Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual…..Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude-the attitude of courage, frankness, and good cheer. To think right is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high.” – from Smile by Elbert Hubbard
Archive for October, 2007
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Eid Mubarak!
Ramadaan is a time I will definitely miss. I felt so close to the One, so at peace with who and what I am and what my purpose is on this Earth. I don’t want that feeling to go away. I don’t want this closeness to disappear.
Now is the time the real test begins. Faith is tested in reality, amongst the things we cherish most, our lives need to be governed by the same principles we imbibed during Ramdaan. Even if it was just little changes we made to make ourselves better people. We need to carry on those little things outside of the Holy Month.
Eid for me is a time for celebration, but also the time for real reflection. Will I be able to keep up with the changes I had made during Ramadaan, or will all the lessons be forgotten so quickly, like the flip of a switch, or a press on the remote for the TV.
What have I learnt from Ramadaan? I learned that this life is nothing but a test. Everything material will melt away, we have so many examples of how everything will perish, superpowers will fall, big personalities will die and be forgotten, what seems to be the biggest changes will mean absolutely nothing in the long run. What matters in the end is how you lived your life, what did you DO with your life.
Everybody will be judged at the end. I think we all need to realise that… our every action will be tunred over and analysed, no matter how small, no matter how secret. I need to take a good look at myself before I can lift my head up and judge anybody else. The evil without begins with the evil within. I need to watch myself. Awareness is the first step to enlightenment.
Eid Mubarak.
Muhammad Karim.
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I’m not making this up…
Church minister found dead and hogtied, wearing two complete wet suits, a face mask, diving gloves, slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask…
[The Smoking Gun]Ann Coulter doesn’t want to kill the Jews, as they say. She just wants “to see them perfected,” as they say. [Media Matters]
Dude, Bill Moyers would totally be a self-hating Jew if he were Jewish right now. [PBS]
Calling Desmond Tutu an anti-semite is making anti-semitism sound like a good thing. [JTA]
If Che Guevara had never been killed 40 years ago this week, he might not still be alive today. [SF Chronicle]
Soccer player to boycott Israel because it’s in his DNA to do so. [AP]
In his defense, this was waaaaay before we thought we’d ever need anything from Turkey. [Think Progress]
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Technorati Tags: Jewish, Anti-semitism, Church, Minister, Desmond Tutu, Boycott Israel, Ann Coulter -
Free Writing – First Attempt
This has been floating around my mind recently…
A grey day… stone cobbled street, empty, shops closed on the right side. Sitting on a grey concrete bench facing away from the shops toward the refreshingly green park on the opposite side, is Kafka, wearing red-shaded horn-rimmed glasses masking tears as he reads today’s newspaper.
Why tears? Because the monsters manifested in his tales have manifested themselves in men’s souls today… they’ve become animals.
His tears fall like rain from the threatening clouds above onto the paper flowers in the park. Each flower had a kid’s writing on it. They were from kindergarten classes the world over where kids were asked to write down their dreams on pieces of paper and were then made into awkward origami flowers, now lying in the luscious green… being soaked, faded and limp from Kafka’s rain tears.
He slumps into the bench, Kafka, falling inside himself, the rain now burning holes into the ground around him, each hole getting bigger and deeper revealing the Hell beneath. Real Hell.. fires and heat, men and stones… beyond this world’s worst nightmare or horror movie. Gut-wrenching screams from its pit, loud enough to make your heart burst, and thousands of them, endless torture between fire and darkness… and not the darkness you know, the one you refer to when you say you’re ‘afraid of the dark’. This is true darkness, in every sense of the word, the absence of light, the absence of all things good. Psychological darkness, utter dread, humiliation, loneliness, shame. Crushing. From all sides. From within and without. No escape. Endless. And then the fire added to it. Burns and pain unimaginable. Remember burning your finger on the stove as a kid? Multiply that by infinity… and all over your body, and you’ll be a little close to what this is.
The tortures on top of this darkness and fire… the worst of this earth doesn’t come close. Endless. Over and over again. Mostly for those who caused others such pain and hardship on this Earth. “This world, this life was just a test.” Kafka says under his breath to the Calico Cat sitting next to him. The Calico Cat miauws her agreement with a sombre expression. She was a re-incarnation of someone from a past life and is now sitting wondering if cats really do have 9 lives… 9 tests. “Roadkill… that’s evidence against this 9 lives nonsense.” And then jumps from the bench, over the Hell-holes and frolics among the limp paper dream flowers. Trampling already limp dreams in utter ecstacy… unaware, ignorant… in a luscious green field soaked in tears.
As the rain continues, the tears form a stream, then a river flowing fast away from Hell but is stopped shirt by a wall with barb wire and walking guards armed to the teeth under a huge sign…”No Love.”
Kafka and the Calico Cat now see this and run to the wall to ask the guards…”How much patience must you have to overcome?” The guard replies in a heavy bass tone and a stern expression… “Oodles.”
The river keeps flowing in wave after wave and cracks form on the wall eventually breaking through in a spectacular slow motion of flying bricks and mortar, falling walls, guards jumping out of the way and the large “No Love.” Sign breaking off and slowly falling into the river…being taken away to eternity, never to be read again, by anyone. The smiling Calico Cat laughs at this brilliant show and turns to Kafka saying… “The river’s realised it couldn’t quench Hell’s fires… so it’s looking for Heaven instead.” Kafka smiles through his red lenses and white teeth. “Yes, but it had to experience Hell first.”
Kafka then grabs an axe from one of the guards and chops some branches and other hangings from the Tree of Life and builds a little boat with an oar… Takes the Calico Cat, jumps in and they went sailing down the river… together, through the broken wall and passed the fallen guard… to eternity.
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