grief is not unprecedented

My dear, when I tell you about hope,

I want you to imagine

the sweat dropping off Hajra’s skin

as she insistently runs for water

in the midst of the desert.

I want you to feel

the pain and the strength

of a father like Ibrahim

when he looked into his son’s eyes

as a sacrifice to God;

Feel the betrayal in Yusuf’s heart

when his own flesh and blood

tossed him away like garbage

and the thick darkness inside a whale

where Yunus resided, alone.

I want you to picture the wide sea

in front of your feet

as Musa fled from the pharaoh

and how terrified Asiyah must’ve been

as she resisted her violent husband.

Scream, as Bilal’s bones get crushed

while his mouth uttered the shahada

and wonder how Rasulullah

could still continue his path

as blood was flowing down his head

and soiled meat was thrown at him.

And maybe then

when you see it all, feel it all, imagine it all,

you would learn that

thirst didn’t win over Hajra and Ismael,

and Ismael wasn’t slayed.

Neither did Yusuf end up unsuccessful

and Yunus forgotten.

Musa and his people still crossed the sea,

Bilal saved out of nowhere

and Muhammad’s mission is blooming

like never before -

because my dear

hope means not seeing an escape yourself,

but knowing that Allah

always does.

Bidden or not bidden, God is present.

Carl Jung has a plaque on his grave that reads: "Bidden or not bidden, God is present."

When I heard this mentioned on a podcast the other day, I immediately thought of the following excerpt which talks about the fact that God not only sees us as we are, but crucially, understands us as we are - even when we struggle to understand ourselves. It says the following:

"In our personal relationships in this world, we seek to be understood, at least by the people we love and by our friends; but also perhaps, by our enemies for, if only we could explain ourselves to them, they would not be our enemies [...] What a relief, then, to discover that - in the only way it really matters - we are totally understood because we are totally known. What a relief also, to be aware that there is one Person in whose presence we no longer have to pretend or deceive or protect ourselves [...] He is always there, waiting; it is we who have made ourselves absent from Him [...] We are known, understood, seen and forgiven." (Gai Eaton, Reflections) I think about this passage all the time. I was probably 19, maybe 20, when I first read Reflections, and it honestly changed my life. Up until that point, I didn't know that I wasn't alone. To be known, understood, seen, forgiven. Known, understood, seen, forgiven. That's all I had ever wanted. Unbounded, unconditional, unlimited understanding.

So, thinking of this in the practical sense, what does it really mean to believe that we are each intimately known, unequivocally understood and unceasingly seen both within the Light of God and by the Presence of God? The suggestion here is not necessarily one of exposure, but actually one of safety, of refuge, and perhaps even relief. It means that "bidden or not bidden", called upon or ignored, invoked or forgotten, loved or despised - God is present.

It means - and this is my favourite part - that God sees us in a way that no one else could ever see us. In fact He sees us in a way that we can rarely ever see ourselves. We are far too full of our own rubbish. Uniquely, he sees through us: through our protective walls, our coats of armour, our cracked glass houses and our outward forms. He sees us with a gaze that is at once penetrative and discerning whilst also being immensely merciful and full of love and understanding. God is either, both and neither, all the the same time.

Most importantly, he alone sees the sincerity of our intentions. He knows all our hang ups, the things that keep us awake at night, the things we wish we had done better, said better, known better. He knows our insecurities just as He knows all our mistakes. And yet, we are continually not only understood and accepted by God, but crucially, accompanied by his presence wherever we are. ("Wheresoever you turn your faces, there is the face of God" [2:115]) The door never shuts, unless of course it is we who make the effort to shut it. And even then, by virtue of our nothingness, our efforts still would not render it shut.

More than this, it means that God is present in desperation, in joy, when we feel that we need him, and perhaps most perilously, when we are convinced that we don't. God is even present for the unbeliever, even for the one who speculates or ridicules the suggestion of His existence.

The passage above also offers an implicit commentary on the dialectic between permanence and impermanence, finitude and infinity, and prompts us to differentiate between that which is relative, and that which is Absolute. What this means for us - as individuals as well as a collective - is that the emotional and psychological architecture around which the experiences of our everyday lives are erected and demolished on a daily basis, simply dissolve into insignificance when placed against the backdrop of the Absolute. Bidden or not bidden, He is there. Therefore, for me at least, this means that if we are aching to feel whole, and searching to be seen, needing to know that we are accepted, seeking validation, fortification or replenishment through the approval and attention of others - it is not necessarily the search that is wrong, but rather our misplacement. To want to feel complete is not unnatural. Yet we all (myself included) search for completeness in all of the wrong places. To believe that completeness can be reached or found or felt within the bounds of relativity, that is, through objects, attachments or worldly ties, is to believe in a realm that is by its very nature ephemeral, fleeting and vacant. Nothing here will remain. Conversely then, we must turn to God who has no beginning, no end. Even when we don't call upon Him, He remains with us. He is therefore the Absolute antithesis of the very ephemerality that defines our own existence. He is Absolute, Omnipresent. Bidden or not bidden - always there.

 

(received from tinyletter.com/mounaks a few months ago.) 

an excerpt from Kahlil Gibran's the prophet

Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Quote by Walt Whitman

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Poem by Warsan Shire.

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.
You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well.
Your neighbours running faster than you, your breath bloody in their throats
and the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body.
You only leave home when home won’t let you stay.
No one leaves home unless home chases you, fire under feet, hot blood in your belly
and even then you carry the anthem under your breath, only tearing up your passport
in airport toilets, sobbing 
as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you would not be going back.
You have to understand, 
no one would put their children in a boat unless the sea is safer than the land.
No one burns their palms under trains, beneath carriages.
No one spends days and nights in the gall bladder of a truck feeding on newspaper
unless the miles travelled mean something more than journey.
No one crawls under fences, 
wants to be beaten, wants to be pitied.
No one chooses refugee camps or strip searches where your body is left aching,
or prison, because prison is safer than a city of fire,
and one prison guard is safer than fourteen men who look like your father.
No one could take it.
Could stomach it.
No one’s skin would be tough enough.
“Go home blacks”, “refugees”, “dirty immigrants”, “asylum seekers”.
“Sucking our country dry”.
“Niggers with their hands out”. “They smell strange”, “savage”.
“Messed up their own country and now they want to mess up ours?” 
How do the words “dirty looks” roll off your back? 
And maybe it’s because the blow is softer than a limb torn off.
Or the words are more tender than fourteen men between your legs.
Insults are easier to swallow than rubble, than bone, than your child’s body in pieces.
“I wanna go home.”
But home is the mouth of a shark.
Home is the barrel of a gun.
And no one would leave home unless home chases you to the shore.
Unless home told you to quicken your legs.
Leave your clothes behind. Crawl for the desert. 
Wade for the oceans.
Drown. Save. Be hungry. Beg.
Forget pride, your survival is more important. 
No one leaves home unless home is a sweaty voice in your ear, saying 
“Leave. Run away from me now. I don’t know what I’ve become, 
but I know that anywhere is safer than here.“

On Compassion.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do -- but who is that 'we'? -- and nothing 'they' can do either -- and who are 'they' -- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

How do I help, what do I do with this compassion? I hope it never dies.