Salaam All
Mercy is a deep attribute that holds the potential to intersect into one's contexts of faith and practice with long-lived potency. However we come into contact with religious leaders whose sole intersection has been with hypocrisy. Short-sighted preachers with their long-winded sermons...poison to the soul.
To grow in Ramadan...to really grow...we need to question ourselves. Here's a question by Gibran...chew on it...Ramadan is a great month to practice to CHEW.
Are you a religious leader, weaving for your body a gown out of the ignorance of the people, fashioning a crown out of the simplicity of their hearts and pretending to hate the devil merely to live upon his income?
Or are you a devout and a pious person who sees in the piety of the individual the foundation for a progressive nation, and who can see through a profound search in the depths of the soul a ladder to the Eternal Soul that directs the world?
If you are the first, then you are a heretic, a disbeliever in God EVEN if you fast by day & pray by night.
If you are the second, then you are a violet in the garden of truth EVEN though its fragrance is lost upon the nostrils of humanity or whether its aroma rises into that rare air where the fragrance of flowers is preserved.
Or are you a devout and a pious person who sees in the piety of the individual the foundation for a progressive nation, and who can see through a profound search in the depths of the soul a ladder to the Eternal Soul that directs the world?
If you are the first, then you are a heretic, a disbeliever in God EVEN if you fast by day & pray by night.
If you are the second, then you are a violet in the garden of truth EVEN though its fragrance is lost upon the nostrils of humanity or whether its aroma rises into that rare air where the fragrance of flowers is preserved.
The Mercy of God is RICH & full of love; however the religion of man is poor. You see it in the unsmiling faces of worshippers in the varied houses of worship. Some statues look happier than such "living" pitiless creatures. What loveless creed do they follow...so that their souls have become a pit of merciless tension & venom.
Though poor and loveless creeds may pass for pure religion's gold;
Though ignorance may rule the mass
While Truth meets glances cold,
There is a law complete, sublime, controls us with its might,
And in God's own appointed time it all will come out right.
Though ignorance may rule the mass
While Truth meets glances cold,
There is a law complete, sublime, controls us with its might,
And in God's own appointed time it all will come out right.
O People! Mercy is the river of God that runs like sap thru the tree of life....let's bear fruits of kindness, tenderness & compassion...Ramadan is the time for it to "come out right."
Shamal...Writing checks for charities is necessary and important. But it can't compare with corporal works of mercy, which are infinitely greater.
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