The Fiddler on The Roof

I haven't seen many movies in my life but among those that I have seen, my favourite is The Fiddler on The Roof. I was 11 when I first saw this movie in 1976. The circumstances under which I saw it are etched in my brain and will make for another story to post in this blog. I know all the songs by heart and can rattle off most of the dialogues as well. Philip and the kids also love it.

But The Fiddler on The Roof is primarily a play, a famous Broadway production that has won 11 Tony and Olivier Awards. Mrs Snowball from church informed me that it is performing in theaters in New Zealand this month.

And I chanced to see Topol the main actor interviewed on TV. He was explaining how it was so much easier to be Tevia now than it was when he first did the play as a young man. Then, he had to remember to walk like an old man. He had to imagine how it might be to give one's daughters away in marriage. Now he was an old man and had a wealth of life's experiences behind him and found it easy to be Tevia. What an actor! I wished I could see the play. I also wondered how several of the scenes in the movie would be presented on a stage.

When I went on line to see when this play was being staged in Auckland, I noticed that the tickets were very expensive. The cheapest ticket was priced at 59 dollars and my manager at work assured me that if I bought that ticket, I would be seated firmly behind a pillar.

Some of the reviews read as follows:
‘The standing ovation from the large audience was fully justified and you would be mad not to see this production’
Capital Times, April 07

‘The milkman still delivers – a star performance that lives up to its reputation’
Dominion Post, April 07

“Topol is that rare creature: an actor with palpable charisma. His eyes glitter, his gaze touches all, his timing and delivery are impeccable and he delicately balances pathos with humour”
Herald Sun, June 06

On Friday, I went to pick the kids up from their youth meeting at Justin and Ingrid's place. Justin came over to the car on the street and said that he and Ingrid wanted to get tickets for our whole family to go and see The Fiddler on The Roof. He wanted to know which day we would be free to go. I said I would call him and let him know. The weekend is over and I have not called him yet.

I have a very good feeling about the fact that someone understood how much we liked The Fiddler on The Roof. I do not think the good feeling I might get at seeing the production itself will match this. I feel satiated and thankful. Incidently, we are not free on any evening this week and will not be able to go. But somehow it does not matter anymore.

New Age systems Vs Jesus Christ

A friend of mine and a professing Christian wrote that she had done several short term courses in fields of New Age belief systems and alternate healing techniques. To name a few, she had done courses on Pranic healing, Reiki, magneto therapy, Electro homeopathy, Siddha, Yoga therapy and Sutkriyas.

"I understand from holy scripture," I replied to her, "that Jesus is the only Way to true life not just for this world but for eternity. There is no other method that can give us true and lasting meaning and happiness in life. If Jesus shows Himself to you from the pages of the Bible, suddenly the Bible will become living and dynamic and will really be the voice of God to you. On that day, all other popular therapies, including Reiki and Pranic healing and various "ways" to happiness will fade in the clear light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray for that day to come for you."

I am not an expert on these "sciences," but at least some, if not all of these, involve spiritual powers. This makes them dangerous for Christians to dabble in. Yoga, for instance, up to a point seems innocuous enough, but after a while it becomes dangerous. The yoga that people are taught in schools and organisations is usually limited to physical exercises, relaxing, and concentrating. I am not sure if it is dangerous at this stage, but certainly becomes so when the concentrating is taken to the next level of transcendental meditation.

Sometimes, these 'sciences' are taught along with ancient systems of medicine like Siddha and Ayurveda. I do not know anything about Siddha, but about Ayurveda, I know that the system includes extremely valuable information. However, like much of ancient Indian scholarship, religion and superstitions were not divorced from science, the ancient sages having had a holistic approach to learning. Ayurveda includes information that is valuable as well as information that is erroneous and even dangerous. The task of filtering out the erroneous has begun with scientific organisations and pharmaceutical companies subjecting the material to modern medical research methodology and stringent laboratory testing. Some companies like Himalaya Health Care have brought out some excellent products.

Over 15 years ago, my brother, a psychiatrist in Texas, had a colleague with some terminal form of liver disease. She had been told that nothing more could be done for her. At that stage, my brother offered to have Liv52, a popular Ayurvedic drug shipped to her from India. My mother would buy several containers of this drug and ship them over to her regularly. The diseased liver healed completely.

Organisations such as American Association for Integrative Medicine and several others across the world are useful for our purposes only upto a point. They may rule out an ancient medicine as dangerous in the light of modern scientific knowledge. However, they are attempting a "multi-disciplinary approach" to medicine to provide "maximum therapeutic benefit" and will not therefore balk at most of the "sciences" I feel are dangerous from a spiritual stand point. In the future, we are in for even more medical confusion. As we move away from the principles that God has laid out for us, we move towards confusion and chaos in every sphere of our lives.

If lay people do short term courses on subjects like the Ayurvedic system, they could endanger those to whom they minister. As a rule of thumb, I accept medication or therapy only from medical doctors of Western medicine. All other systems must conform to the high standards of testing and research of modern science to be usable in our day. I use this rule of thumb in all cases except two, relaxing it for one and making it stricter for the other.

I relax the rule for some simple home remedies. I feel a bowl of chicken soup is good for a cold because my aunt made me some when I was sick and I felt better. This is a very unscientific subjective approach and should be avoided for anything more than chicken soup.

I would be careful about some forms of treatment, even if a medical doctor approved it, if it has something to do with the mind. For instance, some doctors recommend Yoga as a form of exercise to help concentration and breathing. The spiritual baggage that comes with Yoga is not an issue for many doctors, but it is for me. Even worse, psychologists in India often recommend Reiki and Pranic healing. Both of these involve spiritual forces. I have heard of some who tried these therapies, felt better initially but ended up even more deeply depressed than when they went in for treatment.

Most people learn about these belief systems in their quest for happiness and answers. The New Age movement focuses on powers that supposedly lie within our minds in a latent state. People believe that they can draw on these powers to be healthier and happier. Most of them take up this route for a while and give up. Many of those who go on end up with depression and other problems.

To those who have surrendered their life to the Lord Jesus, He offers far more than any New Age system can even promise to offer.

Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”(Jn 8:12)

as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, . . (2 Pet 1:3,4)

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. (Col 2:8-10)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, (Eph 1:3)

Surely we have no need to look elsewhere for direction, truth, and life.
Jesus said . . ., “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

As a child

I sit on His knee
'Fore the Book open wide,
At the place
Where the Lord
Calmed the storm,
Stilled the tide.

Turn the pages
And a young man
With a stone
Felled a giant;

Turn again
To see angels
Close the mouth
Of hungry lions;

Split the sea
The enemy's routed;
Fall the walls
When triumph shouted;

A queen saved her people
In a faraway land;
Against God's will
Whoever could stand!

What a Book!
What a Lord!

As we travel the sod,
Do we need to every worry
Flustered in a frenzied hurry?

What a show!
What a sight!
What a Savior
And what might!

And to think
As a child
On His knee,
I sit still
'Fore the Book open wide,
As my heart drinks its fill.

Here I'll stay,
Here abide,
All my life,
As a child.

-n-

Miss Emma Norton Horton

On 23 June 2007, Miss Horton will celebrate her 90^th birthday with family and friends in Victoria, BC, Canada.

She must have been nearly 65 when I got to know her. When I asked her why she had not married, she said that she had still not met her Prince Charming, and that she was still waiting. To the best of my knowledge, she has not married in the intervening years.

When I grumbled at home that I found reading the Bible boring, my father thought for a moment and said, “Tell God that you want to read His word and will do so, but that you find it boring. He has made the reading of His word so delightful to me, and He can for you too, if you ask Him.” I did pray. Today the word of God is delightful to me too, but between then and now, God used many circumstances and people to acquaint me with His word. One early person that He used was Miss Horton.

She was a headmistress in Clarence High School, Bangalore. To be more precise, she was the headmistress of the Primary Section, which had until recently been calling its classes Teddybears, Bunnies, Bambies, and Bees, the Bees being the senior most in the Primary section. My best friends Annamma Abraham and Gladys Mathai had been Teddybears and Bees and all.

But I joined Clarence only in Standard VIII, which was a part of the high school. One normally would not expect a newcomer in high school to be known by the Headmistress of the Primary section. But Miss Horton lead the Scripture Union (SU) classes.

Once a year, the SU people came to our school and presented the gospel by way of interesting stories and new songs. But the rest of the year, they were still active in a hidden way. They had a school teacher conduct weekly SU classes, and they also published Daily Bible Reading workbooks called God and Me for various age groups.

Miss Horton, as our SU teacher held classes on Friday evenings after school. I do not remember much about what we learnt there. Strangely, I remember that the closing hymn was always ‘Blest be the tie that binds;’ we held hands and stood in a circle to sing it. I am sure we must have learnt useful things during those meetings but it was so long ago, and so many things were happening in our lives at that time. Even our school song, in the third stanza, acknowledges that we were neck deep in ‘work and high endeavour.’

For our teachers we would thank Thee,
O fill them daily Lord,
With deep and true devotion,
To them Thy grace afford.
Bless all the hours of childhood,
The sunshine and the care,
The work and high endeavour
In which we now have share.

One SU meeting stands out because we did not have someone to play the piano, and Miss Horton felt she had to. (One would have thought that for someone from the Brethren assembly, singing acappella would be a natural thing.) To put it mildly, Miss Horton was not very good at playing the piano, and we had to hold the notes till she was ready to play the next ones.

One thing Miss Horton did as our SU teacher was to motivate us to follow the God and Me workbooks. The workbook recommended that every morning, before we left for school, we spend time with God. Before we read the portion of scripture assigned for the day, we prayed, as advised in the workbook, in the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 119:18, “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” Then we read the passage for the day. Next, we read a short devotional paragraph that made the reading meaningful to us. After this, we solved a little puzzle or answered a set of questions based on the reading. Finally, we prayed for God to bless the reading and help us live through the day as His children. One could do all this in 15 minutes, and if we were good and did it, we did not have to watch out for Miss Horton.

Every morning, Miss Horton would come in briskly from the side gate near an enclosed long rectangular area called “The Nursery Lane” and walk toward her office. She leaned forward as she walked, as if she were perpetually walking uphill. She would ask every child along the way, “Have you done your God and Me today,” and go on to make a more detailed comment about the passage for that day. It was amazing to me that she would do this with children of all age groups, which meant that every morning, she did four different God and Me readings, puzzle and all. As Headmistress, she must have been a very busy woman. But she found time for this. One day we will know what the Lord was able to do in the hearts of Clarencians over the years, because of her faithfulness.

I remember how she coached my friend and I to participate in an inter-school SU Quiz. That was the first time, I had to read such a large portion of scripture in such great detail. We went to Miss Horton’s office every evening after school. She taught us for about half an hour. I remember some of the details she pointed out during those classes.

• That the Bible records that 153 fish were caught, when it could have been rounded off to 150. Perhaps this underlined the fact that every person saved for eternity is precious, Miss Horton suggested.
• That John outran Peter as they ran towards the tomb of Jesus, but when he did reach the tomb, he was reluctant to go in and was nervous. But Peter joined John at the entrance of the tomb, huffing and puffing, and went straight in without any hesitation. I fell in love with simple, impetuous, unaffected Peter after those evenings with Miss Horton.
• That Jesus made to proceed on His way on the road to Emmaus when the disciples reached their destination. He went in only when they invited Him; eventually they recognised Him when He broke bread. Jesus does not force His presence or His teachings on anyone. We too must be gracious and dignified when we present the gospel.
  

When she was through with her lesson for the evening, she would set a kitchen timer for 10 minutes and tell us that we could chat with her till it rang. That was when we heard her say that she was still waiting for her Prince Charming. We also came to know with a keen sense of loss and wonder that she did not live her birthday one year because she was flying back to India from Canada, having boarded late on 22^nd June to reach early on the 24^th. We also asked her about Canada, her home and her family.

Another memory is of the jolly time we had in the SU camp in Quiet Corner at the foot of the Nilgiris mountains, where we learnt about the fruit of the Spirit. I remember how she pretended that she did not know about our midnight feast.

Miss Horton had taken us up the mountains by bus to Ooty and had shown us Hebron School where she had worked at some stage. On our way back, the girls bought whatever they could from the shops for a midnight feast. I am not sure whose idea it was to buy stickjaws. We woke up at midnight as planned and moved to the designated room, some making it across wet grass to get there. We could hear the hyenas in a distance, which added to the terror and excitement of the night. What did not go as planned was the fact that we popped the stickjaws into our mouths and wrestled with them for the next hour or so, got tired, and went back to bed. I digress.

One day, she invited a bunch of us to her home; she stayed in one portion of the Flack residence. Again, I do not remember what she taught us, except that I was comfortable and happy. For a treat she offered us some of Mrs. Flack’s guava cheese. I remember biting off tiny bits at a time to make it last for as long as it possibly could.

Have an enjoyable 90^th birthday Miss Horton, and may God bless you.