about abdiel

who i am

I’m a guy made up of the leftovers of all the people I used to be: a straggly-haired punk, a small-town hick, a mouthy little nerd.  I used up all the good stuff from those guys some years ago, and what I am now–a servant waiting for his master–is what’s left.

 The most important moment of my life occurred when I was sixteen, coming out of band practice (astaghfirullah!) with a group of like-minded punks and miscreants.  We had spent the entire class poking fun at a girl named Tracey.  You know what teenage punks are like.  Tracey lived on a farm with two sisters and her dad, and she had built up considerable mass in the exhaustive chores in which the majority of her childhood was engaged–this was, as you might imagine, the superficial reason we’d chosen for picking on her.  Tracey waited for us as we left the class and, quickly choosing me as the most puny of her taunters, separated me from the group and promptly punched me square in the face.  This took me by suprise, and in case I was in doubt about what had just happened, she did it again, and again.  She gave me a lenghtly, humiliating, and skillful beating that, I have no doubt, I entirely deserved.  And in the course of that beating, and its aftermath, I realised that my life and everything that had guided it was taking me in all the wrong directions.  Yada yada yada.  Fifteen years later, I think I might be starting to get it right.  I could be wrong.

I’m a Shi’a.  I’m not sorry about that.  I’m all for Unity, but I believe Unity means respecting, not ignoring, beautiful, vibrant, pulsing Difference.   Communities don’t need to learn how to recognise similarities with their neighbours.  That’s easy.  Communities need to learn how to accept differences without becoming spastic.  Says my 15th favorite Shi’a, “O Lord, give me the strength to tolerate an opposing opinion.”

I watch too much TV.  I’m working on that.

Any questions?  Email me at abdiel.bc@gmail.com