Freaking Numbers

By: Sunny

 

 

I don’t understand why numbers mean so much. It’s everywhere and it ruins everything. It’s in how much money you have in the bank, in how many likes you got on your facebook profile picture, in what your GPA is, and even in how many followers you have. I am frustrated at numbers!

 

The number 3098482 is absolutely nothing until you add the $ in front of it. Number 5 should mean nothing until you say that it’s your GPA. It’s like some currency that determines, judges, and categorizes people. At some point, you’re at 2.3 GPA and everyone tells you that you will never be successful or go to a great college or have a great job or have a stunning life with beautiful children or a wonderful husband, all because of the "freaking numbers"!

 

Can’t I be enough to define who I am? Isn’t that what they claim to be doing? Then why are we still feeding off of numbers and more numbers?

 

 

The Greatest Trick

By: Mehmet Ozan

Charles Baudelaire – the French poet and art critic,once wrote, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” As the master of scheming and deception, passing from shadow to shadow, the Devil is believed to be the supreme manipulator of human beings. But if we were to allow ourselves to be really solemn for a moment, the very obscurity of the Devil has always been the product of a social form. One perceives in the belief of the shapelessness of the Devil the social alibi of a cunning and evil order that has more to do with humanity than with some supernatural entity. If in a moment of clarity we were to stand up to the Devil and drag him back into a world of physical reality and concrete terms, it would be seen that the very characteristic that we have long attributed to his evil is actually representative of the condition of society and the ideological structure beneath it. Here the political or social ideals are not being referred to, but rather the ideological structure on which these ideals are based. The precise formlessness of ideology, which is the pretext of most social evil, is similar to the myth of the Devil.

Help Break Their Fast

 

After hours waiting, suffering in the heat of summer and longing for relief, what if I told you that you couldn’t share iftar with your family? What if I told you,“Tonight, you won’t have the joy of breaking the fast.”

You might be angry and outraged, or wonder “Why?”

 

For some of our brothers and sisters around the world, the answer is simple --they just don’t have access to food.

While you and I may be fortunate enough to share tonight’s final iftar with our families, tens of millions of others won’t have the chance.

Help break their fast.

 

Excerpt from a letter from Sami Yusuf on behalf of World Food Program

 

Effective Marriage Counseling

 

By: Sadia Tariq

 

 

"Marriages are decided in heaven, solemnized on earth and humiliated before Courts."

 

I have just rephrased this old famous saying contemporary to the present era, where, in fact the marriages are humiliated before Courts. In order to avoid such an immaculate insult in open court by stating fictitious and aggravated comments on each other, the couples must first consult a Marriage Counselor.

 

 

A Heart That Listens

By: Sarah Haris

Often we are driven by the objective to win a conversational battle, to prove ourselves more intellectually profound than others, to prove others wrong, to find faults in others. In pursuit of this objective we totally forget that:

 

"Sometimes it is better to be kind than to be right.

We do not need an intelligent mind that speaks, but a patient heart that listens."

 

 

 

Earth Day 2013: The Face of Climate Change

Every year on April 22, more than one billion people take part in Earth Day. Across the globe, individuals, communities, organizations, and governments acknowledge the amazing planet we call home and take action to protect it.
 

Earth Day 2013: The Face of Climate Change

Climate change has many faces.

A man in the Maldives worried about relocating his family as sea levels rise, a farmer in Kansas struggling to make ends meet as prolonged drought ravages the crops, a fisherman on the Niger River whose nets often come up empty, a child in New Jersey who lost her home to a super-storm, a woman in Bangladesh who can’t get fresh water due to more frequent flooding and cyclones…

And they’re not only human faces.

 

They’re the polar bear in the melting arctic, the tiger in India’s threatened mangrove forests, the right whale in plankton-poor parts of the warming North Atlantic, the orangutan in Indonesian forests segmented by more frequent bushfires and droughts…
               

These faces of climate change are multiplying every day.

For many, climate change can often seem remote and hazy – a vague and complex problem far off in the distance that our grandchildren may have to solve. But that’s only because they’re still fortunate enough to be insulated from its mounting consequences. Climate change has very real effects on people, animals, and the ecosystems and natural resources on which we all depend. Left unchecked, they’ll spread like wildfire.

 

Luckily, other faces of climate change are also multiplying every day.
 

Every person who does his or her part to fix the problem is also a Face of Climate Change: the entrepreneurs who see opportunity in creating the new green economy, the activists who organize community action and awareness campaigns, the engineers who design the clean technology of the future, the public servants who fight for climate change laws and for mitigation efforts, the ordinary people who commit to living sustainably…

 

On April 22, 2013, more than one billion people around the world will take part in the 43rd anniversary of Earth Day. From Beijing to Cairo, Melbourne to London, Rio to Johannesburg, New Delhi to New York, communities everywhere will voice their concerns for the planet, and take action to protect it. 

 

We must harness that power to show the world The Face of Climate Change. And we’ll call on our leaders to act boldly together, as we have, in this pivotal year.

 

 

Source: http://www.earthday.org

 

In Search of "Me", Till I Listened to Thee

 



By: Mehmet Ozan

 

" At a distance you only see my light, come closer and know that I am you " ~ Rumi

 

I wondered among these “me’s”, which one is the real me?
I tried to hear the sound deep within, till I listened to THEE.

I listened to the cry of my soul, waiting to fly free,
To drink the wine of Your love and go on a spree.

Over my ignorance and my blindness, I rue.
I wonder why, never before, I had known You?

I was deluded by the splendor of the physical,
I was blinded to the Eternal beauty of Yours.

I learnt that You live in the broken hearts,
I went on breaking, till it cracked apart.  

That’s where the Light entered me,
Illuminating my soul, and all, I could see.

To THEE I belong, and to Thee shall I return,
Till then, gripped in agony, in this fire I burn.

There is no truth but Truth, there is no god but You,
I kneel before You, I bow before You, You, I woo.

I want to cease to exist, I want to cease to be,
I want to drown into You, like a river falls  into the sea.

Come and wash away the image of my existence so there is no 'I' and 'we'.
Empty my being of my ‘self’ and blind me of all that I see, except THEE.

I ask myself, why is there a veil, when I belong to You, why this separation?
I hear a VOICE: Annihilation, annihilation, our union lies in self-annihilation.

 

 

~ Mehmet Ozan

 

 

 

Painting By: Sadaf (Sadaf's Art Gallery https://www.facebook.com/sadafsartgallery

 

 

Pain of Losing a Beloved

By: Shazia Yousuf
 

Pain of losing a loved one cannot heal, it never can. You must try to bury it with the deceased; but both continue to live on in your heart, they never die. The pain and sorrow of the loss stay fresh as a new wound, but time teaches you to move on in life with the burden of sorrow buried within.

Pain at times is good; it lets you realise the pain of others. It gives your life a direction, a meaning - to add meaning to others' lives, to be a source of relieving sorrows with any kind deed, words of encouragement, a listeneing ear, or a simple smile.

So whenever your heart aches in rememberance of a beloved, go out and heal others.
 

Death Teaches Us

From the diary of my late father Muhammad Haris

Death tells us not to waste time.

It tells us to love each other from the depth of our hearts.

It gives us a message that we have to be accounted for our own deeds to the Divine being.

It is a benefit for all mankind.

It is the only thing that will survive in the future.

It is the path to eternity.

It is the mode of completion.

It is the moment of ultimate joy for an upright man to meet The Almighty.

Waves of Change

By: Shazia Yousuf

 

The bitterness of winter, ice cold rains, crisp skin thrashing winds, none could stir those that were a part of the sit-in at Alamdar. United against one cause, to not let the deaths of their loved ones go unnoticed like the deaths of so many innocent victims of mass killings.