12th of July 2019 I went for Friday prayers after a long time. This
highly (un)likely event happened because a number of factors culminated in me ending up on that day and time to this local mosque in Canada. I was reluctant and I was hesitant. Consider it that Neo after all realizing that matrix is real still takes the blue pill! I was hesitant also as I had to further postpone my very urgent project of fixing the dresser drawers of my daughter who had told me a number of time and then had stopped asking me because she didn't want to disengage me from my other stuff. But this time I had to do it right away after finding how much difficulty this problem was giving to her as she was unable to rightly organize her things in a comfortable manner.
So I went and so the Friday sermon started, orated by a young lad with fine English and Canadian dialect. I really hoped and prayed that I get to hear something worth paying attention too because as a keen follower of geo politics where you get high doses of dopamine, when you read the next tweet from the Trump tower who is watching over a collapsing empire, to Russia selling S400 to Turkey and Iran shooting down US drone. So you are desensitized to anything of low intensity cheap humour or just small talk. It is like after cocaine you want heroine not hashish.
Being there I prayed (how ironic) for something useful as my little boy whom like my other children I am constantly shielding from what the crazy world is throwing at them by always making them think and critique what just doesn't make sense. And that raised the stakes by an order of magnitude as I hoped that he listens to something useful and something that doesn't impure his so pure humanistic thoughts and logical reasoning. But my worst fears came true.
The sermon started and pearls of wisdom started trickling one after the other. There were many but what struck as the last nail in the coffin was when he said something like this:
The first thing of all the things that Almighty made was a pen
the first thing
the very first
a Pen
And then he told the pen to write down everything that we see in this world
and the Pen wrote down as it was commanded to it (or him who knows)
Pen wrote down everything each and every detail
every minute detail
detail about what will happen
So dear fellows everything is written
whatever you do in this world is written
your coming to mosque was written (lol at that moment he directly addressed me I guess)
something good happen it is written something bad happen it is written...
It went on and on but what this young lad in his fine English was trying to get to was that if something bad happens. It happens because it is written and there is will of Almighty in it. So you should not despair and should not go astray.
I came back finished the remaining work of fixing my daughters furniture and thinking and pondering and wondering if other people were thinking the same...but doesn't matter I just looked at heavens and Lord and I both rolled our eyes.
But my day ended on a good note I met my father and told him the story and he promptly conjectured in punjabi "tu Odey kole bedha sein".