Tonight, many Muslims will remember and - hopefully - reflect upon a miracle.
This night is the night that the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was awakened by the angel Gabriel and led on a journey from where he lay in Mecca to Medina, Mount Sinai, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem. It was in Jerusalem that Muhammad met and prayed with Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets.
Before the night was over, Muhammad journeyed to the heavens, even to the very limits of where even angels do not encroach.
Known as Meraj, this night represents a unique moment in humanity's oft-time seemingly vain struggle to live up to the standard of greatness laid out before us by our Creator.
Life is full of those journeys.
My life journey has taken me to many places where I have met many nice people but, also, many more who lack in basic humanistic graces. In particular, the past few years have found me surrounded by a lot of mental insults, emotional poison, even physical affronts, and ultimately, spiritual sieges.
My journey finds me beginning to emerge from the aforementioned desert of insults & poisons, affronts & seiges. Tender smiles and Alabama eyes can do so much to soothe and sincere sweetness can do so much to heal.
If a pot of water left burning, unattended for an entire day could create art when "common sense" insists that it would burn and destroy, ¿why can't what was burnt and destroyed be soothed and healed into a once-again useful vessel?
After all, that now-empty pot is going to be very useful on this phase of the journey ... ¿right?
POST-SCRIPTUM: tonight is also, i seem to recall, the 40th anniversary of humankind's first recorded steps on our planet's solitary moon ... which my parents watched on television while awaiting my birth a few months later.
aloh ATIUQIHC
