Pangi - the valley of sorrow

THE VALLEY OF SORROW

Come

Through stone  carved caverns

Ford rushing waters

Enter our valley

Past stone sentries

Who barricade hope

Leave behind  language and memory

They are unintelligible here

A dirge keens a communal sorrow

Insulated within mountain walls,

Frozen memories of children, and mothers

Locked in by broken bridges

We have learnt to live

Despite the deaths

We exist

And those we have watched die

Have frozen into our hearts

Their last gasps have etched our bones and scarred our eyes

So our tears are dry wadis in a desert that never blooms

Some sorrows are too deep to fill with tears

Bone on bones in a communal grave bury memory too deep

For individual mourning.

They etch the living with their dying

And whispers of what could have been

Are interred with them, dumb chasubles

Within a frozen earth

The memories seep into the water drunk by children

It enters the marriage wine, and the lovemaking

Of wide eyed brides

It  curdles in unformed marrow of unborn children

It congeals and sets, to melt into waters

Of the morrow of every morning sun.

Into this crucible of pain,

Hope drops like a blood stain

Wafting, dispersing its crimson, dancing

Wraithe like In the face of the despair,

Seen, yet not seen,slowly dissipating ,

Till at that is left is a trace, a scent, of nostril flaring pink

Can hope transcend tears?

Can it run in rime laden cheeks of wrinkled generations?

Is there breath enough to gasp

And life enough to cry?

Can it turn human again, 

To live, to mend, and to know to live

And not die before the knowing?

Is there hope enough to live,

And dare to a dignity in death?

Crack the cavern

Bridge the stream

Let light in to darkness

And unleash the scream.

This valley may yet bloom

With flowers from that seed

One day, a mothers breast

May not curdle its milk

And children may play

Knowing they have a chance

To grow old and die

Another day.

Be there in our conversations

My wife and my child figure in my conversations often. Nathaniel delights us with his insights and comments, many of which are hilarious, such as when he looks at one of us and proclaims profoundly- " You are missing some parts", referring to an absent dimple on one side of a face.

People who mean to us figure in our conversations. Their influences creep in from the positions they occupy in our minds and hearts. They encircle and color situations, and stand in the wings as we step out into areas that demand conviction and are new for us.

How much does Jesus figure in my conversations? What place does he occupy in the passages of my daily profession? Does his figure hover over my forays into uncharted areas? Do I refer to Him in the course of my day, or reminesce about His hand in the history of my past?

How I want Him to be there in my conversations, a silent  listener, approving quietly to statements of faith. And maybe, in between the noise, I will get a chance to hear Him too midst the cacophony of mixed messages. And I will know, because my heart will burn within me. 

After exhaustion

I reflect about doing justice to the patients.  Justice is one of the four tennets of ethical medical practice, and we are all called upon to enthrone it in our practice. Taking a good history, arriving at a diagnosis and administering appropriate treatment are all pillars of this justice in our medical ministration. 

I have every intention of doing justice to them. However, at the fringes of my stamina, when my body is pleading for some sleep, and my brain is running on fumes, if confronted by a problem patient, I find myself baulking. I recognize mistakes made from such non engagement. I am not able to mentally engage, and thereby the potential for missing diagnoses, erroneous prescriptions and and management. What to do in such situations? 

Temporising the situation by returning later to engage may be one coping mechanism, since trying to engage with the patient at that time may be counter productive. Delegating engagement may be another mechanism to cope by requesting some else to engage. A persistant problem in the peripheral hospitals is that there may not be anyone else. Whenever life threatening situations confront, adrenalin kicks in and fuels engagement. However, it is often at the fringe of the urgent that most mistakes are made, when a patient does not demand emergent care, yet is sick enough to warrant concerted attention. And what if I am sick, and not able to engage? The patient does not go away. As time passes, and the fire of  youth is replaced by the tiredness of middle age, one finds the reserves of energy more sparse and complaints from the physical body more frequent. 

After months of running on fumes, the body  and mind reaches a plateau of chronic fatigue, where it runs hollowly on adrenaline and reflexes, and accumulated exhaustion is factored into a continuum of daily habit. Continuing too long in such a state is deleterious for the community, the co workers and the patients one professes to treat. But when there is no one else to step in and provide relief, what does a professional do? Can he just shut the hospital and demand the patients go elsewhere? Can he just stay at home or go away and consign emergencies to a coffin? The  usual option is that the engine keeps running on fumes.

My grace is sufficient for you, my strength made perfect in weakness are words that have meaning for every moment at such times. There is no other mode of survival. I am very thankful for the doctors who have stepped in, for those who have provided relief and for the juniors who have stepped up to contribute to that grace which has been my sufficiency. I also recognise the fringes of that grace which has wrapped around me and paused the flow of patients, permitted uninterrupted sleep for four hours, and flowed over the patients to sustain them. I am grateful for mercy in protecting the patients through times of my failures and mistakes, and for the same grace healing and restoring them. 

Indeed His grace is sufficient, and His strength made perfect in our weakness. 

The waiting

Love died for me when I didn’t even know it

Love died for me when I didn’t even know it

It prepared my price and paid in full

When I was oblivious to my penury

It bled before my blood cord was cut

And it breathed its last before I breathed my first

Why should someone die for a yet unborn skin?

How can love love so much

That it can include a baby within?

And now that I breathe, on borrowed time and air

What miracle allowed me to see

Blood shed on a tree just for me?

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me

You surround me, behind, before

Borrowed time, bartered life, breathing grace,

Live till life’s debt is no more

A sinner, saved by mercy and grace

Dna and the bible

DNA AND THE BIBLE

The cells of our bodies hold the genetic code tightly compacted into chromosomes, folded and spiraled within our cells. Each chromosome holds millions of dna  sequences, each very specific to our species. When cells replicate, certain sequences are used to create a template on rna, which in turn directs the replication in dna, a process called transcription. This process holds the key to procreation, that part of us which has the signature of God in us and allows us to participate in the creation of a new life.  But in that transcription, only a fraction of the dna sequences are used. The rest just stay there.

The Bible is our dna sequence. It contains so much material, but suddenly, a few verses come together to create real meaning for us, and permit us to see beyond the veil at a certain aspect of our creator.

The Genome project has sequences the entire dna on 42+ 2 chromosomes of the human. A scientist can draw on this to determine the process that spawns diseases. Most diseases are being tracked to that code containing a series of amino acid sequences that may be responsible for the entire organism going awry.

How well do we know our code for life? Do we really track our psychopathic personalities and behavioural aberrations to seek their relevance using the code that is available to all of us? Scientists have spent lifetimes to prise this knowledge out from the tangible world. And in each of our homes lies the secret to our behavioural sequencing, the Bible. However, it often gathers dust, and when read, it is read perfunctorily. We often emerge more confused and bewildered, still clueless while the clue sits right in our hands, like the dna that lies dormant in our cells.

No wonder the wisest man who ever lived asked us to “Search for it like hidden treasure” 

Why crucifixion?

WHY CRUCIFIXION?

Why is it important to hang on a tree?

Why crucifixion, and not an axe blow, or head cut off above

Why a spread-eagled suspended long drawn out demonstration of love

Helpless, skewered for all to see?

Why agony prolonged?

Why pain on  a rack?

Stretching sinews, dismembered back?

Why was crucifixion the price for me?

Why was death dying slowly up there on a tree?

Love  is expended

Love is spilt

Love is given, bleeding there on a  stilt

Love is suspended, and says nothing more

It hangs on a cross, just breathing before

It waits for something, I dare not watch

Yet it is for me that it is breathing, to  predictable ends

What happens in this limbo, as his body bends?

He for me bleeding, me for Him unseeing

Can I just stand untouched

Will I come under the flood

Or stand far away from his blood?

What does it seek, this waiting skewered spectre of death

Why does it breathe and not just give up the ghost?

Why does it see mother and friend and young son?

Why does it speak language and blood all in one?

What is to be gained with this slow passing scream

Why not just die, so I can forget I have seen?

There is something mystical in this long drawn out death

That wait for eternity opening, suspended in time

Entrance and hallways, vistas unseen

Guarded by this man skewered on a cross beam

What is this secret? What does it mean?

Can I too follow and climb up his cross?

Put my spear in his side, to verify my loss?

Can I hold out my hands, helpless like His,

Though his put the world together, and knitted my marrow

Yet held out wide open, spread-eagled in sorrow?

What happens in the wait, this wait for friend death?

When can I give up and say it is done?

How long does that take, till the setting of the sun?

What happens to others, the thief at His side?

Companion in pain, eternal bride?

Damnation destroyed, yet, hells awning maw

Fuming and swallowing, belching great roar

Mocking and deriding, wine sated sour

Why does he not answer? Why does he not defend?

Why let lies flourish like gnats

From a cross these may just may not merit reply

May be they can just distill into a sigh.

Maybe it was for me to see

That death long drawn out has horrors no more

Maybe it was that I could now live free

Because He died, for me, on a tree