a photo a day

(sunlight breaking through the clouds at a future school site in hatton)

A photo a day will keep the memories away.

So they say when I leave, my heart is going to cleave into two and my tears will line my path of exit. (What can I say, Sri Lankans!).

Came back from another visit to the South where a village is being rebuilt by a Texan Christian ministry (horror of horrors) and who need desperately a school. This is an interesting, if painful ethical/religious dilemma. As a nonprofit strongly committed to the secular ethos, one should be not be intolerant of any religion but tolerant of all. Yet tolerance, acceptance, embracing and devotion all mark different commitments. Though it is not an evangelizing organization, though it does not mandate like the Gideons, a Bible in every room, yet by consorting with the enemy if that, are we tainted by association? Will Christianity seep, insidiously through the wind that blows from Texas to Hikkaduwa? Will this organization reap converts by the dozen and ascend the stairway into heaven?

Secondly, if Christianity should seep purely by osmosis, who are we to stop an active choice? All we allow is the presence of Christianity. The choice as always is up to them. (This is an interesting Augustinian problem of choice in Christian platonism- both free will and determinism co-exist, God merely knows what choice you will make in advance, but that does not detract from your full opportunity of choice). I disagree in principle with organized religion. I believe any relationship with any god is a personal one. The congregation of people believing in the same conception of God is a negation of the individual human being by definition. Maybe I'm just being pompous. Certainly I believe Christianity thrives on guilt, a la Nietzsche. But it is also darkly, strangely appealing with its themes of sin, guilt, the individual, repentance and redemption.

Anyhow I digress. We stopped by the beach and ran into the surf with our socks off and our jeans rolled up and I stepped on a sea urchin and got a spine into my foot. It was the second time I'd been in the sea in the past year on work and the third time in the past year at all. The water was as turquoise as can be, till the very end of the horizon.

(I remember when I was in banking and we were driving to an offsite and we were passing fields of gold and I remarked to a colleague that it was beautiful where the corn met the sky and he retorted with, think you're a poet do ya? Well you work for MS).