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...