In my part of town there are a number of Muslim families, many from Somalia, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, essentially a good sampling of the Middle East and Northern Africa. There are also a number of Arabic grocery stores and restaurants, all of which add to the multi-national flavor of my southeast Portland community.
Ramadan begins tonight at sunset. While for these loving, beautiful, interesting, vibrant people, Ramadan is a huge part of their lives, it continues to create a sense of exclusivity, a set apart from the larger community, that I find a bit challenging both spiritually and morally.
It's been a few years since I sat in Fr. Fulhaber's moral theology class, but if there was one single bottom line in his class it was something called exercising your "fundamental option," that orientation of your own center-most being. Did your soul, freely and of its own volition, point in the direction of what is good and godly, loving and healing or was it headed down the path of submission to a darker, controlling, autonomy-usurping "other" - whether it's a religion, a spouse, an employer or a dictator. And, tandem to that position is, do you even know if you are free to make a moral choice? When a couple marry, the implication is that both are adult and mature enough to make a willful decision about their partnership. The question belies the truth that most of us are steeped in spiritual blindness, dimmed by the cloud of unknowing, the proverbial human condition of living with our spiritual eyes closed.
We are all in varying stages of awakening, but I daresay there are few of us who are fully aware and therefore fully conscious enough to make a perfect decision. At least we admit this, and continue to seek enlightenment and awareness. We stumble and we fall, but we keep getting up. It's the continued effort to get up that I think our Creator values, above our blind submission to the rules of a religion that has told us we would be eternally punished if we didnt' follow its dictates, dogma or commandments.
We are all like blind men stumbling around in the dark. Some may have a penny candle, but that's about the best we have. It is the honesty and courage to listen to your heart, rather than blind obedience to the rules, that opens that sometimes illusive door into consciousness and the divine encounter.
Yet, the question is not that we should be judged by our past - personal or religious - but rather by how much we have evolved, grown, healed, integrated the true spirit of love into our less than lovely human natures and grow, expand into a more perfect reflection of the divine here on Earth.
As one who believes in a God of all mercy, absolute unconditional love, a God who nudges us along toward greater awareness, unity among all people, especially those who are opposite or different from us, and asks us to open our eyes to our and God's ultimate truth.
I honestly feel that religions are meant to be like cars, designed to take us somewhere, closer to God. Are we to worship the car, or use the car to get to God. Once we're there, assuming we actually can get there through the car-religion, do we need the car anymore? Does Islam, like old Christianity, ask us to worship God (Allah) or does it ask us to worship the religion. The ultimate message to Christians in the Book of Revelation, near the end, is NOT to worship the religion, but to seek God, who can only be encountered within the deep, pure channels of the human heart.
Peace to all people, of all religions, all who seek God. May you find the truth you are seeking.
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