SENSE OF WONDER

The Juvenile Justice System operative currently in India speaks of a few principles to be fostered among children, and to be adhered to by those who care for them. One of those principles among several the ‘Juvenile Justice’ envisages, viz. - ‘best interest of the child’, ‘privacy and confidentiality’, ‘non-discrimination’, etc. is ‘sense of wonder’.

The other day, while teaching the brothers here at Sunnyside on various principles the JJ system speaks of, and explaining to them ‘sense of wonder’, my mind went on to the ‘secular relativism’ Pope Benedict XVI has spoken of so eloquently and extensively throughout his papacy. I find great relationship between the two: sense of wonder and secular relativism.

Pope Francis as a Cardinal in 2003 has also tried reflect on this ‘sense of wonder’ in his book, ‘Generative Thought: An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussani’.

 Let’s try to move on to reflect on this amazing gift of the ‘sense of wonder’.

Questions such as ‘why is there something rather than nothing… why is this thing not that thing’ were asked not only by Leibnitz but several other philosophers and the men and women of former times as well. But the contemporary human being is not bothered by these ultimate questions and the answers they seek. Reinhold Niebuhr tells us that many people keep in their souls questions such as ‘why do I exist, Where do I go?’ We cannot pretend that such questions simply go away because we are afraid to raise or refuse to ask them.

In the book mentioned above, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio [now Pope Francis] says that if we wish to ask questions that we do not dare to answer and do not know how to answer, we fall into absurdity. In other words, a human person who refuses to ask himself/herself what he/she is essentially reject their own true nature. It boils down to the fact that we refuse to ask what kind of beings we really are. It is because we are afraid that the proper answer to the unasked questions will require us to live in truth which we do not want to accept.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in his book is highly concerned about the spiritual lethargy that the modern man and woman embrace. He questions that how could man raise the question of God so ‘calmly’ as if it were not a burning desire in our souls. He cites from the famous ‘Fides et Ratio’ of Blessed John Paul – the most important questions of human life, death, evil and good are present in all cultures. They must be asked if we are to know who we truly are. And how is it possible not to wonder who we are?

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio cites a few seminal questions, “Why is there pain, why death, why evil? Why is life worth living? What is the ultimate meaning of reality, of existence? What sense does it make to work, love, become involved in the world? Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?” It is always good to see these questions spelled out for us. By not asking them of ourselves and of our fellows, we cease to be what we are.  Young and old, believers and non-believes ask these questions that ‘cannot be uprooted’. Yet, they can be ignored or suppressed in such a way that we cease to be really human.

On a depth level analysis, a few insights are inevitable:

·        We might have read the epic hero ‘Odysseus’ by Homer, where in we learn that he feels ‘homesick’, deeply desiring to see his wife, son and the whole lot of his hamlet. Or rather we might have heard of the great quote of GK Chesterton who said, “why do we feel homesick at home?” Here lies the point or the expression of St. Augustine, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you…” Human beings possess in fact the yearning for the infinite. Sense of wonder is an expression of that.

·        Sense of wonder also reveals to us the perfection in God’s world and in ourselves, and it is important to nurture that perspective. When we view the world around us with wide eyes of wonder, we begin to appreciate everything as a gift from God, and of ourselves as if we are in perfect harmony with the nature. Contemplation in awe of everything that surrounds us including our own very selves is bound to help us in this regard. Gratitude takes us over completely, and we feel ourselves a great miracle amidst another miracle of God’s world. Above all, we need trust and value God present in our own selves.

·        Now coming back to the fundamental questions – we do not need to think that we can answer all our questions by ourselves. We live among those who have thought about them. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio says, “Certainty does not reside in the human head but in the harmony of all human faculties.” Faith itself is primarily a trust in the authority of another – God. Most of the things anybody knows, he/she knows by trust in the testimony of others. Our religious faith depends on the witness of the Apostles and their faithful handing down of what they saw, heard and experienced. Church has not only the ‘moral certainty’ but the fullness of Truth, which her Bridegroom by the virtue of her relationship to Him. Therefore it is incorrect to say that ‘other religions also have an element of Truth’ and that the Church assimilates all those ‘elements of Truth’. The fact is that ‘the elements of truth’ found in other religions is actually and shall always be the property of the Church.

·         Aristotle teaches us that beginning of philosophy is wonder, and only wonder leads us to knowledge… in fact true knowledge leads us to love the Creator God. Pope Luciani [Pope John Paul I] had remarked, “the drama of contemporary Christianity lies in the fact that it puts categories and norms in the place of wonder”. Such derangement leads us all to what is a big disease of the day, ‘relative secularism’ – my body my choice…, that is truth for you this is truth for me…, we can add on the insane list. We might have heard of the recent aggressive reaction and abuse caused by the FEMEN activists on the Archbishop of Brussels, when he was attacked by a group of topless women [who stripped themselves] and poured water on him as he stood against homosexuality. The aggressive secularism is what stands against the ‘sense of wonder’.

Finally to conclude, an insight from the famous Samuel Johnson would aptly fit in here. He observed that many people do wonder but they refuse to do anything more than wonder. They do not take the next step to examine the facts and depths of reality. This seems to have been the concern of Pope Francis, the then Cardinal Bergoglio that the modern world composed of men and women wonder about all sorts of things except what is really important for them.

Thank you O Lord, for the wondrous creation, and for the great miracle of human person, for you continue to astound us and make us feel more wanting of you.

Thank you,

Papireddy. Gade

[May 4^th 2013]

Fancy Dress and sunnyside, 2013 April 13th.

Origins and Sources

Origins and sources

1.1 Introduction

When did English begin? The question is often asked, but the answer is

surprisingly dull. The standard view is that English began when the

Anglo-Saxons began to settle in Britain. Who, then, were the Anglo-

Saxons? Where did they come from? And when did they come to Britain?

From the accounts of Roman historians, especially Tacitus, we know

that Germanic tribes had spread over northern Europe by the time of

Christ. Such tribes did not form any unified confederation. Rather, they

seemed to have been organised on a small group basis. Before the fifth

century, the spread of these tribes did not include any part of Britain.

Until  410 most of Britain had been under Roman control, although

the native inhabitants were Celts, speaking various forms of Celtic,

which give us present-day Welsh, Irish, Gaelic and (in Brittany) Breton,

as well as the now-dead languages Cornish and Manx. No doubt many

Celts also spoke Latin, the language of the Roman Empire.

Until the fifth century, therefore, there were few Germanic speakers

in Britain, and most of those were almost certainly either in the Roman

army or camp followers. But with the departure of the Romans, the

continental Germanic tribes saw in Britain a nearby land ripe for the

picking. The eighth-century English historian Bede tells of how, in

 449, Hengist and Horsa were invited by the Celtic king Vortigern to

help him against his enemies, and how they proceeded to establish a

base for themselves in Kent. Bede also says that these first settlers came

from three Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. Bede’s

account, no matter how careful, cannot be an entirely accurate reflection

of what happened three centuries earlier, a period for which there were

no contemporary records and whose history was recorded orally and

passed down from generation to generation.

The language these settlers spoke was called Englisc (= English) by

them, but it could not have been very different from the languages

1

spoken by those they had left behind on the mainland of Europe. Of

course, if you compare present-day English with German or Dutch or

Frisian you will immediately notice many differences. But these were

absent, or only minimally present during the Anglo-Saxon period. In the

last 1,500 years English has grown less and less Germanic in character. It

is important to stress that there is a continuous, if sometimes shaky, line

of development between Old English and present-day English. There is

more in common between the two than first meets the eye, and I shall try

to demonstrate these common factors as often as possible.

1.2 Indo-European and Germanic

I have introduced the term Germanic but have not given an explanation

of it. So what does it mean? First of all, I should say that it does

not equate to German. German is indeed a Germanic language, but

Germanic is the term used to describe a group of languages which share

a particular set of characteristics unique to them. We shall shortly see

some examples of this, but here we need only list the more important

present-day languages which are of Germanic origin: English, Frisian,

Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish and,

outside Europe, Afrikaans (which is most closely related to Dutch). I

have arranged these languages in an order which, broadly speaking, and

ignoring the special case of Afrikaans, shows their relative linguistic

closeness to English.

But this is not the whole story. For, just as English, German and so on

all owe their origins to Germanic, so Germanic itself belongs to a much

larger language family. This family is known as Indo-European, and

to it belong other groups as well as Germanic, including Indic, Greek,

Romance, Slavic, Baltic, Celtic and other less well attested groups. The

various groupings stretch geographically from the Indian sub-continent

to Ireland. Note that this means that the other native languages of the

British Isles, Welsh, Irish and Gaelic, are ultimately related to English,

although only distantly.

It is probably very difficult to appreciate how similar the wide variety

of Indo-European languages are. This is partly simply because the relations

we are talking about stem from a period almost 10,000 years ago,

and for which we have no direct evidence. The way we overcome this

is by searching for what are called cognate forms. These are words

which share meanings over different languages and which appear to have

similar shapes. Thus, if we search for cognates in Sanskrit (an ancient

language of India), Greek, Latin and English, we find the following

words for ‘father’:

2 AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH

Sanskrit Greek Latin English

pita￣ pate￣r pater father

Notice that in the first three languages the first consonant is always p and

the middle one t, and we can guess that the final -r was somehow lost in

Sanskrit.

English looks different, especially in terms of the first consonant.

But if we compare not only ‘father’ with ‘pater’, but also other English

and Latin words, such as ‘fee’ and ‘pecus’, or ‘first’ and ‘primus’, ‘foot’ and

‘pedem’, you may be able to see that English f often corresponds to Latin

p. This process, which is called comparative reconstruction, is fraught

with dangers, but all I want to do here is to give you an idea of what is

done.

It is also possible to use comparative reconstruction on more closely

related languages, such as the Germanic group. Below I give some

examples of cognate forms from English, Dutch and German, and alongside

them I give the corresponding French words:

English Dutch German French

father vader Vater pere

foot voet Fuss pied

tooth tand Zahn dent

ten tien zehn dix

It will be clear that English and Dutch share much in common, and that

German is not hugely different (although the initial consonant t has

changed to z). Of course the reason for this is that all three are Germanic

languages. French, on the other hand, is a Romance language, deriving

from Latin. Therefore it is much more distantly related. Note that where

English has f French has p, just like the words for ‘father’ above. You

should also be able to work out that there is a further parallel relationship

between d and English t.

Novitiate Experiences of Novices 2012 - 13, Shillong

“Novitiate is a home, where we grow rich in our spiritual life” – Sebastian. B

“Novitiate personally is an assert. Living and experiencing, loving and caring in a family that of all necessary” – Robin

“A home where I nourished to be someone dedicated person for the love of God” – Edmund

“Novitiate life helps me to think about my life, to find the will of God.” – Kyrbasius.

“Sunnyside is a little heaven where in I unite myself with God through prayer, work and meditation.” – Kamborsing

“Novitiate is a place of deeping my spiritual life and to know how deepen my strength in God” – Sachin

“Novitiate life is to experience God and to discern my vocation according to His holy will” – Jacob

“It is a dwelling place for all those who are looking for true happiness in Christ” – George

“Novitiate is a house where a novice strives for a greater understanding of his divine vocation by living it to the full.” – Sebastian. M

“Novitiate life is a grace filled time, where a drastic change takes place in my habits and behavior”. Matthew. S

“Novitiate life is a place where I make a difference in my life” – Synshar

“Novitiate is the first step for a life journey with God” – Khlainbor

“For me novitiate is a spiritual banquet with the Lord” – Shemphang

“Novitiate is a place where I prune, break and mould myself to know God more deeply, to love God more intimately and to follow God more closely” – Narendra Lakra

Picnic to Nehru Part in Shillong, 2013