News on the March: serpent handling

A “serpent-handling” West Virginia pastor died after his rattlesnake bit him during a church ritual, just as the man had apparently watched a snake kill his father years before.
Pentecostal pastor Mark Wolford, 44, hosted an outdoor service at the Panther Wildlife Management Area in West Virginia Sunday, which he touted on his Facebook page prior to the event.
“I am looking for a great time this Sunday,” Wolford wrote May 22, according to the Washington Post. “It is going to be a homecoming like the old days. Good ‘ole raised in the holler or mountain ridge running, Holy Ghost-filled speaking-in-tongues sign believers.”
Robin Vanover, Wolford’s sister, told the Washington Post that 30 minutes into the outdoor service, Wolford passed around a poisonous timber rattlesnake, which eventually bit him.(ack: abc News of may 30)

Some are born fools and some make themselves foolish. The pastor didn’t take the sign God gave his father, ‘Do not tempt God.’ Is there any reason why man should kiss a snake anymore than one bite a dog? The pastor made the news in whichever case. God helps man who trusts in him in helpless situations. But hopeless idiots must help themselves.

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Aesop Fables-camel gets his wish

Sorry, the story continues in Almost Aesop, Fables available through Amazon.com-b

 

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Larger than Life- pastel art

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Out of focus, sharper in clarity

In a couple of weeks I hope to celebrate my birth day. Should I treat it as a day of sorrow? You see I am coming into the wrong side of sixties. But incurable and hopeless idiot I am for a good laugh, I could celebrate it for another reason. You see I am still on the good side of seventies.
On looking back I see the moments of panic and shudder in my life and see nothing I feared did really happen. Fear of parents,teachers who breathed fire and rattled rulers and imposition are all gone. Faces of martinets and House rules are out focus. A nasty marriage divorce, and the fearful step unto the unknown are equally behind me. From where I stand clarity of life as I imagined and how it has been give me a new insight. Clarity of life as a whole, places emphases elsewhere; the reality is much more significant since I can see many chain of events that I had merely treated then as coincidence connect and a few others disappear as of no consequence.
My trust in grace of God and in the mysteries of life has been vindicated. Love as an experience I find far more important and satisfying than a life of ideas. What are sparks of ideas without the reality of life? What is love but the nature of life given the wick to burn? I hope my wife and I shall be warmed even as old age is about us.
benny

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My Cultural Baggage

A couple of years ago I went back to India where I had lived for some fifty years. I came to know a French couple rather well. They were living well in Paris,- and both were professionals, and one day they had enough of it. Love for India had completely taken possession of them. They wanted to see, feel and live close to nature and be in ‘the centre of Cosmic forces’. Which other place but India? Their imagination was quite lively I must admit, and their transparency for all their urban living simply shone through. The man was, of all things an advocate having had his private practice and he felt India demanded all that he could give. Yes he and his wife did give, and at every corner from the law to the whole array of ‘gurus’ in their saffron clothes were for taking all they could. Having ran up all their life savings on the assumption that India of their dreams must some time and somewhere must coincide. It never did happen to their disappointment.
Recently we met once again and the Parisian wanted to know where did he go wrong. Who am I to break his illusions? The French couple loved India of their imagination while I loved the habit of being an Indian. His cultural baggage is neither Paris where he grew up but also imagination that makes reality work. Only what has changed now is this: reality of India added something new to his imagination. Paris that he is going back for good shall be all the more better.
Our cultural baggage is so heavy when consigned to imagination. In reality India weighs no more than Paris since it is to be lived in. Reality and how it is handled requires no ‘culture’ in technicolor but hard common sense.
benny

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Cityscape-watercolor

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Aesop Fables: the fuller and the collier

Sorry, the story continues in Almost Aesop, Fables available through Amazon.com-b

 

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Omar Says-Rubaiyat for the Present Day

Remote control it is not, press I well
Surfing channels of reason, my eyes fail-
If Nature stayed true to will and please
My senses-Ah it would be worth my while.

In this age of instant gratification can Omar Khayyam be relevant to us? I believe the quatrain form could be used to convey our spiritual confusion or love for Immensities that comes in byte-size, only we call it passing time. Nature changes: seasons after seasons on the treadmill of Time, is the riddle that was poets of every age and clime had to come to terms with.
Who is using the remote control, by the way?
It is somewhat like the theatre of the Absurd. One who makes Nature keep renewing the face of the earth affects us as well. Lacking in time we require certainties and only certainty that we end up with is what one might call as Chance.
Thanks to our attention-deficit we also keep checking out what is all available whenever we want some entertainment. Instead we are inundated with bits and snatches of man’s art, news of the mart that would not even feed the appetite of a louse. Who is using the remote control and what for?
benny

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Still life-art

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The Man on the Street

The street was my beat:
In my rags neat I had the street
My catwalk!
Each neon lit corner I just shimmied
Till the crowd came helter-skelter
‘Oohs and ahs!’ how the rowdy froth at the mouth
To have an eyeful of threads!-
They love fashion obviously,
But can’t see heart beating within
The united colors of Benetton.
benny

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