And in all your dealings give full measure and weight, with equity: We do not burden any human being with more than he is well able to bear; And when you voice an opinion, be just, even though it be one near of kin. And always observe your bond with God: This has He enjoined upon you, so that you might keep it in mind. Surah 6:152
As humans, we are complicated. We can be self-absorbed, anxious, quick to think the worse, and pleased when an easy certainty resolves complexity. We can be unconsciously motivated by unresolved issues, memories, and traumas. We do dumb things.
Also, we have been created with an incredible capacity to go deep, to be vulnerable, to lend help. Even when our hands are tied behind our backs, we find ways to create beauty, embrace peace, forgive, and transcend crises.
Qur’an is well aware of our struggles and is constantly reminding us to remember that we are a gift. That there is a vastness to us that is both endless and deathless. God named us in the chamber of God’s heart before we reached the womb. Constantly and always, Love loves us, is drawn to us like a magnetic pull. Death is never the end. Dying is not being “snuffed out.” Rather it is a consummation of our union, our bond with God.
We need to discover for ourselves the truth of this loving reach into our lives. Qur’an suggests as a way to discover who we really are, we need to start at the beginning. Just as we look to creation and see beauty, can we look within our own souls and see beauty?
“Consider the complexity of the self and how it is formed in accordance with what it is meant to be.” (See Qur’an 91:7).
Start there; start with the complexity of the self.*
*The Arabic for self is naf which signifies humankind, life essence, breath, soul, spirit, mind, person, the original source of being emerging from the loins of Adam recognizing our common inheritance as living entities… diverse, yet of One. Think of a drop of ocean in the wave.
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One evening, during a school reception, a parent came up to me, urgently wanting to talk. Drink in hand, he took me by the elbow and moved me to a room away from the gathering.
“I hope you don’t mind. I need to tell you something…. something to a priest, to a religious person, to someone like you, a believer, who won’t laugh at me.”
“I’m all yours,” I told him. “Tell me.”
“I am a neurosurgeon; a good one at that, and one day while in the midst of a very difficult surgery, I stepped away and asked a god I didn’t believe in for help, to guide me, to give me a way through, anything that might help. I was desperate; I didn’t know what to do next to save the use of my patient’s speech.
“And I waited. Unbelievable. I actually waited, and then, I received an answer. A perfect solution. I knew it had not come from me; it actually came from beyond me, outside of myself, as an answer to my frantic request.
“And now, whenever I’m stuck, as a matter of practice, I step away from the operating table and ask for help from a god I don’t believe in, and I wait. And always an answer comes. I now rely on these messages, this gift, this encouragement, this power. I even find myself confident that I will receive guidance.
“And I want to tell my colleagues, but I can’t; I will be humored, if not ridiculed, and so I keep silent, but this knowledge is burning up inside me and I don’t know what to do.”
I remembered tenderness rising within me. Here was a man, accomplished and successful, being invited into a journey of faith. If only he could stop judging God as foreign, let go of his own suppositions about life, release the need to protect his ego, and trust in the bond the Divine had already formed within him.
Qur’an speaks often of this bond of trust, amanah, as a noun. Amanah does not mean to trust, to take a leap of faith, or to risk believing in something you cannot prove. Rather, amanah is the subject, as a gift of trust given to us by God: the gift of reason, of awareness, of receiving guidance, of forming insights.
Intelligence emerges from this bond of trust.
The surgeon’s capacity to reason deeply arose from his own passions as well as the Divine’s gift of inspiration. They are working together. Amanah, the bond of trust, is an in-reach of God into our lives and it comes to us as an intimate connection.
To reason deeply is to enter into God’s gift of guidance.
I turned to the man, “Do you trust in these message that descend upon you, like you’re bonded to them, with an inner certainty?”
“Exactly. Absolutely. I have no doubt. I’m not guessing. I’m receiving messages.”
“Then depend on them as if your very life depends on them. And remember, as all sages tell us, ‘You don’t have to only believe in what you think.’ Trust your own experiences and the intellect of your own heart as well.”
As we parted, I leaned in close and said, “Try to think of God as the Spirit of Life, as Being itself, maybe that will be easier for you to trust in, rather than some notion you have of God as a Being. Ask the Spirit of Life to bring you companions for your journey. You don’t have to travel alone.”
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I have no idea what happened to this man, but I do believe that in the midst of his surgeries and his need for guidance, he had experienced the Gift of Inner Certainty, the Bond of Trust, bestowed as a way to make less-wide the gap between our finite struggles and the beauty of our true intellect.
It’s not so much that we trust in God, but that God is entrusted within us. Our journey in recognizing God’s bond with us may take a life-time. There is no judgment in the Qur’an against a life-long pursuit of questioning. God is patient with the one who struggles to be a believer, who cannot find a way to faith or experience the gift of surrender. You are still under God’s care, whether you recognize it or not, and “God’s guardianship is better, for He is the most merciful of the merciful” (Surah 12:64).
Day 8: Reflection
There is no expiration date on the invitation to accept God’s guardianship, as there is never any coercion in matters of faith. No one has the right to sit in judgment of another’s inner workings of their heart. Kindness to all those who need help, to all those who may be “captive,” believer or non-believer, is a duty freely given. Faith can always take new forms.
Do you believe in the possibility of an endless bond with God, entrusted within you?
