MuslimAgorist
Member
- Mar 13, 2010
- 130
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Dear Stranger,
I was born in California, but spent much of my childhood traveling with my family. On this tour I was struck by the worlds beauty. Some of it, man made, like the Taj Mahal in India. What I found most breath taking were the wonders of nature. A lightning storm over a primordial dessert in Arabia, the cherry blossom petals sprinkling on the floating markets in Thailand, or snorkeling the coral reefs of the Maldives. But few places on Earth possess as much natural beauty as California, where the sun setting on the Bay Area always reminds me that God is a better painter than me.
Back home from this journey, I spent my adolescence as a stranger of one kind or another. I am realizing recently though that my sense of separation is not the result of uniqueness, but of a universal similarity. We can only be as alienated from each other as we are separated from our true self, and we can only be as alienated from our self as we are separated from nature.
Every Prophetic figure in human history sought solitude in nature. Siddhartha sat beneath the Bodhi Tree and returned as the Buddha. Muhammad retreated to the Cave of Hira and returned as the Prophet of Allah. Even our Secular figures did this. Thomas Jefferson built Monticello on the summit of the Southwest Mountains in Virginia where he wrote, Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God.
To date I have primarily worked in graphic design, although I have a completely different skill set Ive developed outside the work place. Ive always been one to take political and social action. It has at times afforded me opportunities for writing articles, public speaking and event coordination. Combining these two fields, the verbal and the visual, I have always thought of myself primarily as a communicator of ideas.
Glad tidings to you stranger
I was born in California, but spent much of my childhood traveling with my family. On this tour I was struck by the worlds beauty. Some of it, man made, like the Taj Mahal in India. What I found most breath taking were the wonders of nature. A lightning storm over a primordial dessert in Arabia, the cherry blossom petals sprinkling on the floating markets in Thailand, or snorkeling the coral reefs of the Maldives. But few places on Earth possess as much natural beauty as California, where the sun setting on the Bay Area always reminds me that God is a better painter than me.
Back home from this journey, I spent my adolescence as a stranger of one kind or another. I am realizing recently though that my sense of separation is not the result of uniqueness, but of a universal similarity. We can only be as alienated from each other as we are separated from our true self, and we can only be as alienated from our self as we are separated from nature.
Every Prophetic figure in human history sought solitude in nature. Siddhartha sat beneath the Bodhi Tree and returned as the Buddha. Muhammad retreated to the Cave of Hira and returned as the Prophet of Allah. Even our Secular figures did this. Thomas Jefferson built Monticello on the summit of the Southwest Mountains in Virginia where he wrote, Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God.
To date I have primarily worked in graphic design, although I have a completely different skill set Ive developed outside the work place. Ive always been one to take political and social action. It has at times afforded me opportunities for writing articles, public speaking and event coordination. Combining these two fields, the verbal and the visual, I have always thought of myself primarily as a communicator of ideas.
Glad tidings to you stranger
2 USMB Muslimagorist, you have come to the best 'Internet Agora'.
