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Tag: religion

  • On the day of Rosh Hashanah

     

    9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
    “It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”
    10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

    I thought of this text today. Could not get out of my head for my whole life the pathos of not knowing the left from the right, the basis of mercy being our utter ignorance and aimlessness as human beings, and THAT is why God did not destroy Nineveh (Mosul) despite Jonah

    …

  • Event Appearance at Johns Hopkins University

    This morning, I was privileged to talk at an great event of SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, as one of the speakers.
    Please check out the website and the video of this whole event.

    “IS THE WORLD FALLING APART?”
    September 16, 2014
    Conflict Prevention & Resolution Forum
    at Kennedy Auditorium, SAIS- Johns Hopkins University

     
    Screen shot 2014-09-16 at 4.00.49 PM

     …

  • Of Gods, Tribes, and Battles

    GOD
    If you cannot find God,
    Find the persecuted,
    Then you are home.

    TRIBE
    Tribalism is an infectious disease
    Human rights is the antidote
    But force feeding can kill the patient

    BATTLES
    Some battles that you want to win,
    Will defeat you if you win.
    Some battles if you lose,
    Then you will win.
    Think.
    Blessed be reason.

    hug

     

    (Photo: A Different Angle)

     …

  • Encyclopedia Humanica

     

    Water- encyclopedia humanica
    Every human being,
    Is a walking encyclopedia,
    Infinite indigenous knowledge,
    Of local realities,
    That no one,
    Will ever,
    Fully know.
    Why do we walk past?
    We are discoverers,
    Above all else,
    We wander,
    To the farthest reaches,
    Of the earth.
    Why do we walk past?
    Melville, Conrad,
    Escaped to the high seas,
    To discover the world.
    But the boat,
    It contained infinite depths,
    Even deeper than the sea,
    That anyone dared ever discover.
    The journey to the strange other,
    The darkest, most dangerous,
    Most joyous,
    Adventure.

     …

  • “Escaping Death in Northern Iraq” -International New York Times

    This is very important in the ISIS issue.

    International New York Time, Escaping Death in Northern Iraq

    Ali Hussein Kadhim, an Iraqi soldier and a Shiite, was captured with hundreds of other soldiers by Sunni militants in June and taken to the grounds of a palace complex in Tikrit where Saddam Hussein once lived.

    “I saw my daughter in my mind, saying, ‘Father, father,’ ” he said.
    He felt a bullet pass by his head, and fell forward into the freshly dug trench.
    “I just pretended to be shot,” he said.
    A few moments later, Mr. Kadhim said, one of the killers walked among the bodies and saw that one man who had been shot was still breathing.

    …The story of the massacre tells as much about the woeful state of the Iraqi military, a force created and trained by the United States at a cost of billions of dollars,

    …

  • Thoughts on Our War World

    Issac

    STARVING COSMOS 

    How can we listen to sad love songs,
    When there are so many starving for love?
    Who the hell do we think we are?
    What rights for pity do we think we have,
    When outside our doorstep,
    Is a cosmos of love-starved beings?

    COSMIC ANNIHILATION CREATION

    We, we are the Higgs boson,
    We are elusive,
    Impossible to discover,
    Yet everywhere.…

  • Reason and Compassion

     

    compassion

    Reason and compassion are lovers
    That give birth to our humanity,
    but only when they engage
    Daily, with intensity.
    The more one’s mind
    is drawn daily to compassion
    For all sentient life,
    the more it is drawn daily to develop
    universal principles of behavior
    that apply to all beings
    Without exception,
    Even very imperfect beings.
    The more that reason is developed daily
    the more it becomes empirically clear
    that we are all the same,
    in 99% of our being,
    the more it becomes empirically self evident
    That where we are different
    it is an advantage,
    Our diversity is our strength.

    compassion and reason are lovers,
    So that we can be.

     

    (Photo: Cultivating Leadership)…

  • Thoughts on God, Human Leadership, and Mountains, upon Leaving War’s Victims, Unfinished

    Customer or employees care concept

    GOD

    An atheist leader
    who is rational,
    Can be more a messenger,
    of God’s mercy for the powerless,
    than a leader,
    who bows down to God,
    over the dead bodies,
    of his victims.

    ‘Less suffering’
    Is the tortured scream
    of God.

    An authentic smile
    Is the fleeting face of God,
    A single act of kindness,
    The touch of Her finger.

    Only when you accept death,
    Can you become committed
    To the renewal of life.
    Only when you see democracy die,
    Can you plan its rebirth.…

  • “Peace Practice Online in a Time of War” -from S-CAR Newsletter

    I recently wrote a cover article reflecting on the recent war in Gaza to the newsletter published by School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

    Practice is a messy, miserable reality that deserves its own independent study. What do we do in times of war? This has dramatically changed for me and many others in just the last year or two, where every war seems to be bringing individuals together online to a level of intimacy, collaboration, and care unprecedented, and others to a level of hatred unprecedented. Then there are shades of gray, where how you frame your disagreements, your texts, your cries, your screams, your pleas, your ruminations in the dead of night, all of it yields surprising communications across enemy lines, in all of the many and variegated enemy systems that overlap in international conflicts. A string of people from one side of the conflict becoming the only

    …

  • “Sunni and Shiite British Imams Denounce ISIS Together In New Video” -Huffington Post

    Very important Muslim statement on IS.

    Sunni and Shiite Muslim leaders in the United Kingdom have come together to denounce the Islamic militant group ISIS in a video posted by a group called Imams Online, reports the BBC.

    A statement on the Imams Online website says, “Senior British imams have come together to emphasize the importance of unity in the UK and to decree ISIS as an illegitimate, vicious group who do not represent Islam in any way.”

    Click here to read the whole article.

     …

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