a pre-ramadan thought – 26 shaban

dear mai’a,

today i posted the following elsewhere and it seemed to me that it was a good way to kick off this year’s ramadan blogging at this site with you. i would want to share the following story with you anyway, and maybe you have some thoughts on it that you would want to share thru this blog. so, let’s get this party started. 🙂

i have spent most of today laying on my very uncomfortable couch, half-asleep/battling depression and i had several odd dreams that i can’t currently remember. but the one i do remember is this:

there were these two twins – Paradise Woman and Pleasure Woman.* even in a dream-state it was obvious that they were symbols. the lesson in the dream was – you can be friends with both Paradise Woman and Pleasure Woman. They are both beautiful, witty, wonderful women. but ultimately, only one can be your *best* friend. eventually, they are both gonna be calling you to different events and you’re going to have to pick which one you wanna hang out with. which is not to say that they never go hand-in-hand, because sometimes they do. but you will find more and more often that they have different interests and that you have to make a choice about which one you want to spend your time/energy with. and you will find, eventually, that you chose one over the other more often than not. and that tells you where your interests/values really lie. eventually you will make a choice between the two.

i don’t know if this is coming to me as a pre-Ramadan lesson, but it sorta seems like maybe it is. i’m not trying to make any judgements or tell anyone else how such a dream should be interpreted, or which twin – Paradise or Pleasure – one “should” follow after. that is an individual choice, and a pretty tough one when confronted with such marvelous options. i suspect that most of us simply refuse to make a choice – but i believe that this dream was a reminder to me that eventually i must pick one. i cannot have a relationship of equal depth with both, it is certainly not sustainable to try to do so.

* i suspect some people will be offended that my subconscious would personify Paradise and Pleasure into women. honestly, i am more hung up on the wider lesson of the dream than questionning why i would see them as women. but i do think, perhaps, it is simply that the dream tapped into my collective consciousness in which it is normal in my culture (First Nations) to personify concepts and normal for oral traditions of life lessons to incorporate a female-seeming personification.

 

ramadan kareem/eid sayyid/our lil eid

this weekend we decorated aza’s room.

amazed by a paper towel

a roll of toilet paper

habibi cleaning up

doing laundry.

our messy messy apartment

my paint bin

 

dear aaminah.  salaam.

• i have been sick these past couple of days.  icky intestines.  and pain.  barely leaving bed.  not fasting.  but barely able to eat.  i am making it sound worst than it was.  really i am so lucky.  habibi was home and took care of aza and all i did was sleep. habibi is home.  even though he just started a new job and a new graduate program.  he is home because of swine flu.  yep. swine flu.  i for one think most of the scare around swine flu is hyped up nonsense.  especially here.  there are only a few pig farmers in the country because it is a muslim country.  but the egyptian government slaughtered most of the pigs earlier this summer.  and now has closed schools and other public buildings until early october in fear of swine flu. so habibi was home and i was sick (not with swine flu.)
• your scarves are beautiful.  i loved the pictures!  so colorful.  i wanted to touch the fabric.  and i have never seen a niqaabi dress the way you do.  i mean most niqaabis i see where black or navy blue.  often there is beautiful lacework on the edging of fabrics, but not like your scarves.  you remind me of a zapatista fighter.  actually i have been working on this image in my head for the past year of niqaab and zapatista balaclava.  and your photos brought them so into focus.
• the day i got sick i went downtown to pick up paint and stickers for aza’s bedroom.  she is in love with fish.  so i am doing a sea motif for her room.  it is part of my eid gift to her.
• right now the music is being played loudly outside.  a baby is crying (not mine). we are waiting for eid.

 

anything else you worship will eat you alive

isabel commented on flip flopping joy.

David Foster Wallace’s brilliant and moving commencement speech at Kenyon College

and left this quote by wallace which i felt in part spoke to the spirit of ramadan.

Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship – be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles – is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things – if they are where you tap real meaning in life – then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already – it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power – you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart – you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

 

salaams mai’a,

thank you for sharing that video. it is heartbreaking and should remind the rest of us how blessed we are. this is the purpose of ramadan, to increase our compassion for others and gratitude.

well, this weekend was a bit eventful since it was the pow wow and my birthday. i bought raw honey and dried echinacea to try to help my immune system. my mom spent the day with me at the pow wow, which is unusual for her, and we had a very nice time together. she bought me three beautiful hijab scarves, two for my birthday and one from the pow wow. and i am a sucker for scarves, so i bought one for myself at the pow wow too.

this is the scarf i bought

this is the scarf my mom bought, and the raw honey i got

i was shocked at the difference in taste between the raw honey and regular processed honey. i actually don’t really like honey, but it’s good for you, and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) says:

“Healing is in three things: A gulp of honey, cupping, and branding with fire (cauterizing). But I forbid my followers to use (cauterization) branding with fire.”

so i use honey in almost everything i can, even though i dislike it. but the raw honey, alhamdulAllah, the flavor is completely different, very light, and so wonderful! which, of course, is the sort of honey the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was talking about anyway.

other than that, i spent a lot of the weekend working on knitting scarves for the other project.

oh, and sent out lots of eid gifts. am still waiting on your address so i can send yours, inshaAllah. 🙂

love,

aaminah

 

ramadan in gaza

 

a couple of pictures

this is the view from our bedroom.  those are the balcony doors.  and the lights (they are little red lanterns that glow and twinkle and pulse) strung over the doors.  i love to stare at these lights.  i sort of go into trance watching them making our little porch look like a red light district.

\i just these motorbikes with a carriage on the back are cool.  maybe someday i will have the courage and opportunity to ride in one.

 

framed painting i made for part of my brother’s eid gift

(don’t worry, he never gets online so i don’t have to worry about him seeing it, LOL)

~~~~~

What’s the Use

(from Love’s Alchemy)

When the heart is full of idolatry,

what’s the use

of prostrating your head in prayer?

When poison has already overtaken the body,

what’s the use of gulping down medicine?

You’d like to display yourself in public

as a model

of perfect piety —

But what’s the use of draping a clean robe

over a dirty soul?

~ Mahsati Ganja’i

~~~~~

salaams mai’a,

inshaAllah this finds you and your family well.

i thought of the poem above because i’ve recently been put in the middle of conversations about whether muslim women who wear niqab are “better” muslims than women who wear hijab, and if women who wear hijab are “better” muslims than women who don’t. somewhere along the way i was completely misunderstood… which i suppose happens easily when people jump into a “conversation” at one point without any awareness of the history or what else one has written on the same subject recently. my honest feelings are that a piece of clothe is pretty meaningless if it doesn’t have something deeper attached to it. at the same time, sometimes that piece of clothe is a reminder of the goal one is trying to reach internally. i don’t read the poem as a hopelessness, “what’s the point?”, but as a reminder to be humble and to be honest. that what really matters is the internal.

we are entering the last ten nights of ramadan, during which any of those nights could be Laylat ul Qadr, the night of power, a wondrous night when Allah is closer to us than ever and there is so much baraka. it is a time of repentence and asking of our Lord with sincerity.

~~~~~

We have indeed revealed this (Message) in the Night of Power:

And what will explain to thee what the night of power is?

The Night of Power is better than a thousand months.

Therein come down the angels and the Spirit by Allah.s permission, on every errand:

Peace!…This until the rise of morn!

Qur’an Surah Al-Qadr (97)

~~~~~

so i am thinking about all the millions of things i need to repent for, all the ways i am not a “good” muslim, despite what my outer appearance might make people mistakenly think. and i am thinking about what i want to accomplish in the upcoming year, inshaAllah. i have pretty much failed at all of my ramadan goals, but that shouldn’t stop me from trying again and again. 🙂 as i think i’ve shared before,

Mawlana Shaykh Nazim’s advise for Ramadhan: “Try to do better than yesterday”

and this is really true everyday, isn’t it? not just for ramadan, but for our whole life, to try to do better, be better, than we were did/were yesterday, inshaAllah.

love,

aaminah

 

via bluesugarcubes, who says:

Before electricity you could look up and see a sky full of stars. Now we need a bit of elevation to see a land full of lights or drive away from civilization and look up to see a sky full of stars.

The point is they are still there, we’ve just made ourselves blind to them.

 

Salaams Mai’a,

i have not kept up this blog the way i had originally intended. i know you understand because i think we “get” each other pretty well, but i still want to apologize for not doing better.

this week has been… weird. and not so much in a good way. as you know, i had last friday afternoon off and intended to go to the masjid for Jummah salat. but, the masjid i usually go to is in the process of moving to a new in-the-process-of-being-built location so they are renting the building next door to the new location for prayers. i knew that, and i knew that it was not a place i could get to, so i had intended to take the bus over to another small masjid but instead i followed my usual pattern and ended up at the now-closed location. along the way, i dealt with some frightening harassment, but i guess that is to be expected.

i’ve taken this coming friday and next week friday off to go to jummah and plan to go to the smaller masjid where my brother’s friends go. i’ve never been there yet, so i’m a little nervous about it. and after the recent several issues i’ve had when out in public, i’m especially nervous that i will have to walk about 3 blocks from the bus to the masjid, but inshaAllah it should be okay. it’s something i need to do…

… because this Ramadan has felt pretty unreal to me. it’s been very lonely. and because of the masjid move and all that going on, i haven’t been to even one single iftar at the masjid. nor have i had the opportunity to have a friend over or be invited out, because my best friend is still in Saudi Arabia, alhamdulAllah. so i’ve been home alone pretty much all the time, except when working. and i’ve been sick. today i tried to fast and got so sick that my hands were going numb and i just felt really really out of it. everything looked and sounded unusual, and it was a bit scary, plus not very conducive to having to work. i’m in awe of athletes and construction workers, and school teachers, and everyone else who fast all month and still upkeep all their normal duties too!

this probably sounds like a terrible downer, LOL. it’s just been weird. i’m still looking for healing… inshaAllah.

love,

aaminah

 

 

dear aaminah,

oh so many things have been on my mind!  so many.  that i am overfilled with thoughts and ideas and effluvia.

today while habibi was in class, aza and i went to the art store.  i wanted shimmery gold paint to paint stars.  and a sketch pad.  aza bought erasers and a multi colored pen.  then we went to the cafe across the street.  it was expensive but honestly one of my favorite places to hang out for a bit.  there is always cool art on the walls. and the owners are really laid back.  the baristas all treat aza like a princess.

so she and i drew pictures with new colored pencils.  i drank double espress, she, juice.  she showed off her barettes.  and had an 8 yr old hang out with us for a bit to color.  outside the cafe, there were a couple of boys playing kick the pepsi can on the sidewalk.  lanterns in celebration of ramadan hang everywhere.  some of them are simple and plastic.  others are glass multicolored and elaborate.

a hijabi sitting next to us asked me how did i do my hair like this?   normally i am a little take a back by the question, cause i dont like having conversations about how exotic i am.  but she was really interested.  said she had tried a couple of times.  (her hair is as curly as aza’s) but it just takes too long.  yeah, i said, sometimes, it would take a couple of nights to finish all of it.

inside i laughed even more.  because, growing up black girl, taking a couple of hours to do my hair, isnt that long.  not when braids took six hours.  and a wash, dry, straightening comb, and then getting my hair done at least took a couple of hours.  twisting my hair, and knowing that i dont have to deal with it for the next couple of weeks, was freedom to me as a teenager.  and of course now, my hair is really wash and go.  loks have their advantages.

———————————————————————————-

i havent fasted for the past couple of days.  been sicky with something icky and intestinal.  finally i feel better and look forward to fasting tomorrow.

you know, its funny i thought about fasting through the sickiness.  but i wondered what would that achieve?  other than my proof of my will power and stoicness?  who would i be loving by such an action?  the divine? no, the divine told me to eat and get strong.  my daughter or habibi?  me, weak, cranky, sicky- is bad enough.  add hungry, thirsty, to the mix–what use i would i be to anyone?

and then i thought.  you know everyday that i get to fast is a privilege.  and not fasting reminds me that not only is food a privilege, but being able to not eat and drink is also a privilege…

anyways now i can feel the infection draining out of me.  and i have so much more energy.

———————————————————————————–

one of the things i am  struggling with are boundaries.  i feel like i have been really unfair to be people recently.  because i have let them cross my boundaries…what i mean is that i knew that what they said crossed my boundaries, but i was afraid to say anything because i didnt want to seem uptight, or mean, or unreasonable, or critical, or demanding, or whatever.  and i see this happening again and again.  i see that others opinions of me is stopping me from speaking my truth.  and i am seeing that by not feeling like i can speak my truth, i am stopping myself from looking for my truth.  does this make sense?

because it doesnt to me.  it doesnt make sense that by censoring my self, i stop even looking for the words to find my truth.  but on the other hand i guess it does make sense.  i write not only so that i can share what i think and feel.  but also for myself so that i can discover for myself what i think and feel.  and i know that in order to for me to discover that.  i need to know that others are sharing that journey with me.  it encourages me to continue…

ah.  we make the path by walking it.  we make the meaning by speaking it.

————————————————————————————-

so glad that i could take aza downtown.  and have a good time.  she got to run through the store and pick out cheap little plastic goods and squeal about the colors.

so this infection was about me not allowing in toxins and other buggies…forgetting that the things that others say ‘only matter if you believe them about yourself.’

no matter how much respect you have/had for the person who said them.