God's pet

I am God’s favourite.

Now hang on! Don’t jump to the conclusion that all my castles in the air have materialized into bricks and mortar.

No. Far from it. Far far from it.

Guess that wil happen someday. But by then, I’d, perhaps, have made greater acquisitions besides which all those realized castles will pale into insignificance.

What irony, eh?

The long and short of it is, our aery castles are not what really matter. They turn out to be false dreams. False in the sense they limit our aspirations to easily accessible destinations.

If God picks you as his favourite, the first thing he will do is to destroy those castles, those limiting dreams that cut short ‘a branch that might have grown full straight’.

Guess you might have recognized the last quote. Yes. It is from Marlowe's Dr. Faustus – which tells the story of that brilliant versatile genius who turned to necromancy to give substance to the castles he had built in the air. Remember what a pathetic figure he was at the end of the show? Screaming and yelling for another chance, having realized he had been chasing the wrong dreams! Poor man! The guy ignored that spark which humans tend to ignore, while chasing castles without assessing their worth.

So if your castles start vanishing from your horizons, do not worry, my dear friends. God has picked you. You need not ask to be picked. It is not your choice. It is His.

Now you may ask, why does he pick A, V, L, and Z only and leave out the rest? My answers:
1. I don’t know. God’s logic is light years away from human’s. One life time isn’t enough to travel all that distance. So better to know our limitations and leave it at that.
That’s frustrating, you might say. Yes, it is. But there is a formula which can tackle that frustration. It is: THY WILL BE DONE. It works, you know. Just try it, and see for yourself.
2. You will not really pose this query if you know what it is to be in the A, V, L, Z league. Have you read the Book of Job? Before you ask to be in the AVLZ league, read it. You’ll kick yourself for even wondering at God’s partiality, and you will shout out to him, SPARE ME LORD. I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR FAVOURITE.

But it’s of no use, you know. Like I said, the option is not yours. The choice is His. And if you are chosen, you’ve had it.

Poor Job, he just wanted to lead a quiet life, minding his own business. And see what happened. He was chosen as a favourite. And he lost everything. His land, belongings, children. On top of that he got the worst diseases one can imagine – both painful, and in appearance real eye sore that people avoided him like plague. Some of the images of him dealing with his scaling skin are ugh! Yukky, to say the least.

But he came out of it! Yes, he did. You know how?

No. don’t think he grinned and bore it like a true stoic. He didn’t. He cribbed a lot. And cursed a lot too. He cursed the day that he was born and wanted that day to be deleted from the history of man!
But he didn’t curse the architect of his misery. He didn’t look up at the abode of his God and curse! For he KNEW, up there was a force which had a REASON for piling these misfortunes on him. Job trusted him absolutely. He knew he will not be abandoned. And he waited.

And one fine day, that force talked to him. Yes. God came down to speak to man to salute his spirit – that never say die attitude anchored in TRUST.

At this point, let’s just take a look at what this ‘trust’ implies. It means humility. An acknowledgement of human limitations. An absence of arrogance. A realization that nothing is really in our hands.

I must admit there was a point in my life when I thought I could turn the world around my little finger! Set your target, go after it – and it is yours. I think that cockiness showed even in my gait. And then it happened. I was diagnosed with a deadly disease! Down came crashing my arrogant philosophy. It overhauled me, my very thinking process.

Like a flash it came to me. I was a modern day Job. I was handpicked. I was the chosen one. Isn’t that a privilege?

I must admit it was with great reluctance that I accepted my recruitment into the AVLZ league. True, I wag my forefinger up at that divine manipulator on and off and tell him, “Hey, I didn’t ask for this privilege”. Then I heave a sigh of resignation and tell myself “Ok, if I am destined for something, there is no running away from it. After all, it’s HIS choice. He’ll take care”.

Believe it or not, that dialogue (monologue?) makes me FEEL GOOD.

And I move on. It’s not difficult, you know. This autosuggestion can work miracles.

I don’t know how I am going to link up what now follows with the rest of this piece. There is no apparent connection. Maybe you can find the link. But I feel I must conclude this piece with it ‘cos from the moment I started writing this, that telephone conversation kept coming to my mind.

I was talking over the phone to my friend Sister GM, who is a nun – one of the finest human beings I have ever come across. She was one of the few persons I chose to talk to after my diagnosis. I told her I’ll be coming down to Kochin for treatment ‘cos Dr.Gangadharan, the oncologist, is being recommended even by the doctors of St. John’s Medical College.

Silence at the other end. And then in a subdued, strange voice: “Is it to be Dr. Gangadharan?"

Despite being updated about my medical condition, she was hoping against hope for some miracle that would deflect my road to treatment from the Oncology Department. Dr. Gangadharan, for the layman, meant nothing pleasant. He was associated with the killer disease.

A year later, I told Sister GM: “Sister, I consider myself privileged to have been Dr. Gangadharan’s patient”.

I don’t think she was too surprised at what I said. She had been closely following my treatment and had associated herself with Dr. Gangadharan during this period for organizing awareness lectures.

Honest. I simply don’t see the connection between the last episode I mentioned and the rest of the post. It could have been the talk of ‘privilege’ that took my mind to this doctor who is doing God’s own work in this pain filled world.

Or is it that I found some answer to the Job predicament in Dr. Gangadharan? You know something like a model for the castles in the air that evolved human beings should build?

Am not sure.

Any ideas?