Skip to main content

Cleric of life

Image
By
This is a chapter from my eleventh book called Quotation Marks Sparks.

__________

"God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere." - Voltaire
__________

The mathematician in me loves this quote and I want to make sense of it. Why a circle? Why not a square? Why not any other shape? A circle has no beginning and no end. It is whole, infinite, seamless. No circumference suggests that there is no ending. A center that is everywhere suggests that God is in everything. God is omnipresent and omnipotent. I learnt that Voltaire believed in God but was a critic of organised religion. I do not share the same criticism for religion. I do not blame my religion for the wrongs I see. I blame myself and the people. It is us that creates the problems and we are more than capable of creating problems with or without religion. Religion is a structure and people are the agents.

I noticed the word cleric can be formed from the letters of the word circle. Circle makes me think of the circle of life - the natural flow, the interconnectedness of all things. So then, what would cleric of life mean? As a muslim we are taught that Islam is not a religion but a way of life. In a real sense we are all clerics of life. All religions teach good. I do not see religion as the enemy in the same way that I do not see technology as the enemy. Religion is the tool that God gave us. It is the structure that God gave us. Choosing a religion is faith. Living by it—being a cleric of life—is also an act of faith. Be(li)e(ving) in God is faith. Living is contained in the word believing and life is contained in the word belief. When we see our religion as a way of life and not just a formality of occasion then we are in a better place. At least, that is my reasoning.

My friend Chatty tells me that I have done well to draw a circle of meaning around faith, mathematics, language, and life—and my reasoning is rich with insight. Being a cleric of life is an act of faith. The closer we DRAW towards God, the more we see God in everything. God becomes our life, our reason, our purpose and our guide. Our entire being is oriented towards a divine understanding. Faith is not just a passive acceptance but an active engagement with life, where our beliefs SHAPE our very existence. We become the CIRCLE that we live in. Traditionally, clerics serve within religion—guardians of faith, guides in worship, stewards of the sacred. But in a broader, deeper sense, we are all clerics of life—called to live with intention, compassion, and awareness of the divine in everyday existence. Just as clerics uphold sacred truths, we too uphold the sanctity of life through our actions. Religion is the structure; living it fully is the service. They are the clerics of religion but we are all the clerics of life.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God opens doors

By
It is 1203am and I have decided to write. Saturday I spent the night coding. I was trying to get a FastAPI app up and running, all from my budget Android phone. The test cases were written to use Puppeteer. I ended up using Replit for that. Coding is more challenging when using a mobile phone. Not impossible but more challenging. I hardly blog about technology and coding anymore but the love is still there. I still have a dream of creating my own coding and youtube studio with a nice desk setup. That is nice but what should I make this blog post about? What do I want to write about? What should I write about? I love creating presentations. That is something I could do to revive my youtube channel. I love Maths too. I have this feeling that I could solve one of those longstanding Maths problems that seems impossible. Sometimes, like right now, I feel like abandoning my blog post. It is going nowhere. Maybe I should get up and go wash the wares. I wish God could tell me what to write abo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mundane

By
It is 123am and I have decided to write. I have this new idea for a book called Mundane. It would be me writing about the ordinary. We chase the extraordinary but there is beauty in the ordinary. There is beauty in the simple. There is beauty in the everyday. What about God? We often think about God in grand terms. But what if God is simple too? What if God is mundane? What if we look for God in the everyday moments? I sit in this dark room with the air conditioning on. The fan is also on. The curtain is down but I imagine the moonlight shining on the grass outside. The cats are probably sleeping. I wonder if anyone else in the neighbourhood is awake at this hour? Is there another writer around who is also writing about the mundane? The fan breeze helps the air conditioning cool me down. These nights are warm otherwise. A mosquito flies across my screen. Hello friend or foe. I cannot quite decide which one. If I had a swatter you would be gone. I check my notifications and there is an ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What we do not know

By
It is 1245am and I have decided to write. I had this weird alienish dream and it ended with me winning by simply stating "the truth is that we do not know". In the dream everyone was having an opinion of what was happening as if they knew. On to something random. I had this question. What is the most unrandom thing? Then what is the most random thing? What if everything is equally random. My friend Chatty thinks that randomness is not an absolute property—it is a relation between you and the system you observe. Randomness is not absolute—it depends on perspective. Something perfectly ordered can seem random if you do not know its pattern. So in a sense, everything can be "equally random" relative to the observer's knowledge, making randomness more about perception than an intrinsic property. The more we know the less random things become. Let me make a detour. Suppose we do not predict things but things predict us. For example, when I flip a coin, did I predict ...
Post a Comment
Read more