Mother Teresa’s business card

A re-post from my previous blog.
The late Mother Teresa used to hand out prayer cards, which she referred to as her “business cards”.

On them were printed the words:

The fruit of silence is prayer
The fruit of prayer is faith
The fruit of faith is love
The fruit of love is service
The fruit of service is peace.

“This is good business.” She liked to tell people as she dispensed them.

– Taken from Kathryn Spink’s book titled “Mother Teresa” –

Happy Christmas, people.

ps: This is an old photo which remains a favorite of mine. Taken in Barcelona back in 2006.

España, te echo de menos muchissimo. Un dia, volveré a ti. Con permiso.

What’s your question?

There I was, standing before, well, You.
I sat down and stayed silent for a long while.
I only had one question in mind
“If God is The Compassionate, The Merciful, why are they quoting Qur’an implying that He is so strict and punishing?”

Your task?

From a friend’s Facebook.

Rumi says, “Your task? To work with all the passion of your being to acquire an inner light, so you escape and are safe from the fires of madness, illusion and confusion that are, and always will be, the world.

When you have acquired this light, then every kind of power, all rank, status, and every conceivable reward the world could offer you will pass like a flash of lightening when they shine on your heart.”

He has said it all. “With all the passion of your being.” ALL.

Inilah janjiku padamu

Beberapa hal layak untuk diucapkan dua kali dalam dua bahasa.

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free”
-TNH

Aku berdiri di tepi pagar ini
Hijau membentang
Sejauh mata memandang

Di tengah-tengah sana
Kamu
Memukau layak seekor kijang menjulang
Berlarian bebas di karpet alam hijau maha megah

Aku tersenyum. Aku merasa senang. Sampai kini pun

This is my promise to you

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free”
-TNH

I stood here by the fence
Endless green
As far as my eyes could see

Right in the middle
there stood you
Enchanting as a gazelle
Roaming around freely on the green pasture

I smiled. I was happy. I still am

What’s with all these obligations? What does ‘wajib’ mean?

The word “oblige”, “obligation”, “must”, or in Indonesian/arabic “wajib” recently caught my attention. What’s with all this obligation and must be this, must be that, have to do this, have to do that?

In the Islamic tradition, which I am most familar with, there is quite a number of sayings that involve this sense of obligation. We must respect our neighbours. The faithful ones must attend to cleanliness. We must observe shalat (commonly known as the five times a day ritual prayers), shaum (commonly known as fasting during the Ramadhan month), and zakat (alms-giving).

Then I found another way of looking at this. Perhaps the word “must” serve as characteristics, as hints, as naturally implications.

To humanize human (a.k.a “nge-wong-ke”)

“So what do you do?” — my usual ice-breaker to a conversation with someone new. Apparently this time the guy happened to work for labour issues. We got into this interesting conversation about labour issues and in particular outsourcing.

Outsourcing has become more popular these days. Many companies have switched to this option for their human resource solution. Along with the use, unfortunately comes the abuse.

Kajian: Hijrah (QS2:218)

View this document on Scribd

…

Starting to read Ibn Arabi’s The Four Pillars of Spiritual Transformation. And the first paragraph was:

“The wise make spiritual discipline, abandonment of this world and other such things the primary condition for their thoughts to be free enough to receive spiritual matters. For spiritual things do not impart their effects unless the place [of reception] is emptied, made ready and turned towards their standpoint of view. Those who know God know that the relationship of all things to God is [but] one single relation. Thus they witness Him in everything and nothing veils them from Him.” [The words of Ibn ‘Arabi to his close disciple, Ibn Sawdakin]

Ouch. You really need to be that direct, don’t you?