The Prodigal Returns!!

Where was I, all this while?
Gone - far and away,
May be a million mile!

Do I deserve a return?
Or long gone,
Is the chance of taking a U-Turn!

Am I confused?
And scared,
Of being turned away and refused!!

For I don’t know what awaits me?
A servere backlash?
But certainly not a welcoming party I'll see!!

Yet, forever I couldn’t stay away?
Soon it'll be dark,
And I should turn around, while its still day!

Not sure if it is my best bet?
Unsure and trembling
In the direction of home, my sails are set!!

I'm worried over what awaits me?
Sweating, I’m unaware,
That my father still awaits me in glee!!

For wasn’t it His promise?
He guards not the ninety-nine,
But the one that’s gone amiss!

Surprisingly, whats the unexpected I find?
Love and care, warmth that awaits
For my Father is patient and kind!!

Inspired by the one of the most touching parables of the Bible - The Prodigal Son!

Need reasons? I just have Love!!

Someone sang not so long ago… “Love me for a reason and let the reason be love” and I always felt that it was one of the easiest things to do. Wow… isn’t it? Love because you love! Isn’t that easy… I’d find it mighty difficult if I had to love someone only after I had convinced myself of the 100-odd reasons I’d need to know if I could love them or not. It is certainly easier to just go ahead and Love - without reasons & consequences.

One of my favorite lines goes like this “too many things in our lives are done without passion - let Love not be one of them” and just because I use Love & Passion in the same sentence doesn’t mean it is Love of a 'certain' kind only. It can be any love… between anyone, anything!

Why can’t we trust that it can exist – devoid of its negative trappings and existing in its most fundamental & beautiful form! Love that is not about receiving but one that is about giving. Why don’t we take Love to be an honest expression of care and warm outpouring of emotion? Why are we looking for reasons someone loves us before we begin to appreciate the love they have?

We live in strange times, so strange that every step could count as a bizarre paradox. We try with all our might to achieve a few things but conveniently forget to celebrate the success of those achievements. We cry our hearts out for someone to listen & care, yet when someone comes around we only have suspicion to greet that move. Why have we - as people & society, become so pessimistic and negative in thought. Our minds are closed to the possibility of love; our hearts no longer warm to finding selfless care.

We all know it, we all want it… we yearn for someone to love unconditionally… yet cannot believe that someone actually does! So contrived are our times that we cannot believe that love can exist for the sake of love alone. Yes, there has been an odd calamity here, an odd mistake there… but as species I wonder if such pessimism is warranted. Our lives are so in tuned as “ends justifying means” agents that in everything we look for a logical explanation. And if there comes none, our conclusions are grim to say the least.

The Bible says that we are all made in the image of God, and it also says that God is love… even my poor mathematics tells me that if a=b and b=c then a=c… by which I can assuredly conclude that each of us humans are capable of love because that is how God made us. Of a love that is selfless, honest and true. One that is devoid of a selfish motive… love that is because of love alone.

Sad, that we have now come to believe that we are incapable of such love! And even more saddening is that we have shut ourselves to even receive some of it!!

Is this the state of our poverty in our consciousness that we cannot accept “Love whose reason is Love Alone?” haven’t we been looking for it all along? Haven’t we been wishing that we find love that doesn’t restrict our horizons, that doesn’t want anything in return, that wants to give, that wants to express, that wants you to know you are special, that wants to just love… no more!!

I feel deeply disheartened that our pessimism and cynicism is so entrenched that now we do not want to Love this way anymore; we rather not believe that such love can exist than having to justify its existence. Our lives & times are all about justifying the myriad ends; Love has become a task which is measured for its 'justify-ability'… I can no longer love, just because I want to love, I need to give reasons and so many of them… sadly, the world that sang “Love me for a reason, and Let the reason be Love” has now settled for “Love me for a reason, else don’t bother to Love”

If you care to Love, you must be ready to explain – why, how, reasons, justifications, relations... and I find giving so much proof… as difficult as I did to prove mathematical theorems.

Glad I was awful at the theorems, for I’m no good at a ‘Hence Proved’ love either!

"For I loved as I could,
not as the world thought I should!
The Love I had, I never hid,
And there wasnt any wrong,
In all that I did!

I loved, not looking for a return,
I gave, never waiting for my turn!
'Cos my Love wasnt for any reason,
It was just an honest care & warmth,
And it stayed the same, each day, every season!!"

Happy Easter!!

"Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do!"

- Gospel of Luke 23:34

Often its the simplest of solutions that one finds the hardest to discover. Its those that are most obvious, but have a profound impact, which seem to be lost in on our mortal eyes. In times when the simplicity of love can heal, one often heads to the complexities of hate and division. As the world heads forth to yet another Easter weekend, and there have been atleast a couple of thousand of them already, I wonder if I and a great many like me, have acctually grasped the amazingly simple love that Christ exemplified on the Cross. Atop the mountain called Golgotha, He potrayed not just a sacrifice for those who were with Him, but an unqualified and unbelieveable love for those who had wronged Him. He gave himself not just for those who were devoted to Him but He went out looking for those who devovered Him.

In our present times, when relationships - both at an individual & societal level are strained; bonds that are streched and love that has gone stale; it is necessary we seek that simplicity of love that we saw on the cross. Our world has become complex with each of us grading people and their actions - good, bad, ugly, malicious, deplorable etc etc. Some people are seemingly deserving and the others being no qualified partakers of our love. Why have we conditionalized ourselves and our emtions so much? Ware there so many barriers to reach out to someone's heart and touch them with warmth??

'Love' is a word that can conjugate a different meaning for every different person. Its never been adequately defined, nor shall it ever !! For defining it is like the story of the blind who decide to describe what is an elephant like - each calling it what he has experienced it like; while each of them is correct in their own way, none of them are complete. Such is the case with Love - it can never fully fit into our finite minds. Our minds always seek to break things down to logic so that our small minds can take them in... but such is the infinity of love - that it shall never be fully comphrehended by anyone. There again, though no one fully comphrehends love, love in itself encompasses everyone - people, situations and emotions.

There is nothing love cannot solve nor anything that love cannot heal. But to do so, it must be allowed; it must be employed by us as a means to touch people's lives. Where fear divides and hatred hurts; love can build, restore and create an atmosphere for relationships to blossom. While hatred and uneasiness leave us as despicable & desolate men, love allows us the humanity & humility to co-habit in togetherness.

Christ spoke seven different things on the cross He was crucified, but just as He lived through His life, His heart first went out to those who were 'wrong'. He preached all his life about caring and loving those who have fallen out of favor with us, who no more figure in our 'special' list... those who you would rather do away with, those who hurt you and grieved you - malicious or otherwise! He saw a need in them to be restored.

Deep within, everyone has a desperate need of acceptance - irrespective of one actions & disposition. Similar must have been the case with those soldiers who meted out the most sereve and brutal punishments of the Roman times - to a man who was hardly deserving of it. I am sure in their individual lives they must have sought acceptance and love - found it a few times and not on other occassions... and yet to get it from the man whom they were crucifying must have been something they must have least expected. I surely trust that love must have stirred their hearts, if not in the commotion of that crucifixtion but in the solitude of its aftermath.

Being crucified was not a punishment just for the physical being of a person, it was to be a torture of unforeseen proportions. It was not just meant to kill but to put the person to the ultimate shame, to brutally hurt both the physical and mental person - all at the same time. While undergoing such monumental punishment Christ exemplified for us the Love which the world really needs. With every wrong that happens to us, we tend to fall backwards in the amount of love we give. With every situation thats against us, we retreat a few steps away from loving others. Bitterness fills our hearts as we walk our lives full of misery and discomfort, and yet it was never the lesson which Christ intended to leave with us. All He lived for was Love, all He died for was Love! So Love is ultimate message of Easter... spread it and live it!!