let it be!"

One of the most demanding aspects of today’s life is the pressure to act and live like the neighbour next door. I do agree that everyone has the right to copy a lifestyle. But, can I be what I am? In a Valentine’s Day, when the world keeps pointing to the Lady Love, I keep telling myself that I dress my lifestyle, read my lifestyle, eat, and live my lifestyle. I do not like the world to tell me which motel I stay or what books I’ll read.

Years ago, I remember getting an English New Testament in school. It was distributed by some Christian organization. For me it was great to have a small, cute, green pocket-bible in my hands... Not so much to read but for keeps. I used to carry that Bible in my trouser pockets even during college days. For me, to open those thin white pages and feel the book was great. I wouldn’t read it but smell it! Ya...the scent of the pages attracted me most. But all these made me a point of jeer.... “Hai! Have you brought your Bible today?” college friends used to ask.

Gone are those days... but the fact remains: In all of us, there is a tenacity to be what we are. The other day, I carried a book on medetation to a hotel. Friend of mine who was sharing the evening with me took it and strolled through the pages. “Abby, have you brought this book for reading here and now?” he asked. Frankly I never would like to read, that too a serious book, in a crowded hotel or in the company of friends. “No,” I told him, “I just wanted to keep it close to me and get a feel of it.”

The simple list of my favourites goes on: T-shirts and indigo jeans, occasional down town eateries and road side tea hawkers, St. John of the Cross and Henri Nouwen, lots of sea wind and sands, solitude and sound of the waves and.... most of all, a pack of books and a heart for God.

I understand Omar Khayyam when he sang:
“HERE with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse –
and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
and Wilderness is Paradise enow”
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“Lord... Let it be ... Let it be, I am what I am... what you wish I am and together both of us hold hands and hearts evermore....Amen ”
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