Is it okay to ask HIM for a wish?
He weighs that behind closed eyes, folds the question in his hands, and then, pulls a smile out of the fold: “Why not? Be a child. Ask. Ask. Ask. Ask for any wish.”
But do I ever know what is good for me?
“No,” he smiles again.
It always happens, you know. At some aching curves and bends, I turn the familiar Helpless Human and decide to post a wish, and ask for specifics, and make my dreams come true.
"And then?"
And then, just when I fill the prayer in my hands and am just about to pour it on my soul and churn it in the prayer wheel whirling within, with all the right ingredients – tears, a jaw tight from painful determination and all the stocked-up profusion of humility– I pause..
“What pause,” he asks, but his eyes tell me that he knows.
It’s a pause… I almost fight against. A strange strange pause. It stops me from being so helplessly human. The pause reminds. It reminds. Reminds, like a memory from some long past birth. Some past blessing. (Or bane)… It reminds me that He knows better. That He decides best. That whatever He fits is flawless.
“And then?” he goads.
“And then, in the nick of that moment, when I am about to place the wish on the wheel, I just pour some saline at the Lotus Feet instead and weep: “Let me walk in Your will”.
“But that’s faith, my child,” says he.
But they tell me to ask, ask, ask for my wish, burn all my fire and make the cosmos see it and then let His mercy show, in my fulfillment. They tell me, go, leap, leap higher and pluck that wish. Bloody hell, pluck it and make it yours.
"That is also faith. But waiting is another faith."
“But this world uses other words.”
“Like?”
“Like, passive. Like, procrastinator. Like, lazy. To my ears… they sometimes roll up into a bristly ball that batters my insides and almost seems to scream - ‘loser’.
His smile widens: “But is that the word that leaps out of you too?”
No… To me, I sound like the ‘undoer’. I can never be the doer. I find it so impossible. And then, just like magic, I just know the moment when I turn doer. It comes from Him tapping at me at the right places. I just know the magical hands of Him that push me and pull me. But I can’t describe them to them.”
“If I told you… I am the world’s most successful un-doer?” he asks. And then himself replies – “I know when He wants me to act. I wait. And I pray. And in the silence of this wait, He slips in, turns me into His instrument, I play out His action and in all my silence, I don’t even know when I have done it and returned! Returned yet again, to the state of undoing. He works like that. He works through us and we don’t even know it in the din of our own minds”.
Really?
“That alone is the reality,” he says.
Then…. I change my wish (yet again).
“Tell me,” he begins, his hands back in their fold, ready to fill my prayer.
“Please tell Him, to let me walk in His will. He knows what I desire. And deeply desire. And He alone has placed it there. And He alone knows it too. It’s a secret between He and I. Also, tell Him, to keep me close to Him. And keep me in love. With Him and then all that belongs to Him. Will you?”
“Yes, I will,” he comforts, almost my father behind his face.
But when he is walking away… the saint in His stride, I almost call him back.
And then, instead, I turn in, and whisper to myself: “And tell Him…. please, please…. that actually He knows what I so deeply desire…. And tell Him to try giving that to me. I am human, helplessly human after all. ”
He walks on, smiling. But something tells me, he too heard the whisper.
He weighs that behind closed eyes, folds the question in his hands, and then, pulls a smile out of the fold: “Why not? Be a child. Ask. Ask. Ask. Ask for any wish.”
But do I ever know what is good for me?
“No,” he smiles again.
It always happens, you know. At some aching curves and bends, I turn the familiar Helpless Human and decide to post a wish, and ask for specifics, and make my dreams come true.
"And then?"
And then, just when I fill the prayer in my hands and am just about to pour it on my soul and churn it in the prayer wheel whirling within, with all the right ingredients – tears, a jaw tight from painful determination and all the stocked-up profusion of humility– I pause..
“What pause,” he asks, but his eyes tell me that he knows.
It’s a pause… I almost fight against. A strange strange pause. It stops me from being so helplessly human. The pause reminds. It reminds. Reminds, like a memory from some long past birth. Some past blessing. (Or bane)… It reminds me that He knows better. That He decides best. That whatever He fits is flawless.
“And then?” he goads.
“And then, in the nick of that moment, when I am about to place the wish on the wheel, I just pour some saline at the Lotus Feet instead and weep: “Let me walk in Your will”.
“But that’s faith, my child,” says he.
But they tell me to ask, ask, ask for my wish, burn all my fire and make the cosmos see it and then let His mercy show, in my fulfillment. They tell me, go, leap, leap higher and pluck that wish. Bloody hell, pluck it and make it yours.
"That is also faith. But waiting is another faith."
“But this world uses other words.”
“Like?”
“Like, passive. Like, procrastinator. Like, lazy. To my ears… they sometimes roll up into a bristly ball that batters my insides and almost seems to scream - ‘loser’.
His smile widens: “But is that the word that leaps out of you too?”
No… To me, I sound like the ‘undoer’. I can never be the doer. I find it so impossible. And then, just like magic, I just know the moment when I turn doer. It comes from Him tapping at me at the right places. I just know the magical hands of Him that push me and pull me. But I can’t describe them to them.”
“If I told you… I am the world’s most successful un-doer?” he asks. And then himself replies – “I know when He wants me to act. I wait. And I pray. And in the silence of this wait, He slips in, turns me into His instrument, I play out His action and in all my silence, I don’t even know when I have done it and returned! Returned yet again, to the state of undoing. He works like that. He works through us and we don’t even know it in the din of our own minds”.
Really?
“That alone is the reality,” he says.
Then…. I change my wish (yet again).
“Tell me,” he begins, his hands back in their fold, ready to fill my prayer.
“Please tell Him, to let me walk in His will. He knows what I desire. And deeply desire. And He alone has placed it there. And He alone knows it too. It’s a secret between He and I. Also, tell Him, to keep me close to Him. And keep me in love. With Him and then all that belongs to Him. Will you?”
“Yes, I will,” he comforts, almost my father behind his face.
But when he is walking away… the saint in His stride, I almost call him back.
And then, instead, I turn in, and whisper to myself: “And tell Him…. please, please…. that actually He knows what I so deeply desire…. And tell Him to try giving that to me. I am human, helplessly human after all. ”
He walks on, smiling. But something tells me, he too heard the whisper.
Hello Balpreet
ReplyDeletewhy do you embrace the sufferings of a purist sometimes? That is something that creates too much of abstraction here and there. I think the question of spiritual identity can become too dependent on inherited symbols and emotions. There is nothing wrong with that but I fear that power of your contemporariness is too pristine to be enveloped in an old lexicon of feminine suffering.
Thanks Sunil, yet again for a detailed feedback.
ReplyDeleteBut almost all times, words flow because there is a need to vent them. They choose to come out as they are meant to.... I have no hold on them. They have a life of their own... And they are just an instrument of expression of that is within me, the way it is at that point of time. They way He wills it. Really. So, in that context, writing is not for the sake of words. It is just incidental. The real thing is what rumblings He intends within me and how I deal with them. Cheers and value your heartwarming feedback as always. God bless.