Visit to a Sculptor cum Artist

A few of us Homeschoolers went to visit a Sculptor today. We saw her use her hands to painstakingly and lovingly make clay into a face. The way she molded it, the care and attention to details, and the way she explained it to us was amazing.

She is a student of JJ school of Art, and she both does and teaches Sculpting, Drawing and Painting to students. I met her when she was admitted to my Hospital last month, and she mentioned that she was an artist. Being curious I asked more details, and she invited me to visit her studio. That set the process in motion, and today we ended up actually visiting her place.

Her place was filled with her various creations.

She does pencil drawing, water colors, acrylic colors as well as sculpture. She said that to make human figures one needs to also know anatomy and physiology, just as in Medicine.

Pencil sketch of a relative.

Color pencil drawing! Amazing real life effect.

The ever smiling artist!

Kids engrossed in watching her sculpt a face

 

We watched as she transformed a lump of clay into the likeness of a face. She used her hands which she moistened regularly with a wet cloth. She also used a few wooden instruments.

We were reminded of the verse in the Bible “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

(Psalms 139:13 NIV)

The finished face!

Our children also made their own clay creations.

We really enjoyed the time with her, and at the end of the visit she gave us a crate of Alphonso mangoes from her farm! God bless her.

The newest addition to our family

Yes, and she is named the Ertiga! This is our new family transport. The LUV story vehicle that has captured the hearts of Indian families all over. We love this vehicle for its sheer practicality, spaciousness, ease of use and versatility. It can seat seven people easily, and can even make space for a couple more if needed! Yet its footprint is smaller than that of a large car.

When used as a five seater car it is very spacious, with a wheelbase over 2700 mm, longer than many luxury cars. The sheer size of the rear door speaks volumes of the space available inside.

These are pictures of our new car after we have done a few modifications to it, and we absolutely love it!

From the front it sports a wide smile, and looks ever ready to go! It is tall and yet solidly planted to the ground.

The rear looks great, with no ugly projections or bumps. It can even be mistaken for a small hatchback!

We have made a few changes to our vehicle to improve the life and joy of the vehicle. I felt it is easier to show them to you rather than explain it. So here goes J

Reverse parking sensors to warn us of blind spots were fitted by us at our dealer.

There are some other things that we got done at Car Décor.

We did full carpet lamination with a transparent tough material that is permanently fixed over the light beige carpet. Floor mats can be placed over it, and the floor cleaned easily with no problems even if liquids spill inside the car.

Full wall to wall carpet lamination.

Steering grip really helps in tight corners when you have to use only one hand to steer the vehicle.

We put Chocolate brown and Olive combo art leather seats from Orchis, which were essential since the original company fitted fabric cover was light beige.

They have done a neat job with the new upholstery, and give three years warranty against stitch-loss and peeling.

And yes, we did add two screens on the headrests for back seat video entertainment, which also reads DVD, SD cards and USB. It also has a few games which kids can play during long drives. The screens have a neat zip cover to cover the screen when not in use.

Bumper and side protectors also help protect the car from objects which try to come too close!

As for the driving experience, our Ertiga is a diesel car, and this is our first diesel car too. The car is quite, fast, and easy to drive. I am enjoying the power especially the turbo that kicks in after 2000 rpm. Small turning radius and electrically powered side mirrors make parking and maneuvering in city traffic a breeze. Rear seat is very comfortable, you can adjust the reclining angle, adjust the roof air conditioning to your taste, and there is a center arm rest too.

The Maruti Ertiga! The ideal family car. Need I say more?

Hope springs in Mangrove Forests of Dahisar

If you look at this picture closely you will see something remarkable. These are signs of new life. Tender new mangrove shoots growing where once a superhighway was planned by greedy builders to engulf and destroy dense mangrove forests in CRZ 1, which are protected by Indian law! This is real life application of Education to the world around us.

Tender mangrove shoots growing over debris dumped in Survey 344 at Dahisar West

A few years ago, if you read our previous blogs, you will read about the environmental catastrophe which was about to be unfolded on 450 acres of virgin mangrove forests in Survey 344 at Dahisar West. The New Link Road Residents Forum with help from the BEAG, CAT, then Suburban Collector Shri Nirmal Deshmukh, Justice Tahiliani and few upright officials in the Judiciary, Police and MCZMA managed to stop the dumping of debris in this pristine mangrove forest. We had to go upto the Supreme Court to get a favorable verdict.

Today the debris remain, as a mute testimony to human greed. Some of it was ordered to be removed following the Supreme Court ruling, but a significant portion still remains.

Yet, inspite of all the debris there is something special coming up!

Amidst the rubble and debris, we see new mangrove shoots bravely springing forth! God has designed these mangroves with a special quality, to thrive amidst the tidal waves, harsh salinity and humid heat of Mumbai’s coast!

These young mangrove shoots give us a message, that however impossible the task may seem, we must never give up the fight to save God’s creation from the hands of greedy men.

God bless you!

Citizens foil Dumping on CRZ: Times of India

CITIZENS FOR THE CITY

Hypertension in Children?

Hypertension on the rise among children in city

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MUMBAI: Recently Dr Ajit Menon, a cardiologist at Lilavati Hospital, Bandra, treated a 12-year-old boy for hypertension. The child, doctors suspected, was battling “school-related stress”.
“He complained of regular headaches. We put him on anti-hypertension pills, asked his parents to change his diet and taught him to manage the stress,” said Dr Menon.

 

 

 

 

The boy is among an increasing number of children and teenagers being treated for hypertension. A recent study by the National Institute of Health in the US shows a rise in the number of children between the ages of two and 18 being hospitalised for hypertension (see box). Though no data for India is available, city doctors say the statistics here could not be very different.

Doctors said while some children have high blood pressure because of physiological problems like kidney ailments, lifestyle – poor diet and high stress – is the main cause of hypertension.

“A majority of school and college-going children eat junk food, which has a high quantity of salt in it. Lack of exercise also makes them obese and puts them at a higher risk of hypertension,” said Dr Rohit Agarwal, member of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics. The anxiety to excel in school is also a major cause. “Parents who push children to get good grades are pushing them to a stage where they need medicines to control stress,” said Dr Menon.

 

The solution is not just early detection. “Many schools conduct health camps, so teenagers are being diagnosed sooner. They need to make lifestyle changes early to eliminate the risk of damage to the heart and kidneys,” said Dr Ganesh Kumar, head of cardiology, Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital.

A growing number of parents have taken their children’s education and health seriously and decided to homeschool them. Besides individualized teaching tailormade for their child, in homeschooling the whole family gets time to grow in relationships with one another and imbibe family values. Studies have shown that stress levels are considerably lower or absent in homeschooled children as well.

• 7 Apr 2013
  
• With inputs from Hindustan Times (Mumbai)
  
• Priyanka Vora priyanka.vora@hindustantimes.com and Dr. S. P. Mathew
  

  
   

Teacher teacher

As Homeschoolers who teach our children at home, people often ask us: How can you parents teach your children? Can’t you let the ‘professional teachers’ teach them?

Today we read about the results of the Central Teachers Eligibility Test given to teachers in India: The results shocked us too!

Only 0.4% of teachers pass eligibility test

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[Taken from Hindustan Times 7 Apr 2013 (Mumbai) HT Correspondent htmedia@hindustantimes.com]

MUMBAI: City teachers are worried about appearing for the new teachers eligibility test, conducted under the Right to Education Act, as only 0.4% of teachers across the country passed in 2012.

 

 

In 2011, only 14% passed the Central Teachers Eligibility Test (CTET), considered the benchmark for recruitment of teachers. In the exam, teachers must answer 150 multiple choice questions in 90 minutes.

“Only one out of three teachers who appeared for the exam from our school last year passed it. The test is tough because the National Council for Teacher Education has said a person must score 60% or more to be considered qualified,” said Najma Kazi, principal, Anjuman-I-Islam Girls School, Byculla.

In its meeting on Saturday, Shikshan Katta, a forum of educationists, decided to raise the issue of the test’s difficulty and other problems teachers have been facing under the RTE Act before the state.

Educationists blame the poor quality of training given to school teachers for their failure to crack the test. “Many teachers do not have updated knowledge about the subject they teach. The training should refresh and update teachers’ knowledge,” said Basanti Roy, former secretary of the Mumbai division board.

The test is not the only contested RTE provision. Schools have not yet received government resolutions related to new evaluation systems., and there is also confusion over the policy to not fail students till Class 8. RTE RULE Experts say poor training to blame for dismal figures.

 

What do you really, really need?

This may be pretty hard reading for many, as I am going to ask you deep questions on your life.

What do you base your esteem on?

 

 

Is it on your body, or perhaps your mind? Your skin colour, your hair, your clothes, the place where you stay, your family background or your grades in school? Or on your possessions?

 

It is natural for us to base his esteem on ‘self’. After all these things are what we can experience using your natural senses.

 

Is there a better reality on which to base your esteem on? Something super natural?

 

You may well ask what is the problem with basing our esteem on ‘self’?

After all, you have been born in this family, privileged to get this education, worked hard to reach where you are presently, should you not be proud of your accomplishments?

 

Ask yourself, is this going to last? Will your hair last, or your health, or your wealth? Your fancy car?

 

Is there a better way?

 

Yes, and for that you need to ask yourself the hard question: What is my real need?

 

What do I really, really need?

 

Is it recognition from people, name, fame and money?

 

Or is there something more deeper, more satisfying, and more lasting than these?

 

Jesus said in Mathew 6:19
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Mat 6:19-21 TNIV

Treasure:

What is taught to us by Jesus here?

• Treasure is precious
  
• We are preoccupied with it
  
• Presently on Earth: it is affected by Moth, rust, or can be stolen
  
• Protect it by all means
  
• Provide happiness – temporary
  
• Perpetual- anxiety and worry
  

 

So what is the advice given by Jesus?

Store your treasure in heaven

 

What is your treasure?

What do you spend your time, energy and attention on?

 

 

What makes me do what I do? What is the method I use? What is the result?

 

Mat 23:5
“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long;

Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next.

Mat 23:5 MSG

 

 

 

Eg: Why do you wear clothes? For others? To get attention/honour?

Fear in you is made use of by merchants.

Fear of ‘others’

 

What is your NEED?

When you dont get what you need, you satisfy yourself with substitutes. Then you never look for original.

 

What is my central need?

Unconditional love.

 

From childhood, the child looks for it and does not get it.

 

Ultimately it concludes that it is not going to get it, so start looking for honor from people. Then you will never look for the truth once you are satisfied with substitutes.

 

It is these substitutes that kill. Fakes look like the original, but they do not deliver what you really need.

 

What is the result?

 

You start pretending that you have got the real thing:

 

Pretensions:

What you are inside and outside are both pretensions

Putting on a mask

Many types of people

Identity struggles result as the result of pretensions which have gone on for decades.

Children pretend to be what they are not because parents demand, do not allow them to be true.

Exaggerating.

 

Result of pretension? IF YOUR INSIDE AND OUTSIDE ARE NOT THE SAME YOU WILL END UP MENTAL.

 

Luk 5:36 Jesus then told them these sayings: No one uses a new piece of cloth to patch old clothes. The patch would shrink and make the hole even bigger.

 

Many breakdowns come because of continued pretensions. Trust is broken.

 

Why did you pretend? What others will think?

 

What happens in conflicts: Cumulative effect of pretensions

Remedial measures:

What does man do naturally?

Keep a distance so I won’t be affected. If I come closer there will be pain.

 

Inability to love the unlovable.

Why they are unlovable?

Trace the reason backward

 

1 John 4:7-8 NIV Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

 

Love is from God:

The Living God is the only one source of unconditional Love, also called agape love.

 

[In the world: I love you means I want to make use of you]

 

Man when separated from God. has no unconditional love:

Jesus said:

And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.

I’m not interested in crowd approval. And do you know why? Because I know you and your crowds. I know that love, especially God’s love, is not on your working agenda.

I came with the authority of my Father, and you either dismiss me or avoid me. If another came, acting self-important, you would welcome him with open arms.

How do you expect to get anywhere with God when you spend all your time jockeying for position with each other, ranking your rivals and ignoring God?

Joh 5:40-44 MSG

 

 

So how can we love unconditionally? We cannot.

Man in the natural is without unconditional love

Unless we believe in Jesus, and become a source of unconditional love.

 

When we do not accept this unconditional love, what happens? The inner vacuum remains.

This vacuum inside is called lust. We want to fill the vacuum by fulfilling our lust. It never gets full.

What is the result?

 

Ecc 2:10-11 NIV I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. 11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.

 

Man without love has three major problems [present in every one]:

1. Loneliness: Nobody cares for me, nobody understands me.
   
2. Insecurity
   
3. Inferiority: I am nobody, I want to become somebody
   

 

To fill the vacuum you are looking for love from People

You accumulate honor, acceptance…but do not get Love

 

Then what does man do? Try to save yourself…

Use self-salvation measures: The 5 P’s : SIN

From Sin into Sin

 

Pretension: to save your image you tell a lie

Proving yourself

Promotion:

Power: competition destroys love, creates hatred

Comparison: To climb the ladder [Anything you cannot compare?]

Compromises result

Class struggle

 

These methods can make you successful, and are addictive. They can destroy.

He wanted love, tried all self-salvation ways, ended up getting Hatred.

 

 

Luk 9:24 NIV
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.

 

The result?

Luk 9:25 What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?

 

 

What are you looking for?

Unconditional Love

 

Success: Efficiency, Achievement

How is it measured? eg: Houses, Cars.

By statistics alone. The world says: No numbers, no success.

 

Relationships:

How do you define a good child?

Is it by success? Can you love your child for who and what he is?

 

In the Kingdom of God’s evaluation is not on Success but on your Faithfulness

 

Four areas of faithfulness:

In Little

In Money

With someone else’s goods

Serving one Master

 

Jesus said in Luke 16:10-13 He who is faithful in the least is also faithful in much. And he who is unjust in the least is also unjust in much. 11 Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust the true riches to you? 12 And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who shall give you that which is your own? 13 No servant can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

 

Your real need is Unconditional Love

 

Have you ever felt the need of your Soul?

 

As the deer pants, my soul longs.

Even if you are successful to the nth degree, if the needs of your soul are not met, everything is a waste

 

When you enter in a crisis, you may realize this need.

 

Restored relationship with me is your need, is the counsel of the Creator.

 

He alone can give you unconditional love, as He demonstrated in Jesus Christ.

 

We are taught by the evil one that our need is more ‘things’.

We say she is doing very well, but inner life is miserable. Is this ‘doing well’?

 

Are we not brainwashed by the World?

 

A teaching which no one will accept, a teaching of Jesus:

Luk 12:15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

If you think abundance is the basis, you will be greedy for more.

 

Luk 12:13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

 

That could be our prayer request. Praying to God to answer ‘our’ prayers. Jesus says “who gave me this job?”.

 

What is His job?

Find the lost, save the sinners.

 

We think Jesus answers our prayer requests for marriage, job, education, marriage?

 

Unanswered prayers based on lust are answered by the one who gave you that lust, by the evil one. That is why people confuse the evil one with God. They think God is a desire fulfilling genie.

 

Whom do we believe?

 

God says this is not the life…World says this is the life.

 

What is Sin? Not believing in God

 

Holy Spirit convicts you of Sin: John 16:9
about sin, because people do not believe in me;

 

Root of Sin: my right is for myself

 

What is the basis of our prayer requests?

 

Don’t think those who are uneducated are living unhappy lives.

 

Why did God call a certain rich man [in the parable mentioned in Like 12] a fool?

If abundance of possessions is the basis of life, why was his life gone?

Luk 12:20-21 NIV
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

 

God calling someone a fool…is a severe judgment.

 

Do we realise that we all are dead? We are born dead, living dead, going to eternal death. It is mere existence. Protoplasmic activity. Man separated from God has protoplasmic activity for 70 to 80 years. Like the severed tail of a lizard which moves but has no real life. Movements we make are mere activity. We will all go to our death.

John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

 

At Creation, when God created Adam:

Gen 2:7 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

The presence of God in man as a Spirit was life.

After the Fall, Man became mere flesh. Life is not there.

Unless we realise that, we won’t feel the need for abundant life.

When Jesus Christ came, He said ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. A parallel way to eternal life.

How can man get eternal life?

John 5:24 Jesus was very clear: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.

 

I must believe the whole Gospel. Gospel literally means News that is too good to be true.

Interpretation of John 5:24 is….

1Jn 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.

 

We must be ‘born again’.

What does it mean?

How are you born again?

1Peter 1:23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

How?

Hearing the Word of God produces faith, you get convicted by the Spirit of your real nature, your need for forgiveness, and that you are loved unconditionally and forgiven by God in Jesus Christ.

 

Romans 8:11 And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

Unless you are born of water and the Spirit you cannot enter the Kingdom of God:

John 3:5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.

Not by any act that you do. Salvation is not by works. It is by Faith.

 

It is only then that your real need, your deepest desire is met, by the One who created you and loves you beyond measure.

 

So I base my ‘value’ on the fact that God loves me so much that He has sent His Son Jesus to die for my sins, restore me into a loving relationship with Himself, and give me eternal life. This value will never fade away, and no one can take it away from me. I will be foolish to base my value on my self-esteem [my body, mind or possessions]. I can boast only of ‘Christ esteem’ as Andrew Wommack puts it.

Thank you God!

Have a lovely day.