patience with lessons

O believers, seek help with patience and prayer; for God is with the patient. ~ Qur’an 2:153

dear mai’a,

patience is not one of my virtues. i am quick to complain, quick to vent, quick to want answers. some of this is, i suspect (though others may tell me i’m wrong) a north american/modern cultural trait. we are so used to having things at our finger tips (google it, map it, turn on the weather channel, etc.) that when we have to wait for anything it seems impossible to do. but some is just my natural personality. i am not patient. i am not patient with myself, with my own limitations. i am not patient with Allah’s Will and instead always seeking something (undefined, often) that i think would be better than my current state (literally and figuratively, LOL).

Ramadan, i think, is meant to teach us something about patience. the long stretch of day without food and drink prepares us. we aren’t supposed to spend the whole day whining about how hard it is or fantasizing about what we will eat for iftar. it’s also supposed to be a lesson we carry over into our lives all year long. patience with difficulty. it’s a lesson i have thus far failed to learn and want to try very hard this Ramadan to “get”.

By my greatest teachers I have learned things that I still refuse to accept. ~ Cat Listening (this was a status on FB from our friend Adele. i don’t know who or what “Cat Listening” is, but definitely related to the quote.)

sometimes the lesson is hard to accept even when we know it is necessary. this applies across so many things.

i was questionning my commitment to tariqa, my ability to be a mureed, my ability to be a Muslim worth anything. and a lot of it had to do with lack of patience waiting to see the fruits of it, and a lot of it had to do with inability to accept certain lessons and patience to do the work necessary to understand the lessons and how they applied to me. i haven’t finished working thru all of that. i mean, there are still some lessons that i don’t understand and cannot apply on face value when they appear to be things i cannot accept. but i’m working towards the understanding part.

and maybe it’s the journey, and making that journey with patience, that is the real thing that i need to learn.

 

if chicory is bitter, it is still from the garden

To become a saint of God, you must covet nothing in this world or the next and you must give yourself entirely to God and turn your face to Him. To desire this world is turning away from God for the sake of what is transitory. To covet the next world means turning away from God for the sake of what is everlasting. ~ Ibrahim Adham

dear Mai’a,

i am so glad to hear that your prayers are being answered and you are feeling directed, that Allah is facilitating things towards your dream(s).

i was thinking that i wanted to write something about fasting. i mean, that i am not. because i have health issues that make it problemmatic for me, really impossible for me to keep the fast. and every year i go thru questions from people about it. this year i haven’t yet, alhamdulAllah, but i have heard from several other sisters who have already been hurt this early in the month. because people can’t seem to mind their own business and want to question everyone else’s fasts. now sometimes, i think we project our fears and think we will be judged so we don’t say anything. that was the situation for me when i thought that i had these questions and couldn’t talk to anyone, not even my very closest friend and mentor. but i was proven wrong. sometimes our own shame, fears, and expectations are the barrier. but it is also true that when it comes to fasting, there are a lot of people who think it is “commanding the good” to meddle in your personal life and tell you whether or not your dispensation to not fast is valid.

a friend commented in some discussion about this and made me realize that if we are fasting out of fear of what others will say then it may not be a valid fast anyway. our intent is supposed to be for Allah. not for what others will say. and i think this is part of the “give yourself to God”. there are so many ways that we can make the most of Ramadan even if we are unable to fast for legitimate reasons. but we have to make that choice to give ourselves entirely to God, not to other people’s perceptions of us.

i also opened Ibn ‘Ata’ Illah’s Book of Wisdom and saw this

O God,

If chicory is bitter, it is still from the garden;

if Abdullah is a sinner, he is still one of your friends.

which i think is an excellent reminder to myself of both my own state and compassion for the states of others.

 

touching liberation

sri ramana maharshi says:

There are two ways of achieving surrender. One is looking into the source of the ‘I’ and merging into that source. The other is feeling ‘I am helpless myself, God alone is all powerful, and except by throwing myself completely on Him, there is no other means of safety for me’, and thus gradually developing the conviction that God alone exists and the ego does not count. Both methods lead to the same goal. Complete surrender is another name for jnana or liberation.

thinking about this quote so much in the past few weeks.  how at some point, by whatever method, our self must dissolve in order to touch liberation.   how islam, to me, is the second method.  how other traditions i have experience have been more in line with the first method.  how sometimes i think: i must be doing it wrong, using the wrong method, maybe i should jump ship and try a different one.  and how at their core, both methods are the same.

who is it that is thinking these thoughts?  typing these words?  where does this ‘i’ come from?

these thoughts are just partial truths, incomplete descriptions of reality.  this ‘i’, this personality, is just a part of the whole.

i dont need to jump ship.  i need to surrender.  to the whole.  stop clinging to the partial truth.

can i dissolve?  can i say, your truth is just as valid as my truth.  both of our truths are partial, just pieces of the whole.  and when i acknowledge yr truth i am able to see the whole of reality much clearer?

am i able to say, i and thou?

who am i?  who art thou?  who are we?

 

overwhelming power and beauty

marhaba

kif hallek, habibti?

(as i would greet you in the west bank)

i am so glad to hear that you have found good support.  that is beautiful.  and so glad that it happened in the beginning of ramadan, so much easier to enjoy the days and nights when you do not feel like you are alone in your suffering.

i had such good news come to me last night, i am still sitting in a bit of shock over it.  for the past couple of years, i have looked at my career trying to figure out where i was going in it.  most of the time feeling like i was walking through a shadowed forest, thick with underbrush, trying to learn the patterns of the sun and the moon and the stars, but honestly feeling lost most of the time.

and so in the past couple of weeks the dream career that i have drooled over has seem to come more and more within reach.

the work that i have known i would be great at, the whisper in my bones when i watch others doing it, the compulsion to keep at it quietly, consistently, prayerfully is coming to fruit.  i am squirming and ecstatic.

of course i opened up my sufi book of life and happened upon the perfect pathway/name for god

dhul jalal wal ikram

possessor of majesty and benevolence

the eleventh centurt afghani sufi al-hujwiri comments:

when the one manifests itself to its servants, its sometimes shows its power, and sometimes its beauty.  the power fills us with awe, the beauty with feelings of intimacy.  the awe disturbs us, the beauty brings joy.  power burns, beauty illuminates.  touched by the power, our inner self, nafs, remembers its mortality.  touched by the beauty, our heart remembers its communion.  through the vision of divine power, the small self passes away.  through the revelation of divine beauty, our hearts are resurrected.

neil douglas-klotz comments:

when you are guided to this pathway, take the opportunity to feel humbled by a wave of divine power and abandance flowing over and through you.

ramadan certainly is generous.

in love,

mai’a

 

learning to trust

dear Mai’a,

well, i should have done this last week or earlier, but i have “purged” myself and discovered who my real friends are. ha ha. i don’t mean “great, now i know who i can’t rely on!”. no, i actually mean: now i know that i have real, true friends. it would have been more appropriate for me to go thru this process before Ramadan began. it would have left me more properly prepared for the Holy Month. instead i came into the month in immense pain and doubt about many things. but alhamdulAllah, better late than never and now i can begin to move on, perhaps even to heal.

today’s reminders:

Allah is the Protector of those who have faith: from the depths of darkness He will lead them forth into light. ~ Qur’an 2:257

~ ~ ~

By love, bitter things are made sweet and copper turns to gold. By love, the sediment becomes clear and torment is removed. By love, the dead are made to live. By love, the sovereign is made a slave.

This love is the fruit of knowledge. When did folly sit on a throne like this?

The faith of love is separated from all religion. For lovers the faith and the religion is God. O spirit, in striving and seeking become like water. O reason, at all times be ready to give up mortality for the sake of immortality.

Remember God always, that self may be forgotten, so that your self may be effaced in the One to Whom you pray, without care for who is praying, or the prayer.

~ Rumi

 

reminders as gifts

dear Mai’a,

it is amazing how meaningful that quote in your last post is to my current feelings/situation. it was a really blessed reminder!

today has been that sort of day, where it seems like necessary things keep popping up in front of me. for example,

You, you are a man, but you can’t know secret for another man. It has identity, as well as you have another identity. You have a personality as well as second person, he has a identity and personality. Everything can’t be on same category as the second one. Each one, each one category belongs to that one but a second one can’t enter wholly through that category. There is one moon; there are ten billion people. Each one’s knowledge about that moon, it is different. Moon just coming and appearing through our knowledge and mentality in another way, different; different; different. ~ Maulana Nazim (source)

and

When My servants ask you concerning Me, I am indeed close (to them): I listen to the prayer of every supplicant when he calls on Me: let them also, with a will, listen to My call, and believe in Me: that they may walk in the right way. ~ Qur’an 2:186

some of my recent angst seems to have drained away miraculously in the last day or two, part of the miracle of this Holy Month. also, i was able to speak very openly with a few friends and find that i do have genuine community and sisterhood, even with Muslims. a reminder that family is often self-made. finding people that you can talk to without pretence of perfection and piety, just very honestly and vulnerably, is indeed rare and special – and yet that has been an early Ramadan gift to me from a group of amazing women.

having gotten some of those issues out of my obsessive mind has, apparently, also helped open me up to refocus my energy where it should be for this month, inshaAllah. perhaps by the end of the month, i will have found some answers, clarity, and a reminder of my purpose, inshaAllah. 🙂

 

passionate vision

so today i opened randomly – the sufi book of life – and came upon – malik-ul-mulk – traditional translations: possessor of sovereignty and lord of power and rule

an excerpt from the commentary:

perhaps life is calling you to reach deeply inside and gather all the power and vision you have received in your life in order to go forward.  or perhaps it is asking you to open your heart, to live with much greater passion in order to be of service to others.  whether in affirming this quality as a part of our inner reality or in facing a particular outward situation, we do not really choose this pathway; it chooses us.  to breathe and feel its force with a full heart affirms that all our work, loving, and knowing are really just this pathway expressing itself through us. to actually experience it, at any level of the self, is grace.

today the first day of ramadan, when it came close to the time of breaking the fast the streets fell quiet.  i had forgotten how quiet our raucous neighborhood gets as folks wait for the call to prayer.  and then for a couple of hours after the call, still quiet.  it was amazing.  beautiful.

and just like quiet gripped my normally noisy neighborhood, i too feel that i have been gripped by life, by a vision, gripped by the neck to do what i must to be of service to this world.  a vision that chose me, and i said yes.

 

starting Ramadan

dear Mai’a,

my heart is very heavy. it seems a terrible way to begin Ramadan, full of sorrow and fed-up-edness. i am not ready for Ramadan this year. which is terrible to say because a Muslim should welcome Ramadan, should always be ready for the opportunity to do good deeds, to re-center the Qur’an, and reconnect with our Islam.

it starts, always, with a disagreement. over who sighted the moon when and where. and you know, i don’t really even understand the anger in that fight. i feel like people should follow what they believe to be correct and move on from there. no need to argue about it. no need to question each other’s practice. so, the Grandshaykh of my tariqa announced Ramadan beginning tonight. as always, the U.S. contingent is quite sure that it begins Tuesday night. and that’s okay with me. it doesn’t really bother me which day they wish to start. what bothers me is the questions about just who told me it was different and why i won’t just follow along with the locals.

this has been a despairing time, to be honest, for several reasons. i went searching, expecting to open a couple of books to find the “right” thing that i needed to be reminded of right now. and as it happened the first thing i opened to was perfect.

Bismillahir Rahmaanir Rahiim

O my Lord, i have given everything into Your hands – my life, my death, my afterlife, and Judgment Day. All my things i hav transferred to You, and You are the One Who controls me. O my Lord, i do not possess anything with my ego and my soul. i cannot give good to myself, or bad to myself, or life to myself, or death to myself, but i have transferred all my accounts, and all Your judgment on me, and all Your questions on me, and all my answers i have transferred to You. Whatever You want to do with me, You do. My neck is in Your Hand. i am helpless in answering Your questions; even the smallest answers i cannot give. With all this weakness, and helplessness, and hopelessness, i am coming to Your door.

from Practices during Rajab, Shaban and Ramadan in the Naqshbandi Awrad of Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Haqqani

so this is where i will start from. turning it all over, recognizing my utter helplessness.

 

ramadan mubarik!

“Life will break you.Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either. For solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love.You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum)

zayik, habibti?

al hamdullilah.

i am not ready for ramadan.  cairo of course is bustling.  as it always is.  plastic toys from china that light up, or make music, or scamper, or all three, are abundant on the streets and in the shops.  i can’t help but let aza buy some.

aza was sick for the past few days with fever, diarrhea and puking, and so was cal.  so we moved ourselves into a motel that has the advantage of airconditioning.  it has been wavering between 36 and 40 degrees for the past few days.  which is normal, but miserable, in our stuffy apartment with faded walls and surrounded by too many other apartments suffering from the same maladies.  a few hours in the motel room and we all were feeling better.

i hope to fast, but first i must deal with some more immediate physical issues.

what i truly yearn for this month is renewal.  for my body, my mind, my spirit.  i feel overwhelmed and i know it is what we do that matters, what we practice that matters day after day.  and i want to go through my life, piece by piece, and ask, do i need this?  who does this serve?  what am i doing?  and whose liberation is it supporting?

i see myself forming all of these instantaneous opinions based upon little else than my own ego.  my need to be right.  to win.  to conquer.

i want to stop assuming that people are flat, two dimensional, unless proven otherwise.  i want to let people, situations, beings be infinitely complex–as default.

i want to be able to live out that everyone’s heart is broken.  no one gets through life without a broken heart.  whether it was done all at once or day by day, year by year.  and so when someone acts, positively or negatively, we can know, i can know, that they are acting from a broken heart.

whether they are using the shards of that heart as a knife to hurt others.  or letting love flow through the cracks and out into the universe.

with love,

mai’a

 

Ramadan Mubarak

dear Mai’a,

as i think you know, in the Islamic calendar days begin after the Maghrib prayers. the Grandshaykh of my tariqa has announced that Ramadan will begin tomorrow night (for me that is Monday 8/9)  and those fasting will begin Tuesday morning.

i will not be fasting again this year due to my immunity issues, though i am striving to make changes to my diet.

anyway, i just wanted to say Ramadan Mubarak to you!