Allahu Akbar!

Slain police officers Kamil Shnan (left) and Hael Sathawi against the backdrop of a forensic team surrounding the body of an assailant on the Temple Mount, July 14, 2017. THOMAS COEX/AFP and Israel Police

Allahu Akbar!

They are deliriously fervent in their
passion to do service to the divine
in which they invest their entire lives
their past, their present and their
delusional prospects of a future that
in recognition of their willing sacrifice
will lift them as the Prophet Mohammad
was lifted, into the realm of their revered
god who demands of them the ultimate
for which no alternatives suffice. Their
lives are sacred in their submission to
Islam but those the scripts inherited
from Allah identified as the despised
infidel are as dross, worthless and
utterly meaningless, their very existence
an catalyst reproach to the faithful
for tolerating their presence when all
it takes to perform the service their
faith demands of them is to engage
selflessly in slaughter of those
undeserving of life. And so, whatever
executive means at hand will suffice
as the faithful go forth, their minds ablaze
with intent, their conscience is clear in
the knowledge that they do god's work
aids in the commission, even at the
very doorstep of the almighty's abode.
All that is and will be is at the pleasure
of his blessedly gracious spirit, Inshallah.

Holocaust Deniers

They have few peers and on this
they pride themselves, asserting their
preening confidence in demonstrated
rectitude of a shade societal convention
fails to recognize. These are the rare
few who defend the words and actions
of the indefensible, who cite their right
to the freedom of sneering at history
the historical revisionists whose lens
interprets reality as a farce they obey
an imperative to counter. As racist 
bigots and hateful defenders of dread
fascism's crowning glory who see
victory in their lost global conflict
when those who fought for universal
freedom overcame the Axis heralding
tyranny, they did succeed in destroying
an entire continent's reserve of Jews.
Their denials of that wholesale and
fastidious instrument of death leaving
no doubt that a mass convulsion of
deranged malice motivated the putrid
annihilation of innocents satisfied the
blood-lust of sadistic hatred, proffered
as a gallant struggle for freedom, to
speak as one believes, without censure.
As though to minimize six million dead
with a broad diminishment of numbers 
makes the unspeakable crime more
civil, palatable, excusable as an excess
of devotion to the duty of cleansing society
of identified enemies of civilization.

 

Grim/m Doubt

Is there a higher pastoral authority
in human existence, a fount of
wisdom and theological-social
aspirations toward the ultimate
spirituality on the path to sainthood
than the pope? There was a children's
book with a moral message of a poor
fisherman whose catch of a giant
elderly fish offered the man a wish
if he but returned the fish, an obvious
angel in disguise to its watery home.
The fisherman thought long and hard
and finally ventured his wish; to be
the pope. Sternly rebuked by the
fish who warned that he could be
an emperor, a king, a monarch of
great estates and wealth, but the pope
never, ever in his wildest dreams,
that position sacred inheritance to
scant few whose destiny it was. Now
the pope has issued a decree that a
new pathway to sainthood is extended
to the faithful of his flock. As example
an expectant mother waving off
life-saving treatment for her fatal
disease, in exchange for delivering
her child intact; that child known
to be deformed never to attain full
maturity as a functioning adult, her 
sacrifice ushering her to sainthood.

In The Woods

They are the very picture of contented
consanguinity, the devoted pair
strolling comfortably together
mother and daughter, a delightful
sight to those they meet and greet.
Fair-skinned, round-faced, facial
features prettily perched upon
swanlike necks, their smiles warm
the privileged upon whom they are
proffered. Their Irish heritage a
match for grass-green eyes and fire
flamed hair, cropped and curly for
the mother, long and flowing for
her daughter. Their relationship is
clearly one of need and fulfillment
each offering the emotional nurturing
the other craves, their symbiosis a
lesson in motherly and filial love.
The sylphlike form of the younger
is captivating and somehow eerily
fey. Look, have you noticed? They're
wearing long, graceful gowns.
Passingly odd garb for a casual
walk along a woodland trail under
overcast skies, gloom settling
into the forest as dusk arrives, a
light breeze ruffling their hair and
flowing dresses, ephemeral yet
real; not so peculiar perhaps if
they truly are woodland nymphs.

 

Nature, Interrupted

Certainly it is most unusual that
a yearling doe would find her way
into this place resembling though
it does her accustomed preserve in
nature, while it is not but an urban
forested reserve. The woodland
corridors that once existed to bring
her and her generational cohorts to
this place have long since vanished
replaced by the steadily relentless
recroachment of houses. In those
houses live people and with those
people their companion dogs. The
doe is far from where that exquisite
creature should be for her safety and
survival. The dog that accosted her
approaching swiftly on a trail much
used by residents is a Husky, and she
too but for the intervention of human
desire should be in her own natural
preserve, in the North. A whim of fate
has brought them together, the dog
and the doe, one a hunter one its prey.

Creator, Destroyer

Tinder dry weather, wind and dry lightning have caused fires to spread aggressively in the province. (B.C. Wildfire Service)

Creator, Destroyer

In a lifetime of nudging nature
to show us her vast range of 
grandly impressive geological
sites of monumental landscapes
few have been more varied and
stunning than those we have seen
in that westernmost of Canadian
provinces where we alpine camped
canoed and strolled among the 
world's old forest marvels. Ascending
mountains, placing a tent on a narrow
shelf on their slopes, watching the
force of nature that is a thunderstorm
and waiting out the drenching in that
tent to finally see across the vast
expanse to the Stein Valley a bonfire
in defiance of possibility. Paddling
our geared canoe through the
Bowron Lakes in the Cariboo
Mountain range, from lake to river
to lake. The mountain sheep, the
fear of grizzlies, the shrieks of 
screech owls, moose and salmon
the tracks of wolves. Awed in the 
presence of venerable trees the 
ephemeral hush as of nature's 
cathedral. The vast stretches of desert
the irrigated fields of ginseng, and 
the roaming cattle ranches, the depth
and awe of the Fraser River Canyon
this there was and this we saw. And
now wildfires roar about Cache Creek.

Historia 101

This is no fable. Much less a 
hypothesis. This is the reality that
we cannot identify through the haze
of our contentment and sanctimony
viewing ourselves as exemplars of
freedom, justice and equality among
all. We are the vanguard of a new
world order where tolerance and
mutual respect gain the order of the
day, all day, every day spiralling 
into an endless future without conflict.
The other side of the equation is the
presence of brutal, barbarian regimes
to whom human rights is a concept
evoking contemptuous laughter as
they maintain order through the
time-honoured medium of forceful
coersion and regimented placebos
and if any go afoul the merciless
application of a justice system that
is immediate and final solves the issue.
Those seeking to escape the confines
of stifling tyranny migrate as refugees
to havens embracing their right to
liberty but whose laws and equality
assurances are rejected in favour of
renewing allegiance to the violence
left behind. They are rewarded for
their criminal acts by forgiveness in
a society which cannot conceive of
holding to blame those arriving from
deprived backgrounds, assuring a
wholesale migratory epidemic to
smother the culture and roots of the
embracing nation complicit in their
own inevitable and pitiable demise.
They are the vanguard of conquest.