oh help me God, look past my unfaithful love, look past my pride, oh how it blinds my sight look past my faults, oh how engulfing they are it is your hand i seek, in the profundities of my heart, how many a beloved loved but so few in love, so i make no claims to love, you, as you love me, for in all loftiness your Love of all things great is greater.
it's not what was said, but who said it it's not what was said, but who said it, how sweet it is to be murdered by the poisonous dagger of your enemy than to be wounded by the one to whom your heart harbours love frail strikes and lasting wounds, words what then of actions and feelings?
naivety so is the adversary of man how lightly this life we take, the short-sightedness of man transfixed upon the womb of this world infants still hoarding our mothers noxious milk.
I'm writing to you. So listen. You know the way, you've known for quite sometime. Forget the others, they will remember themselves or else forget, your duty is to remember. Tomorrow is approaching and today has already left. Procrastination and lethargy equate to a craven form of cowardice toward life and its inborn difficulties. Struggle. Sacrifice. To truly live is not to succumb to folly, to drag along the measured timeline of one's life, a sloth tottering from millimeter to lifetime, till he like all things before him timely returns to his source. "We are God's and to Him We Return" Listen, if your ears are still capable. Do not become a burden to the Advisors as Jesus (p) says: "How long will you be advised without taking any advice? Certainly you have become a burden to the advisors." (Adab al-nafs, vol.1, 175) Listen, to the inner divining of your soul, its aspirations, its desires, its vision for comfort. If you must let up, then do so, give it what it truly desires. If its power and greatness that it seeks, then know that will be granted to tomorrow, to the meek today. If it is wealth and opulence, then know it will be granted tomorrow, to those who gave it away today. If it is comfort and pleasure, then know that, it will be granted tomorrow, for those who regulated it today. You want it tomorrow but you won't work for it today. You want it today, but it won't be there tomorrow.
Oh how easy it is to rebel. How so free man feels. The Master who set his slave free, now nothing but a slave who set his master free! Shackled to the reigns of his ego, a prisoner of his very will, fleeing from his Master to his master; a slave yet to understand the value of his freedom.
There are far too many battles to fight, and those who don't recognize the war have already been defeated, and those still fighting have already won. Keep fighting. Live it right. This ain't no nike commercial. It's life. Don't just do it. ®
You grant him life and he complains of death. You assure him of an eternity – he says he’d rather enjoy the moment. You give him death, he whines about folly of life. You tell him how it is and how its supposed to – but he’s far more concerned with what he wants it to be. You warn him of himself – he warns you. It’s for your own good you say, but he’s more convinced of his supposedly far-reaching foresight. You tell him there is a time and season for everything, a time for perfection and peace but sadly none is hastier then him, determined to find it here and now. He struggles, sweats and bleeds. He cannot find it and the emptiness begins to consume him. He feels hopeless and dejected, raises his fist to the heavens and scorns you!
Why have you forsaken me he says! You assure him of your unwavering love, of the nature of this world – that man’s quasi-divinity comes at hefty price! “You are a traveller” you tell him, but he says he’d like to stay and reside. “Plant your seeds” you tell him, but he says he is happier consuming. You remind him that you and you alone gave him life, but sadly he takes it for granted, as if he inherently has the right to live. In his most dire frustration, he demands knowing why you’ve brought him into existence—that he’d be better off in naught. He wonders why you didn’t ask ‘him’ first? Lest he enjoys non-existence and finds it far more comfortable and promising… You remind him of his dependence, of his ‘borrowed’ volition, of his pseudo-identity—but alas he just won’t listen, so intoxicated in the wine of life, the cup he was forbidden from drinking; the vinous fruit he should have never ate.
How do you teach a man what he does not wish to learn? Oh man… Oh God.
Behind me the widow sits at the corner-stall, her family awash in the sea of fate, their memories ebbing with her sighs…their solemn silhouettes caressing her grief-stricken heart, but to what avail? Do not recount their names before her, for they but bring a wicked sorrow that would but gash away at a heart whose numbered beats have become faint and senile. Watch as her parched tears etch the arid sands below her -- carving her anguish -- jagged letters of agony... Let the torrent of her tears cascade and the soil imbibe her sorrow, let the letters become words, for perhaps now the heavens would lend their catholic ears and listen. She says nothing, but of course she needn't say -- everything around her has so gravely spoken. The maroon blood stains blotch her noticeably tattered clothes; it’s a sight no less grim then the ravaged streets that surround around her. No less dire than the innominate children across from her, scavenging through carrion waste, sullying their once innocent hearts. Another sigh escapes the grip of her crippling grief, consoling briefly her heart with an ever so distant hope, reminding her that ‘His’ vital spirit still surges within her. That it is not death that encircles her but the verve of life coiled in the pangs of her suffering. Trying her—painfully chiseling the breadth of her vision; shattering the shackles of this noxious love. Like a mother disciplining her insolent child, that perhaps beyond the tears and grief, she might listen. That she might learn. I wipe her tears with my fleeting thoughts, still damp from life’s somber lessons. For if she has yet to learn, she has at least taught me a lesson.
Estranged in its toils and miseries, you are a stranger wandering its jagged, soiled streets, longing for a home you’ve yet to reside and a peace you’ve yet to encounter. The cold winter night clothes you with its harrowing comfort—sheltering you from the sun’s searing heat. Alas, it is the sun you truly seek, or so your heart assuredly whispers, but much to your dismay, your body can only take so much of the sun’s heat. You realise you are weak. After further deliberation you recognize there are untapped reserves of inner strength, dormant, lurking behind your simple, and yet most difficult of choices. That said, you realise in whose merciful hands you subsist, and in whose eyes your penitence will be readily valued—suddenly, the prospect of self-revolution dawns on you, for there is no alternative. No alternative but to stop the lie and stop trusting the illusion. Is it your indecisiveness that torments you? Could change be so simple? Choice. Could there really be solace in the cold? If anything, you’ve been in the cold, perhaps far too long—you’ve felt its callous touch, stared deep into its deafening eyes, and swallowed its riddled promises. You can’t take it any longer, how can you? As you watch yourself butcher the few meagre remnants of your humanity—the spiritual guillotine you’ve submissively offered your neck to. Others too, weren’t as foreseeing, they too readily forwent their souls, sparing it of life’s most prized choices, as though infants suckling the illusion, embracing the wretched mother that has no mercy over her child. You are surrounded by such gruelling martyrs—they clutter its streets—theirs stories all so similar, of far-flung expectations and mundane dreams. They are strangers too, their eyes laden with regret as they mourn their failures. If you listen closely you can hear their faint, brittle cries, echoing past the ruptured chambers of their now hollow hearts. Peer then, into their furrowed desolate eyes, for past the dreary void you will find the root of their desperation, the least of which is a looming fate, a fate ever so crimson. They chose to be strangers, not to this world, but the other. Choice; a liability ardently sought by those who lack it, a gruelling burden to those who exploit and abuse it, and a lasting tribute to those who honour its temperament. Now choose.
I was having a really interesting convo with my dad on msn, and yes, I CHAT with my dad on msn, we are several thousand miles away from each other and after all it’s the 21st century innit (spoken with a makeshift Canadio-British™ accent)? Anyway, it was quite an interesting confabulation (muhahaha had to use this con-fabulous word!, okay sorry enough cheese); we spoke about many things, first about a life-long friend he’d just reunited with and with whom he shared nearly everything—literally, carbon copies of each other, the poetry, the art, the same blood type… errmm things which I also have completely in common with my dad, …err hate to say it, but its nearly like father like son in many cases. And as my high-school teacher Mr. Laggis used to say, more often then some of his students liked … “I digress”. The colloquy (ooo another one, muhahah) took its pace as we ventured into the morbid realms of death and old age…both of which we agreed weren’t always passages of life the children of Adam wanted to pass through…And why should we long to pass through them, even amid the worst of quagmires, we love life. We really do, and we love it with a sort of insatiable passion. We savour it and eagerly hanker for more of it, through money, power, pleasure; what ever strokes and seemingly intensifies our existence. As for those of us who’ve contemplated the abominable; suicidally ‘taking’ our lives—cowering and relinquishing our life in an inner crescendo of frustration. To be sure, many of us have been there, some more critically than others and as wrong as it is, it’s never committed because we truly loath the prospect of life. No. Rather, we do it because we love life so much that we cannot bear to see it deficient and seemingly absent of all that of which we deeply desire of life, be it love, power, worldly success; the desires are apparently many, but they are really one. We desire life, in the richest of its forms; a life of lasting peace and of contentment. That’s what rabidly resonates in our soul—the money, the power, the pleasure are no more then transient tastes of what we truly desire. A few dollars might lend a few moments of fleeting peace but just as those dollars are spent so too are those few moments of peace—lasting far less then what we truly desire. Despite the daunting spectre of death and old age, are they not passages toward that greater life—the one we so fervently desire? For our desires are clearly ‘not of this world’ since this world defiantly betrays our desires time and time again—as it banters our unquenchable thirst for life. So if our scales are fair why not long for that eternal abode? And if they are weighty what else is there but to seek redemption and turn in penitence. A kind of tender irony, as God further directs us toward that which we desire; since death becomes an inescapable misfortune, life an endless pit of self-ruin and penitence the only retreat from our misery. And of old-age what more of an invitation to repentance can one ask for? “What is the life of this world but amusement and play? but verily the abode of the Hereafter,- that is life indeed, if they but knew.” The Quran (29:64)
You know, heh, i empathize more and more with the Mal’akhim as they exclaimed their astonishment at the Lord’s will not long ago; their astonishment goes without saying. Really, one needn’t even look; you can very well hear the corruption and bloodshed the Angels knew would so easily ensue as the children of Adam began their reign on earth. It makes a man wonder, and it makes a wonder of a man; what destiny underlies his anguish? What purpose did the Heavens have in mind as they let Adam loose and what have they now, as they watch the dreadful turmoil unfold? I wonder still, and empathize even more…and yet i am realising, quite simply, that in a grandeur sense, what is, is what must be. This is in some sense how the Merciful responded to the innocent bewilderment of the Angels, assuring them that, beyond all, there is more to man then what meets the eye. There lies a purpose and destiny that even a high arch-Angel Azazeel turned Shaytan, could not stomach with ease, and in many senses, neither can i. Man’s ultimate purpose and destiny will remain, in much in the same way as it began, contentious and difficult to grasp. The difference however, is where Satan turned away in rebellion, masking his ignorance with denial; the Angels harkened in submission, accepting their ignorance in the face of what Providence ultimately had in store. This too, is required of Adam’s children, as they wonder over their plight—for they are expected to wonder, but lest their wonder turn to frustration with the Divine, and worse yet, lest their frustration turn into denial. What is clear is that the Lord is incomprehensible and evidently how can the musings of a limited and obtuse creation ever encompass the unparalleled ‘thoughts’ and ‘intentions’ of his creator? Never mind his ability to encompass ‘him’; he can barely articulate his thoughts of him, for what combination of letters can describe his sublimity and what imageries can capture his majesty? How then does he seriously expect to fathom the Lords intentions for bani-Adam and the ultimate purpose and destiny that underlie his creation; one that supersedes and overbears the clearly inexcusable corruption and bloodshed we see everyday? This may very well fall on deaf ears, considering we live in a world where man’s ability to discern is seriously overrated—he naively feels he can understand anything, and anything that can’t be understood is better off deemed as non-existent, at least that would somehow afford him some comfort (or so he thinks).Ultimately though, it is God and God alone, who can divulge perhaps a morsel, a meagre fragment of such purpose to our feeble minds—and even that would be a bargain. So when i open the shaitan-box and bustle (noo not busal, whoever you are you must be Arab and hungry) to see the news, and all that’s seen is suffering, I empathize with the Angels and wonder what is to become of man in this epic we call life.
"When your Lord said to the Angels, 'Ineed I am going to set a viceroy on the earth,' they said, 'Will You set in it someone who will cause corruption in it, and shed blood?! while we celebrate Your praise and proclaim Your sanctity?' He said, 'Indeed I know what you do not know'." Quran 2:30
It is interesting how subtle the partition between good and evil is—yet how far removed they are from each other. Strange that, good is so easily committed, and how evil even easier. Let time have it as it may, one is easily inured to the questionable, much less the reprehensible. In truth the very sequel to one’s evil actions, since at times being so seemingly inconsequential, leads the foolish in to further volitional intoxication—construing the lack of immediate consequence as a license for further evil. For if one does not immediately chide a child for his insolence, in time, he only persists in the act—failing to see the wrong in what was done. How then is our plight? For no longer are we children, gracing this world in utter naivety—no, no longer—rather as time would have it, our intellects have been chiselled and honed, and our moral faculties no less. Why then are we like children, though indeed far more deplorable—we are imprudent in our actions and feelings, inured to their foul muck, naïve to their consequences, lacking even the most cursory of foresight. The gift of life is not in the least without an inestimable price, of which we are all vested to pay, lest we fool ourselves in to thinking otherwise—we are causally reminded of this, albeit intermittently.
I saw my grandfather today for the first time in about 16 years, for a man whom i have visually forgotten, much less had any sort of sensual communication with, i felt a deep connection spring from beneath my veins –a deafening array of sorrow and shame pressing my heart as it surges. Strange how i feel i owe this man, my fathers father—i feel sympathy for this man, so close, and yet so far from a grandson that once played on his lap and shared merry moments. Separated by nearly two decades, oceans apart, in worlds far removed, reuniting as mere strangers. He is weary, fatigued, shattered by the decades of stress and strain in the sweltering streets of southern Iraq. His children scattered across the globe, his wives (married twice) having parted this life for the one ahead of him—what was once a vibrant world now bleak; a brute testimony to all things transient.
He calls me to his side amid so many of his grandchildren; my nafs (lower self) is pleased at the show of distinction, i quickly rebuke it, assuring it that distinction rests in God’s eyes and not man’s. Past the silhouette of callous and craggy skin I stare into his better eye, peering into a near century of experience and insight into this toilsome life. What do i tell this man, of my life of ease? What do i tell a man who has intimately lived in the shadow of difficulty and oppression. What do i tell him of air-conditioned rooms, clean running water, and ample food? Of McFlurries and closets of spare clothing—how do i boast of religious freedom, of social welfare and political freedom? how?... so i say nothing of it. I kiss him on the forehead as we exchange our greetings. He smiles as he murmurs several praises to his Lord, al-hamdu-lillah, and how right he is. A moment of silence tiptoes past vigilant ears—oh how so quickly we age and how so swiftly the passage of time treads past our numbered days.
Sigh…
|
|
|
|
