Yellow-gold light of late afternoon: my favorite.
I didn’t have time to be hungry today. All morning I worked on the Duras translation, hearing the surge of sentences echoing in the expanse of space in which the novel takes place–a beach, the sky and the ocean nearly indistinguishable.
I think about this in terms of self and community. Does the fast become a way to separate oneself, uncouple from the world-as-it-is.
Or can you use the opportunity to come closer to others.
Tonight I am preparing an iftar for some students and have also invited some friends and colleagues to join us.
Once again I do not know quite how many people will be coming, or whom they will be.
But I don’t know who I myself am really, do I?
In the middle of the day, there are Jummah prayers in the student center. One of the professors offers a khutba and then leads the Jummah prayers.
Jummah (it means, prosaically, Friday) is a prayer that is supposed to be performed with the community. It made sense since Islam was such an individual religion, even though communal prayers were offered all the time.
This one time during the week you were strongly recommended to join with other Muslims and pray.
I’ve never been a big fan of the group prayer. Usually it goes too fast for me. I like to linger over the Arabic syllables, stay a long time in the postures (which remind me so much of the surya namaskar you would do in a yoga class), and besides I haven’t been very good at keeping up my daily prayers.
It’s odd because the daily prayers are an easy practice and the month of fast is arduous, yet I have chosen that practice to be faithful to.
Is it because I think I have something to prove?
At any rate, I haven’t prayed Jumma for probably fifteen years.
I have a hard time with prayer because when I pray I want to believe that god will see me.
But since I am not sure what the nature of god is (or God if you prefer or G-D or whatever) I don’t know how I can speak.
It’s somewhat like speaking out loud to empty room hoping like anything you are overheard.
There was one prayer I offered; I couldn’t resist it.
In the summer of 2008 I went to Al-Andalus, the Muslim south of Spain. There in the Cathedral of Cordoba, I found myself needing to pray.
The reason is that the Cathedral used to be the (unspeakably huge) Mezquita, or Mosque. When the kingdom fell to the Catholic monarchs of the north, the building was given to the Catholic Church who consecrated it as a cathedral and in fact built a full sixteenth century cathedral inside.
That should give you an idea about how big it is.
Since in its earliest days, the building on the site was shared by the Christian and Muslim communities of Cordoba (until the Muslim community became to large and they bought out the Christian community giving them money to build a church in another location), my friends thought I ought to be able to pray there. The security guard said no, it was not permitted.
So there I was, a vexed Muslim in a vexed Mosque. It was the only place in the world I could pray, and of all the Muslims in that building, wandering around like tourists in their own house, I felt I was the only one who could.
And so I did.
Today when I saw the notice about the Jummah prayer I thought to myself, I should go. And then immediately after that: why would I go?
I feel such a personal relationship with my beliefs, never want to explain them to anyone, feel so out of sorts with the community at large, a communal offering is the last place I wanted to put myself.
But I am putting myself in it tonight, aren’t I? But that’s on my terms: food I am preparing, I am offering, and in my own home.
So is my spiritual practice always on my own terms? I know that’s not true because I can remember all the times in yoga class when I wanted to quit and give up, especially in a difficult posture, and I would tell myself, “This is your small ego that wants to prevent you from an experience you need to have. Stay here. Stay now.”
Maybe there is divinity in the energy and grace that moves between bodies and within them. In which case I inviting god or an idea of god into my house tonight.
So this afternoon, I went myself, humbly, to the makeshift mosque on the second floor of the student union.
My friend Ali who leads the prayers was beside himself with pleasure that I had come.
When we lined up for prayers behind him, the students and I, we were the same, bareheaded, barefoot, the same.
I let my hands drop at my sides, since I am Shi’a, while the other students folded their hands across their abdomens, the posture that Sunni Muslims use for prayers.
I also noticed the two women who laid their rugs behind the row of men. I wished this could be different, that we could be interspersed, and if not interspersed then in the same line.
Everything isn’t equal in the room, I thought to myself as I recited verses quietly to myself, but here I am, at least, here I am.