[Image: Peter Sanders]

I’ve been struggling with words recently and filling the void with posts on various links instead.

When I began my journey back to Islam all I wanted to do was talk about God.

A lot.

I was like a high schooler with a crush that she just can’t stop talking about. With something so new and exciting the only way to make it feel real was to share it with others, through words and repetition.

I found myself trying to track the ebb and flow of my belief, and to find, feel and hold Him in my heart. And I did – I felt Him holding my crushed spirit and body close and safe when I was very ill in October 2005.

But, over time, a silence has set in.

I speak of Him less and reflect on His signs more. At first I wandered the corridors of ‘lost’ Love lamenting because I could no longer feel Him in the exact same way as I did before.

Then, I realized that instead of feeling Him only in my heart, I could no longer contain Him – He was beginning to seep out all around me and into every one I met…

Even to say this is too much. As soon as I try to articulate something about Him, words diminish it.

Are there doorways to enter which the mind and its words must be left behind? Can love sometimes silence one? To write about that which can only be experienced is futile.

I find myself at a new threshold of longing, of creating a sacred, private space in which to be alone together with Him. My prayers and profession use words, but I long now also for a “silence in which another voice may speak.”

Direct words fail me, so, analogy:

Last summer a friend told me her boyfriend made an off-the-cuff marriage proposal while they were holidaying in Turkey. Quite romantic to my mind, but she waited anxiously upon their return to the US for a “real” proposal – a ring and bended knee.

She got what she desired, telling me that she was relieved that she did better than I with Basil.

I was surprised by her sympathy. Basil proposed to me on new year’s eve, three months after we met in 2001. We exchanged all of four spontaneous words, and our future together was sealed.

Dimly, I recall thinking that a traditional proposal would have been nice too. But looking back now, what she deemed so crucial is of little consequence to me.

How could I tell her that the necessity for a ring that looms so large in her new relationship has long been overshadowed by our six years of financial, emotional and health turmoil that threatened to break us again and again, but ended in bringing us closer than I could ever have imagined it was possible for two people to be?

How could I explain that all the nights he lay curled on a too-short hospital guest bed by my side after a 10-hour work day just so that he could hold my hand as I fell asleep, so that I would not feel alone, meant more to me than any routine bended knee?

How could I explain that in the beginning I cobbled together the material things he gave me as proofs of his love, but that later, it is that which he gave of himself that made a believer out of me?

I couldn’t. So I just smiled and let her think that she got the better deal as far as proposals go.

And so it is, now, with God. The high school crush, the need to shout it from the rooftops to make it feel real to myself has passed.

I have put the ring away; my finger is bare, for now the band fits around my heart.

It’s like that stage in a marriage where instead of constantly drawing from the well to drink and reassure oneself that it is still there – still deep and true and pure – one’s roots have wended their way down under the land to a place where rivers flow, to be nourished constantly, consciously and unconsciously…beyond words.

Subhan-Allah.

—

O my Lord,
the stars are shining and the eyes of men are closed,
and kings have shut their doors,
and every lover is alone with his beloved,
and here I am alone with Thee.

- Rabi’a al-Adawiyyah

[Image: My Greatest Need is You]