All about God, Good and Evil, Angels, Michael, Artiya'il and a Cat named Moses

I woke today resolved to post a good blog. A happy blog. Full of soul-lickin’ goodness. I scrolled my manuscripts until I came across this…

1. Indiscriminate Mercy
They come with the clouds
And ride the falling raindrops,
Each sparkling pearl,
That feed the earth
And fill the sea,
Heralds of a Lord
Whose Bounty falls
On the heads of the Muslims,
Jews, Christians, Atheists,
Agnostics, Buddhists and Hindus alike.
…………………..
From chapter 20 entitled ‘Raindrops’. “Ya Huu!"or even "Yahoo!" means in Arabic (roughly) “Oh He!” as in He who is God.

The ‘They’ are Angels, of course. Sufi lore discloses some aspects of their presence, for instance, are you aware that: -

- With each rain drop, rides an angel?
- With each dew and misty drop from the Niagara Falls also clings an angel?
- On each leaf on each tree, stands seven angels?
- There is an angel called Artiya’il whose job description is to visit and heal the sorrowful?
- Arch-Angel Mikhail / Michael (a.s.), is overall in charge with the workings of the Universe, the disposition of rain, and generally wealth and prosperity (and I guess poverty too)

Holy Geronimo. That’s a whole lot of angels and divine love. More than enough for you, me and the cat named Moses. In fact it is mind-boggling, isn’t it? Just from where I am drinking Nescafe in the back alley of a Chinese Kopitiam, I can clearly see 16 trees. Say we assume there’s on average 300 leaves (the trees are those dwarfish urban types), that’s already 33,600 angels. This is not counting your guardian angels (of which I do not know our individual quotas), nor other angels attending to the Sun, the air, the clouds high above me, nor the two busybody angels sitting on my shoulder, diligently recording my good and bad deeds even as I type this blog.

The whole point of what I am saying is this. The numbers between good and evil is disproportionately in favour of Good. Ergo, in favour of you.

Good trounces evil. Hands down, evil is not even in the same league. Not even in the same dimension of meaning. Good is God, and evil simply the absence of a goodly conscience. Just as darkness has no substance but merely the manifest absence of light.

So today is Monday. The beginning of our working week. But the Angels work 24/7, tireless in their absolute obedience to our God.

Your God and my God, compadre - He is the One and the Same. There may be some amongst the Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, Zoroastrians or Wiccan telling you otherwise. Well, that is their right to say so. But this time, their right is simply wrong.

So maybe it is time to follow God's way - and let us stop discriminating in our mercy and love for one another. Ameen.

Pax Taufica.

p/s - Sketch is mine, fresh as the coffee I had this morning. The pictures are ancient Persian Muslim depictions of Angels. Sourced from this delightful site called Isodore of Seville.

p/p/s - Moses the cat is in reference to the cat in Joshua Kadison's song "Jessie', and not the Prophet Moses Kalimullah. But I am fond of him too.