I’m going to fast to the best of my ability this year. Ramadan begins May 15. I find meaning and beauty and connection to God in the rituals of Islam, although I must admit that fasting alone can sometimes be lonely and hard.
I’m trying to read some additional perspectives about the Gospels and I’m ever so slowly building up my stock of knowledge around the parables and Jesus’s teaching. To be honest, his story doesn’t really resonate with me. I am horrified by the disrespect he had to endure during the crucifixition, but I don’t have the warm, fuzzy, feeling for Jesus that I have for the Prophet Muhammad. I don’t feel naturally inclined to cut him slack (what was up with withering that fig tree after all?) and I bristle at the difficulty of some of his teaching (I’m not at all down with the idea that I have to forgive others in order to be forgiven by God. Surely it is simply accurate that God’s capacity for mercy is greater than mine).
I continue to attend Christian churches almost every week, although I have never experienced in a church the deep swell of God’s grace that I felt time and again in mosques. But religious duty resonates with me, so going to a place to worship God with others every week is definitely satisfying, even if those churches aren’t a theologically perfect fit.
I am trying to be patient. To carry out my plan of visiting various area churches and waiting for God to tell me when I’ve reached the place He’s chosen for me. Maybe that place will be a state of mind, and not a building, or a congregation. I’m trying to trust the process of reaching out to God. There’s a saying in Islam that I’ve always loved, and that I rely on: If you take one step toward Allah, He takes ten steps toward you. I am banking on it, because the only thing I can really count on is my still, inner yearning for God. If that yearning truly results in God’s reaching back out to me, I feel most days that I could wait forever on that promise and the connection I find during prayer.
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