The name of this blog is “The Spaces in Between”, and that’s the name of everything I do, really. The Sufi stuff, the Intercultural Relations masters degree, even the Irish music, which draws strength from what seems like another lifetime — it’s all about border crossings and the foggy, negotiable spaces between different settled realities, which can morph into anything.

From a recent post on a different blog, regarding my imaginary author (who thinks that I am his imaginary author):

“Silly things happen to Halycon Sage, they just do. Maybe he attracts them somehow, or perhaps it’s something to do with the way his mind works, simultaneously perceiving at least two disparate halves of reality at any given moment.”

Yup. Here’s the latest one, and it really is silly.

As a Muslim, I’m quite familiar with the concept of the Yaum ad-Din, the Day of Awakening and Evaluation, more familiarly known as the Day of Judgement. This is the moment outside time and space where we perceive the real meaning of our actions, guided by the One Who understands our most secret thoughts and motivations, “Nearer to [us] than we are to ourselves”. By Whom, “No soul will be wronged by so much as the point of a date stone.”

That’s one half. The other half is that, as a post-modern person, I’m naturally familiar with the Internet, that great blessing and curse of our times.

So, you know that online moment where you try to access something you haven’t used in a while, but which is vitally needed for some project, some compelling personal interest, some burning career need?

At the first hint of trouble, you wait, breathless in a timeless time, for acceptance or rejection. If you’re accepted, the gates swing wide, revealing images, sounds, colors, words and worlds. As Jesus said, “Friend, come up higher.” Or — paraphrased and slightly altered — ‘Come in and sup with me.’ The little black-on-white circle turns in a quick, friendly way, seeming to say, “Of course we know you! Don’t be ridiculous! All of this is yours!”

Then there’s the opposite experience: “Authentication required”, “Access denied”, “You are not authorized” . . .  You are a stranger, an impostor who is trying fool us, and we do not know you. Though you’ve been here a thousand times, though you paid for your access, you are an impostor and a cheat;  we reject you and we do not know you. Get out, get thee down into the outer darkness. There is nothing for you here.

Unlike the Lord of the Worlds, the internet does not understand, and will harm you by the point of a date stone, the point of a walrus’s tusk, or the point of a spiral galaxy. It’s a darn good thing the internet is not God!

There you are. I told you it was silly.