a piece for a friend
The thing about a child
I was speaking to a friend of mine whose relationship with me is solid gold. I actually don’t know what that even means! Except it does weather any storms. Not that the storms have been devastating. But a disaster is nevertheless a disaster.
I was telling her about a recent experience I had where two people, rather two sets of people, were doing the same exact thing to me that was, to put it mildly, problematic. For one I had infinite patience and forgiveness. For the other, none. Zero. I found that to be startling so I went back to reconsider, were they doing the same thing? Yes, they were.
In the midst of a storm that my teacher was caught up in, I cast prejudice aside and called him. To ask him why that could be.
His answer was immediate and simple.
“With one your relationship is running through God – He used the word he always uses - Allah. That is why you can endure their behaviour with acceptance. With the other, the connection is through your nafs. Its through duniya i.e. the world. Hence you don’t mind slamming the door without casting a second look.”
Hmmm I thought. He was absolutely right!
I had been sowing seeds of repentance for the month of Rajab. They all seemed related to intolerance, self-righteousness, unkindness. One by one I prayed on a seed and handed them to Ghaus Pak (ra) with tears of remorse streaming down my cheeks, my head hanging low from disappointment the state had lasted so long with such utter blindness.
Of course giving credit where it’s due, those seeds were born precisely out of the same relationships which I had eventually turned away from. Striking a balance was not going to be up to me. I had been there, done that. They never wanted to meet half way. Yet they always claimed a yearning to be near. I didn’t get that. The seeds promised a fruit in Ramzan. 90 days wasn’t too far to wait!
Plus it wasn’t about them. It was about me. Being different. The taker of the seeds was my Spiritual Master. The elation that fact held in it was beyond description.
But this is about a child.
One in particular.
Anoushay!
I saw her since she was a baby every few months. Like her siblings but the first child of a close friend is always something else. At a young age, she was diagnosed as autistic. Nobody knew what that meant then. The only thing on display was extreme brilliance and a photographic memory.
I learnt that when I did the night time story reading while in Scotland to give the parents a break. All the books she loved were long. Half-way through I would start counting how many pages were left. She was perhaps 6. I would start to skip paragraphs and as soon as I tried the shenanigan, lying in her bed, without any irritation, clearly absorbed in the story, she would point her finger in the air and say:
“You missed a part, Mony.”
Then she would start saying all the words and paragraphs I had intended to avoid reading. She would say the words and I would read them on the pages and be amazed. It was a marvel to experience.
When she visited Portland almost every summer for years till the age of 15, I never forgot how she would go on and on about the natural beauty that the city and its surroundings were imbued in.
“God is amazing,” she would say happily as we walked in forests and parks, watching sunsets day after day after day.
My friend told me how she bought her books about the Prophets and one day she came up to her and said solemnly,
“I’m ready to be sacrificed.”
When she looked at her confused, Anoushay handed her the book about the Prophet Ibrahim (as) and his son.
“Ummmm,” I think she said taking the book from her hand. “This is not about you.”
But it was. About devotion and obedience to a parent. At least one!
I love that story. The purity of a child’s connection to its Creator is so innate it’s striking. My niece Sameena used to love learning prayers and verses I would teach her. It was like she knew who she was speaking to. What she was taking about.
When I would sometimes forget and start to say bye on Skype, she would exclaim, “Mony, we didn’t pray!” and my heart would feel the happiest it has ever felt.
Time passed. Lives that were at least apparently happy revealed themselves to be not so much and the effects of that pierced the children’s existence. Then the world set in. The nafs, the self that prompts towards wrong, decided it wanted to tread its own path and so it broke the pact it had with the soul. It made Iblis its ally. The soul didn’t stand a chance.
Except for the one who gained a Spiritual Master. To even the battlefield. For I find that even the ones who seem like their insistence and persistence in stubbornly holding on to inflicting oppression with justifications of “injustice” upon themselves, which seems like it will last their whole lives, there is a fear in them of a reckoning.
Not after death but here in this world. Even though the acts of selfishness don’t look like they will stem as they seem possessed by Iblis and strangled by their own nafs, they cannot claim, as many do, unawareness. They know their accountability will be here and it will be painful.
I was telling someone the other day it was surprising for me to discover that the Spiritual Master lets you sink. He lets you go deep into the water, lets you drown in it before he pulls you out. After all he is watching everything you do. But he is informed of taqdeer, fate decreed, and he submits to that until the moment comes when he is allowed to intervene.
Being alone in the world seems like a difficult concept. Loneliness is what kills most people while they are still alive. There were times in my solo life when I thought it would have been nice to have someone to walk with in a summer rain. To sit under a tree and have a conversation. To ask to come over for a meal and just eat together.
But all doors have to close in order for the Greatest Door to open. In the moments the thought occurs to me now for an other, it no longer lasts long. In that thought, since learning that the only dua is the invocation that is in the words of Allah’s Chosen, I recite a prayer I came across recently that the Imams of the Ahl e Bait, the blessed family of the Last Messenger (salutations and greetings upon him and his family by their Lord as much as there are stars in the sky from the beginning of time till its end) loved reciting in prostration:
بعزتك سجدا بقسمتك راضيا
Bi-izzatika sajada, Bi-qismatika raadiya
By Your Majesty I prostrate before You,
In my fate decreed for me by You, I am contented.
For the ones who don’t think they will ever have a Master, it’s as easy as looking at the sky on a clear, cloudless night when all you can see are stars on a blanket of perfect midnight blues. Just looking up and picking one and calling it your own.
أصحابي كالنجوم بأيهم اقتديتم اهتديتم
The Beloved of Allah Subhanahu, Who sends salutations upon him and his family eternally, said,
“My Companions are like the stars. Whichever of them you follow you will be rightly guided.”
Those stars that are always there, through the day and through the night.
It is itself an unending consolation that a child might turn their gaze yet again towards one of them. That’s the thing about a child that becomes an adolescent and then an adult, the endless possibilities of returning like “the returning of the shadow towards that which creates the shadow and the waves towards the water.”
إِنَّمَا تَعْبُدُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ أَوْثَـٰنًۭا وَتَخْلُقُونَ إِفْكًا ۚ
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ تَعْبُدُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ لَا يَمْلِكُونَ لَكُمْ رِزْقًۭا فَٱبْتَغُوا۟ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرِّزْقَ وَٱعْبُدُوهُ وَٱشْكُرُوا۟ لَهُۥٓ ۖ إِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ ١٧
You worship only idols from besides Allah, and you create falsehood.
Indeed, those whom you worship from besides Allah (do) not possess for you any provision. So seek from Allah the provision and worship Him and be grateful to Him. To Him you will be returned.
Surah Al Ankabut, Verse 17
Tafseer e Jilani
Then warned Subhanahu about their mistakes in their worship of others than Allah so He said:
Innama ta’abodoona min doon illahi: You only worship, other than Allah Al Mustahiq, The Only One deserving of worship and The Only One Independent without association and similarity…
Authaanan: idols, naming them as a god out of shirrk, association with Allah and transgression and you worship them like you worship Allah, stubbornly and wrongfully…
Wa takhluqoona: and you create i.e. you make false claims and attach them with Allah with confirmations of associations with Him, especially these statues of falsehood, ineffective…
Ifkan: lying and fabricating, disputing as a show, even though those statues, they have no benefit for you and or harm for you and no sustenance for you and cannot prohibit your provisions. Instead…
Inna: indeed the gods…
Alladina ta’bodoona min doon illahi: those whom you worship other than Allah Al Haqeeq, The Only One Deserving of obedience and worship in totality, it is the same whether they are idols or that which has senses and movements…
La yamlikoona lakum rizq-an: they do not possess for you rizq, sustenance i.e. the matter of rizq, livelihood is restricted upon Allah Al Muttakaffil, The Only Sponsor for the provision of sustenance for His Servants. It is not in the power of any other than Him that He provide anyone from His Servants sustenance in an overt or inner sense and indeed, Subhanahu chooses sustenance by mentioning it although they cannot do anything else either because indeed, He made it apparant for His Claim and He completes the intensity of their needs with that rizq. And if you want rizq, sustenance, bodily or spiritual…
Fab’taghu: seek and ask…
Aynd illah: from Allah Al Qadir, The Only Dominant One, Al Muqtadir, The Only One in Control…
Ar rizq: sustenance in form which nourishes your temperament and is meaningful, that connects with your origin and your return, so you utilize by His Sustenance in your beginning (in this world) and your end (Hereafter)…
Wa: and while you heard and knew there is no provider for you except Allah…
U’buduhu: only worship Him as is deserving (for Him) from His Servants and know Him as is deserving of His being known…
Washkuru lahu: and be grateful to Him, fulfilling the rights of at least some things from the Rights of His Blessings and a little from the Vastness of His Fazl, Favour and His Karam, Generosity and know that you…
Ilayhi turja’oon: to Him return, like the returning of the shadow towards that which creates the shadow and the waves towards the water.
a piece for a friend
The thing about a child
I was speaking to a friend of mine whose relationship with me is solid gold. I actually don’t know what that even means! Except it does weather any storms. Not that the storms have been devastating. But a disaster is nevertheless a disaster.
I was telling her about a recent experience I had where two people, rather two sets of people, were doing the same exact thing to me that was, to put it mildly, problematic. For one I had infinite patience and forgiveness. For the other, none. Zero. I found that to be startling so I went back to reconsider, were they doing the same thing? Yes, they were.
In the midst of a storm that my teacher was caught up in, I cast prejudice aside and called him. To ask him why that could be.
His answer was immediate and simple.
“With one your relationship is running through God – He used the word he always uses - Allah. That is why you can endure their behaviour with acceptance. With the other, the connection is through your nafs. Its through duniya i.e. the world. Hence you don’t mind slamming the door without casting a second look.”
Hmmm I thought. He was absolutely right!
I had been sowing seeds of repentance for the month of Rajab. They all seemed related to intolerance, self-righteousness, unkindness. One by one I prayed on a seed and handed them to Ghaus Pak (ra) with tears of remorse streaming down my cheeks, my head hanging low from disappointment the state had lasted so long with such utter blindness.
Of course giving credit where it’s due, those seeds were born precisely out of the same relationships which I had eventually turned away from. Striking a balance was not going to be up to me. I had been there, done that. They never wanted to meet half way. Yet they always claimed a yearning to be near. I didn’t get that. The seeds promised a fruit in Ramzan. 90 days wasn’t too far to wait!
Plus it wasn’t about them. It was about me. Being different. The taker of the seeds was my Spiritual Master. The elation that fact held in it was beyond description.
But this is about a child.
One in particular.
Anoushay!
I saw her since she was a baby every few months. Like her siblings but the first child of a close friend is always something else. At a young age, she was diagnosed as autistic. Nobody knew what that meant then. The only thing on display was extreme brilliance and a photographic memory.
I learnt that when I did the night time story reading while in Scotland to give the parents a break. All the books she loved were long. Half-way through I would start counting how many pages were left. She was perhaps 6. I would start to skip paragraphs and as soon as I tried the shenanigan, lying in her bed, without any irritation, clearly absorbed in the story, she would point her finger in the air and say:
“You missed a part, Mony.”
Then she would start saying all the words and paragraphs I had intended to avoid reading. She would say the words and I would read them on the pages and be amazed. It was a marvel to experience.
When she visited Portland almost every summer for years till the age of 15, I never forgot how she would go on and on about the natural beauty that the city and its surroundings were imbued in.
“God is amazing,” she would say happily as we walked in forests and parks, watching sunsets day after day after day.
My friend told me how she bought her books about the Prophets and one day she came up to her and said solemnly,
“I’m ready to be sacrificed.”
When she looked at her confused, Anoushay handed her the book about the Prophet Ibrahim (as) and his son.
“Ummmm,” I think she said taking the book from her hand. “This is not about you.”
But it was. About devotion and obedience to a parent. At least one!
I love that story. The purity of a child’s connection to its Creator is so innate it’s striking. My niece Sameena used to love learning prayers and verses I would teach her. It was like she knew who she was speaking to. What she was taking about.
When I would sometimes forget and start to say bye on Skype, she would exclaim, “Mony, we didn’t pray!” and my heart would feel the happiest it has ever felt.
Time passed. Lives that were at least apparently happy revealed themselves to be not so much and the effects of that pierced the children’s existence. Then the world set in. The nafs, the self that prompts towards wrong, decided it wanted to tread its own path and so it broke the pact it had with the soul. It made Iblis its ally. The soul didn’t stand a chance.
Except for the one who gained a Spiritual Master. To even the battlefield. For I find that even the ones who seem like their insistence and persistence in stubbornly holding on to inflicting oppression with justifications of “injustice” upon themselves, which seems like it will last their whole lives, there is a fear in them of a reckoning.
Not after death but here in this world. Even though the acts of selfishness don’t look like they will stem as they seem possessed by Iblis and strangled by their own nafs, they cannot claim, as many do, unawareness. They know their accountability will be here and it will be painful.
I was telling someone the other day it was surprising for me to discover that the Spiritual Master lets you sink. He lets you go deep into the water, lets you drown in it before he pulls you out. After all he is watching everything you do. But he is informed of taqdeer, fate decreed, and he submits to that until the moment comes when he is allowed to intervene.
Being alone in the world seems like a difficult concept. Loneliness is what kills most people while they are still alive. There were times in my solo life when I thought it would have been nice to have someone to walk with in a summer rain. To sit under a tree and have a conversation. To ask to come over for a meal and just eat together.
But all doors have to close in order for the Greatest Door to open. In the moments the thought occurs to me now for an other, it no longer lasts long. In that thought, since learning that the only dua is the invocation that is in the words of Allah’s Chosen, I recite a prayer I came across recently that the Imams of the Ahl e Bait, the blessed family of the Last Messenger (salutations and greetings upon him and his family by their Lord as much as there are stars in the sky from the beginning of time till its end) loved reciting in prostration:
بعزتك سجدا بقسمتك راضيا
Bi-izzatika sajada, Bi-qismatika raadiya
By Your Majesty I prostrate before You,
In my fate decreed for me by You, I am contented.
For the ones who don’t think they will ever have a Master, it’s as easy as looking at the sky on a clear, cloudless night when all you can see are stars on a blanket of perfect midnight blues. Just looking up and picking one and calling it your own.
أصحابي كالنجوم بأيهم اقتديتم اهتديتم
The Beloved of Allah Subhanahu, Who sends salutations upon him and his family eternally, said,
“My Companions are like the stars. Whichever of them you follow you will be rightly guided.”
Those stars that are always there, through the day and through the night.
It is itself an unending consolation that a child might turn their gaze yet again towards one of them. That’s the thing about a child that becomes an adolescent and then an adult, the endless possibilities of returning like “the returning of the shadow towards that which creates the shadow and the waves towards the water.”
إِنَّمَا تَعْبُدُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ أَوْثَـٰنًۭا وَتَخْلُقُونَ إِفْكًا ۚ
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ تَعْبُدُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ لَا يَمْلِكُونَ لَكُمْ رِزْقًۭا فَٱبْتَغُوا۟ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرِّزْقَ وَٱعْبُدُوهُ وَٱشْكُرُوا۟ لَهُۥٓ ۖ إِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ ١٧
You worship only idols from besides Allah, and you create falsehood.
Indeed, those whom you worship from besides Allah (do) not possess for you any provision. So seek from Allah the provision and worship Him and be grateful to Him. To Him you will be returned.
Surah Al Ankabut, Verse 17
Tafseer e Jilani
Then warned Subhanahu about their mistakes in their worship of others than Allah so He said:
Innama ta’abodoona min doon illahi: You only worship, other than Allah Al Mustahiq, The Only One deserving of worship and The Only One Independent without association and similarity…
Authaanan: idols, naming them as a god out of shirrk, association with Allah and transgression and you worship them like you worship Allah, stubbornly and wrongfully…
Wa takhluqoona: and you create i.e. you make false claims and attach them with Allah with confirmations of associations with Him, especially these statues of falsehood, ineffective…
Ifkan: lying and fabricating, disputing as a show, even though those statues, they have no benefit for you and or harm for you and no sustenance for you and cannot prohibit your provisions. Instead…
Inna: indeed the gods…
Alladina ta’bodoona min doon illahi: those whom you worship other than Allah Al Haqeeq, The Only One Deserving of obedience and worship in totality, it is the same whether they are idols or that which has senses and movements…
La yamlikoona lakum rizq-an: they do not possess for you rizq, sustenance i.e. the matter of rizq, livelihood is restricted upon Allah Al Muttakaffil, The Only Sponsor for the provision of sustenance for His Servants. It is not in the power of any other than Him that He provide anyone from His Servants sustenance in an overt or inner sense and indeed, Subhanahu chooses sustenance by mentioning it although they cannot do anything else either because indeed, He made it apparant for His Claim and He completes the intensity of their needs with that rizq. And if you want rizq, sustenance, bodily or spiritual…
Fab’taghu: seek and ask…
Aynd illah: from Allah Al Qadir, The Only Dominant One, Al Muqtadir, The Only One in Control…
Ar rizq: sustenance in form which nourishes your temperament and is meaningful, that connects with your origin and your return, so you utilize by His Sustenance in your beginning (in this world) and your end (Hereafter)…
Wa: and while you heard and knew there is no provider for you except Allah…
U’buduhu: only worship Him as is deserving (for Him) from His Servants and know Him as is deserving of His being known…
Washkuru lahu: and be grateful to Him, fulfilling the rights of at least some things from the Rights of His Blessings and a little from the Vastness of His Fazl, Favour and His Karam, Generosity and know that you…
Ilayhi turja’oon: to Him return, like the returning of the shadow towards that which creates the shadow and the waves towards the water.