Some 'Fishy' Thoughts

                                      After nearly 15 years I decided to rekindle my old passion or hobby of having fish at home. Since an old tank was already available at house we only need to buy the fish and filter for it. We bought 2 big ones and 4 small ones. With great joy we cleaned up the old tank and installed everything in an hour’s time. We couldn’t control the excitement; we smiled n squealed like small school children :). My roommate - an avid lover of fish, also quoted a scientific study that states that watching fish will reduce our blood pressure – little did we know that our BP is going to increase in the coming days!

After one day we noticed that the big red fish is hitting and biting its pair. The bitten fish started hiding and whenever it tries to come out it will be chased back. Cutting the story short it died of bleeding and starvation in 2 days. It was a shock to know that such enmity and hatred exists even among fish! After few days, our close friend gave us his fish tank to look after when he goes out of town. It had beautiful golden fish gliding around silently and peacefully. Watching it was a serene experience. We tried to shift the small fish from our tank to avoid the “killer” fish. But the small ones also started the same biting behavior with the big silent golden fish forcing us to put it back. In short our tank became a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth (literally) and the friend’s tank became a place of joy and happiness. To finish it off yesterday we found that one of the small fish also killed its pair!

Whatever be the scientific or logical reasoning behind the behavior of our killer fish, it made me think about our homes. Aren’t some of us like that killer fish? Due to our stubbornness and hard heartedness didn’t we change our peaceful homes into hell? Didn’t we also transfer our hatred into other members of our family or maybe to our roommates in our hostel? We may appear very flashy and appealing to the people outside (we are supposed to be role models too!) but what happens in our personal life and our family will be quite the opposite. My mom used to tell me (usually after a quarrel) - “Let me see your coordinator; I will reveal your real face to JY!” I use to laugh at her but will feel guilty afterwards.  I used to be an altar boy from childhood and a Jesus Youth from college days – a model catholic boy for all, but not at home. I used to be lazy, stubborn and quarrelsome at home. By the grace of God over the years I have realized my mistake and I am trying to change since then. Jesus says "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” [Mathew 5:9]. Is there a desire in me to become son/daughter of God? Are we really peacemakers at our home; at our workplace; at our parish or our colleges? To whom do we associate - the silent Gold fish which easily mingles with other fishes and create a serene atmosphere or the killer fish which creates lot of trouble and unhappiness in the life of others? 

P.S: Post our traumatic experience we are planning to donate the killer (sorry Red Parrot) fish; any takers? :)

Going Gaga - Silly or Senile?

                                          This picture may have been taken barely minutes after Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta received the flesh and blood of Jesus for the first time in her life. She attended Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school in United States. She described her school life as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure" as she told in an interview.

By age 19, this beautiful young girl started experimenting with life – in a wrong way. She started singing in bars and clubs to further her career on songwriting and singing and started her experiments with alcohol, drugs and sex. In her own words – “I went to a Catholic school but it was on the New York underground that I found myself."

                                        Turning 25 a few days back, she is no longer that innocent Steffanie Germanotta but Lady Gaga aka Mother Monster. She holds a twitter account with a record 9 million followers (whom she fondly calls monsters) and her youtube channel upload views have crossed 1.37 billion (137,893,744 as I write this post). In last April she was named the Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the year. Winner of both Grammy and MTV Awards Lady Gaga has shown the world how to successfully mix music, sex and fashion in the right combination to become a global celebrity. She makes sure that she stays in the limelight by wearing (or not wearing?) the strangest outfits possible. Gaga's influence on modern culture and society has provoked the University of South Carolina into offering a full-time course titled "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame" in the objective of unraveling "the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga with respect to her music, videos, fashion, and other artistic endeavors".

What prompted me to write this article is the recent news that Lady Gaga is planning to come out with perfumes that smell blood and semen. Intrigued to find out more about this strange lady, I went online and did a quick research on her life. The findings as explained above left me shattered! The first verse that came to mind was Deutronomy 30:15 "See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. Again verse 19 says I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.  This is the beauty of Christianity that you have a God who has left you with free choice – the choice even to abuse this choice!There is no compulsion or pressure on you to always take the “good choice” as some may accuse on the church. But for youngsters like lady gaga this freedom also paves the way for the destruction of their souls.

So the problem seems to be in the understanding of true freedom. True freedom doesn’t mean doing whatever you want but exercising it in the right context. Freedom finds its true meaning when you use it to obey God.

Venerable Pope John Paul II himself says:

“Freedom negates and destroys itself and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others when it no longer recognizes its essential link with the truth.  When freedom out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth. . . then the person ends up by no longer taking as his sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion, or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim”

Jesus is standing at the door of our heart (Rv 3:20) waiting for us to know the truth which will set us free (Jn 8:32), to choose life over death which will make us a complete man or woman. What do we choose today?

P.S:- While searching on Lady Gaga to write this blog, I got disturbed at the gravity of bondage of sin in her life. I offered the day’s mass for her conversion – may be the only sensible thing to do, as a Catholic for her soul?

PFA the LENT

                      

Its been more than 2yrs since I left my software job but still PFA, MOM, OOO etc means more than 3 alphabets to me! All software engineers will have a "yea I got it" smile in their face nw. For the others I just want to focus on PFA which suddenly assumes a new role in my Lenten schemes. PFA denotes 'Please find attached ' while sending mails with attachments but in this post it will stand for Prayer, Fasting & Almsgiving. Yes I am heading off to the Lenten season.  I am writing this on a Monday and by Wednesday Lent 2011 will begin attached with PFA!

PFA

Traditionally on Lent season we do the following - we fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, abstain from meat the whole period, meditate on the Way of the cross every Friday some places every day, do visits to orphanages and poor homes etc. Though this has worked out well for so many years, I feel this approach fails to see the unifying theme or purpose of PFA. To get more clarity I turn to Pope Benedict XVI message for lent 2011. He says "….we are moved to free our hearts every day from the burden of material things, from a self-centered relationship with the "world" that impoverishes us and prevents us from being available and open to God and our neighbor". Each of the elements in PFA specifically aims at these underlined keywords. Fasting helps to turn our focus away from 'us' and the world. Prayer helps us to gaze upwards to God and Almsgiving demands our attention towards our neighbors.

P for Prayer

Will there be a difference in our prayer during the Ordinary times and the Lent season? Tough question and even tougher answerJ It seems to me that prayers during Lent season should be focused more on sincere conversion not merely on a peripheral level but on a deeper level - dwelling deep into our inner selves seeking out those areas where we have denied access to Jesus! If we are successful in finding at least one such new area this Lent and purified it with the grace of Jesus, our P has hit right on the nail!

F for Fasting

Last Advent I had an interesting discussion with a lapsed catholic (LC) and a priest regarding the purpose of fasting. The LC was training his guns at the hypocrisy of fasting which involves mere abstinence from meat. He was arguing that we should save money through fasting and give it to the poor, only then fasting will be meaningful. Obviously he was repeating the same mistake of replacing holiness with goodness which is a topic I would like to reflect on later. The priest was explaining how the tradition of fasting came into existence and rather than skipping meals it should be sacrifices which will affect our personal lives. Listening to both, I felt the meaning of fasting is still not explained or understood well. Again I turn to the wisdom of our beloved Pope, he says "Fasting, which can have various motivations, takes on a profoundly religious significance for the Christian: by rendering our table poorer, we learn to overcome selfishness in order to live in the logic of gift and love; by bearing some form of deprivation – and not just what is in excess – we learn to look away from our "ego", to discover someone close to us and to recognize God in the face of so many brothers and sisters."

A for Almsgiving

Pope says"….the Church, especially during the Lenten period, reminds us to practice almsgiving – which is the capacity to share. The idolatry of goods, on the other hand, not only causes us to drift away from others, but divests man, making him unhappy, deceiving him, deluding him without fulfilling its promises, since it puts materialistic goods in the place of God, the only source of life." This makes us search for the real meaning of being happy or joyful. As children of God we can find 'real' happiness only when we start looking into the happy eyes of our neighbors – our brothers and sisters. To make them happy we need to do something and let's start doing it this summer!

P.S:- This Lent I have decided to stop facebooking and tweeting to take the focus away from 'my profile' and turn to the profiles of God and my neighbors who are not available in any networksJ