Reflections on Mother's Day

MOTHERS DAY  2013

                                             Photo Credit: Facebook Page: Imagen Perfecta

Reflections of a Mother 

Nice to greet you all on Mother’s Day. This is in tribute and celebration of motherhood. Let us offer a toast to our mothers, and to those of us who have gone through this turbulent, emotional and yet enjoyable period of seeing our children grow up. Whether you have gone through the throes of delivering a baby or not, I am sure that everybody, born a girl, has a natural maternal instinct in her. Every girl child nurtures, protects and mothers from the moment she can think for herself, which makes us all mothers through all ages…

I am thinking of a mother in the Bible, whom we haven’t given much thought to, at least I haven’t..   Jochebed, the mother of Moses: When Jochebed gave birth to a son, she saw that he was a healthy baby. Instead of letting him be killed by the Egyptians, she took a basket and coated the bottom with tar, to make it waterproof. Then she put the baby in it and set it among the reeds on the bank of the Nile river. At that same time, Pharaoh’s daughter was bathing in the river. One of her maidservants saw the basket and brought it to her.

I can link the mothers in war torn areas with this brave lady, the Mother of Moses…. in war torn areas and in refugee camps where children are born in trenches and in the most uncomfortable and dangerous situations, where soldiers have no respect for the dignity of women, where children have no safety, where life is a constant struggle to protect your children from the evil eyes of the enemy.  The Asia and the Pacific region is home to some of the world’s largest refugee situations holding almost 9.5 million people, which is 30 per cent of the global population of concern to UNHCR.

This also brings into focus the number of children who are orphaned, disabled, missing, kidnapped, abused, trafficked and scarred for life mentally and physically.

In a 1996 UNICEF report on children and war, it was reported that during the decade from 1986-1996: 2 million children were killed; 4-5 million disabled; 12 million left homeless; more than 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents; some 10 million psychologically traumatized. 15 years and many wars after this report was published, one can imagine what the statistics would be!

Children, who have survived the war in Sri Lanka, remember only the bodies that were strewn around and   kept falling all around them. They remember that they were scared even to come out and join the long queues for food being doled out in refugee camps, because they were scared that they would get shot. One girl said that all that she could remember was hunger and being scared to come out… but, her mother would get food for all of them, despite the risks involved. Of course she lost her mother to one of those bullets.. ….

Peace is not something that we can dream of till hatred and violence exists, till boundaries and political divides form obstacles, till we think of each other as aliens, (at least so it says in passports), till we speak of the supremacy of our own races and dogmas….. Life is for the living and loving….

Loving as unconditionally as a mother does….

Susan 

12 May 2013

 Innocence 

My child,

Your innocence, is fresh as the morning dew,

Your smiles are flowers in the sun

Your eyes, bright twinkling stars—

Your chatter, the patter of rain!                                   

Your laughter, chimes of tinkling bells-

Your spirit, free, dancing in the wind!

My child,

Where are they taking you?  ...........

To fight against your hapless kin?

To be beasts of burden in killing fields?

As camel jockeys or human shields,

Used and abused, trafficked and sold?

To appease a hunger of a different kind!

My child,

They brought you back to me—

Quiet, tired, pale, unsmiling—

Your blank eyes gaze through me!

Your deathly silence haunts me!

I hug you, in anguish, in tears…

You have lost your childhood,

My child, you have forgotten to smile!!!

  

Susan Jacob

Chiang Mai

14/03/2013

20 November 2012

A Day of Reckoning

14 year old Rishma, her parents, activists and supporters, around the world, found reason to be happy on Universal Children's Day, as news came in about the dismissal of Rishma's case by a Pakistani Court. It has vindicated the stand of thousands of her supporters and has brought relief to all those who agonized and prayed for her.

Another landmark is in the making as the General Synod of the Church of England is all set to vote on the issue of Ordination of Women Bishops. In September 2010, the draft legislation allowing the ordination was referred to the Dioceses for prayerful study. In February 2012 a Report to the synod showed that only two of the 44 dioceses were opposed to women bishops. In May 2012, the House of Bishops referred it to the Synod for final approval. Today on D day, 20 years after the decision was taken to ordain women priests, it is still not known which way the pendulum will swing on the issue of Women Bishops. 

Universal Children's day

On the Occasion of Universal Children's Day
20 November 2012

Gems from Khalil Gibran

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children." 
And he said:

Your children are not your children. 
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 

They come through you but not from you, 
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts. 
For they have their own thoughts. 

You may house their bodies but not their souls, 
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. 

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. 
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. 

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. 
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. 

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; 
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

The Year That I was born........

In 1951, the world was a different place.

There was no Google yet. Or Yahoo.

In 1951, the year of my birth, the top selling movie was Quo Vadis. People buying the popcorn in the cinema lobby had glazing eyes when looking at the poster.

Remember, that was before there were DVDs. Heck, even before there was VHS. People were indeed watching movies in the cinema, and not downloading them online. Imagine the packed seats, the laughter, the excitement, the novelty. And mostly all of that without 3D computer effects.

Do you know who won the Oscars that year? The academy award for the best movie went to An American in Paris. The Oscar for best foreign movie that year went to Rashomon. The top actor was Humphrey Bogart for his role as Charlie Allnut in The African Queen. The top actress was Vivien Leigh for her role as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. The best director? George Stevens for A Place in the Sun.

In the year 1951, the time when I arrived on this planet, books were still popularly read on paper, not on digital devices. Trees were felled to get the word out. The number one US bestseller of the time wasFrom Here to Eternity by James Jones. Oh, that's many years ago. Have you read that book? Have you heard of it?

In 1951... The new United Nations headquarters officially opens in New York City. Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a 1-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat, northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. Hank Ketcham's best-selling comic strip Dennis the Menace, appeared in newspapers across the U.S. for the first time. The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins. The United Kingdom begins an economic boycott of Iran. I Love Lucy made its television debut on CBS. Judy Garland begins her legendary concerts in New York's Palace Theatre. The National Ballet of Canada performs for the first time in Eaton Auditorium. John Huston's drama film, The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, premieres in Hollywood. The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than $13.3 billion USD in foreign aid to rebuild Europe.

That was the world I was born into. Since then, me, you and others have changed it.

The Nobel prize for Literature that year went to Pär Lagerkvist. The Nobel Peace prize went to Léon Jouhaux. The Nobel prize for physics went to John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton from the United Kingdom and Ireland for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles. The sensation this created was big. But it didn't stop the planets from spinning, on and on, year by year. Years in which I would grow bigger, older, smarter, and, if I were lucky, sometimes wiser. Years in which I also lost some things. Possessions got misplaced. Memories faded. Friends parted ways. The best friends, I tried to hold on. This is what counts in life, isn't it?

The 1950s were indeed a special decade. The American economy is on the upswing. The cold war betwen the US and the Soviet Union is playing out throughout the whole decade. Anti-communism prevails in the United States and leads to the Red Scare and accompanying Congressional hearings. Africa begins to become decolonized. The Korean war takes place. The Vietnam War starts. The Suez Crisis war is fought on Egyptian territory. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and others overthrow authorities to create a communist government on Cuba. Funded by the US, reconstructions in Japan continue. In Japan, film maker Akira Kurosawa creates the movies Rashomon and Seven Samurai. The FIFA World Cups are won by Uruguay, then West Germany, then Brazil.

The movie that was all the rage when I was 15?Madame X. Do I  remember the songs playing on the radio when I was 15? Maybe it was Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones. Were you in love? Who was I in love with, I dont remember?

In 1951, 15 years earlier, a long time ago, the year when I were born, the song The Tennessee Waltz by Patti Page topped the US charts. Do you know the lyrics? Do you know the tune? Sing along.

I was dancin' with my darlin'

To the Tennessee Waltz

When an old friend I happened to see

I introduced her to my loved one

And while they were dancin'

My friend stole my sweetheart from me

...

There's a kid outside, shouting, playing. It doesn't care about time. It doesn't know about time. It shouts and it plays and thinks time is forever. I was once that kid.

When I was 9, the movie The Absent Minded Professor was playing. When I was 8, there was The Shaggy Dog.

That's the world I was born in.

Progress, year after year. Do you wonder where the world is heading towards? The technology available today would have blown my mind in 1951. Do you know what was invented in the year I was born? The Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill. Liquid Paper. The Nuclear Power Reactor.

In 1951, a new character entered the world of comic books: Schroeder from the Peanuts. Bang! Boom! But that's just fiction, right? In the real world, in 1951, Gordon Brown was born. And Jane Seymour. Charles De Lint, too. And me, of course. Everyone an individual. Everyone special. Everyone taking a different path through life. 

It's 2012.

The world is a different place.

Have I taken the right path, I wonder!!!!

Cross section  of a trunk of a tree that is 2000 years old..
Red Wood Forest in San Francisco

ps: Did u like it?
let me be honest....
I got a link from a friend of mine..
it will give you similar details for every year

check it out:
http://whathappenedinmybirthyear.com/

March 8, 2012

Reflections on International Women's day

The essence of motherhood....

God's love is also like a hen that holds her chicks under her wings!

Loving and caring comes naturally for the feminine of the species, and when we are children we are so comforted and protected in her safe arms.

That was a life of dreams and make believe, but I shudder to think what it was to be mothers, caught in conflict, disasters, war, poverty and sickness. I can imagine what it means to be ill treated by rough and tough soldiers at borders and check posts, the unscrupulous official with no morals or manners, to be raped and pushed around during wars that they don't understand, of cramped dwellings in refugee camps, of survivors of floods, earthquakes and tsunamis....
But the spirit of women is a never say die one, they find reason to sing and dance, in a world of their own, of colors, songs, movement and rhythm, of aroma, scents, beauty and laughter.

The spirit of women..

color, joy and fun...

the never say die one.....

They have made the world a brighter place to live in....

1st March, 2012

The Year gone by ....

Has it really been a year since I have written creatively? Or has it been just my laziness to post on my blog? Maybe I just wake up on Intl. Women's day.

201o and 2011 have been crucial years in my life, some experiences good some were not so good, and the best was that I retired from Government service. Not that I belittle in any way the 35 years that I spent with friends and my officers, learning and growing, struggling with promotion exams, while the children wondered what kind of exams is our mother writing all the time? It is just that it is great to be free and be an ordinary citizen.

These were years of widening my horizons to more global issues of peace with justice, church and its responsibility to nurture communities of peace, the responsibility of each and every citizen of the world to sincerely wish for love and harmony sans war, sans greed, sans unfair competition.

It was a year of the growing realization that mother Earth was anguished at the way we were treating her. The natural disasters and calamities almost every week was a harsh reminder that all our underground nuclear testing, the ravaging of her bowels to find metals and fuel, the destruction of flora and fauna, everything was a result of this irresponsible behavior. And she as every other good mother has still not abandoned us... she groans and yet struggles to feed her billion children and more, till she will one day fall and die as she will not have the strength to survive any longer for her children.

Romans 8: 22-23

“For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. ²³And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves…….”