On the road

On the road in Atlanta (but rather unlike Jack Kerouac), I brought Muhammad Asad's memoir, The Road to Mecca, along with me, hoping to finish it before it's due back at the library (where it can't be renewed because someone else wants it).

In the section I read last night [on p. 184], Asad (a European Jew) is asked by his friend Mansur:

"Tell me, O Muhammad...how did it happen that thou hast come to live among the Arabs? And how didst thou come to embrace Islam?"

"I will tell thee how it happened," interposes Zayd. "First he fell in love with the Arabs, and then with their faith. Isn't it true, O my uncle?" [Though Zayd is a few years older than Asad, he calls him uncle out of respect.]

"What Zayd says is true, O Mansur. Many years ago [it was actually well fewer than ten], when I first came to Arab lands, I was attracted by the way you people lived. And when I began to ask myself what you thought and what you believed in, I came to know about Islam."

"And didst though, O Muhammad, find all at once that Islam was the True Word of God?"

"Well, no, this did not come about so quickly. For one thing, I did not then believe that God had ever spoken directly to man, or that the books which men claimed to be His word were anything but the works of wise men..."

Mansur stares at me with utter incredulity: "How could that be, O Muhammad? Didst thou not even believe in the Scriptures which Moses brought, or the Gospel of Jesus? But I have always thought that the people of the West believe at least in them?"

"Some do, O Mansur, and others do not. I was one of those others..."

And I explain to him that many people in the West have long ceased to regard the Scriptures—their own as well as those of others—as true Revelations of God, but see in them rather the history of man's religious aspirations as they have evolved over the ages.

"But this view of mine was shaken as soon as I came to know something of Islam," I add. "I came to know about it when I found that the Muslims lived in a way quite different from what the Europeans thought should be man's way; and every time I learned something more about the teachings of Islam, I seemed to discover something that I had always known without knowing it..."

As I continue my reading of Thomas Cleary's English translation of the Qur'an, I am trying to remain sufficiently open-minded to recognize, if possible, whether I too discover anything that "I have always known without knowing it."

And clear enough minded to understand what the significance might be of "always having known."

The pause that refreshes

When the slogan "the pause that refreshes" came to me this morning, I thought I was remembering it from Pepsi Cola advertising. Maybe I was, but in an article on cola advertising, that particular slogan isn't listed as having been one of either Coke's or Pepsi's, although the word "refreshing" occurs in several other slogans.

Well, never mind. The refreshing pause that I'm talking about is the pause that an aware person interjects between a stimulus and the person's otherwise automatic response. That pause is (or can be) refreshing precisely because it gives the person the opportunity to exercise a choice as to whether to act automatically or in some new way—even a very innovative way.

In the religious context, a person's automatic response to "the stimulus of life" (or perhaps more poignantly to the stimulus of learning that we all die) might be to believe as the person's parents believed.

Muhammad Asad reports in his memoir, The Road to Mecca (1952), that he found very attractive to himself personally what he observed in the 1920's to be the cultural tendency of Arabs to do just that: believe as their parents (and virtually everyone else around them) believed. To Asad, this was a very good thing, integrating an Arab's physical and spiritual life into something peaceful, natural, anxiety-free—unlike the European's neurotic, awkward, spiritual anxiety. In other words, whatever pause the Europeans had taken to cut themselves free from precedent was, to Asad, anything but "refreshing" spiritually.

Yet myself, very unlike Asad, I feel rather at home and comfortable with pausing to exercise my thought and creativity. I can hardly imagine ever becoming a "Muslim automaton."

Anyway, that's my current take on one of Asad's theses in The Road to Mecca (as I now read Chapter 5 of 12).

Fanaticism

My friend in the library told me this morning that he was going to "watch some [basket]ball this weekend." He said he was still feeling a little down over our local men's collegiate basketball team's failure to reach The Final Four. (Next day's front-page headline of Raleigh's News and Observer was "Tar Heels Collapse." Note, this was the front front page, not the sports front page. Basketball is big in Carolina.)

I told my library friend that that was the trouble with being a fanatic: you'll be disappointed a lot.

Hmm, he observed, "there are around three hundred Division A collegiate basketball teams. Most fans are going to be disappointed."

Remember that "fans" is short for "fanatics."

I talked with another sort of fan on the commute bus a couple of days ago. She's a devout Christian, and we've discussed religion. She knows I am not a devout Christian, but a skeptical one at best. I told her about my reading of Muhammad Asad's extraordinary memoir, The Road to Mecca. I told her he is the man who wrote the 12-pound book, The Message of the Qur'an. I told her I'm reading the Qur'an, in Thomas Cleary's English translation.

Well, my commute friend (we are friends; we respect and care about one another) frowned and warned me to be wary of Islam. "The Qur'an isn't the word of God."

"You seem pretty sure or that."

She affirmed that indeed she was. And she said it again, "The Qur'an isn't the word of God."

That's the other kind of fan I was referring to. Both types of fan don't "believe all things," obviously. Basketball fans don't believe that basketball is just a game. (I'd add "stupid" to that, but then, I guess I'd be a sort of fanatic myself.) My library friend did agree with me, however, when I said that if fans could step back and adopt "a more philosophical view of life" they'd be a lot happier.

And, of course, my Christian friend doesn't believe all things. In fact, she corrected my understanding of Paul's essay on charity (love) in his letter to the Corinthians. "He's talking about human relationships," she said, "about being open and accepting."

I can accept that, believe it. But I still believe the larger (if incorrect) interpretation of "believeth all things." It might be necessary to overcome fanaticism.

And frequent disappointment. I wonder how often my Christian friend is disappointed. She's a lovely person (and a beautiful woman). I would want happiness for her. Aside from her fanaticism, she deserves it.

Believe all things, but hold on to none

On a walk through a nature preserve this morning with a friend, he told me that his aging cat had developed diabetes and his girlfriend was suggesting that he consult a cat psychic. I of course expressed some doubt about that, but he said he'd probably do it. "Who knows?" he asked rhetorically, "couldn't hurt."

Responding to my doubt, he added, "I tend to believe all things, but I hold on to none."

The first part of that reminded me of the little essay about charity, or love, in Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians. "Charity believeth all things." I've often said that of myself. That is, that I believe all things, although I know that that might be hard for my readers to accept, having seen lately what a skeptic I've become.

But the second part of what my friend said, I liked that too. "Hold on to none." How unlike the man I saw later at Costco wearing a T-shirt to remind everyone that Jesus was nailed to the cross for us. This man may not believe all things, but he sure believes that. He holds on to it, counts on it.

But not my friend, and not me either. For in "hold on to none" I immediately recognized myself, although I'd never consciously practiced it, as my friend seems to. And I see this now as a way to understand my going from "blasted" to "buoyed by birdsong" over the last few days.

Let me try to explain that. My experience of being blasted resulted, I think, from pressing too hard to try to find something in religion that, damn it, I could hold on to. I became blasted from not finding any such thing anywhere I was turning.

But when a blog friend prompted me to tell her what, then, I would prefer to spend my time on, I easily and confidently said that I felt I was going to be okay. I would just relax, be my usual, morally upright self (love my neighbors and treat my enemies with respect but circumspection), and enjoy life. Exult in the sun and the wind, maybe write a lyric occasionally, interject some praise. Enjoy reading for interest the Qur'an, the Gnostic Gospels, Muhammad Asad's memoir, Ezra Pound's Cantos, John le Carré's novels.

And continue to tend to believe in angels, if it pleases me, believe that God exists, that Jesus was the son of God (and might even look a bit like Brad Pitt), that he died and rose again, that Muhammad was God's messenger...But now, especially after that walk in the woods this morning, I won't count on any of it.

"Bitter like death and hot like love"

Part of enjoying reading Muhammad Asad (not the Prophet Muhammad's) The Road to Mecca, the story of his encounter with Islam, is picking up many tidbits of "local color," such as this one:

...in Arabia coffee is freshly roasted for every pot. As soon as the beans are lightly tanned, he [his friend Zayd, his traveling companion in the 1920s] places them in a brass mortar and pounds them. Thereupon he pours some of the boiling water from the larger pot into the smaller, empties the ground coffee into it and places the pot near the fire to let it slowly simmer. When the brew is almost ready, he adds a few cardamon seeds to make it more bitter, for, as the saying goes in Arabia, coffee, in order to be good, must be "bitter like death and hot like love."

Mr. Asad is the author of a work I have mentioned: The Message of the Qur'an, a twelve-pound tome of almost 1,200 8.125" x 11.25" pages, which I am blessed by the good graces of a dear friend to have as a reference.