Showing posts with label inspirational. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inspirational. Show all posts

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Happy Fasting, Ramadan 1430 H

Happy Fasting, my beloved Brothers & Sisters!The holy fasting month for the Moslems is coming. It’s Ramadan 1430 H. After a year of common life, today they have to retreat from lusty way of life into holiness, framed with fasting, and filled with prayers, listening to /reading Qurans, good deed and charity.

I just want to give respect to this special time with a brief insight, taken from my garden. I found a caterpillar, swinging on a banyan leaf. It just hung on with a tiny fiber from its spittle. The creature started to wrap its whole body with salivary fiber coming out from the mouth. A new stage of life began, a crucial one of metamorphose: to be a chrysalis - a silent chrysalis. It ceased eating leaves and everything, and spent the time by fasting. That’s a beautiful period for such creature to change its character: from being a greedy animal to be a beautiful and helpful one – from being an ugly caterpillar to be a fabulous butterfly.

So, chrysalis has become a spiritual symbol of fasting time for inner change of life.

However, all is begun with a little movement of the caterpillar: to let itself ‘drop down’ to be ‘hanging on’ a leaf! What does it mean? This is my spiritual insight: fasting should be based on humbleness. To be mature in faith, ones have to trust their lives humbly to God, not to their selves! Then, fasting is a process of letting this self go, and letting God come into the deepest heart and drive all the purity of human dignity.

The perfection of fasting does not depend on how strong ones can keep out from eating and drinking, but it depends on how ‘keeping out from eating and drinking’ has led them into the purity of being human before God! [skd]

Happy fasting, Ramadan 1430 H
my beloved Brothers & Sisters!

Friday, February 06, 2009

Some place to perch on



I wish I could tell you the vibration of this Javanese song "Kupu Kuwi", hoping that you could feel the cheerful atmosphere brought by the gamelan music. Or, maybe you could make a dance with the harmony! It's about butterflies. Well, here you are the lyrics, in Javanese and English:

Kupu Kuwi
kupu kuwi dak incupé
mung aburé ngéwuhaké
ngalor ngidul ngétan bali ngulon
mrana mréné mung saparan paran
katoné ra ngerti sayah
mentas méncok cégrok banjur mabur bleber


Translation:

The Butterfly
I would like to catch the butterfly
but it's flying busily
going to the north, flying to the south, to the east and back to the west
going around where it loves to
it seems to have no tired
after perching on here, then fly away somewhere

In many ways, butterflies may inspire ones who want to grasp the spot of their lives. The composer of the simply short and beautiful song just captured regular activities of them. He might think of nothing but describing the creature when it’s flying and perching. Of course it’s just looking for nectar, sometimes just enjoy flying. No relationship, so far. However, he made it when he wanted to catch one of the beautiful, and he realized that it was hard to do. This could generate many ideas for one's life!

One of my friends means it as a process of his struggle to survive. Like catching butterflies, he feels so when working for livelihood. Another one means himself like the butterflies, which will perch on some place after flying around. Everyone needs a place to stand on, temporarily or permanently!

So, let's dance with butterflies! [skd]


Get your own playlist at snapdrive.net!

Download: Kupu Kuwi - MP3.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Glory of Flowers - Laudes


Flower - Laudes, originally uploaded by BornJavanese.

Morning still reserves new things to receive. The show comes from blossoming flowers under the morning sunlight. Droplets of dew are on the stage as well. Focus on the yellow flower! It shows its ultimate beauty, I think. So, it seems to show the glory of nature. That should be a significant note: morning time should be a glory!

What about humankind? It the glory of nature, e.g. flowers, is shown by flowers when they are blooming, when should the glory of man be shown in the morning?

Morning time breaks a new day more. We start our activities. So, what is the first thing we do when waking up from the bed that shows our glory? Prayer, a morning prayer!

I give the picture "Laudes" as wondering if a flower were praying. At that moment, it should be the best performance of a flower! Laudes (Lat.) = Morning Service, Morning Prayer. [skd]

Monday, July 14, 2008

The droplet time


The droplet time
Originally uploaded by
BornJavanese

Rain had just stopped falling when I enjoyed that evening. It seemed to be the last rain to close the past season. Recently the air is getting hotter and rainy day is very seldom already. The summer season had just begun. Therefore, the last rain might be like a farewell to the rains. Nevertheless, it made the air and surroundings quite fresh sweeping the dusts away from every leaf and surface. The dusty turned into the clear. That was so exciting.

Among the evening scenery, something little caught my eyes. It was a droplet! Yeah, not all the rainwater reached the ground successfully. Some left on leaves showed like pearly earrings swinging about to fall. They looked like dews in the morning. What a beautiful!

I played with them by shocking the leaf gently. Some droplets on the critical points really dropped into the ground, some were just swinging and still on the same place. There was a droplet, which was really catching my eyes. This one was bigger than another was. I thought it was just by one more gently shock – by me or by wind - and it would drop too. However, I did not do that. Wondering about the time it would drop, something occurred in my mind: a thought about life’s time!

Life is as fragile as the droplet! One shocking movement is enough to make it critical: drop-off or still hang-on! That is the moment of life! Of course human’s life is not just like a swinging droplet as he/she has power to survive more than any other creature. Time is not something from outside, which make barriers for his/her space. Time is what every human can create with his/her life to go. What about replacing the word "life" with "love"? That will be so human time!

Be blessed! [skd]

Saturday, September 08, 2007

My little shoots, looking for the light!

Solution is already potentially within our being!

Well… I think everybody knows that sunlight is very vital for every living thing even every being on this planet earth. Who can imagine there is no sunlight? Darkness! Moonlight might be the second hero. Ok! But the moon has its light from the sun, and it only reflects the sunlight. The sun is still the super hero!

What I will share here now is not the scientific knowledge about the sun or the moon. But I’m talking about the light which is very essential for our living. When we are in darkness, we need light! We long for the light! No light, no living! The rest is a question: Is light the solution while the sun is still shining upon the earth?

I’ve got a lesson from my little shoots.

I like gardening. It sounds funny as I am living in a paying house with no landscape or space to grow plants like in a common garden. So I’m going with my little pots. The plants I attend are just popular ones. Some are so easy to grow, one of them is philodendron.

Several days ago I slipped of sticks of philodendron into my pots, two sticks in every pot. Each one of them had just two internodes with one leaf left. No real root they had except nodules at their internodes. Done! I gave them water, and place them on the floor in my veranda. Days went by, until I found something happening. There were small shoots breaking out of their leaves’ armpit! Of course they were still small leaves.

Now, they look like the picture shown above. You see, they are going to crawl, as if they’d want to reach something to hold on. And the growing is about to a certain direction. Yes! They are going to the direction of the sunlight! (I toke the picture in the morning at about 09.00 AM). Do you see anything special on my little philodendron? What about this one: the closer to the sunlight has grown longer than others! There are more leaves at that part. Why?

You can give me a scientific explanation on this phenomen. In simple words I would say that my philodendron needs the light for its growing. It has photo-sensory cells to detect the lights. As the cells get the light intensively they are stimulated to multiply themselves faster than others. As an individu the philodendron mobilizes supporting elements of its growing in great quantities to them shaping new branches and leaves. The results of the photosynthesis done by the cells will be spread to all parts of the plant. The cells grow extensively as they multiply themselves faster, while the others grow more intensively, they become thicker and stronger.

That’s a common and natural fact.

By the nature, plants need light “to grow well”. By the nature, the plants have all elements and potentiality “to grow”. I say so with quotation-marks on the two phrases “to grow” and “to grow well”. It means, when the plants get no enough light, they are still capable to grow, even with no light at all they still grow though it’s going hardly to mention easy to die. They will grow pale, and will be burnt as soon as you place them under the sunlight immediately. What I would like to say is that the light is just a catalystic factor more than a basic element of the plants.

When my philodendron is growing extensively to the direction of the sunlight, it seems like a process of looking for a solution! The sunlight is supposed to be the solution. In fact, it’s just a process of cells consentration. And it’s just a bio-chemical process as plants have no neural structure – like those of animals – to enable a kind of decission making. But, as I have to get the lesson from this process, I would like to say: to concentrate the supporting elements in great quantities to the lightened shoots is the exact and actual decission – and so the solution – my philodendron can make to grow better than before! My philodendron makes the potentiality actual as soon as the sunlight shines intensively upon it!

Human being is higher than vegetative beings. We have emotions, intelligence, and – don’t forget – spiritual-religious view. Even we have all dimensions of all beings including physical and vegetative ones. So, the experience with my philodendron looking for the sunlight above might give us insights to take. Some would be as follow:

  • Inherently plants have sensitive photo-sensoric cells to detect the light source direction. (We have intelligence and capabilities to know better about our basic needs to be real human! Recognize your own talents!)
  • Light is just a stimulus as well as catalyst factor for the proses of growing, not the basic element. Even in the darkness plants are still capable to grow! Sunlight is the best one among the others that will stimulate and catalize the process. (What is the most dream of your life? What is the goal of your life? Remember, it’s not the solution but the best direction you can go!)
  • When they get the sunlight, the plants concentrate the supporting elements in greater quantities to the intensively-lightened-cells shaping shoots and leaves extensively. That’s a kind of exact decission, movement-for-solution, and actualization of potentiality which has existed in every vegetative being by the nature. (When you get the direction, and so believe in it, then go for it with all of your talents and energy! You have them already! Make them actual, and fulfil them in your move now! That’s the solution!)

I would like to recite a brief song from the “Sister Act II” soundtrack movie to end this post:

“If you wanna be somebody,
if you wanna go somewhere,
you better wake up and pay attention!”

Thank you, and God bless you all! *** (",)

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