The Circle

So...I was thinking this week about whether bad actions make bad people, and the conclusion was easy enough- no. We've all done bad things but we're not deemed bad people, nor do others deem us bad people. So what makes bad people? It was the intermediary stages between actions and character that confused me. 


Et voila...I stumbled across a book today that explained the matter perfectly. Every virtue is like the centre of a circle, and every vice is a deviation from that centre. Essentially, for every virtue, there is an infinite number of vices- there is only one centre, but an infinite number of points other than the centre of the circle. The further you are from the centre, the worse.


And I suppose "bad people" lie at, or beyond, the circumferences of these circles.

Call Upon Me; I Will Answer You

Alone, in the dark, a young girl is weeping,

Not knowing what her heart has always been seeking,

So, now, to her Lord, she is finally speaking,

Revealing the secrets she thought she'd been keeping.

Her Lord listens to her with indescribable love,

He watches her raise her weak hands, above.

"My Lord, I beg you to enter my heart,

To you, all my sorrows, I wish to impart,

This emptiness, I can bear it no more,

I feel I am drowning and you are my shore."

She buries her wet face in the palms of her hands,

For she knows that He, alone, understands,

But she wonders if she is worthy of His mercy, so great,

She wonders if forgiveness and love are her fate.

"My Lord, I have neglected my soul,

I never gave heed to my purpose or goal,

And now, I need You to set my soul right,

I have no-one but You in the midst of this night."

Tears flow from her eyes like a thunderous river,

As she awaits the reply from this Generous Giver,

But He waits and He watches as she continues to cry,

So she calls desperately into the night sky,

"My Lord, You are everything I need,

Of any happiness, You are the seed,

I yearn for You to make my heart whole,

To take Your place, this world previously stole."

With nothing more to give, the girl gets to her feet,

As longing for her Lord fills her every heartbeat.

She raises her hands, one final time,

Her soul weighed down by her forgetful crime.

"My Lord, You are my only, last hope,

Without you, I know, I won't be able to cope,

To feel Your presence, my soul, I can sell,

All I want is that in my heart, You dwell.

My Lord, I want You to open my soul's eyes,

And to put an end to my grievous cries,

You said that Your friends feel no sorrow, nor pain,

So befriend me, God, let this night not pass in vain."

As she tires from this begging, her eyes slowly close,

And she feels that her yearning, now surely, He knows,

Her Lord looks lovingly at the slumbering youth,

And knows that her words carried nothing but truth.

So He grants her relief and whispers some words,

Sweeter than the chirping of awakening birds,

"...Call upon me; I will answer you," (40: 60)

And more than this, what else could be true?

Your Love

Your love is a strange love, a rare love,
A love where every time I love, I feel like I was blind,
In all those moments where another occupied my mind,
Your love is a realisation, a new beginning,
Like the smooth slate, the new book, I try to keep clean,
Erase the moments of my life in which, absent, you had been.

Your love is the substance, the thread,
Which I want woven into my life's young tapestry,
Until that very thread is the only kind that really, one can see,
Your love is the glass, the lens,
Through which, every time I look out at the world,
The perplexing mysteries of my tired soul are unfurled.

Your love is a standard, a measure,
Which makes all other kinds of love bow down with shame,
Your love- I don't know what it is, but "love", we chose its name.
Your love is something else, not love,
But about its name- its belittlement, I don't complain,
For, without the futile goal to reach, how would the others train?

You love is generous, a gift,
For it has a price that every lover, to this day, has paid,
But strangely, this very price becomes the lover's loyal aid.
Your love is humbling, revealing,
For it leaves the lover with no words, no speech, and just emotion,
And every dreamer that thought your words are his, forgets the notion.

Your love- I try to mould it,
For, despite my feeling it, it is too much to understand,
But what mercy! That, my ignorance is evidence of your love, so grand.
Your love is the soul, the spirit,
Which keeps my own conscience awake, kicking and alive,
Your love is the clear path which guides your lover to the house of five.

Your love is a plethora of plethoras of good,
And given a drop of your ocean of eloquence,
Describe it, for an eternity, I tirelessly would.

It is a testament of your mastery with words,
For I am left with none when it comes to you,
But I keep trying to fulfil it in Salman's thirds,
I feel, then, when my words exhaust, I just "do".

He gave me words simply to tell the difference between you and I,
And that is, hunting words to describe your Love, I know I will die. 

To My Master

In a river of grief, I shed tears of shame,

The mistakes I made, exactly the same,

Yet beside you, that day, I wish to stand,

Beside you- my master, loving and grand,

How many oaths shall I foolishly make?

And then how many will I guiltily break?

I cannot see you because I am blind,

The people that can- I'm not of their kind,

Yet for you, my heart bleeds day and night,

Waiting for life to be filled with your light,

So now, one last oath, to you I will pledge,

As on the cliff of sins, I stand on the edge,

Today, my life, I commit to your cause,

From now, I abide and obey your Lord's laws,

And if I come close to breaking this oath,

I ask for forgiveness and your guidance- both,

Accept me, for your love is truly so great,

And pray that your sight resides in my fate,

For you are the master, the guide that I need,

And of all my successes, the God-given seed.

World

The world is like a high-interest bank- the bank tells you that if you borrow the money, you will be able to buy your new jacuzzi bathtub, holiday villa and car. However, once you borrow and buy, you realise that you aren't enjoying your purchases because you're too busy working around the clock to pay back the debt and interest.

The world pretty much does the same. The world tells us that we won't survive without giving in to the material hype or achieving a certain level of material assets- that degree, this job, such an income. The list goes on. We will only be able to quench our spiritual thirst if we sort out the so-called essential material aspects of life first. So we start, we succumb, we work and struggle to "survive". But for what? In the end, this survival is pointless because one is then in an endless cycle to merely "survive" and nothing else. Before you know it, the world has surrounded you with a never-ending list of must-do's that will, in themselves, take a lifetime. 

Vicious cycle or what? But let us not be pessimists- if this is a test, then there must undoubtedly be an answer, a solution to this problem, somewhere. Perhaps I will post it in my next entry.

Exam

It being exam time, I got thinking...

Isn't it an absolutely wonderful feeling when you know that you couldn't possibly revise any more than you already have? Knowing that you've covered all the material that you were required to learn. In the end, I suppose one looks forward to the exam, not just to get it out of the way, but also for "letting out" that hard work- experiencing its fruition. You just can't wait to put pen to that paper and generate the end result of success.

Well, life is quite similar, I guess. It's probably possible to have a very similar feeling about life. Life is revision. Death is the journey to the exam hall. The Promised Day is the exam. Wouldn't it be great to have that aforementioned feeling with regard to our lives? Great? "Great" is an understatement.

Yes, it would be indescribably great, for lack of a better word. So, I guess I better go and "revise". In every sense of the word.

Unreturned Love

A friend and I watched a lecture a few days back about the Imam of our time, may God hasten his reappearance. There was a story in the lecture, which I hope I can narrate as accurately as possible.

Allama al Hilli was a great scholar, an expert in his field, but he had two dillemas; the first was that he didn't understand Imam al Baqir's (as) hadith, where he said that God would cure sins the size of the ocean for one who shed a tear the size of the wing of a mosquito for Imam Hussein (as). The second was that he wanted to know if one actually meets the Imam of our time if he or she goes to Kufa for forty Thursdays in a row.

It was the fortieth Thursday and Allama al Hilli was walking towards Kufa. As he was drawing closer, an Arab man approached him and asked him where he was headed. Allama al Hilli replied that he was going to Kufa. The Arab man asked him why, to which Allama al Hilli said that he wanted to meet the Imam of his time. Again, the Arab man asked the reason. Allama al Hilli replied that he had a question to ask the Imam (af). When the Arab man asked what his quesiton was, Allama al Hilli explained his first dillema and said that he was confident that he would meet the Imam, it being his fortieth Thursday visiting Kufa.

The Arab man asked Allama al Hilli if he would permit him to answer his question, to which the scholar was slightly hesitant. However, the Arab man insisted he be given a chance to ease Allama al Hilli's first dillema. He narrated the following story:

There was once a king who, with his army, proceeded towards a war. However, he lost his army and was left deserted in a forest, where he saw a small cabin. The king approached this cabin and knocked on the door. When an old woman answered, the king explained his situation and asked the old lady if she could let him stay with her for a few nights for safety. The woman explained that she lived alone with her son, and that the king was more than welcome to stay.

The woman and her son gave everything they had- they had only one animal, which they sacrificed for the hungry king. After he ate, he promised the woman and her son that when he returned to his kingdom, he would repay them for their favour, and he left.

Months passed, but the woman and her son heard nothing from the king, so her son decided to approach the palace to remind him of his promise. Her son approached the king in his palace, and asked the king if he remembered the time when he was deserted in the forest. The king immediately remembered, and wondred how he could have forgotten his promise. The king turned to one of his advisors and asked how he should repay the young man and his mother. The advisor suggested to give them some treasure. Another advisor suggested some land.

The king looked at the advisors and said, "How unjust both of you are. This young man and his mother gave away everything they had, for me. Therefore, if I am just, I want to give away everything I have, for them."

The Arab man explained that if a normal king could be as generous as to give away everything he had in return for a single sacrificed animal, then the King of kings could undoubtedly give away His repentance to the man who gave everything away for Him on the tenth of Muharram.

Allama al Hilli narrated that he began to cry when he heard this answer to his dillema. The Arab man then said to Allama al Hilli, "Tell our followers that when they visit us and they need our help, I will always be there to help them." As soon as Allama al Hilli realised that the Arab man was the Imam of our time, the Imam had gone.

After listening to this story, I feel ashamed. Here is a man, someone we claim to follow and be loyal to, who probably cares more about our actions than we do ourselves, who wants to offer us a route salvation and loves us, and yet we don't return this love- instead, we keep him waiting. We fail to be the soldiers that he so desperately wants.