TO JESUS ON THE CROSS : E X JOSEPH

I knew E X Joseph since early 1960’s when he was Secretary General of the All India Audit & Accounts Employees’ Association when he was based in Mumbai and I had just joined Accountant General’s Office, Trivandrum. He maintained our relationship unbroken since then, though both of us passed through many phases of life both in personal and ‘official’ life. Every New Year, every ONAM, every X’mas we remembered each other. I had opportunity to understand his association with V K Krishna Menon and V R Krishna Iyer, to read his writings on human issues and to watch from a distance his work in relation to publications he edited and books he wrote. Copied below is the poem he mailed to me on March 28, 2015: TO JESUS ON THE CROSS The cross was your destiny, it was bound to be You challenged power, defied authority You exposed the hollowness of the learned mind You pulled down the gods that man had created You rejected the claims of the priests, the Pharisees You walked with the lowly,the lost,the sinners You chose fishermen and a prostitute as disciples You lived in freedom,in the radiance of the truth. How could you be allowed to be free to preach love when violence, greed and hierarchy reigned? You called self-anointed priests, agents of god hypocrites, whited-sepulchres,pretenders You protected the woman who was to be stoned by the self-righteous,the custodians of morality You proclaimed with the authority of the spirit that the meek shall inherit the earth that the rich will never enter the heaven of peace that the kingdom of god is not outside man’s heart that law was for man and not man for law that life is divine in its simplicity and in love that man and God are united in creation that mystery of life blooms in innocent children. How could you be let to pull down the mansions of belief, power, wealth, the darkness of mind? Your place could only on the wooden cross Your destiny down the ages to be ever crucified Your fate in history to be made into a god of power,of wealth to be carried on golden crosses by the multitudes. And yet, you will resurrect in the splendor of life You will ever be the flower in the luminous spring that will one day be the endless joy of all mankind You will be the light that leads the way for minds that absorb the spirit of the law of evolution You will ever be the explosion that will create life divine to be the supreme reality of existence You will ever be the ocean of ecstasy that plays In the heart of every lover that carries the moon You will ever be the mystery that flows in the song of every bird, in the blush of every dawn the earth and the heaven, the stars, all universe will carry the throb of freedom, of love, of the cross. e.x.joseph

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