Where is the peace and quiet?

I try to attend church as regularly as possible. Staying in a campus which is 14 km say from the town, I attend our campus service which is held in the college auditorium. Today the service was a short one, started with praise and worship songs none of which I know, followed by bible reading ,an offeratory hymn, I did not know , a sermon, prayer of intercession ,closing hymn(this I knew) ending with benediction. The whole thing happened in 35 minutes.
I was suddenly taken back to my childhood, we used to attend the English service in St.Pauls church in Vijayawada . The pastor was Rev.Muthyalu . He was the one who confirmed me. Must have been around 65 to 70 at that time. A baritone. He had a wonderful voice. His service was so structured. We used to sing beautiful hymns. Accompanied by a organ , it had to be pedalled to get sound out of it. What beautiful sound it was. The hymns were sung in such a beautiful Unhurried manner soaking all their essence. I get upset these days when I have to sing hymns to a guitar , they rush the hymn. Loses its beauty. Why the guitar has to be at such high volume I don't  Understand. And then those loud clapping and action songs, what's with that? ,Sunday school is in the other room people.
Praise and worship? more like noise and mayhem.
I am not against all this but there is time and place for everything. I find these services don't give the peace that I go looking for, instead I get a headache with that loud guitar.
 I wish I was back  in that church with that wind organ playing and my favourite hymn ' O God our help in ages past and our hope for days to come' is sung by a hundred voices , their voices echoing against that wooden ceiling with those rafters shaped like a funny cross. Those plaques of stone adorning all the walls remembering a loved one, some as old as the First World War .
When the service was over we would walk out to the lawn and linger around a while, Our father would have met with some friends and we would see the cricket game which had started in the school ground opposite the church.
There used to be this old man who used to come to church with his grand daughter , we nicknamed him George Bush, he looked like him ,the senior bush .back then we had not even head of the junior Bush.
I later found out from my mother that we were related to Rev. Muthyalu, how exactly I don't recollect now.
Those beautiful Sunday's will never come back. Those moments of peace and quiet , wonder where they have gone?

lessons from lost

lessons from lost

Hello friends ,

i am abig fan of the serial lost. it is was on star movies on wednesday nights.

for those not familiar with the plot here is a brief synopsis.

lost is the story of a group of people who aircrash into an unknown strange island. the serial is about their struggle to survive and to get out of the island. they are hounded by the natives of the island whom we eventually come to know as the 'others'. the others are led by an evil man called Ben who is ruthless and does not stop at anything, even murder, to stop the group of people from getting off the island.

The group has a doctor amongst them Jack who becomes their leader and he is the one who makes all the decisions. he is ably assisted by some people from the group who include saeed-an iraqi soldier, sawyer-an excon, kate-a murderer, locke-a paraplegic who starts walking once on the island. hurley-the obese guy, charlie -a junkie, jin- a korean and his wife sun.

they all discover hidden good qualities in them self while on the island. they have fight off their own insecurities and fears to combat the others. They come so close to each other that they become each others weakness which is exploited by ben. but there comes a day when they all resolve to get off the island and take some hard decisions . they kill many of the others in the process and finally make contact with the outside world.

Ben has his own agenda and tries to convince jack that contacting the outside world would mean death to everyone the island. we get hints that he is conducting some experiments on children but what exactly he is upto we never know.
there are many dialouges in the series which are confusing and which hint that the island is probably not a real place but a state of mind. some times it is referred to as hell and some times as heaven. there is a place called the looking glass a la alice in wonderland. There is an unseen man who apparently controls the island, he is called Jacob. he could be god or satan we dont know.........yet.

what does the island teach us what did it teach me?
i guess one valuable lesson i learnt was listen to myself.
make decisions they may be wrong but you have to make them.
never try to justify any mistakes that you make.
stand up for your self.
your friends are important.
to get some thing you have to give up something.
sacrifice something you like only when you know it will be worth it.
if you want to be a good leader get ready to get you ass kicked,also get ready to kick some.