SPRINGBOARDS and WALKING STICKS

 When Sundar Pichai, the Indian-American CEO of Google, first arrived in California for studies, he looked out at the hills and saw them burnt brown, a landscape that seemed tired, drained, and waiting for rain. His host looked at the same hills and called them golden. Same hills, same light; two different perspectives, and thus two different worlds. In his commencement / graduation address to the graduating class of 2026, Pichai returned to that moment and drew from it the first of three things worth carrying: learn to see the gold. Optimism Is a Way Of Seeing Optimism is not the belief that everything will go well. It is closer to what Proust meant when he wrote that the real voyage of discovery lies in having new eyes. The facts of your life will often be brown and unpromising. Whether they are also golden depends on the quality of your attention. There is an old story from the Franciscan tradition about Brother Juniper, who was so incapable of seeing malice in anyone that he wa...

 Jesus was born, and he lived in a fractured world, like we find our world often times. How do we keep our hearts open in a world that often feels fractured, competitive, and overwhelming? Ancient Buddhist philosophy offers a practical framework known as the four Brahmaviharas , could be translated as the heavenly homes, divine dwelling place; a place from we must operate from. These four psychological states: Metta (Loving-Kindness), Karuna (Compassion), Mudita (Sympathetic Joy), and Upekkha (Equanimity)—are not passive emotions. They are active, limitless qualities of the heart that shield us from anger, pity, envy, and anxiety. Across historical traditions, global literature, and the Bible, we can see these universal virtues vividly brought to life. 1. Metta : Universal Loving-Acceptance Metta is the baseline of the Brahmaviharas—a boundless, unconditioned goodwill toward all living beings. It operates without transaction; you do not offer Metta because someone earned...

 The video, a scene featuring comedian Louis C.K. and his television daughters, offers a surprisingly profound and poignant lesson in parenting, specifically addressing the concept of "fairness" and how to guide children away from envy and towards empathy. It dismantles the common parental instinct to artificially construct a perfectly equitable world for their children, advocating instead for a crucial lesson in reality. The Illusion of "Fairness" From a young age, children possess a hyper-sensitive, almost innate radar for what they perceive as "fair." When a sibling gets a slightly larger piece of cake, a new toy, or, in this case, the sole "mango pop," the immediate cry is one of injustice: "That's not fair!" Watch this video  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAgdo6-GJcs&t=4s As parents, the instinct is often to immediately rectify this perceived imbalance. We want our children to be happy, and we want to avoid conflict. We m...

 The story of Bartimaeus (Mark 10: 46–52), tells us that every human being is a bundle of vulnerabilities and capabilities, though the proportion may be different from person to person. We must not be silent about either of them. On the one hand, talk loudly about and face our vulnerabilities and over come them as far as possible; and on the other hand, put into use our capabilities or your capabilities will die in you. Bartimaeus is the story of a man who refused to be defined solely by his limitations, yet was equally unwilling to waste the gift he received. In him, we see the full arc of authentic human living: honest confrontation with vulnerabilities, and the bold activation of capabilities. Bartimaeus sat by the roadside at Jericho; blind, begging, and marginalized. In the social imagination of first-century Palestine, blindness was not merely a physical condition; it carried the weight of shame, exclusion, and perceived divine disfavour. He was, by every outward measure, a b...

  If you remain in my love you will follow my commandment, and you will bear fruit. Do you bear fruit? How do we know? Watch whether others come to you. If you see others coming to you to gather from you, or to take a bite from you; it is an indication that you are bearing fruit. I watch birds. Birds gather on trees that provide food, provide shelter. We do not evaluate our fruitfulness by looking inward at our intentions, but by watching outward at whether we are being The Greeks came to Jesus. The Centurion, whose daughter was ill, came to Jesus. People searched after him day and night, brought their sick and needy to Him. Jesus kept bearing fruits of mercy, generosity, and inclusivity. People come to you to gather difficult fruits. Jesus bore much, meaning, difficult fruits. In John 8: 1-11, we have the story of the woman caught in sin. And our binary sense of morality says, the scribes and Pharisees were insensitive to women, they brought her to Jesus to trap Jesus, etc. I wou...

 Fear is among the oldest, most elegantly designed instruments in the human psychological toolkit. Long before language, philosophy, or civilization, fear kept our ancestors alive. It sharpened the senses, flooded the bloodstream with adrenaline, and compelled swift, decisive action in the face of predators, rivals, and natural disasters. Without it, the species would not have survived. In this sense, fear is not a flaw to be eliminated, it is a feature, a compass that points toward genuine danger and motivates the caution, preparation, and effort that underpin real growth. The student who fears failure studies harder. The entrepreneur who fears irrelevance innovates more boldly. The athlete who fears losing trains with greater discipline. The parent who fears neglecting their child gives more of themselves. In each case, fear functions as a stimulus; a productive tension between the present and a worse possible future that compels meaningful action. Psychologists sometimes call th...

 Fear is the enemy of life. It is perhaps the oldest, most intimate companion of the human condition; present before we have words for it. The spiritual writer Henry Nouwen, in one of the most unflinching diagnoses of the modern soul, wrote that fear has invaded every part of our being. There always seems to be something to fear: something within us or around us, something close or far away, something visible or invisible, in others or even in God. Fear is, as Nouwen puts it, "an omnipresent force that we cannot shake off," one that "controls, whether we are aware of it or not, most of our choices and decisions." This is not merely a spiritual observation. Neuroscience confirms it. When the amygdala, the brain's alarm system, registers a threat, the prefrontal cortex, the seat of reason and higher judgment, is effectively bypassed. We stop thinking and start reacting. What is terrifying about this is not the momentary panic it produces, but the long-term effects...

 Ask anyone — or ask yourself — "Do you love God?" and the answer will come swiftly, almost instinctively: "Yes." Countless songs celebrate this love. Devotion to God has become, in many circles, not only wanting but fashionable; a beautiful sentiment worn close to the heart. But ask a different question — "Do you keep the commandments of God?" — and something shifts. An uneasiness settles in. A silence. Yet Jesus is unambiguous: if you truly love God, you will keep His commandments. Perhaps the deeper danger lies not in outright disobedience, but in the illusion of obedience. Many of us — especially those in religious life; can grow comfortable believing we are faithful simply because we follow institutional rules, parish directives, or episcopal guidelines. But this is a quiet escape. To equate the commandments of God with the prescriptions of human authority is to mistake the map for the destination. It echoes the elder son in the Parable of the Prodiga...

 Life is difficult in two ways. One is the difficulty of the mountain climber who falls, or of the entrepreneur who loses everything in a bad quarter. The other is quieter; the suffering of the person who wakes each morning, goes to work everyday, without knowing why. This is the suffering of alienation: the condition in which a human being becomes a stranger to his or her own life. To understand alienation, we must first understand its opposite. Consider the mountaineer. She rises before dawn, her body aching from the previous day's ascent, the cold working its way through every layer of clothing. By any objective measure, she is enduring hardship. And yet there is something luminous in her. She moves with intention. Every grueling step is folded into a larger story she is telling herself, a story that ends at a summit, with a view earned, with a body that answered when called upon, with the quiet pride of having attempted something the mountain did not want to give her. The diffi...

 There is a deeply human instinct to move away from trouble. When conflict erupts, when danger signals rise, when the crowd grows restless or a region earns a fearful reputation, the natural impulse is to retreat; to find the nearest place of comfort, safety, and silence. We build walls, draw borders, and call it wisdom. It is a reasonable instinct. Nobody volunteers for hardship. Nobody chooses chaos when peace is available. And yet, the life of Jesus of Nazareth stands as a quiet, persistent rebuke to this instinct. Over and over, in the Gospel accounts, we find him doing the one thing the crowds would not: moving towards. “When Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been arrested, he came to Galilee.” The arrest of John the Baptist was not a small political inconvenience. It was a signal, a warning shot from the powerful to the prophetic. Herod Antipas had silenced the voice crying in the wilderness, and anyone paying attention understood what that meant: public preaching, free s...

 When we read the great farewell discourse in the upper room, we are invited to read it not with our calculating, egoic minds, but with a contemplative heart. Jesus has just finished doing something completely unthinkable: he has taken off his outer garment, wrapped a towel around his waist, and washed the grime off the feet of his friends. He assumes the position of the lowest slave in the household. And then he looks at them, and across time at us, and says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.” In the first half of life, our False Self—our ego—hears this passage and entirely misunderstands it. The ego is obsessed with hierarchy, with climbing ladders, with proving its worth and protecting its boundaries. The ego hears "servant" and "master" and thinks this is a lesson about staying in our place, a divine reinforcement of the cosmic pecking order. It thinks Jesus is saying, ...

 John 13 opens not with a sermon but with a gesture; one of the most staggering gestures in all of scripture. The master had tied a towel around his waist, poured water into a basin, and went from disciple to disciple, washing the dust and filth from their feet. He did it without announcement. He did it without requiring their worthiness first. He did it fully; to every man in that room. And here is where the scene reaches its most devastating depth: he did not skip Judas. He did it with total generosity and magnanimity, zero partiality, and at full knowledge of the cost. He knew what those feet had already been plotting, where those feet would walk before the night was through. And still, he knelt; still, he washed. There was no partiality in his mercy, no calculation in his generosity, no precondition on his service. The magnanimity of the master was total. This is the context in which the words, “ a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one ...

  How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.  There is an impatience in this demand that sounds, on the surface, like honest seeking. Just tell us. Be clear. But Jesus does not receive it as honest seeking; and he is right not to. He has told them. The works he had done have spoken. The signs have been shown. The feeding, the healing of the blind man, the raising of the dead; none of it has been ambiguous. The problem was never a lack of clarity. The problem was a lack of belonging. There is a difference between a question asked in order to find an answer, and a question asked in order to resist an answer. The crowd at Solomon's Colonnade had already organised their resistance. They had taken up stones. They had convened investigations. They had cast out the man born blind for daring to testify. The question, tell us plainly , was not an open hand extended toward truth. It was a closed fist, demanding that Jesus incriminate himself in words ...

 Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is the story of three brothers, passion (Dmitri), reason (Ivan), and spiritual compassion (Alyosha), struggling with the existence of God and moral responsibility in a world where their father, a repulsive squanderer, is murdered. Dmitri takes the path of violence and drunkenness. The spiritually gifted elder Zosima, near death, bypasses the other two brothers and bows his head to the ground before the young man who was brash, drunken, and violent, now tormented by guilt. The gesture bewilders everyone in the room. The gesture recognises Zosima’s powerlessness to condemn another; it upholds Dmitri's potential for spiritual awakening and activate Dmitri's own conscience, forcing him to confront his inner conflict. Zosima’s bow serves as a radical act of faith in humanity. Jesus, in John 12:44–50, does something remarkably similar; not with a gesture, but with a declaration that cuts against every instinct of power and religion that su...