Last night should have been fun. I'd had a wonderful Sunday morning and afternoon, Pastor Said Ailabouni having picked me up at 6:15 a.m. so we could drive on to Grace Lutheran Church in LaGrange, where he preached his first sermon on Easter Sunday, 2007 (I was there for that one, but had not returned until yesterday).
It was snowing (SUE-f#ckin'-PRISE) and had even began accumulating heavily; that heavy kind of snow that you can hear making your tires creak, and sound like an old schooner when you turn your wheels into the grain.
But the two of us had not had the opportunity to catch up for several years, and so I began to tell him my own story, which basically begins with the epiphianic walks I started going on, just last September 7, 2010. The story about the family reunion to commemorate my aunt's ashes in the family cemetery in Livingston, Iowa, about the All Saints Sunday Church Service at First Presbyterian Church in Centerville, Iowa, where my mom was baptized and confirmed (as were her sisters), when I along with four other family members (out of a total of 22 mostly cousins - 19 cousins, two uncles, one aunt) attended the service in which they lit a candle and named the name in rememberance of EVERY member of 1st Presbyterian who had died since the church was founded, in the 1850's.
How I could go through that lovely service, surrounded by kin, having had a wonderful two nights and a day to revel in the tales cousins tell about why the got away with and didn't back in the day when we were in so many ways, like pawns on a great chess board, the parents trying to figure out who to send where for the summer, while they got a little respite. (Of course, this worked to the advantage of the twins, Cotty and Cathy, because while their husbands would take them on vacation every summer, my mom and dad and family only ever went on one family vacation together, the summer after my fifth grade year, 1962, in Minoquwa Wisconsin - thus Bill & Cotty and Mike and Lyn got more free time out of the summers than did Ralph and Anne, but for Ralph, who had already paid his golf course dues, what was the point in going on vacation if you'd have to spend as much on a GOLF vacation as your own memebership cost for a year? And I can see his point. His argurment resonates with me.
It was at the end of the All Saints Service at 1st Presbyterian that I had my second (and third) epiphanies; that what had been missing from my life the past 39 months was my faith community - the Islamic Society of the Northwest Suburbs - and teaching the children Sunday school.
I'd quit drinking on Easter, 2007, as a direct consequence of a sister who spoke at the afternoon prayer session at the mosque. She was an Baptist, American soldier, martial arts instructor, mother of three boys, divorced from her career military husband who had filled up an undergraduate college requirement with a comparative religions course, in which two Muslim men we also studying. When she walked into class the first day, she almost walked out, so shocking to her psyche it was to see this "sand-eating camel jockeys." But she stuck it through, and became friends with the Muslims. They were always willing to talk about their religion, and always willing to listen to her questions and answer them to her satisfaction. Rather agreeable men, quite frankly. Rather more agreeable than most of the southern yokels she interacted with.
But, she was still convicted in her own Christian fundamentalism, and determined to help these good men see the error of their ways. She arranged to meet with them, at her house, after the term, and confront them with the wrongness of their beliefs. They were so intelligent; so logical; so rational; she would be the instrument through whom God would make his revealed truths known.
At the appointed hour the two men arrived with a funny looking bearded man in a robe and sandals. They called him their imam. She began to speak. They listend ... and, within half an hour, she had made her attestations:
"I declare and attest, that there is no God but God."
"And I further declare and attest, that Mohammed is his Messenger."
And in so doing, thus converted to Islam.
Which she practices every more fervently and ardently each day. Fifteen hundred men, women, and children have converted to Islam, because this Tennessee girl bakes cookies for everyone in a 20 mile radius, and then goes and delivers those cookies, and talks a while, casually mentioning that she's a Muslim, which invariably gets a rise, and some questions. Which are invariably the predictable ones, but, she always fuses off any potential arguments saying: "Let's not worry about what we disagree on. Let's find those things we CAN agree on. Do you believe that there is one God who created all the heavens and the earth? Do you believe that in the final judgement day each and every one of us shall be called to appear before Jesus for our final judgement?
From these two points of agreement, a lot of understanding and insight will quickly emerge, until you have two child-like human beings getting to know one another and being delighted, even more by their similarities, than by their differences.
Grace Lutheran has three services; @ 7:45, @ 9:00 and @ 11:00. There is an adult forum from 10-11. This week's forum featured a refugee being sponsored by the ELCA's refugee outreach program.
I was there for parts of all three services. Actually, ALL of the second service, most of the third. There were parking places to shovel, and Pastor Said had given me $10.00 in MacDonald's cards (I even have $2.59 left).
And I kept getting lost in every service. Which is quite understandable once you realize that all three services are different! Different music, different singing ensembles, yi carombas!
It was snowing (SUE-f#ckin'-PRISE) and had even began accumulating heavily; that heavy kind of snow that you can hear making your tires creak, and sound like an old schooner when you turn your wheels into the grain.
But the two of us had not had the opportunity to catch up for several years, and so I began to tell him my own story, which basically begins with the epiphianic walks I started going on, just last September 7, 2010. The story about the family reunion to commemorate my aunt's ashes in the family cemetery in Livingston, Iowa, about the All Saints Sunday Church Service at First Presbyterian Church in Centerville, Iowa, where my mom was baptized and confirmed (as were her sisters), when I along with four other family members (out of a total of 22 mostly cousins - 19 cousins, two uncles, one aunt) attended the service in which they lit a candle and named the name in rememberance of EVERY member of 1st Presbyterian who had died since the church was founded, in the 1850's.
How I could go through that lovely service, surrounded by kin, having had a wonderful two nights and a day to revel in the tales cousins tell about why the got away with and didn't back in the day when we were in so many ways, like pawns on a great chess board, the parents trying to figure out who to send where for the summer, while they got a little respite. (Of course, this worked to the advantage of the twins, Cotty and Cathy, because while their husbands would take them on vacation every summer, my mom and dad and family only ever went on one family vacation together, the summer after my fifth grade year, 1962, in Minoquwa Wisconsin - thus Bill & Cotty and Mike and Lyn got more free time out of the summers than did Ralph and Anne, but for Ralph, who had already paid his golf course dues, what was the point in going on vacation if you'd have to spend as much on a GOLF vacation as your own memebership cost for a year? And I can see his point. His argurment resonates with me.
It was at the end of the All Saints Service at 1st Presbyterian that I had my second (and third) epiphanies; that what had been missing from my life the past 39 months was my faith community - the Islamic Society of the Northwest Suburbs - and teaching the children Sunday school.
I'd quit drinking on Easter, 2007, as a direct consequence of a sister who spoke at the afternoon prayer session at the mosque. She was an Baptist, American soldier, martial arts instructor, mother of three boys, divorced from her career military husband who had filled up an undergraduate college requirement with a comparative religions course, in which two Muslim men we also studying. When she walked into class the first day, she almost walked out, so shocking to her psyche it was to see this "sand-eating camel jockeys." But she stuck it through, and became friends with the Muslims. They were always willing to talk about their religion, and always willing to listen to her questions and answer them to her satisfaction. Rather agreeable men, quite frankly. Rather more agreeable than most of the southern yokels she interacted with.
But, she was still convicted in her own Christian fundamentalism, and determined to help these good men see the error of their ways. She arranged to meet with them, at her house, after the term, and confront them with the wrongness of their beliefs. They were so intelligent; so logical; so rational; she would be the instrument through whom God would make his revealed truths known.
At the appointed hour the two men arrived with a funny looking bearded man in a robe and sandals. They called him their imam. She began to speak. They listend ... and, within half an hour, she had made her attestations:
"I declare and attest, that there is no God but God."
"And I further declare and attest, that Mohammed is his Messenger."
And in so doing, thus converted to Islam.
Which she practices every more fervently and ardently each day. Fifteen hundred men, women, and children have converted to Islam, because this Tennessee girl bakes cookies for everyone in a 20 mile radius, and then goes and delivers those cookies, and talks a while, casually mentioning that she's a Muslim, which invariably gets a rise, and some questions. Which are invariably the predictable ones, but, she always fuses off any potential arguments saying: "Let's not worry about what we disagree on. Let's find those things we CAN agree on. Do you believe that there is one God who created all the heavens and the earth? Do you believe that in the final judgement day each and every one of us shall be called to appear before Jesus for our final judgement?
From these two points of agreement, a lot of understanding and insight will quickly emerge, until you have two child-like human beings getting to know one another and being delighted, even more by their similarities, than by their differences.
Grace Lutheran has three services; @ 7:45, @ 9:00 and @ 11:00. There is an adult forum from 10-11. This week's forum featured a refugee being sponsored by the ELCA's refugee outreach program.
I was there for parts of all three services. Actually, ALL of the second service, most of the third. There were parking places to shovel, and Pastor Said had given me $10.00 in MacDonald's cards (I even have $2.59 left).
And I kept getting lost in every service. Which is quite understandable once you realize that all three services are different! Different music, different singing ensembles, yi carombas!
