Day 7

Guarding My Faith

“My Worst Habit” (Rumi)

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I’m with.
If you’re not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle and knot up.
How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.
When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can’t hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.
Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
No matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.
Don’t let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night, before death
closes your mouth.

I made it to not one, not two, but three masjids in one night! I was so thrilled to finally get out for iftar on Monday evening. I prepared with great anticipation. We rolled up to Bawa Muhaiyadeen’s Fellowship about 45 minutes before maghrib. The Fellowship space is set up like a movie theater on the ground floor and so people were arrayed, watching a video of one of Bawa’s talks. We decided to sit in the row closest to the foodJ Unfortunately, the translation in the video was poor so we didn’t get much from the video, but it was wonderful to see Muslims of many stripes and hues gathering, and to see all the children. Being in that place fed me a spiritual snack…The masjid itself is just next door to the Fellowship and is a very well-kept peaceful space. I am always a little nervous in a new masjid, and at Ramadan especially, that the women’s prayer space will also double as the play area for children. At this masjid, there is sign to tell folks that if their children are not able to sit quietly or pray they should stay in the classroom space rather than go upstairs. There were still children running up and down but it was better than other places. And there was a partition separating the men and women. While partitions raise my hackles, at least this one was lace supported by plastic piping so that at least we could see the imam. Salat was beautiful, as always.

The other essential part of the masjid-during-Ramadan experience, once you understand how the prayer/spirit-food space works, is understanding how the food system at a given place works. I noticed most people got their dinner plates before salat. There was a long line and then loads of people appearing with cups of watermelon and full plates. I thought oh it’s cool, I’ll wait until after prayer. BAD IDEA! By the time I came down, I had to scrape the bottom of the rice pot, no watermelon, no cake. Ha ha! I now understand the Ramadan food system there. I will not be caught unawares next timeJ

So feeling pretty good and jonesing to check out the masjid nearest to home, we got in the car and rolled to 43rd and Walnut. We ended up at a masjid just across the street, not the one I’d been thinking of, and decided to give it a go. Dear reader, nary were we inside before deciding to turn back. It was a classic case of giant, well-lit, peaceful space with 5 or less men in it and then an opaque, heavy partition and 6 feet of dimly-lit space from partition to wall for the women. We turned on our heels after giving a few salaams.

On we went to the masjid about 2 blocks down, a gorgeous building on the corner of 45th. In we went, only to find it empty except for one woman sitting just inside the door, Hadiya. She was an older woman, wearing a turquoise, black and white tartan burqa, with the face part tied back so she could eat. She gave us the details of when isha and tarawih began, the iftar schedule and then began to talk to us about the importance of guarding our shahadah (the testification of faith, the first pillar of Islam: There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger.) and our iman. She told us the story of two men who had been muezzins in the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him). One had given the call to prayer for 40 years. On his deathbed he renounced his faith. “Why would he do that?,” she asked. I had no answer.

“Once you have your shahadah, you have to guard it,” she said several times.

I began to wonder: what does guarding your faith mean? And for Muslims, though it may be a fine point, is it completely synonymous to guard one’s shahadah and to guard one’s iman (faith)? I thought about what guarding my fast means—it means I seek to increase my spiritual consciousness through contemplation and practices of prayer, remembrance and reading Quran, and it also means that I endeavor to avoid taking in media or hearing/seeing things that point primarily to our capacity for lust, for anger, to let our egos dictate our actions. Guarding my fast also means that, more than anything else, I wrestle with my own nafs (the lower self). Sufi stories sometimes describe the nafs as a donkey or horse that won’t go the way you want it to. The donkey/horse has to be trained so that it can convey you to the Beloved, like Majnun to Layla. I’ve been thinking a lot this year about the duality of our humanity—our light and our darkness. I spent many years simply ignoring or denying any anger I felt or any emotion I deemed too negative to be in alignment with my desire to be a servant of the Most High. I have expended much energy to ward such ignorance. As life unfolds and I understand surrender a little better, I begin to understand that self-honesty is critical. We cannot surrender, cannot live in a state of surrender to Allah if we do not accept, truly accept, our own feelings, particularly where they feel dark. Today, guarding my shahadah, guarding my iman means striving to abide in surrender, which includes accepting myself. Inshallah accepting myself increases my capacity for empathy and compassion and thereby ever expands my capacity to love until “I” disappear in love, until “I” die before I die.

What does guarding your faith mean to you? Please share!