The rains started on Good Friday again this year, bringing to a close the dry season which had been rather humid even up here in the hills. I’m told it’s not the start of the monsoon proper, but the rains fall nearly every day, and it certainly brings any fears of a drought to an end. I moved to the city at Easter, and I’m now living in a large disused classroom in the same complex I stayed at last year. It’s a delightful room, open and airy, the solid walls only rising a couple of feet before giving way to grill-work. The room is hidden away a little behind some other buildings so althou59-the-end-of-daysgh it is open I still retain my privacy. The rains fall in the mid afternoon, when it tends to be heavier, or sometimes they arrive...
It’s a curious thing that so many people, whether children or adult, make themselves the less loveable in one way or another, the more they feel the want of a loving relationship. They end up of course perpetuating the very thing they wish to escape from, and at such times it needs someone who can see and call forth their potential for love, even in the midst of their darkness. The temptation is always to act in a lazy way, to try and buy off the demand that is being made, but it is only when one is prepared to enter into relationship with the unlovable, with the ugly and deformed, that there can be any chance of transformation.
I have to make a special effort to spend time with children like Mahesh and Isra, because we have a number of other children who are much more demanding of one’s time and attention. Last year it was decided to bring the children from another House to this one so as to save on duplication of resources. At a stroke the number of children increased from 14 to 22. Of the new arrivals one stood out immediately and was well known throughout the House in hours. Rajan is a mentally retarded and hyperactive boy of about 11 or 12. Unfortunately he made himself well known by his violent behaviour, pushing down the other children, upsetting the medicine tray, and turning everybody’s food plate upside down. It took us days to adjust to his presence...
Opening the door to the bathroom I am met by half a dozen smiling faces, and we greet each other as a new day begins. All the people gathered here – in wheelchairs, on a potty, or simply lying on the floor – are here because they are prone to incontinence, some because of mental or physical handicap, others because of old age. One young man, paralysed from the waist down, only goes to the toilet once every other day, for which I thank God, because for some unknown reason the stench from his stool is quite overpowering. The nightwatchman who helps me with the bathing appears, his scarf wrapped over his face – when I first saw him in this guise I laughed, thinking that he was overreacting, but later I came to admire his prudence. Last...
The first time I came to work at the House I remember being in a state of great apprehension, having never done anything of the sort before, and not knowing what to expect. There is a certain resistance and fear in the mind when faced with any new situation, and we much prefer the comfort and security of the old, of what we know, to the challenge of the new. We normally live subject to the past and it is really the power of God working in us that enables us to do what is right, rather than what is easy. My biggest fear that morning as I made the long journey to the House was that I would be asked to do something I had no competence in and would be exposed for the worthless fellow I knew myself to be. But I prayed in surrender to the...
[Daya Nivasa, Mulgampola, Kandy] Across the room from me is a boy who is maybe five years old. His eyes, though crossed, are sparkling, and his whole face is lit up in happiness; he has a big smile and his mouth lies open revealing his solitary tooth. He is smiling at me and I am smiling at him. Isra, for it is he, is sitting in a special blue box that has an adjustable back, on his legs are heavy sandbags which are meant to be holding them straight, however his legs have freed themselves from this burdensome constraint and have returned to their naturally twisted condition. Isra’s head is not supported well by his neck and so it rests on his right shoulder – it looks uncomfortable, but this too is its normal position and he shows...
“Today we usually spend some time thinking about Jesus’ last steps on the way to the cross how he is weighed down by the sins of the world, failing under the heavy load he must carry, and so on. But the teaching is not just about the cross, it has little meaning in itself unless we see it in the light of the resurrection. And I feel we’ve had too much of the cross without the resurrection. In my encounters with people over the years I’ve met so many who are suffering in life because all they’ve ever known is the cross; and it’s not as though the resurrection hasn’t been taught, so I feel it stems from the fact that with an ever-increasing materialism in the world we no longer believe in miracles – if I asked you all now: ‘Do you believe...
“...it’s said that it’s not possible to cultivate virtue, but it’s usually said by people who know more about the spiritual life than they do about cultivation, because as any farmer or gardener can tell you, they are not able to make things grow, the most they can do is prepare things in such a way that the conditions are favourable for growth, and I feel it’s the same in the spiritual life really, you have to do whatever it is that is given to you to do, so you try and clear the ground of the hindrances, and you prepare the soil with a sound moral base and so on, and those things you can do, and have a certain responsibility to do, but after that it’s really a grace whether anything grows there or not – generally it will of course...