Beware Black Fridays

That old adage of the occident and the
orient as opposites seems well observed
usefully recalled on occasion when episodic
events bestir us to the reality of manifest
differences in beliefs and behaviours each
so different from the other and yet perhaps
not? Even words describing events however
take on disparate meanings from one to the
other and in the occident we shudder at 
manifestations of the barbaric we see at
play, grateful to be so unalike, or at the very
least, having outgrown medieval instincts
tipping toward intolerance and bloodshed.
Take Friday as an example, when mosques
are filled with fervent worshippers, a holy
day of prayer when the faithful do due
obeisance to the sacred and blessed nature
of their god, one of only one a phantom of
kindly disposition urging the flock to good
deeds when a deed of another kind explodes
in the sacred interior slaughtering hundreds
at the hands of that same god's faithful
given to martyrdom inflicted upon their own
while a world away another Black Friday
urges worshippers of free enterprise to
shop in a frenzy of gift-planning to prepare
for the venerated tradition of honouring
that god, the only god's mortal offspring
sacrificed so that others might not be, a
morbidly misunderstood concept whose
faithful once pilgrimaged to land held holy
by both and strange the interpretation and
enactment in each of Black Friday when
the occident and the orient finally meet.