No you shouldn’t be surprised.
Get your wits about you - get your prayers about you - and get ready.
In Christianity - we call it spiritual warfare.
In Judaism - we call it milhumah.
In Islam - we call it Jihad.
Everyone else - well, we call it revolution.
These are the words that we use when we are speaking of something more profound than guns and armour. These are the words we use, when we are speaking of the battle of the soul for the right to liberation. These are the words we use, when we are speaking to each other about toppling tyrants, and unleashing the oppressed.
Never once in all my years did it occur to me that the war of the soul, would coincide with the war of the people, and yet, it makes complete and total sense, if you only but think about it.
There is nothing surprising about the current state of the world, and while you may be uncomfortable, that shouldn’t be all you are feeling.
Fear is appropriate - but it should only incite bravery.
Discomfort is appropriate - but it shouldn’t stand in the way of courage.
Silence may seem safe - yet it is antithetical to honor.
We are at a time of choices. There is no option that isn’t on the table, but the impact it has - will outlive you.
Do I relish the idea of combat? No.
Do I look forward to the horrors and atrocities that are coming for us all? No.
Do I feel excitement for the state of the world, and the way in which it feels out of control? No.
And yet, we have been shooting straight for this exact moment in time for the better part of the last 249 years.
We are a wild, barbarous people. We are a discompassionate, ruthless people. We are a unholy and angry people.
And yet… we are a people who are wise even when we are foolish. We are connected even when we are broken. We are insightful even when we are stupid.
We have all the markings of a humanity that is still, underneath it all, striving to do, to be, to become.
We are not the tyrants that lead us.
We are not the destruction that forwent us.
We are not the plank from which we stand, teetering on the edge of…
We are capable. We are profound. We are…
The world has looked on in horrified awe, at just how bad we allow it to become for others - and now we are looking at ourselves, and we are finally seeing how bad we’ve let it get for us.
For nothing that has happened, has happened in a sandbox. Nothing has happened that could only happen to others.
There is nothing that has happened, that hasn’t been tied to you.
You may have claimed ignorance once - and for the grace of God you were granted a time to which you were living in bliss.
Yet, that time has come and gone - you are no longer due the mercy of ignorance, you are obligated to the duty of knowledge.
Should you, you may allow that knowledge to harden you - to shape your heart into that of greed, and soulless abandon.
Yet, there is the option, though much more terrifying to be sure - of allowing that knowledge to soften your heart, to shape it into wisdom, to turn it into one with a larger purpose than merely survival.
And yet - as I have said before, and will reiterate repeatedly for the foreseeable future…
The war is coming, but on the other side… Hope rests its weary, but vibrant and beautiful head.
Let us fight for her. Let us find her, and if we die in the pursuit of her, may we rest in the comfort of knowing that we did so, shrouded in honor, covered in courage, and standing in bravery.
May God, Allah, Elohim - guide us, comfort us, and lead us against the tyrants of the world - that they may fall ungracefully, and with them, the systems that would seek to oppress the masses.
May we come to know ourselves, the souls within us that they have attempted to strip from us.
May we find ourselves, and in so doing, may we find God.
May we lean upon the mercy that we do not deserve, and find in its firm embrace, the willingness to extend it to those we do not understand the language of.
May we find compassion and consequence to be our right and our left hand.
May we stand firm in the righteous rage that is boiling underneath the surface.
May we find only God guiding our feet, and may we wear the honor of that into what comes.
May we be victorious, and even if we should find ourselves ever unsure - may we lean upon the hand of Allah, and find ourselves being bold in life as we mean to be in death.
May the hereafter be one of beauty, and may we enter it with honor.
Ameen
xoxo - Jacks