There is no God but The One,
The Compassionate,
The Merciful.
Behold, in the creation
of the heavens and the earth,
and the alternation of night and day,
and the ships that sail on the sea
to profit the people,
and the water God rains from the skies,
thereby enlivening the earth
after it has died,
and spreading animals of all kinds
thereupon,
and in the shifting of the winds
and the clouds
subdued between the heavens and the earth:
therein are signs
for a discerning people.
Surah 2:163-164
Reading and listening to the Qur’an does not require you to accept creeds. Nor does it require belief in the Divine. The verses are extending a bridge, an invitation to be a partner, to be in relationship… to hear, to read, to be within each other’s presence, with no prerequisites, except to observe and discern, as how you perceive may become one of your best teachers in understanding.
Begin within the phenomenon of the foundation of the world. Look upon the earth and receive the miracle of creation’s beauty, honor the ingenuity of humanity’s brilliance, and trust in the rains that enliven the soil. From whence does this harmony and coherence come? Wander into your wondering.
Qur’an encourages us to reflect and ponder in order to move deeper into living within the authenticity of our hearts’ desiring. Often not easy, as life can be difficult. The Qur’anic invitation to observe and discern, “to consider,” is compounded with the lived experience of tests and trials and tribulations of being human.
Simply put, we can feel hammered.
Often, we don’t know what to do, especially when we are in “no-win” situations. What about those times when we must part ways with friends, maybe even family, who are not supporting our commitment to dignity and truth telling. Or we identify unhealthy addictions we’re drowning in, but don’t want to change as we have convinced ourselves of their necessity. Or we see the path we need to take, but we’re simply too afraid to move forward.
You don’t know what to do, especially if you are within the grasp of trauma. You find yourself struggling within your opposites, your dueling natures, different paths of separation seeded within the great warfare between knowing what to do, and what not to do. Who are you? The you and the not-you, caught within the extremes of good and evil.
The heart of the Qur’an invites you to put your burden down.
~ ~ ~ ~
Not long ago, my sister asked me to preach at her ordination, when she was commissioned as a chaplain in the Lutheran church. Thirty years before, she was an accomplished photographer and war correspondent. She married into an Italian family, owned a home just outside Rome, and traveled all over the world. Her life seemed quite glamorous.
She was in South Africa, on assignment, yet her life was far from glamorous. Her marriage was falling apart; she felt alienated in her work; she was lonely and depressed, eating and drinking and smoking too much, and one night she fell to her knees and prayed to a god she didn’t believe in.
“Help me; I don’t know what to do; I’m a mess; I’m falling apart.”
And she heard a voice, “Go home. Go home to your parents.”
She thought someone was in the room, the voice was so clear. She turned around, expecting someone there; she even looked under the bed, so convinced that the voice was real. Someone had to be in the room, but where?
“Go home.” No voice, however ethereal or present, had ever been so real, as it pressed upon her spirit.
She listened. She put her burden down.
She went home to heal, to face the truth, to see the hurt, to accept help: to lean into trusting, to lean into her own vulnerability, and to lean into the unknown.
Her life changed; she embraced her healthy self and it began when she accepted the voice that came during the night as al-Ghayb, an Arabic word, often translated as the unseen, that which will never be seen, yet appears as grace, as gift, beyond reach, mysterious, yet present and giving direction. Al-Ghayb guided my sister to her own wisdom.
One of the great wake-up gifts to the beauty of our own lives is pain. If only it could be different.
My sister was brought to her knees as she searched for whatever could guide her out of anguish. As difficult as it was for her to give up the glamour, she faced her illusions that sustained her false self. Had she not, she would have languished in others’ dreams, missing the detailed dignity of her own life. Maybe that’s why Soren Kierkegaard said that the greatest despair in life is not knowing you are in despair.
To be numb is not a life, no matter how well it protects.
Verses of Qur’an, by acknowledging the difficulty of the human quest, reach out to take a hand, to plant fertile ground in a heart, and to soften all landed blows.
Even if you were the only person in the universe, the only one, God would have created the world just for you, only for you, especially for you, because that’s how God is. By God’s design, the earth is rolled out just for you, like a color-rich prayer rug, inviting you to kneel to the nobility of your soul.
Imagine a love burning like that just for you.
Day 2: Reflection
For today, imagine putting one of your burdens down. What does that look like? How does it feel? Imagine being invited to kneel to the nobility of your soul. What does that look like? How does it feel? Besides the idea of God, are there things in your life that are “beyond the reach of your perception”? How do you imagine them?
