stages

so i've been noticing a couple of stages on the way to where i am. (if i knew what the next stages were i wouldn't be stuck where i am now would i?) and i think they explain a lot of irritating behavior and i think that you can dispell a lot of panic if we just name them and move on.
1) fairy tale faith. this is the first one. people tell you what to believe and you just sort of go along with it. this is where you start as a child. God-- the One, the Infinite-- shares a category with the tooth fairy and the stork and santa and elves and dragons and all sorts of other things you have no direct experience of but that people assure you are real and true and meaningful. some people stay here. they are not very interesting to talk to, but neither are they particularly irritating. when you disagree with them, they are bewildered but can't really engage in a dynamic discussion with you about what is and isn't actually true. they haven't really thought about the difference between what they profess and what they believe. they are comfortable and happy. the rituals of religion are for them.
2) intensifying faith. this is where people start exploring their faith, learning more about it. it is an active phase. people read a lot and go to groups and hang out in places of worship and with co-religionists. they are more interesting to talk to because they are more knowlegable, but when you disagree with them they will draw on their holy book(s) and will have nothing of themselves to add to the discussion. it is a crucial step, without which i don't know how you can go any further.
3) clash. in the process of examining one's own religion, one comes across aspects that clash with one's own inner sense of morality. you begin to notice that there is a difference between what you are professing and what you actually think is real. this is the first part that is really painful, and this is where religious people become nearly unbearable to be around. there is no retreat from this step. once you realize that you and your faith are clashing there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. and it is terrifying. to admit that there are parts of your faith that are dead wrong is to be forced to confront your faith on all its levels, to start a painful process of spiritual house-cleaning. if you refuse to clean your spiritual house, you will remain on this level, professing, usually loudly, things you don't actually think are true. you may be spotted because you will, when confronted with your own internal inconsistencies, point to your holy book and say with increasing frustration that it alone is the source of all truth and that you really need nothing more.
4) house-cleaning. here you start to arrange the things you believe and the things you're going to set aside-- "not part of my practice." it is a time of honesty, and a good stopping place. if you stay here, you will be reasonable, easy to live with. you will be pluralistic and will be able to accept people on the fringes of your religion and even outside your religion as probably having a reasonable point of view. this is an optional step and might not be present for everyone. at this point, a lot of the comfort of religion may be stripped from you. depending on your temperment, ritual practice may be less comforting now, less meaningful-- what comfort and meaning it holds may stem more from familiarity than from an honest belief that you are interacting deeply with the Divine.
5) the slope. if your housecleaning persists, if you are diligent and careful and ruthless, you may begin to question whether the God you are praying to is God or some sort of reflection/distortion of God. clearly it is the latter. as you search your heart for what you actually think is true you may find yourself fuming at the things people are saying about God-- the God you are seeking couldn't possibly be the puny/petty "god" these people are talking about. it becomes hard to hear people talk about God. it becomes unbearable to go to group worship. you can feel yourself clutching at the last remnants of the fairy tale God you've known since childhood whom you've been unknowingly unmasking as an illusion, as no one, as offensive and impossible and blasphemous. but you're clutching because you can feel the emptiness opening up around you. you can't stay here. you must either go back to loudly defending a faith that is yours in name only or slide further in.
6) the abyss. emptiness. your prayers are shouted into an uncaring void. it is very, very hard to pray. the straws you were grasping at disintegrate, as does everything you ever thought of as your faith. you are alone in a meaningless universe. to truly enter this place, you will have to renounce your faith. you will have to let go of the little "god" you were clutching all this time. it is an idol and you have to smash it. you may stay here, an atheist, an agnostic. when asked "what religion are you?" you will answer along the lines of "i was raised ______" your parents will be freaking out. those people you used to hang out with at your place of worship will no longer be your friends, but some of them will pray for you to "find your way" meaning "find your way back to them". but it's too late to go back. it is a fairly comfortable place. you are reasonable. you alternately pity and envy religious people, but you can't be one of them. they look backward and ignorant to you, but they also look happy-- irrational, unreasonable, and smug, but cozy. you are above all that.
7) the desert. to be in the abyss and look for God is painful, painful. you are a miserable, groveling, sniveling thing, fervently, snot-nosedly begging God to come back. you look for Him everywhere and see only a bunch of stuff. you are God's jilted lover, leaving a thousand messages on his cell phone. you can't figure out exactly what it is you believe in. prayer is like night in the desert-- impossibly empty, desolate, cruel. but if you sit in your desert long enough, your eyes adjust. you hear the little night animals scrabbling about, you see the infinite stars bathing the place in gentle light, you being to notice the wind, the plants, the glittering sand... the night is impossibly full, impossibly rich. you have fallen through a trap door and emerged into something you can sink your teeth into. your little "god" is gone, and what has taken its place can only be met with bewilderment. you start to get that look on your face that means you have spent a lot of time staring at God. you are open and easy to talk to, and the world looks very, very different to you.
*) not sure where this fits in with the numbering system, but you may have a mystical experience. you may have a couple of them or a lot of them. they may take different forms at different places on your journey. you are not in control of these experiences-- they overtake you. like a victorian maiden, you swoon. they are powerful, they shake you to your core. you sound stupid when you talk about them. once you see heaven/God/Reality or whatever you want to call it and the world closes back in on you you will miss heaven and hate it here. prayer will become a desperate attempt to return, to experience God in that way, to at least touch the edges of it. you will fail.
8) wandering. driven by curiosity, by instinct, by the depth of your longing for God-- which, if you've gotten this far, is pretty deep-- you begin to look for other people who are searching. you read again, but widely now. you read heretics and mystics and you from people outside your religious starting point. as the curtain parts, you see a transcendent unity of faiths-- we are, after all, in the same universe with the same underlying Truth. the differences between faiths start to look uninteresting, their similarities and the way they fit into each other fascinating. you have stopped trying to convert people. you have stopped thinking of yourself as holding the only Truth. you listen. you pray. your prayer becomes more open, more accepting. you stop judging your performance, you stop looking for signs that you are going the right way. you trust God to take care of you. you trust that He knows what He is doing. you begin to look for more idols to smash, for trap doors to fall into, for more and bigger and emptier voids to be lost in. you let go of the wheel and let God drive. your ritual practice becomes curious, mindful, aware-- it becomes an act of trust, a secret between you and God.

at the gym

gym clothes by so hijab on Polyvore.com

Items in this set:
Women’s Workout Pants |..., $50
Men's T-Shirts | Men's..., $34
Kuwaiti Hijab, Mona Hijab,..., $17
gym

the gym

about quarterly, and the last two times at the gym, i get spoken to by born again christians who are trying to save me.

(wrapping my khimar around my bosom so as not to be disturbed does not weem to be going as planned, at least for me. i rather suspect that i would be much less disturbed, at least in this way, if i were half naked in skin-tight clothing. the born again gym community would thereby be assured of my salvation, being able to see half my skin and all of my figure and thus assure themselves that i had accepted jesus christ (upon him be peace) as my personal lord and savior.)

as you may have been able to figure out, i'm still smarting from my last encounter.

this one was a protestant minister who travels regularly to turkey to convert muslims to christianity. he hasn't tried saudi arabia yet, and i would advise him not to do so. he was a very nice man, a widower, who knew his bible in koyne greek and was quite conversant with the council of nicea, which is refreshing.

the last one was somewhat less qualified, although rather more conversant with muslim ideas of modesty.

then there is my professor, who cornered me while we were carpooling and made me cry at work. and there are my classmates, who don't say anything but look at me with a mixture of wonder and pity that i may be misinterpreting as "she seems like such a nice person; i'll sure miss her while we're in heaven. if only God (high above all things) were more reasonable"

but this guy just planted himself in front of me and patiently explained that i was crucifying christ (upon him be peace) with my apostasy. and i tried to listen to him, and listen behind what he was saying to the love that motivates him, that drives him to speak to heathen like me, to what he thought he was trying to accomplish. at least it's a noble sentiment-- save the heathen! but it was very hard, because i was trying so hard not to say that it's that sort of judgemental exclusivism that drove me from christianity in the first place. i cannot and will not believe that i am more reasonable than God (highest above all things, which includes, clearly, me) and i'm not about to send anyone to hell for not calling God by the correct name, for not reciting their prayers in the proper language or in the proper format, for not believing a particular story as opposed to another story.

and i couldn't even begin to tell him about God because it never really was my turn to speak.

and i couldn't even begin to tell him that i thought we were on the same team, that there's only one team because there's only one God (unbegotten, unique, perfect-- beyond our understanding, the merciful, the subtle). but i did tell him that i am a doctor who has devoted her career to the service of the poor and who lives with God in my mind and in my heart and all around me.

but i also wanted to take off my scarf and fricking finish my workout.

severe heresy

more stuff i've been thinking about:

the physical relationship between evil and freedom

in a newtonian clockwork universe you could hold God accountable for everything-- every star, every butterfly, every case of cancer, every child hit by a car-- the universe would be set in motion and the conclusion would be written at the moment of formation and every single event would unfold as planned.

this sounds very boring for God. and it also sounds wrong. (but hear me out, there's predestination and free will all wrapped up together in the package ahead...)

because we don't live in a newtonian clockwork universe. we live in a heisenberg uncertaintly principle, quantum mechanics, schrodinger's cat universe full of collapsing probability fields. we're not on a table of billiard balls all colliding predictably down to the last particle; the universe is built with chaos woven right into it.

in a newtonian clockwork universe, every thought you ever thought would have been destined from the beginning of time. you would move through your life like a wind-up doll, feeling spontaneous because you were programmed to feel so and dying at the moment it was planned for the truck to hit you or for your heart attack to occur.

in a heisenberg uncertainty principle universe, you are a set of probabilities down to the chemicals in your head and the atoms that make them up and to the unimaginable tiny bits of reality that make up the atoms themselves. in order to give freedom of thought you have to weave it into the fabric of reality, down to the chemicals that the neurons use to talk to one another, down to the tiniest details of the universe.

but this freedom comes with a price-- earthquakes and cancer and typhoons and flower pots falling on your head and the thousand accidents of physics and happenstance that you allow when you let the universe be the kind of place where freedom can happen. at this price you buy autonomy for your servants, you graciously allow them to chose to love and serve you.

predestiny can still happen in this setting, but it is more subtle. an apple seed is made capable of growing into an apple tree-- of setting out its apple leaves, of growing its apple tree trunk, of bearing its apples. this is destiny-- your goodness is inside you in the same way the apples are inside the apple seed: secret, hidden, possible...

more heresy

moving on to more things i've been thinking of:



the purpose of reality

i've been struggling with why God would want a universe in the first place and us in it in the second and i can't say i've gotten very far with this. given the choice, i think people of faith would rather simply sit at the feet of God in adoration rather than eat and sleep and fart our way through wherever we are right now. God, being kind beyond measure, must have some reason. we, being servants, must serve some purpose.

i was watching a movie yesterday called fast cheap and out of control (which was interesting for many reasons, but i'm not writing to try to get you to watch it) and one of the people in it started talking about the interaction between consciousness and sensation. i think the point he was trying to make was that you need some sort of environmental input in order to shape consciousness. imagine a brain in a box with no way to interact with anything (somehow alive-- hey, it's a thought experiment: anything's possible in a thought experiment). i think it would be very boring for the brain and that the consciousness residing in that brain wouldn't get very far. now if you stick some hands and eyes and, well, a whole body around that brain and set it in a complicated world it would become a lot more interesting very fast.

maybe people are like clay-- if you want to form them you have to form them against something: push against them with your hands or with tools and they turn into a vase, let them just turn untouched on the potter's wheel and they remain unformed lumps.

not really sure, but maybe that's the point of having a universe full of stuff-- maybe that's the stuff that pushes against consciousness and helps it form into something interesting.

heresy

so i've got a few things i just have to say in public and i don't know if anyone is out there and i don't know how any of it is going to go over but here it is:

the transcendent unity of God

a few concepts keep running through my mind and then click into place. they're heretical, hence the title. the first one i want to write about is the transcendent unity of God.

God makes a huge point of being one God, the one and only but why bother? if you are the only God there is, then whoever is praying is praying to you. you feed them and tend them and look into their hearts and listen to their prayers-- what does it matter what they call you? why bother pointing out that you are not only the river god and the mountain god and the god of the trees and the sun but all thoes wrapped up together?

and, being God, who sees into everyone's hearts, you know that people who are praying to you each have a different concept of who you are. they are, in essence, each praying to a slightly different god. you, being more than can fit into the mind of a believer, squeeze yourself into their hearts and, being patient, do not mind the flaws in their concept of you. why bother to correct them with your number?

i think the point of the distinction is to keep people from fighting tribal wars, all in the name of "my god is bigger than your god" by reminding them that you are the God of their tribe and the God of their enemy, of the rocks and the trees and the oceans-- that there is no need to fight over you, that you wish they would stop.

i've heard speeches about "false gods", about money and status and sex and i agree that these are distractions and can't be the direction of a meaningful life, but i don't think anyone is seriously sacrificing goats over them. to call them false gods is to use metaphor; i don't think those are the false gods at all.

it is a subtle thing, but i think that when we bicker over whose religion is "right" we are setting up false gods ("their god" and "our god") while setting aside the point i think God is trying to make-- he is God of everyone. we are all wrong and we are all right. we are all mistaken about God and God is big enough and patient enough to let it slide. but we need to stop pretending that we disagree about who is God-- there's only one and God is the only game in town. the unity of God unifies religion. everyone who prays prays to God and God hears us all.

am i doing this wrong?

so about a week ago one of my friends showed up to work in a headscarf. she called me over and told me she'd been thinking about it for years now and decided that this was the moment, this was the time. and the time she decided this was while she was watching me give a talk at work.

so today it's off.

and yesterday, at eid, i was the only woman there in a scarf. it was a south indian party, so there's kind of a cultural difference in interpretations of what you're supposed to wear, but i felt just about a conspicuous as i always do.

i think that's the thing. i feel conspicuous. and paradoxically naked. if i were walking around in a miniskirt and cleavage no one would be able to tell my religion or how important it was to me. granted, they still really can't-- with me all covered up-- but with this thing on my head i think they can hazard a guess. and they're right: yes, i'm muslim. yes, religion is very important to me. yes, i think it's safe to say that i spend all day trying very hard to do the right thing, the kind thing. and i'm always worried that i'm falling short.

i eat halal. i don't paint my fingernails. i'm (sporadically) trying to learn Arabic. when i pray i mean it. but somehow the depth of my faith-- and, frankly, the name of my faith in this Christian-majority country-- are kind of personal. and they're much more personal to me than my hair.

so today i sat in the middle of work feeling like a ridiculous fraud in my pretty, pretty scarf and for the millionth time since i put it on i thought about taking it off. and for the millionth time i didn't.

can i tell you a secret?

so it's been about a week and i've got the consonants pretty much down (except for the one that looks like a big backwards "3" that i can't really say with any accuracy, but maybe with a little more practice...) and we just finished the short vowels (so it's maybe another week or so before it's time to start on the Quran!)

my friend-- and nearest peer-- just started reading the Quran yesterday; i'm hoping to catch up so we can recite together. (i think the shiekh is hoping this as well, he seems a little swarmed at the moment: there are so many of us crammed into that little room reciting at him, crowding around his desk, leaning forward, intent...)

so there's this group that i kind of watch out of the corner of my eye while i'm copying out my lessons-- it's a woman, a boy, and three girls, all reading together. the woman caught my eye because she wears niqab and i'm sort of fascinated by how you can tell the look on her face by the look in her eyes-- smart, friendly, outgoing. (i'm kind of rooting for her.) so a couple of days ago i was sitting off to the side while they were reciting and i was trying discreetly to read over her shoulder (she reads with her finger on the page, so it's easier to follow) and the sound sort of got stuck in my head; it was a short sura with a very distinctive ending to each line.

at night now, when i read the Quran just before bed, i've been trying to find the words i recognize (God, names that they spell out) on the Arabic side of my bilingual edition, trying to say them to myself, to hear the sounds. sometimes i try to sound out a whole line, if it looks simple. last night i flipped to the back to try out something short and i found the sura they've been reciting! it's the last one, al Nas.

okay, maybe that sounds a little small for a secret, but considering i knew about three letters of the alphabet a week ago, being able to recognize something written in Arabic is a big deal for me. only a couple of days ago i realized i could read the little sign that says "halal" on my food and the little sign with the "BismiAllah" over the cash register at the Pakistani restaurant. it's only been a week but already there is something very different, like the opening of a whole new world that was incomprehensible not that long ago.

but i don't think i'm supposed to peek ahead, so i'm going to keep this little discovery a secret.

madrassa

so i'm on vacation for two weeks. while is desperately need the sleep, i get fidgety when there's nowhere to go and nothing in particular to do. i'd been thinking about heading out to Arab area of the city to get my hair cut (badly needed!) and to check out the shopping and planned to stop by the mosque to ask about learning Arabic, as i figured there would be more native speakers there than at the other mosques around town. so i picked up a couple of cute scarves, had a nice halal lunch, and wandered over to the mosque, where i was told the sheikh would show up fairly soon.

there is a little room on the second floor of the mosque where the sheikh sits behind a big desk. there is a collection of chairs around the room where mostly women and children sit, moving from seat to seat as their friends come in, mingling. the sheikh speaks no English and i can only say my prayers so when it's my turn one of the women has to translate (all of the women speak at least three languages, two of which are Arabic and English, the third may be French but there are several i can't identify.) meanwhile, the children come up in little groups to recite and the sheikh corrects them without ever looking up from the copy book where he's writing out the alphabet for me or some simple words that at this point are only a collection of sounds for me to practice.

then i take up one of the little desks and practice making the sounds, writing the letters. i try to pick out the sounds from the buzz of Arabic around me, to pick out letters and sometimes words i recognize in the signs around the classroom. the women help me with the letters i say funny, making the sounds over and over while i watch their mouths, listening to me try again and again. i've got two weeks and i'm serious-- i have two weeks to learn to make the sounds, to learn which ones go with which letters-- two weeks before i am swallowed up by the hospital with its endless hallways lined with lights that never go off, with its rooms that fill again the moment they empty, with its waiting room spilling out into the street...

praying distracted

things i have tried lately to focus prayer (and that have variously helped and not helped at all):

1) concentrating on the Arabic
2) trying to run Arabic and the English translation at the same time in my mind
3) purposefully setting aside my stethoscope and pager before starting and, with them, this world (well, mostly-- i answer the pager if it goes off just in case someone's sick, then i start over)
4) trying to clear my mind before starting and, to be honest, several times during as well
5) pausing when i notice my mind wandering
6) trying to be mindful of God during the day whenever i remember to
7) and offering my sincerity and my effort when i feel like my concentration is just not measuring up

sisters, what do you try?

faith

so i've been afraid of my next rotation for months now. the thing is, i have to go to these places in the hospital that have strict dress codes of their own. when i was on labor and delivery a couple of months ago, i got unceremoniously tossed out of the operating room (i'd ducked in to ask a question and had thrown on a surgical gown and a surgical hat over my scrubs and scarf). the circulating nurse was puzzled-- "just take off your scarf and wear a surgical hat; your hair is still covered." i took a couple of trips to the main OR, but no luck-- i couldn't find anything that would keep my neck covered.

so i've been dreading this rotation, as i have to pop in and out of the OR several times a day and a few more at night. avoiding the OR is just not going to happen and ripping off my scarf in the hall because i can't think of a better way is just felt wrong wrong wrong and i sank my head to the ground and begged for help.

today is switch day, the day we all finish up our work and scurry around the hospital to find our counterparts on the new service to figure out where to go and what to do first thing tomorrow morning. so as i was heading upstairs to the call rooms for dohr i ran into the nurse practitioner for my new service and bared my troubled soul to her big, warm heart. turns out not only does she understand that i need to cover my arms and my figure and that my neck and ears are an issue (and she has a slew of practical suggestions) but she also knows that my new professor is muslim and wears a scarf, too, and probably has even better ideas than we are coming up with in the stairwell. so she comes down to the NICU with me and introduces me to my new boss, who proceeds to show me how she ties her scarf so it won't fall forward and how she handles the NICU's new sleeveless policy. and then i go take signout from my predecessor (also muslim, by the way) and this hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach gently disappears.

slowing down

so i was all excited two days ago when i got a package in the mail with a couple of new jilbabs-- funky and spunky and fiercely cute! so i rinsed them in the sink and hung them up on the shower curtain rod to work out the wrinkles they got in shipping and today was time for the debut of my favorite.

now i'm not my best at five AM, and i threw it on over a pair of (rebellious! against dress code!) jeans (that no one would see but that i would know about) and a cute tee shirt, pinned my scarf on and ran out the door. well, not ran, really-- the thing's too long. by the time i got to the hospital and tumbled out of the car to the wards, it was painfully obvious that i was tripping over my skirts no matter how i gathered it in my one free hand. it took another few tries to realize that the trick was speed-- i had to float (rather than scamper) through the day.

as an intern on wards, this is theoretically impossible, but somehow happened and-- i don't know how-- but i think it kind of got under my skin. all day long, it was like a little voice saying "slow down" and the more i tried to float the floatier i got. today i couldn't quite hit "cheerful" but i got and held on to "warm" and while i wasn't quite "patient" i was at least "long-suffering" rather than "annoyed and about to scream."

so maybe sometimes things that are getting in your way are trying to help...

failure

so i'm having just this horrible day. i'm at work and everything frustrating is happening; it's just a long list of tedious tasks and things that require fifteen phone calls and writing the same thing over and over and over again on different sheets of paper. the thing is, when i'm mad, i try to be patient-- and i try to act patient, and i try to sound patient-- but i'm not fooling anybody. my voice may be saying "this is doctor so-and-so from family medicine, i was paged" but you can clearly hear the "@#$*&^!!!!!!!" trying desperately not to reach my vocal cords. when i'm mad, i try harder and harder to not sound mad and my voice gets slower and clearer and higher and sort of sing-song-y and the harder i try the worse it gets.

and i know that a hospital is basically a building full of people who are at the end of their ropes-- patients, family members, nurses, pharmacy technicians-- everyone just wants to scream and leave. we've all just had it up to here with each other and with this place and it is literally all we can do to keep a thin veneer of civility on our increasingly searing annoyance. i know that we're all just sick to death of being here, of slogging through the mountains of paperwork, of fighting over every scrap of resources, of the endless checking and re-checking and forms and phone calls. i know that we could all just use a little kindness, a little patience, a little understanding, a smile, and i try, really i do, but my smile looks less sincere as the day goes on, my writing gets messier and messier the more i hate the form i'm filling out, my walk turns into a stomp, my gaze into a glare, and my voice we've already discussed.

so i retreat into my iPod, which is loaded with inspirational talks at the moment. the one i'm listening to presently has to do with good character. people of good character are cheerful, it says, and do good works easily. i've been waiting for it to tell me what to do when you don't quite measure up, when "cheerful" isn't quite one of the first 5000 words you'd use to describe yourself. today it mentioned, briefly, that the trick is to keep trying.

and failing, i suppose.

but keep trying.

intentions

so last week when i went to the islamic center sunday class (which i privately think of as islam 101) the speaker veered off topic (my favorite part) and said something about intentions. i was kind of zoning out at the time, looking around the room or something, and didn't catch the first part (like you don't zone out now and then) but the point he was making was that he was having trouble in his prayer life a while back and was advised to refine his intention-- that was the key.

so i've been giving it a try. revealing to say the least. standing there, just me and God, Who can see perfectly well why i'm there, trying to articulate why at this particular moment i am praying-- "because it's time" just begs the question of why you are praying at all, let alone on time-- leads to different answers each and every time. sometimes i feel like i'm just slogging along, sometimes i feel like i'm practicing and trying to get better, sometimes i just want a break or a moment of peace-- mostly there are four or five reasons circling, many of which are embarassingly base. sometimes i'm hoping to feel God's presence or to connect with Him or to ask Him to guide me more closely or to comfort me. but how do you ask someone Who is always there, always with His hand on your forelock to be closer, to be more present, to guide you more closely? and the farthest i've gotten to the core of why i'm praying is a need to strengthen my end of the connection, to reach for Him, to take a breath and start over, to close my eyes and fall backwards into Him, to be swallowed up, lost...

imagining a way more glamourous life than i actually lead

imagining a way more glamorous life - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

but the next time i'm invited to an opera premiere i'll have all my shopping done ahead of time...

starting out

here are a couple of resources i've come across that have helped me so far:

1) Arabic: i'm still plowing through the alphabet a little at a time, but i'm starting to get used to the letters. i've been using the arabic alphabet and a little notebook to practice in and tend to practice in front of the tv in the evenings.

2) Salat: so i started out with how do i pray, which has a little animated guy and says the prayers out loud. my only issue is that you can't rewind and have to keep starting over if you're trying to learn the prayers phonetically. the good parts are that you know what you're supposed to do and what it's supposed to sound like.

3) Qibla: i like islamic earth, where you can enter your address and it can put a little arrow on the map to show you which way to face.

4) prayer times: i use a gadget on my desktop that has a little clock with the name of the next prayer and a little countdown timer.

5) clothes: shukr takes up most of my closet, although i also like islamic design house. my favorite scarves are from shukr, veiled by design, and the hijab shop and my favorite hijab pins are from muslim base.

6) food: i've had good luck with zabihah.com in my area.

7) and some podcasts: for faith matters, i've found several of the talks on zaytuna institute very helpful and i love the ibn 'Arabi society talks-- beware, they're pretty deep. for lighter fare, i like islamophonic, altmuslim review, and mecca one and because i'm suddenly curious about this part of the world mosaic has a review of news in the Arab world which is interesting and fun to watch.

starter kit, also

starter kit - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

and here's a casual mix and match set.

starter kit

starter kit - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

here's a mix and match set in neutrals for work

embroidery

blue and red - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

so i'm kind of a sucker for embellishments-- fancy prints, embroidery, little sparkly things...

the mosque closest to my house

was open today!

parking was a bit of a challenge, but there was a man unlocking the front door as i pulled up, so the suspense was over by the time i hit the door. rookie flubs this time included not figuring out where the women's entrance was before depositing my shoes, which meant i sort of stood around on one foot and another after prayers waiting for the men to thin out before collecting my (very feminine-looking) shoes from their jumble. luckily, a nice man noticed my confused wandering and guided me to the sisters' entrance before i had the chance to blunder into the wrong side.

there was nice calligraphy on the wall, including the 99 names of God (SWT). i skimmed it looking for one to roll around in my head for a few days and picked The Subtle (SWT), which is a fun one to contemplate. the room was comfortable, tastefully decorated, and plain. the men's side slowly filled while our side held a smattering of women. there was a good mix of ages and cultures, with a two year old who tottered around adorably and a gentle old woman who shooed us closer together for prayer.

the kutb was in English and the speaker translated the Arabic he used line by line. the talk was simple and centered on being faithful and observant (can't really go wrong with a topic like that, i suppose.)

distraction during prayer is a big problem for me. my mind wanders off and i pull it back (and it wanders off again, and i pull it back...) and i hope that the struggle itself is pleasing to Allah(SWT). today, gazing obediently on the ground where i would prostrate, i saw a little movement-- a tiny bug of some kind wandering through the carpet. i smiled inside at Allah the Subtle (SWT) as i carefully placed my hands and face on the floor, studiously avoiding my new friend, and saw up close how intricate, how delicate, how beautiful he/she was.

and with a little red

black and white - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

loving the abayas at aab

black and white - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

fairy tale princess

fairy tale princess - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

transitions

so my job schedules vacations for us and mine just started today. it feels strange to have time to myself, but at least i'll have a chance to get to jumma. but here's the question: which mosque?



the one nearest my house i've never, ever seen open, but they've got to open it up tomorrow, right? on the other hand, it's been a very long time since i went to the one near work, which isn't all that much further. the one in my town i'm sure i'm going back to anytime soon, as i felt so awkward by myself in the back with just one other woman and half the kutb in Arabic (which i plan to learn, insh-Allah but, hey, it's a language-- i'm going to need some time, right?:: i'm still on "baa" "taa" "thaa"...)



prayer is starting to feel more natural and i'm starting to be able to focus better, spending less time concentrating on trying to remember what i'm supposed to be doing and saying and more time pushing distracting thoughts out of my head and tasting the meaning of the words i'm saying (or, well, the phrases-- i'm still feeling my way through phonetically.) i'm better at being on time and better at setting aside whatever it was that i was doing. my Quran reading is, on average, on pace, although i tend to have good days and bad days. i'm getting better at wrapping my scarves (and have amassed an embarassingly large collection of them) and more comfortable wearing them; it's starting to look like me in the mirror when i'm wearing one. people at work are starting to get used to the sight of me in them and i'm starting to get used to explaining that i'm muslim, that i am native to this country as are my parents, that i'm a convert, and my stand on the scarf thing (that it's a matter of your own personal understanding of what you are supposed to be doing, that my own personal interpretation is that i'm supposed to put a scarf on my head, and that-- so far as i can figure-- the doing or not doing of things that you think you are supposed to do has a big impact on your spiritual life.)

then i usually start babbling on about how i kind of like scarves, because they are pretty, and how, if given the choice, "scarf" would not be in the top ten things that are hard for me to get used to, way behind "no more bacon ever", "no more beer ever", "time to learn Arabic", and the general anxiety that comes from just being new. and when they ask me why i put up with these things, i explain to them how surprised i was to discover that Islam was the name for the things i already believed, how relieved i was not to have to try to believe things i didn't, how grateful i was to read the Quran and enjoy it, and how the more i knew about the Prophet (PBUH) the more i came to admire and love him.

a few fabulous greens

some fabulous greens - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

wouldn't change a thing about these looks from three fabulous sites...

so my friend's family used to own an art gallery

i sort of like the red one - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

and her house is full of their collection. (probably not their favorite bits, but it really is striking)--abstracts full of color and texture and mystery... so i was thinking that maybe we are all artists at heart, really. but really i thought there just has to be some way to work that dress into an outfit.

splurging a bit here

just add esarp - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

loving the turkish scarves--trying them against a quiet abaya while adding a dash of personality in the shoes and a bit of shine in the accessories so that the scarf doesn't look like it got stuck on my head while on its way to a more stylish woman...

so i'm watching little mosque on the prairie

orange and brown - by so hijab on Polyvore.com

and riyyan's style simply must be copied, worn, and loved! the thing is, i can't find her scarves (or anything even close) no matter how hard i try. this set is inspired by her first outfit in episode 1 but, it must be said, looks nothing like it. for a much better riyyan blog, try hijabchique/blogspot.com...

blues and browns

blues and browns by so hijab

so one of the ways to look current and keep covered is to use cute minidresses as tunics. this one has buttons on the collar which hopefully close it up a bit and i figure just about anything can be bought a size or two bigger so that it can float a little more off the curves...

red and black by so hijab

you may have noticed i'm going though a central Asian embroidery phase. hard to resist the colors, the intricacy, and the novelty. looks a bit beachy with the wide-leg white jeans, huh?

yeah, i get around

yeah, i get around by so hijab

maybe a little matchy-matchy but i sort of wanted to see the qi pao and the chapan together. the pants are from a salwar kameez set.

a couple of really smashing things

afghan style by so hijab

well, they're not exactly wardrobe basics around where i'm at, but apparently they are in Afghanistan and, i don't know about you, but i think i could maybe work one of these. don't worry, the website says they come with matching scarves and pants to wear under the dresses, but i put up some silk ones just in case.

no really, where are you from?

a night out by so hijab

so a whole lot of years ago i remember this magazine spread on jean paul gaultier and all i really remember about it was that there were women wearing pants with dresses, that there was a lot of color and embroidery, and that in the article part of it there was something about how he was borrowing a bit of this and a bit of that from lots of different traditional clothing sources. so it kind of stuck in my head. not sure i *or anyone, for that matter) could pull this particular look off, but with a little tweaking...

mexican hijabi

mexican hijabi by so hijab

so the shawls in this photo are silk and supposed to be fairly soft, but i have not personally road-tested them, so proceed with caution...

Call night

call night by so hijab

okay, so i'm actually usually a bit louder with the colors on a call night because, hey, something's got to cheer me up while the pager keeps going off, but let's keep it just a little tasteful for now, shall we? the patent leather finish on the shoes is a practical consideration, by the way-- they wipe clean very easily and nothing seems to soak through. ever.

who's the new kid?

so i've been trying to figure out which of the smattering of islamic centers near my house will be "my" islamic center-- the islamic center of the little town i'm in, the other islamic center of the little town i'm in, the islamic center of the little part of the city i'm in, or the islamic center of the city i'm in...

the little town one is very near my house, but there's no building just yet-- people are praying in a conference room in a little motel down the street on little plastic liners, which is fine, but when i got there i was the only woman there for the longest time and kept self-consciously scooting further and further to the back of the room until i was jostling the little plastic potted plant in the corner. (i would've hid behind it if i could.) a nice man brought me a rug to pray on and put another one next to it and pretty soon another woman came in to pray-- i could have hugged her and cried in relief-- but we remained the only two there. being new, i already feel so self-conscious-- i'm sure i'm doing something (if not everything) wrong and spend most of my time trying not to do anything at all and hoping that no one will notice i'm there at all.

the little part of the city one is about five miles away. it's where i took Shahada and will always be special to me. it's where a nice lady fixed my scarf for me and taught me how to say the Shahada in Arabic and gave me a copy of the Quran and her cell phone number. um, i've never been back.

the other islamic center of the little town i'm in has its own building; it's painted like it has arches and has its name in big letters on the walls. i've driven over there a couple of times at my best guess as to prayer time and have never seen the doors open or anyone nearby.

but the islamic center for my city has a sunday course, so i drove over there. still haven't figured out where you're supposed to park, but there's a big building and the doors are open when i get there, and the talks are interesting and practical and geared for english-speaking newcomers. last week, one of the men (kind of out of nowhere) asked how to perform salat when you're still kind of learning salat (very, very relevant for me, as i've still got parts that i haven't memorized phonetically) and the speaker sort of dropped everything and told us to just do what we could, substitute "subhan'Allah" for the parts we forgot, and just keep going. the next speaker tried to hit the highlights of the Prophet's (peace be upon him) life in the hour she'd been given and did great job. (not having been brought up on these stories, i have to learn them.) when we prayed, a nice lady shooed me up next to her and i sort of forgot about whether i was embarassing anyone and it was just like being at home, just me and God and only the usual distractions pestering me while i prayed.

purples, bronzes, and a little bit of orange

purples, bronzes, and orange by so hijab

So i don't know about you but i've got a closet full of the classic neutrals-- black, brown, beige, grey, navy...-- but somehow or other, a few purple pieces have started to creep in. it may be time to give up and buy them a bag and a nice pair of shoes (or am i the only one who buys presents for her clothes?)

gardening sort of gets inside you

earthy by so hijab

it is entirely likely that i will be wearing this (with the substitution of a pair of rather more sensible shoes) to work sometime soon. that way, i can bring a little bit of my garden with me while i'm there.

props to veiled by design and their beautifully coordinated sets, by the way, although i tend to wear them without quite so many layers, as the headbands pinch my ears against my glasses...

okay, a little flashy for me

a night on the town by so hijab

in my heart of hearts, i know that there will be no "nights on the town" for me in the near future, but a girl's gotta dream...

studying at starbucks again

orange by so hijab

i'm going through an orange phase, presently. that top, by the way, is great for summer-- lightweight but still opaque enough to wear without another shirt underneath-- and the fit is flattering without being revealing. how they pull that off i'll never know. oh, and i cheated, the hijab pin is sold out...

shades of brown

browns by so hijab

so as you may have guessed, i think i look best in autumn colors. i sort of put this together to see if it would look alright for work. sometimes it seems like all i ever do is work (well, and shop when things are slow...)

spring green

spring green by so hijab
so i fell in love with this scarf at veiled by design and have been trying to work it into an outfit. not sure if i came close on this one, but i kind of like the garden-y tones: light blue, pale green, and brown.

coffee, toffee, and a dash of paprika

coffee, tofffe, and a dash of paprika by so hijab

tunic, big pants, bangle, and a beauty of a scarf topped off with a big, sparkly, dangly pin...