Yahia Lababidi

To those with an impossible-seeming climb ahead,
it can be done.

Spiritually-speaking, what applied to us as children remains true as adults:

we can only play, once we’ve completed our homework.

When in doubt,
meditate
upon your wound.

Goodness is to trust,
time after time,
in the incorruptible
goodness of others.

Feathered friends

#birds #photography

"We only live to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting."

#Gibran

“As a result of their faith on earth,
their light will shine before them as they pray,
'O Lord, make our light complete and forgive us,
for You are capable of doing anything.'”

#Quran (66:8)

16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."

#Bible

🌞⭐️🌟🔥💥 Matthew 5:14-15

14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

Palestinians praying amid the ruins

We must be willing to let go of
the life we have planned
so as to have the life
that is waiting for us

— E.M. Forster

War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times. -Howard Zinn

#art by Fernand Khnopff, The Temptation of St. Anthony (1883)

And the punishment for those who stand on life's sidelines sneering, shall be having stood on life's sidelines, sneering.

[ #Art: The Kiss of Forgiveness by Maria Makki]

YouTube video by YAHIA LABABIDI I SAW MY FACE: a short film by Sally El Hosaini, featuring a poem by Yahia Lababidi

I Saw My Face

youtu.be/F4dIDRVyW3c?... #poetry #video

I saw all the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning,
"What can get us out from such snares?"
Then I heard a voice saying to me, "Humility!"

Don't trust your self righteousness, control your tongue'.

— St. Anthony

A man said to the Prophet, “Counsel me,” so he (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “Do not become angry.”

The man repeated [his request for counsel] several times, and [each time] he (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “Do not become angry.”

— Al-Bukhari and Muslim

"Those with insight never feel truly safe from four… a past sin… remaining life… a blessing… and the gradual, but swift, deviation of the heart.”

ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Mubārak

“The world is the morsel thrown to distract the dog at the door of the King.”

ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Mubārak

“Perhaps I have not yet heard the word that will lead me to salvation.”

Ibn al-Mubārak

Refaat Alareer and the online culture war Western media institutions excused the intellectual's murder by deeming him "controversial."

“But far stranger than having a friend transformed overnight into a global icon was having a friend, a colleague in the publishing business, a holiday host, deliberately assassinated by a government in cahoots with my own”

Exactly how it feels to have lost this friend this way

“The true zāhid is the one who has removed the world from his heart, despite still holding it in his hands.”

Softening the Heart: Kitāb az-Zuhd wa’r-Raqāʾiq

“Tranquility is unlawful to the hearts of the Saints of God … for they are agitated in this world by seeking God and in the next world by rapture.”

— Abdallah B. Mubarak
#Sufi #Sufism

FOCUS

Hope is more patient
than fickle despair
and, so, outlasts it.

"Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power."

Lao Tzu

"The only tyrant I will accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me."

Mahatma Gandhi

Trust in Longing to sing itself.

“Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.”

— The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Richter edition, 1888), page 682

"Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness...'”

#Bible, 2 Corinthians 12:8-9