Blowin' in the Wind...

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Two pictures that captured my eyes today morning. A feather floating into the room, drifting along with the wind, going where the wind blows. Today it landed up in our front room, to be swept away by me and taken out with the garbage!

A feather that was part of the body of a bird once, actively participating in the forward momentum and the miles that bird would have flown, today is a drifting in the wind. It has no sense of direction or where it should go, it is propelled by the winds around, till some one picks it up and throws it in the garbage!

The second picture that came to mind was one of ‘driftwood’. I was reading in the Good book “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. ² May be this was that brought the picture of driftwood in my mind.

Driftwood is floating wood that has wound up on the shore due to the actions of the elements. Once part of a big tree, or structure of ship or a building, today is a piece of wood drifting based on the movements of the elements of nature! Some are good looking and beautiful but mostly serves no purpose than to be burnt in fire.

Our generation grew up with Bob Dylan’s song - Blowin’in the Wind. In 1994, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. A season, when world was looking for stability amid fast changing times. The refrain The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind has been described as impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind. 

How many roads must a man walk down, Before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail, Before she sleeps in the sand? Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly, Before they're forever banned? The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, The answer is blowin' in the wind..


It is dangerous to be a loose canon in the constantly shifting sands of these complex ambiguous post pandemic times. How should we live in such times? 

The good book asks this question - “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” I have on my table a violin string,’ wrote Rabindranath Tagore. ‘It is free to move in any direction I like. If I twist one end it responds; it is free. But it is not free to sing. So I take it and fix it into my violin. I bind it and when it is bound, it is free for the first time to sing.’

This season is one for rechecking our foundations, binding ourselves to the age old foundations that gave us stability, and bring beauty and songs out of being bound to the bigger picture of restoring foundations amid shifting sands! At times even digging up tearing down old ones and building  new foundations too! Then only we will remain stable. This is what Jesus reminded us too…

“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock. “But if you just use my words and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.” Matthew 7:24-27 MSG;NIV - “These words I speak to you are not - Bible Gateway



  

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