Resonating Thoughts

I wonder..

The Wooden Bowl

Ofcourse, one might have read this already elsewhere. And since it’s very inspiring I thought to post it here too.

A frail old man went to live with his son, daughter-in-law, and four-year-old grandson. The old man’s hands trembled,his eyesight was blurred, and his step faltered. The family ate together at the table. But the elderly grandfather’s shaky hands and failing sight made eating difficult. Peas rolled off his spoon onto the floor. When he grasped the glass, milk spilled on the tablecloth. The son and daughter-in-law became irritated with the mess. We must do something about Grandfather,” said the son. I’ve had enough of his spilled milk, noisy eating, and food on the floor. So the husband and wife set a small table in the corner. There, Grandfather ate alone while the rest of the family enjoyed dinner. Since Grandfather had broken a dish or two, his food was served in a wooden bowl.

When the family glanced in Grandfather’s direction, sometimes he had a tear in his eye as he sat alone. Still, the only words the couple had for him were sharp admonitions when he dropped a fork or spilled food.

The four-year-old watched it all in silence. One evening before supper, the father noticed his son playing with wood scraps on the floor. He asked the child sweetly, “What are you making?” Just as sweetly, the boy responded, “Oh, I am making a little bowl for you and Mama to eat your food when I grow up.” The four-year-old smiled and went back to work.

The words so struck the parents that they were speechless. Then tears started to stream down their cheeks. Though no word was spoken, both knew what must be done. That evening the husband took Grandfather’s hand and gently led him back to the family table. For the remainder of his days he ate every meal with the family. And for some reason, neither husband nor wife seemed to care any longer when a fork was dropped, milk spilled, or the tablecloth soiled.

Allah mentions in Quran, Surah Al-'Isrā' 17:23-24

” And your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him. And that you be dutiful to your parents. If one of them or both of them attain old age in your life, say not to them a word of disrespect, nor shout at them but address them in terms of honour. ” (verse 23)

” And lower unto them the wing of submission and humility through mercy, and say: “My Lord! Bestow on them Your Mercy as they did bring me up when I was small. ” (verse 24)

A Wise Woman

A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him, she did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the wise woman.

“I have been thinking,” he said, “I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone.”

Meray Pass Raho

Meray Pass Raho – translated as : Be with me / Stay with me / Be near me.
One of the classic Urdu poem by great Poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

Meray Pass Raho

You who demolish me, you whom I love,
be near me. Remain near me when evening,
drunk on the blood of the skies,
becomes night, in its one hand
a perfumed balm, in the other
a sword sheathed in the diamond of stars.

Be near me when night laments or sings,
or when it begins to dance,
its steel-blue anklets ringing with grief.

Be here when longings, long submerged
in the heart’s waters, resurface
and when everyone begins to look:
Where is the assassin? In whose sleeve
is hidden the redeeming knife?

And when wine, as it is poured, is the sobbing
of children whom nothing will console -
when nothing holds,
when nothing is:
at that dark hour when night mourns,
be near me, my destroyer, my lover,
be near me.

History of Valentine’s Day

Valentines Day – The festival of love, which is celebrated on February 14 each year is an expression of what the people believed in their pagan religion to be divine love. This festival was invented more than 1700 years ago, at a time when paganism (shirk) was still prevalent among the Romans. In ancient Rome, the festival of Juno Februa was celebrated on February 13-14 and February 14th was a holiday to honour Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman gods and goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia – a fertility celebration commemorated annually. Pope Gelasius I recast this pagan festival as a Christian feast day circa 496, declaring February 14 to be St. Valentine’s Day.

Who is St. Valentine?

Which St. Valentine this early Pope intended to honor remains a mystery: according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there were at least three early Christian saints by that name. One was a priest in Rome, another a bishop in Interamna (modern Terni), and of a third St. Valentine almost nothing is known except that he met his end in Africa. Rather astonishingly, all three Valentines were said to have been martyred on Feb. 14.

Most scholars believe that the St. Valentine of the holiday was a priest who attracted the disfavor of Roman emperor Claudius II around 270. At this stage, the factual ends and the mythic begins. According to one legend, Claudius II had prohibited marriage for young men, claiming that bachelors made better soldiers. Valentine continued to secretly perform marriage ceremonies but was eventually apprehended by the Romans and beaten to death with clubs and was executed. Another legend has it that Valentine, imprisoned by Claudius, fell in love with the daughter of his jailer. Before he was executed, he allegedly sent her a letter signed “from your Valentine.” Probably the most plausible story surrounding St. Valentine is one not focused on eros (passionate love) but on agape (Christian love): he was martyred for refusing to renounce his religion.

In 1969, the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, known officially as the Roman Martyrology, was revised as part of a larger effort to pare down the number of saint days of purely legendary origin, the Church removed St. Valentine’s Day as an official holiday from its calendar.

First link to Romance:

It was not until the 14th century that this Christian feast day became definitively associated with love. According to UCLA medieval scholar Henry Ansgar Kelly, author of Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine, it was Geoffrey Chaucer who first recorded association of Valentine’s Day with romance in Parlement of Foules (1381):

“For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.“

[For this was on St. Valentine's Day,
When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate.]

This poem was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia. A treaty providing for a marriage was signed on May 2, 1381. (When they were married eight months later, he was 13 or 14. She was 14.)

[ref: Oruch, Jack B., "St. Valentine, Chaucer, and Spring in February," Speculum, 56 (1981): 534-65. Oruch's survey of the literature finds no association between Valentine and romance prior to Chaucer. He concludes that Chaucer is likely to be, "the original mythmaker in this instance."
ref: Kelly, Henry Ansgar, Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine (Brill Academic Publishers, 1997)
ref: Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XV, Published 1912]

Traditions in Modern Times:

In Great Britain, Valentine’s Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of the century, printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine’s Day greetings. Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland, a Mount Holyoke graduate and native of Worcester, Mass., began to sell the first mass-produced valentines in America.

According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. [if one card is on average 3USD then.. well, do the maths!]

‘What is Love?’

Ever wonder what Love is? I had been doing research on this proposed subject for quite some time. But a strange thing happened that after a long long research & study & writing, I came across ‘An Essay by Jailed Uyghur Writer Nurmuhemmet Yasin‘. Immediately after reading it, I had no choice but to put his essay here and neglect my own. And here it follows:

“What is love? This mystical, mythical question goes back to ancient times—without a coherent answer. Each person’s experience of love is uniquely varied, and each person’s understanding of love is different from the next. Love varies from one period to another along the length of a human life; a person can have many loves, but each experience will be different from the next. Summing it up, or pinning it down, are both impossible.

“Love is like a continually shattering mirror that always leaves behind images etched in people’s hearts; but it will itself remain a mystery forever.

“Many people give themselves over to this mystery, but while love can produce the most tender and delicate feelings in anyone’s soul, it alone can open a window in the hearts of a very few.

“A simple analogy might be that of spring water which satisfies an extremely thirsty soul. Imagine, in the intense heat of midsummer, a very thirsty shepherd, using both hands to scoop the running water from a roadside creek to drink with a joy that satisfies his thirst. Such a sensation is beyond compare.

A transformative process

“Similarly, when a tired and weary person returns home from far away, he says to himself, ‘Finally, I have come home,’ before stretching himself out on his bed to rest. This joy, too, is beyond compare. Again, when a writer who has been up all night working puts the last full-stop at the end of his article; this, too, is boundless consolation for the heart. These all are phenomena of love.

“In fact, love is a sort of deeply pleasing satisfaction, but with various manifestations. It defies explicit definition. Gibran Khalil Gibran gives us an extremely vivid description: ‘For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. That is to say, love can occupy the deepest places of your mind, shake the foundations of your life, and force you to leave your native land. Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.’

“Love is the kind of process described above; it makes you understand yourself. Only through this process, will you be able to become a soul, to become a part of life. Gibran uses a real life image to describe it, precisely because it is so difficult to give an explanation. A profound understanding of the process is even more difficult.

“Everybody has a different explanation and a different definition regarding the love they experience. The majority of people can suddenly fall in love with a stranger. If you ask them what they see in their lover, sometimes they can’t give you a clear answer. But the fact of their regard for each other is indisputable.

“Regardless of the secret mystery of love, it is a process in your feelings and in your heart. Love, too, always manifests itself in the body. Love will appear repeatedly in your life. In fact, the Gibran description of love is also talking about a solid, concrete form of love. Still other forms of love exist secretly in a human life.

‘Performance of the self’

“Love is a kind of performance of the self, a satisfaction of the self; love is a kind of need, or is a much-needed satisfaction. Love is a kind of tendency toward both secret transformation and public transition. No matter what, if you fall in love with an actual person, you can feel your body making various unexpected changes. You might also realize that changes are taking place in your thoughts as never before.

“If this kind of phenomenon appears in your life, you may presume you are in love, for these phenomena are a form of love in themselves. Regardless of whether these phenomena last a long time or a short time, whether they are painful or enjoyable, they constitute riches, which will inscribe themselves in your heart forever.

“In brief, as a living human being with a soul, it is impossible not to fall in love in the course of a lifetime. Love is like the sunshine; no matter how tightly you shut down your heart, the sunlight will find a way to shine into it. Love’s process is unstoppable. Therefore, my advice would be: Don’t waste your precious time trying to define the meaning of love. The best definition is already in your own heart and mind.”

Maralbeshi County
Midnight. July 24, 2004

Original Uyghur essay by Nurmuhemmet Yasin. Translated by RFA Uyghur service director Dolkun Kamberi. Produced for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.