An Engaging Story
By Mohammed Faheem
US

A man, who regularly attended family meetings suddenly stopped participating without any notice. After a few weeks, one very cold night the leader of that group decided to visit him. He found the man at home, alone, sitting in front of a fireplace where a bright fire burned. The man welcomed the leader. There was a great silence. The two men only watched the dancing flames around the logs that crackled in the fireplace. After a few minutes the leader, without saying a word, examined the woods that formed the fire and selected one of them, glowing most brightly of all, and removing it to the side with a pair of tongs. Then he sat down again. The host was paying attention to everything, fascinated. Before long, the lone member flame subsided, until there was only a momentary glow and the fire soon went out. In a short time what was previously bright light and heat had become nothing more than a black and dead piece of wood. Very few words had been spoken since the greeting. Before preparing to leave, the leader with the tongs picked up the useless piece of wood and placed it again in the middle of the fire. Immediately, the member piece of wood was rekindled, fueled by the light and heat of the burning coals around him. When the leader reached the door to leave, the host said: “Thank you for your visit and for your beautiful lesson”.

I'll return to the group soon. Why is a group important? Very simple: Because each member that withdraws takes fire and heat from the rest. It's worth reminding group members that they are a part of the flame. It's also good to remind us that we are all responsible for keeping each other's flame burning and we must promote the union among us so that the fire is really strong, effective and lasting. What matters is to be connected. We are here to meet, learn, exchange ideas or simply to know that we are not alone. Let's keep the flame alive. Life is beautiful with friends and family. THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF OUR FAMILY FIRE. Let’s keep it burning.

Comment on the story by AzherQuader, CBC, Chicago :

What a beautiful story Br Faheem. Thanks for sharing it. The curse of this pandemic will not be easy to overcome. The loss of lives, the loss of society, the loss of humanity that has become such a painful reality, has left us surrounded with a devastating loneliness, the likes of which we had not experienced before. No matter how successful we are in defeating this silent invisible enemy, in the days to come, life will never be the same again, I suspect.

Intoxicated with the accomplishments of our modern day successes we had thought ourselves unbeatable. Armed by our military power we had thought ourselves invincible. Nothing mattered to us except ourselves and our obsessive, possessive love of land and culture. The death of a few thousand some twenty years ago, caused us to cry revenge and destroy the lives of millions of those who had nothing to do with us and our dead. We sat silently watching the slow disintegration of our neighborhoods as guns multiplied and the peace and security of our homeland destroyed. We saw disparities rise and empathy fall. We saw race relations brutalized as we embraced ethnic pride and violent terrorizing extremism. We normalized hate speech, we glorified same sex, we permitted the rape of our democracy in front of the world, as we shamefully ignored the rule of law and the proof of evidence in matter after matter. We have clearly strayed away from our path with little sense of direction or destiny. All that matters for us today is the immediate, the short-term, the self-gratifying, the self-satisfying. A path that is destined for self-destruction and we are happily racing on it. It is the wood in the fireplace that I see as our problem.

The 70 million who did not choose for change cannot be ignored. Their fire is still blazing. If we are unable to cool them down and reignite them with a different fire that lights up a different future for us all, then we have not learned much from this pandemic. Rolling over some cooling logs and placing them back in the fireplace along with some smoldering ones may just rekindle their fire that may burn down the house itself. Let us pray for course correction through greater outreach, engagement and understanding. Let us pray we play our small part, in this important effort, in saving this country we so love and fondly call our home. With over 250k of our neighbors dead and counting it cannot be business as usual anymore.

Life is too short for the rhetoric of red states and blue states or the cries of them versus us. Things must change and they will not change unless we change. It must begin with us. Hope is not the answer. Engagement is.