Oblivion

I had forgotten God most of my life--work, play, concerns of everydayness, politics, philosophy, pleasures of mind and body--but not prayer, not reflecting on the source of existence. I became all body, I became all matter and was absorbed in the nearest. I hurt my body and soul in this way. When, late, I started prayer with understanding, I found out that this concentration on the origin of existence, this supplication to and worship of the Eternal Living, this standing in front of the Infinite, with understanding and experiencing it as the most Real--has had a purifying effect on me. Then one wants to do good--not for God's gifts only-- but we hope and desire these gifts of love, because if God doesn't love me, it is not important who else does, it will be hell.

"They will receive their Lord’s gifts because of the good they did before: sleeping only little at night, praying at dawn for God’s forgiveness, giving a rightful share of their wealth to the beggar and the deprived. On earth there are signs for those with sure faith––and in yourselves too, do you not see?––in the sky is your sustenance and all that you are promised. By the Lord of the heavens and earth! All this is as real as your speaking." (51:16-23)

“Even if they saw a piece of heaven falling down on them, they would say, ‘Just a heap of clouds,’ so leave them, Prophet, until they face the Day when they will be thunderstruck, the Day when their snares will be of no use to them, when they will get no help.  Another punishment awaits the evildoers, though most of them do not realize it.  Wait patiently [Prophet] for your Lord’s judgement: you are under Our watchful eye. Celebrate the praise of your Lord when you rise.  Glorify Him at night and at the fading of the stars.” (52:44-49)

The Price of Righteousness

Dear Marianne

Feeling your pain woke me up way early before dawn for fasting in Ramadan, and I couldn't do my morning prayer before writing the following to you: 

“May the hearts of human kind find each other in the struggle for righteousness.”—Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, one of the first woman Rabbis who defends the rights of Palestinians and generally the oppressed in the world.

My lovely garden, Marianne, I know your beautiful trees and flowers are struck with cold winds now. Last night I couldn’t sleep well too. I was thinking how courageous and righteous you are. But after all what is humanity, life, and the meaning of life about, if one doesn’t arrive with understanding at the conclusion that Jesus two thousand and eighteen years ago and Hussein in Islamic tradition one thousand and thirty-three years ago, arrived at: that ‘righteousness’ is the key to God.

Strangely those who try to save their life and refrain from sacrifice will lose it, whether in this world, or in the world to come. Restorative justice is the alchemy of life. Without God, the fire of justice and righteousness in our chests will have no justification and ontological oil—but survival of species-being? What makes our species so ‘significant’, if it is not ‘righteousness’? Strangely enough, what makes our species so special is love and kindness and paying price for it, which means sacrifice for this God-given gift to humanity, not survival. A deeper sense of surviving resides in this ‘sacrifice’, which only the blinding light of divine presence can illuminate its rationale. After all, who is real “Christian” today?

And I say these things knowing that I am myself not comparable to you in this sense of ‘righteousness’ and ‘sacrifice’. When my own son was struggling with mental turbulence and consequently became homeless, despite all the difficulty, it was you who principally agreed he lives with us, even if we live in a small apartment and couldn’t make it happen yet, partly because of my lack of patience, lack of the essence of compassion and sacrifice. So, who are we to judge you?

Now that you are struck by injustice and as the co-founder and president of faculty union are insidiously laid off from teaching the youths at NDNU, the job that you devotedly loved and love so much and was and is ready to sacrifice for its principal reasons of existence, I just wish to remind you how precious and beautiful you are in body and soul.

Now this truth clearly shines in my chest (not only head), that righteousness and doing what is right can bring peace and restorative justice to this world, can unite Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and Confucians, can unite the poor and the oppressed with righteous people who wish to stop discrimination and oppression. Only a divine understanding of this sacrifice can calm our tortured hearts and renders us the meaning of life. I love you madly.

5/17/18