The Cold Within

Earlier today, I was out with a good friend of mine in my car and prayer time came. I stopped by a mosque and we went inside and waited for prayer to start. When we entered the mosque I walked to the front row while he sat at the back, close to the door and almost hidden behind a pillar. He prayed alone and left the mosque and stood as far from the entrance, eventually hiding behind the mosque’s side wall. Why did he do that? Because he is a Shiite and had suffered several incidents where he was harassed inside a Sunni mosque, such as the time a guy came and removed the tissue paper he had placed on the carpet in front of him while he was praying. So this friend of mine, fearing harassment, had to hide to practice his religion. We talk of tolerance nowadays and how we must tolerate “the other”, such as people from other religions, but how can we even start to seriously consider ourselves tolerant if we cannot tolerate our brothers who pray to the same God and follow the same prophet we do. We will never get anywhere until we become citizens of the world and stop acting like we’re living alone on this planet. But how can we become citizens of the world and interact with others and tolerate their faiths if we cannot tolerate ourselves? I share with you this beautiful poem:

 

The Cold Within

By James Patrick Kinney

Six humans trapped by happenstance
in black and bitter cold
Each possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story's told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
the first woman held hers back
For on the faces around the fire
She noticed one was black.

The next man looking 'cross the way
Saw one not of his church
And couldn't bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man's face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
Did naught except for gain,
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game.

The logs held tight in death's stilled hands
Was proof of human sin,
They didn't die from the cold without,
They died from the cold within.