PAINTING A NEW ART WITH COLORS OF MEMORIES AND LESSONS

Time’s running real fast. It’s already one year into writing my blog. One year of painting a new art with colors of memories and lessons I learnt in life. I look at my blog and can today exclaim “WOW!!” Couple of years back I never would have imagined myself writing like as of today…forget the idea of writing a blog. Well I know that I’m not at all up to the level of professional writers. And all the gRamMaticle misTAkesS that keep occurring frequently in my blog makes me laugh as I read back through it.

My blog has frequently got its wardrobe changed with new layouts and designs. But after all, all the design just sticks to the predefined templates provided by blogger (Hey BLOGGER we need new better looking templates and more flexible ones!!!). Unfortunately I do not know much of HTML and thus cannot a create better one. Recently my sister started writing a blog for the first time (ohh my gosh…I forgot to add her blog to my blog links…hope she spares me…) and happily it was my turn to give her out my pieces of advices on how to run a blog. But she got a better hand in one area. She found a cool template for her blog via the internet. And my dulled out brains forgot to think of such a stupid thing. And now I’m stuck with this template. Well not that I don’t like the present one, but I out of competition put my googling skills on the run and found out cool new templates for my blog. I uploaded one, but that didn’t work and so a few couple more. Suddenly one of them worked, and whoa I was all ready to see the new attire of my blog. But ‘Crrrraaaasshhh’….(that’s how it actually sounded in my dulled out brains…) my ideas shattered into micro-granules that immediately flew away with the wind. The blog looked completely messed up with all my widgets scattered here and there haphazardly. In the process, I was asked to delete some widgets before saving the new template. And my happy excited –at that time stupid- conscience said OK and voila…3…2…1…the widgets got deleted. DUhh myself…those were very important widgets!! And I forgot to backup the details of those widgets. And all my one year’s data vanished away as though it was never there. So then back to square one, I went around searching the net for those widgets. Thank God they are back again!

That’s about the widgets and the junk on my blog. Coming to more important things…posts…writings…articles…etc. I’ve seen myself improve in my writings and my style of writing slowly has changed, till lately, as some feel that it has changed a lot. I don’t understand such things though…I just write because I love to, because I feel I should improve my life, because I feel there has to be a vision for every mission, because I feel there need be a change in this world beginning in my life…blah..blah..blah…I can just keep writing on that. It really encourages me as I read through my previous posts, because the thoughts and the lessons I learnt so far has been immense. The scripture portions I elaborated on touches me today as I read though it. Sometimes I wonder if I really have written those thoughts but I thank God for his leading in those thoughts. There were times of ups and downs in my blog. Sometimes I could post up to 5 posts every month, but then it gradually decreased to a hard worked 3 posts every month. There were two-three months when I didn’t post at all anything. As I look back to those days today, I realize that the cause of it was my spiritual failures and struggles I lost. And there are some posts too which when I read today, I find myself not agreeing completely to those posts. But I want to leave those posts as they are, because it refreshes me on my thoughts I left behind.

A very big complaint I received was, obviously, I write too big posts or say, ARTICLES…I know that it’s really difficult to read something as big as 1200 words in a single sitting. I write this big maybe because my essays are not a precise writing or because I want to make my point loud and clear or maybe because I just want to keep on expressing myself till I’m satisfied. Sorry for that, but I hope to make stuff a little bit smaller. Ooops already 750 words…chalo..now I got to stop….

Ending with, I want to first thank God for giving me this gift of writing and for helping me thus far in writing this blog. Also I thank all of you who faithfully are reading my blog and even all of you who do once in a while peep in (remember it’s open to all - 24x7 hours). A special vote of thanks to Joe who helped me mature this blog and develop in me a ‘skill’ to write. Thanks to his invaluable critics, my writing has improved thus far. While reading my blog do spare a few minutes and post a comment if you feel like. It encourages me. Anywzs…Enjoy Reading Everyone!!...and be a part of my blog. Thanks.

FLIPPING THE COIN IN ORISSA…WELL NOW…TAILS FROM HEADS

Recently I interestingly scrambled through the pages of The Week magazine getting myself updated with its cover issue. However, as if it was unexpected, the cover issue turned out to be on the violence against Christians in India, esp. Orissa. With all the violence going on around, The Week’s focus brought into light a rather different view of the whole situations with respect to Christians. They made the whole situation look like as if the Christians are to blame for it. While the Christians got persecuted and beaten up and some to the extent of even being killed, the cover issue flipped the coin in Orissa. They got in people from the opposing parties to speak up. While the opposition readily spoke up their mind, it embarrassed me slightly.

 

Back to square one. The VHPs the Bajrang Dal and the other opposition cried aloud their agitation and anger into the pages of The Week. They alleged that the Christians were ‘presenting their gods and goddesses in a bad light’. While the issue of forced conversion was still there present in their allegations, they focused more on this new allegation. The head of the opposition stated that they would continue their violence and attack on churches if the Christians wouldn’t stop forcedly converting and presenting their deities in a bad light. And they stated that if the Christians would stop doing the same, they would too stop their violence.

 

So what is this ‘presenting their deities in bad light’? It all started when they attacked a church and found a book which accused the gods of the Hindus of various things and thus presented their deities in a bad light. It was this issue that really got into their nerves. But now what was wrong in that? Don’t we have the freedom of speech? Can’t we exercise our rights and speak out our minds to the world? If we do feel that there is something bad in someone else’s god, don’t we have the right to say so?

 

I guess not!! If you can’t believe it, believe it because God says so, because the Bible says so! If we turn the pages of the scriptures to Exodus 22:28 we see that God tells us not to abuse or speak evil of any god. And here we are writing books and volumes of books over each god of another religion, abusing them and presenting them in a bad light. Well I may argue that God calls the other gods as gods having eyes but can’t see and ears but can’t hear, etc. It’s weird because God didn’t abuse them at all. He just presented the facts as they were. Whether it be an idol of Jesus or an idol of any other god, the fact that an idol is inanimate will always be true. So did God ever abuse any other god? I guess not. If we see the life of Jesus while he lived on this earth, he never disrespected other people’s gods. He gave people the liberty to choose between him and the other gods. So if God didn’t use his liberty as a sovereign God to disrespect any other god, how can we use our so frail liberty to portray any other god in a bad light? Respect all gods, whether you feel that they are true or not.