Gate-less Heaven! 2nd Sunday Jan 17 2021

 

Gateless Heaven! 

"When" can I come to your place?  You may be very busy with so many things!

Can "I" come to your place? If I am a peasant, a poor, a dalit, an orphan; you may not like me to enter your home!

"Where" can I meet you? You may live in a restrictive area where most human beings are forbidden to enter!  Or due to your status, you may not like me to enter your conclave! 

Some years back, three men belonging to a Dalit community were very badly treated in Thinniyam near Lalkudi, Trichy.   Because they had beaten the village drum, they were made to eat human excrete and were beaten with a red hot iron by the so called "higher caste" lumpens!  A bold village youth took the risk of brining the news out!  Under the leadership of Mr. Rathinam a senior advocate we took the matter to the street and to the court.  But the three men's life was in danger and we had to evict them from their village vicinity in order to protect them.

Around this time, I was beginning to live in a village far from our formal religious institutions and communities.  I immediately took them to my place.  Lucky I was not staying in a religious house which would have made it very difficult to accommodate those victims.  To pass permissions and rigidities, it would have been near impossibility!

Poor men entering a police station or simple people entering a "high class" hospitals or entering government offices for certificates or licences you will be humbled and made poor!

Many "houses" are not homes!  You need appointments, pass through restrictions, Audience may not be granted! 

But, normally in villages, people are very simple, they immediately invite you to their homes!  Their homes are simple in structure but plain and welcoming!  Their hearts are also simple and plain!  They have nothing much to defend, hide or feel afraid of!  Whereas people who possess more become protective.  They cannot be easily approached.  Attachment to possession in due time become identification with the same!  Then, when possession is hurt, you are hurt!  When your ideology is attached your Self gets offended.

Your inner fear increases your inner complications!  Your inner complications increases your inner defense, Your inner defense increases your seclusion and alienation!

You trust a few and mistrust many!  Some of their places look so very neat and tidy but highly resembles me of an asylum!  Their laughter, their celebration, their meditation and prayer are all time tabled!  They need bells to wake up and eat their food!

On the contrary, you see Jesus inviting a couple of persons immediately to his residence, probably a temporary one, may be of one his friends'. may be a little tent!!

A spiritual person necessarily need to be a transparent person!  He has less to hide and defend!  He is open therefore, faith filled!  If you are defenseless, you are ever open to persons, ideas, theories, inventions and truth which is dynamic.

If you hesitate too much to welcome people into your place, may be you live in a ghetto not at home!

By the way, Heaven has no doors and door bells!! Any Tom, Dick and Harry may just walk in!  If you think that it may be too disturbing then better to go to hell!