I can't say I've been doing such a good job at the prayer portion of Ramadan. I've often substituted yoga, of course, but only for the Fajr -- not for any of the other of the five prayers. I started washing at prayer time, based on my friend's suggestion, but I have not followed through every single time. Even at the prayer-times when I have washed, I do not have a specific focus other than my own body, in combination with the random thoughts that are in my head.
Having read through various versions of appropriate prayers for the five times of day, I haven't found any that inspired me so much as to memorize them. I do not know the phonetics of any Arabic prayers, and the English translations I have read seem -- to my mind -- to be repeating very similar praises to Allah ("glory to my nourisher," "praise to the most affectionate," "you deserve all veneration," etc.) again and again.
If I'm not wrong, most of the prayers can be boiled down to: 1) thanks and praise to Allah (with some nods to Mohammed and Abraham) , and 2) a request for guidance along the right path. The positive thoughts about guidance I understand, or can translate into something that I understand; the praise of Allah seems far too vague. If I have not felt a personal relationship with a god-figure since I was a teenager, then who is Allah to me?
Today, as I walked toward the mosque, I dialed my iPod toward a playlist of songs that seemed appropriate for walking toward worship. The first that played was a version of "Amazing Grace" by Tori Amos, followed by "World Falls" by the Indigo Girls, followed by "Thank You" by Alanis Morissette. It was this third song that caught my attention. The chorus of this song goes like this:
Thank you, India.All right, I thought. I have a list of five abstractions and one geographical location, and for today, they will be my substitute mental focal points for "Allah."
Thank you, terror.
Thank you, disillusionment.
Thank you, frailty.
Thank you, consequence.
Thank you, thank you, silence.
I rounded the corner to the mosque while winding my iPod cord around itself, and fell into step behind three women in traditional Muslim dress -- full headscarves and flowing dresses. One of them pushed a baby in a stroller. They walked slower than me, but took up the entire sidewalk, so I slowed down, rather than rush pass them. A few paces before what I knew to be the steps up to the mosque, they turned abruptly and walked up a much narrower set of cracked and broken steps, one of them lifting the baby stroller up onto the top. They were walking toward a back entrance to the same house where I would enter by the front. I continued down the main sidewalk, and then I -- an atheist and a homosexual and no kind of Muslim at all, but a man nonetheless -- walked up the main steps and in through the front door.
Whereas last week when I came for Asr prayers there were only four of us, this week the front rooms of the house were already nearly full. Prayer mats sat rolled out on the floor of the foyer, a room toward the back of the foyer that had been dark on my previous visit was full of men, and there was red tape on the floor of the front room (the one I'd been in before) delineating the rows where the men should stand to pray.
I removed my shoes by the door and took a place on one of the red lines in the front room.
The prayers began shortly, and I was surprised to discover that nobody was leading them. Each man went at his own pace. Since I am unskilled at performing salat, I followed the movements of the man in front of me. Stand up, "Thank you, India." Hands on knees, "Thank you, terror." Forehead to ground, "Thank you, disillusionment." Sit back on heels, "Thank you, frailty." Stand up again, "Thank you, consequence." And so on.
Partway through, I thought of discarding India from the list and focusing on the abstractions, since I have never been to India, and can't really relate. And yet, I had to smile at the coincidence that occurred to me: Ahmadiyya Muslims are a splinter group. Their movement originated in Punjab, India, at the end of the 19th century. Not all mainstream Muslims consider Ahmadis true Muslims because of their beliefs about what happened to Jesus (he survived the cross and traveled to India), the existence of prophets beyond Mohammed, and other differences. So, yes, I thought, I will thank India for this afternoon's worship experience.
After the prayers were over, a man (not Zaki -- this man was older, with a gray beard and Hamid-Karzai-style hat) stood to deliver a short sermon. (Most men did wear prayer hats, by the way. Many wore pillbox-shaped hats, which I find attractive and fashionable, though I do not know their correct name. Others wore smaller, flatter hats resembling kippot, but larger. One man wore a large scarf, and some of the younger men wore baseball caps, do-rags, or went bare-headed. One very old man, who had been offered a chair, but elected to move slowly through the prayer poses, was also bare-headed.)
The sermon was bland and simple and fairly sweet. I could have easily translated it into "Christian" by substituting a few key words in the speaker's text ("Sunday" for "Friday," "God" for "Allah," etc.), and by eliminating the references to Mohammed, peace be upon him (as well as to the "Messiah of our age," a reference to the founder of the Ahmadi movement).
The speaker encouraged us all to change our lives for the better during Ramadan and to make the change stick. We were encouraged to pray and to give alms to the poor. We were reminded that the focus on Allah in the mosque should extend throughout the week, and that we should be good representatives of our faith at all times, not just on Fridays. "Love for all, hatred for none," should be our guiding principle, the speaker said. The end of the sermon was followed by a prayer request for someone's elderly aunt, who had recently arrived from Pakistan to receive medical care for a grave illness. It was all so reminiscent of a church service in my youth that I felt moved by what for a moment felt like a universality of religious practice.
After this, we prayed again in Muslim style (back to specificity of religious practice), only this time the prayers were led in unison by the gray-bearded speaker who stepped into the foyer and spoke into a clip-on microphone connected to speakers in the other two rooms.
When the service was over, we each greeted those around us, and the gray-bearded leader singled me out as a visitor, stepping over to greet me and invite me to the mosque's Saturday and Sunday iftars. I have iftar plans in the suburbs again on Sunday, and social plans with non-observers on Saturday, though I am tempted to break them to attend the Ahmadiyya iftar.
The gray-bearded leader's welcome felt very sincere, and after I stepped out onto the porch, and sat on the railing to tie my shoes, each of the men who walked out of the mosque past me paused to introduce himself and thank me for coming.
As I walked back down the steps, I put my iPod buds into my ears, and dialed around for one of Alanis Morissette's other songs: "You Learn" from her first album. I'm not a fan of hers, per se, but she has some songs that I like, and her lyrical structure for some songs seems to mimic a style of repetitive prayer. "Thank You" is one of those songs, "You Learn" is one of those songs, and "Excuses," from her fourth album, is one of those songs as well.
It occurred to me that if I were compiling my own modern-day holy book that I might collect these three particular songs together under one heading -- Prayers from the Book of Alanis. Is Alanis Morissette inspired by God? Who am I to say that she is not?
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