The Last Word

Surprise! Out of the ether of time and
space named social media comes a
sneering, malevolent challenge from
someone whose stinging words
swiftly identify him and certainly his
choice of politics as a firmly devoted
member of a loathed and loathsome
ideology whose champions actively
seek out martyrdom in their deadly
cause. Your visceral gasp of revulsion
incites an immediate albeit restrained
response-in-kind as a reminder that
in a civilized world his barbaric
Medievalism has no place. Nor does
his pious declaration of respecting
'human rights' shield his purpose as
a terrorist-supporting stalwart, your
acknowledgement toward which
simply elicits continued verbal jabs
and you realize that to joust with anyone
afflicted with such an impoverished
world view aids his cause and serves
to elevate him personally in the esteem
of those of his cohorts following him
and repeating the exchange on that
same stream of social media that you 
equate with the sinister Dark Web. 

The Quality of Mercy

He's a handsome, dapper man
courteous and unfailingly good humoured
quick with a quip, equipped with a
mordant sense of humour; good company
when someone of his ilk shares with
others both their sense of ironic comedy
and the equanimity of a well-balanced
personality. But not this time, though
his initial greeting and smile gave no
prior indication that he was on the spur
of relieving himself of a sense of having
had quite enough. Fed up: with unearned
entitlement, lack of discipline, of respect
of a sense of responsibility. He would know. 
And he blames parents raising children
patterned on their own lack of civil
behaviour. He would know, he grimly
asserts, since he is exposed to them daily
whining, demanding, impudent quasi-
adults attending university and querulously
challenging their professor on every level
draining his patience, impelling him to
consider reducing their grades. There is
no cost to empathy on our part for our
own last languished in a university class
decades earlier. And, as he hastened to add
his own are well imbued with the verities
of indisputable virtues by inheritance. 

Fated Destiny

If the good husband and wife had not
gone out together from their Swiss Alps
village 75 years ago to milk their cows
searching them out along a glacier
they would never have disappeared
leaving seven children behind to be
cared for by grieving family members.
So long ago, that their five grown sons
have since died never to learn of their
parents' mummified bodies frozen into
the ice having finally been discovered.
Vanished, without a trace, in a crevasse
in the glacier of a mountain in the
western Alps. How romantic, even
the name of the glacier seems mysterious
hardly tripping off the tongue:Tsanfleuron.
Surely if those people having lived there
all their lives, knowing that others
had also suddenly never been seen again
might have thought twice about
venturing out to meet a like fate? The
'if' is the most unknown of all ventures.
If unsuspecting that fate and ill fortune
awaited them, would they have gone out?
You muse introspectively, certain that
musing of such 'ifs' is irrelevant to 
outcomes, good or bad, and feel grateful
that you have no idea whether any 'ifs'
bide their time in your own fated destiny.

Their Legacy

Amina, thought to be about three, was pulled from the rubble in Mosul after being 

trapped for days. The little girl is believed to be the daughter of ISIL fighters from Chechnya 

who died in battle.© Carol Guzy via ZUMA Wire

Their Legacy

The child, only moments before 
buried deep in the debris of a bombed
building has been schooled beyond her
three years of life. Asked where her 
parents are, she responds "shaheeds"
her eyes blank of fully understanding
the tiny orphan layered in the dust of
an explosion, wistful and lost but
saved from death, her confused mind
steeped in a memory that will visit
and revisit her consciousness as years
pass. And what of her future, hers and
that of the countless other abandoned-
to-martyrdom castoffs of warriors of
Islam jubilant in their release from life
in the process of slaughtering infidels
who cannot and will not join them in
paradise since they are forbidden entry
as kuffars. This child may remember
her parents' lessons as will others
older than her, but the weeks-old
infants not yet ripe for paradisaical
ambition will know little of their ardent
antecedents who joyfully subscribed to
the sacred injunction to go forth and
perform jihad, the fruit of their labours
seen in the atrocities they commit and
the forlorn offspring left to carry on.

 

The Purpose of Conviction

"We are dependent on our brains for
whatever form of faith we experience in 
our lives reflecting our spiritual being:
Does God exist? Does life have meaning?"
Ah, the academics, the experts, those
of scientific mind and the papers to
prove it, those professionals in whom the
public places their trust knowing as they do
what we do not, now inform us that a
sense of purpose is essential to living a
life well, to appreciating the opportunity to
exist despite any or all happenstance
intrusions mitigating against meeting our
humble aspirations to be satisfied with
what fate has apportioned us. We could
hardly, of our own initiative ponder the
sublime issue of existence and its purpose
without their guiding words. Our minds
incapable of grasping that existence gives
us purpose. Trouble sleeping? Tch! Fewer
than the minimally-stated hours will 
shorten your life, so what to do? Have purpose
of course, and by that measure, the metric
identified so pithily by those whose
immaculate credentials lend them the
authority that you lack, will do very well
for you. As for existence, does a fly in
some ancient collective-species memory 
realize its purpose? Perhaps terrorists assured 
of their ascent to paradise in honour of their
purpose achieved have discovered the 
formula through zealous application of
their spirituality's injunction to arouse
themselves to the purpose decreed by Islam.

Who Are We To Judge?

Have you ever noticed, my friend
how parsimonious perfectly decent
people are in recognizing good in
others to the extent that it becomes
clear an inherent meanness of spirit
overcomes the potential to compliment
others as a nasty little imp within
urges restraint lest one's admission
of admiration take away from their
own sense of accomplishment in any
arena where the slightest hint of
competition raises the social hackles
of those perfectly decent people. In
acknowledging that very human
failing are we directed from within
to judge, to hold that individual in
less esteem than we would like? One
wonders if one's own forbearance
and the preference to express admiration
where due would then become somewhat
compromised, making of one in essence
little more than complicit with the
narrow-minded whose inability
to give credit where due represents
the measure of their compatibility
with the golden mean and the injunction
to do unto others, of such value to us.

Wildfires

In the endless time that the fabulous
Old Testament's legendary interpretation
informs that the omnipotent power
that is the Almighty took to create
existence, a mere seven days
completed the transaction from endless
nothing to vastly unimaginable existence
roughly the same number of days
it takes to canoe and trek through the
Bowron Lakes in the Cariboo mountains
interior of British Columbia, one of
nature's most favoured landscapes
where endless rain cascading through
overcast skies drenches hardy
canoeists day after day after day.
There, at Cache Creek,100-Mile House
and Williams Lake where Gold Rush
fever led a hopeful influx of
prospectors to a rough and ready
ingathering amongst the stately
splendour of old-growth forests, 
endless mountains, rivers and lakes
nature met the onrush with total
equanimity knowing in her wisdom
of longevity that they would leave and
only she and her creatures would remain.
Yet now she has staged another drama
consuming her landscape in spontaneous
combustion, countless wildfires scattering
her creatures, all accomplished in the
very same time-frame heralding existence.