I’m Taking A Photo Of My Smile

A little ship sets out, sailing toward the sun. Life looks like a labyrinth floating on a river a river tied to another river, each leading to the ocean, and the ocean hides another labyrinth within.The small vessel drifts without knowing. At the first end of the river, danger appears. We feel fear ahead lies an abyss. I think I must turn the vessel sideways. We keep praying without stopping.

A Master warns those on the small ship: “The water is not deep, but the current is so strong that those who try to go deeper rarely return.”We have passed the first difficulty. We have descended safely from the cliff into the sea. The way is long and winding. Many have tried this path. Many gave up. Many continued, finding a safe place and resting upon a rock. Some waited for the sun to shine. Some perished and fell.

If each river joins another, and all rivers meet the ocean, how could anyone within the river truly understand where they are? There are beings scattered along the waters some searching, some weary, some trying to go against the current. But it’s a futile effort; the current always returns to the same place.

There is one little boat that carries billions of beings. It is the way we choose to see it from us to the outside, and from the outside to us. Our small vessel still resists the current for now, but it knows it must keep sailing with it.It greets the friends stranded along the way, and invites anyone who wishes to join. Here is a little shoe the only one of its pair. It doesn’t know where the other is, but it must know it is separate.

This lifeless passenger is brought to life by these letters. Now that we can see it, it lives forever. Each letter feeds it, like a key turning in a machine but it is not a machine. No machine could ever be like it, because it is written it is alive. A living being, just as I want it to be a little boat that separates us from others and unites us with them.

Billions float within it, each little shoe searching for that door that only the righteous and the believing may enter through the river. And here, our little boat that set sail toward the sun has anchored, waiting for its new passengers.

Show us the straight way, The way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray. Al-Fatihah 1:6-7

Those were ˹some of˺ the prophets who Allah has blessed from among the descendants of Adam, and of those We carried with Noah ˹in the Ark˺, and of the descendants of Abraham and Israel,1 and of those We ˹rightly˺ guided and chose. Whenever the revelations of the Most Compassionate were recited to them, they fell down, prostrating and weeping. Mariam 19:58