Reblogged from eatsleepdraw
Yo, Susanna
I worked in Alabama for a summer but I did not come across even just one banjo on anyone's knee. There may have been a tear, two or three.
This is what my Baby Nal used to look like. But, seeing as how it’s lived an adventurous five plus years of life…it’s now just a very scratched up, more pale shade of pink. This makes me a little sad.
I read a book called “Zeitoun” last month that has become really relevant in the light of recent events in the United States and I’d like to share a little of it with you.
First, a little background: I found this book in the Houston airport on my way to New Orleans this past summer. It is a true account written by Dave Eggers about The Zeitouns, a Muslim family who lived in New Orleans previous to Katrina. During the storm, the hard working Father (who everyone calls by their last name, Zeitoun) stayed to take care of his and his tenants homes and the homes of his clients from his painting business. After the levies broke, Zeitoun pitched a tent on his roof, lived off of meat he had stocked in a freezer which he grilled each night and found his canoe to use to help rescue neighbors and their pets that stayed and were left behind. One day during his daily stop to call his wife at a tenants house which still had a working telephone, he and three other friends (who were also helping rescue people with various boats) were wrongfully and forcefully arrested and made to suffer for about a week (in third world conditions under the brutality of harsh and irrational National Guardsmen at a make shift prison at the Amtrak station where all displaced “prisoners” -most with misdemeanor crimes like public drunkenness or overdue parking fines- were brought) because they were thought (with no reasonable suspicion) to be terrorists. It took months for his wife to find out he was alive and then get him out of the full security prison that FEMA sent all the displaced prisoners to after their stay at ‘Camp Greyhound’ even after he was interviewed and cleared by homeland security. Even after the storm and the horrible atrocities that Zeitoun faced because of his religion; the Zeitouns have returned to the city they love to rebuild their life (home and painting company).
I started this book on my flight to meet my family on the houseboat at Lake Powell and finished it before we left the lake. I actually missed several ski runs because I could not put it down. It was the best but most depressing book I’ve read in a long time. I urge you to pick it up and read their story in depth.
Tonight, I decided to go back to the book to re-read a few pages after watching a clip from cnn of a “pastor” talking about burning the Quran because as he says “it isn’t Holy to us.” I became physically ill. I was reminded of a part of the book where Kathy (the wife/mom) shares of her conversion from Christianity to Islam.
Eggers writes:
“Kathy began borrowing books about Islam. She was just curious, having no particular intention to leave the Christian faith. At first she was simply intrigued by the basic things she didn’t know, and the many things she wrongly presumed. She had no idea, for instance, that the Qur’an was filled with the same people as the Bible - Moses, Mary, Abraham, Pharaoh, even Jesus. She hadn’t known that Muslims consider the Qur’an the fourth book of God to his messengers, after the Old Testament (referred to as the Tawrat, or the Law), the Psalms (the Zabur), and the New Testament (Injeil). The fact that Islam acknowledged these books were revelatory for her. The fact that the Qur’an repeatedly reaches out to the other, related faiths, knocked her flat:
We have believed in God
and what has been sent forth to us,
and what was sent forth to Abraham,
Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob,
and the Tribes
and what was given the prophets
from their Lord;
we seperate and divide not
between any one of them;
and we are the ones who submit to Him.
She was frustrated that she hadn’t known any of this, that she’d been blind to the faith of a billion or so people. How could she not know these things?
And Muhammad. She’d been so misinformed about Him. She’d thought He was the actual god of Islam, the one whom Muslims worshiped. But he was simply the messenger who related the word of God. An illiterate man, Muhammad was visited by the angel Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic), who related to him the words of God. Muhammad became the conduit for these messages, and the Qur’an, then, was simply the word of God in written form. Qur’an meant ‘Recitation.’
There were so many basic things that defied her presumptions. She’d assumed that Muslims were a monolithic group, and that all Muslims were made of the same devout and unbending stock. But she learned that there were Shiite and Sunni interpretations of the Qur’an, and within any mosque there were the same variations in faith and commitment as there were in any church. There were Muslims who treated their faith lightly, and those who knew every word of the Qur’an and it’s companion guide to behavior, the Hadith. There were Muslims who knew almost nothing about their religion, who worshiped a few times a year, and those who obeyed the strictest interpretation of their faith. There were Muslim women who wore t-shirts and jeans and Muslim women who covered themselves from head to toe. There were Muslim men who modeled their lives on the life of the prophet, and those who strayed and fell short. There were passive Muslims, uncertain Muslims, borderline agnostic Muslims, devout Muslims, and Muslims who twisted the words of the Qur’an to suite their temporary desires and agendas. It was all very familiar, intrinsic to any faith.”
The next page continues explaining the crisis Kathy was going through, being disappointed in certain aspects of the Christian faith. Especially after a church service where a Pastor sent the offering plate back out to a working, middle class congregation after “not receiving enough.” She even runs into a Pastor from the church at her job and shares with him her concerns. The Pastor tells her not to worry and asks her to sit in the front of church the next time she comes. She did, she called her on stage, she hesitantly does what he asks as she had never been in front of that many people before and this is what happens:
“Kathy,” the preacher said, “tell them what you told me. Tell us all.”
Kathy froze. She didn’t know if she could do this. She was a talkative person, rarely nervous, but to recount something she’d said privately to the reverend in front of a thousand strangers- it didn’t seem right.
Still, Kathy had faith that he knew what he was doing. She believed she’d been chosen to remain in this church. And she wanted to serve. To help. Perhaps, like Reverend Timothy entering the store that day, this was another event that was meant to be, meant to bring her closer to Christ.
She was given the microphone and she spoke into it, telling the congregation what she’d told the reverend, that she had been investigating Islam, and that -
The preacher cut her off. “She was looking to Islam!” he said with a sneer. “She was considering” - and here he paused- “the worship of Allah!” And with that, he made a snorting, derisive sound, the snort an eight-year-old boy would make on a playground. This preacher, this leader of his church and congregation, was using this tone to refer to Allah. Did he not know that his God and Islam’s were one of the same? That was the first and simplest things she’d learned from the pamphlets Yuko had given her: Allah is just the Arabic word for God. Even Christians speaking Arabic refer to God as Allah.
He went on to praise Kathy and Jesus and reaffirm the primacy of his and their faith, but by then she was hardly listening. Something had ruptured within her. When he was done, she sat down in a daze, bewildered but becoming sure about something right there and then. She smiled politely through the rest of the service, already knowing that she would never come back.
She thought about the episode while driving home, and tgat night, and all the next day. She talked to Yuko about it and they realized that this man, preaching to a thousand impressionable and trusting parishioners, didn’t know, or didn’t care, that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity were not so distantly related branches of the same monotheistic Abrahamic faith. And to dismiss all of Islam with a playground sound? Kathy could not be part of what that man was preaching.”
So, aside from the heaps of religious arguments that these entries I just quoted could cause I just wanted to share them because I learned something from them and I hope you can too. I also hope that the many Americans getting so defensive about “our country” could open up their hearts to our seven million American-Muslim brothers and sisters that just want a place to be and pray.
I read this from an article from Relevant Magazine:
Historically, foreign immigrants overwhelmed lower Manhattan, especially during the Industrial Revolution and the years leading up to World War II. Many of the Arab immigrants in New York City settled around the area where the World Trade Center would eventually be erected. As the Arab population rose, the neighborhoods gave way to the name “Little Syria.”
While the completion of the Brooklyn Battery tunnel heralded the eventual diminishing of the name Little Syria, many Arab families still remain prominent in the area. Rather than an “invasion” of lower Manhattan by elusive Islamic jihadists, the Cordoba House provides a place of community and a house of worship for the many Muslim-Americans already residing in the area.
The true test of our faith rarely comes in times of peace or tranquility, but rather in moments of adversity. Just as the early church wrestled for their freedom of religion against Roman persecutions, so we face the same struggle today. Faithful Christians must always find ways to express the love Christ called us to, even (and maybe especially) toward our Muslim-American neighbors.
Sources:
“Zeitoun” by Dave Eggers pgs 61-66
goes to Miss Kaila Weiss!
“What were all the things that interrupt the yodeler? cuckoo birds, road runner, dinosaur, avalanche…”
Yesterday:
Text from a friend: “…and before you leave and save another country. I have a gift for you!”
My response: “…yay gifts! another country would be nice.”
Today:
FB chat from Family Friend: Are you there?
Me: yes, just reading your status actually
Family Friend: You were the subject of conversation at my house this weekend. I told my cousin all about you and told him the many ways you could be a blessing in Kenya - want to go?
Me: ummm, I suppose so…haha, I mean, yes!
Family Friend: I need you to come over and visit. I’ll tell you all about it.
Me: okay
I appreciate this shirt.
The Mayonnaise Jar
When things in your life seem almost too much
to handle, When 24 hours in a day is not enough;
remember the mayonnaise jar and 2 cups of coffee.
A professor stood before his philosophy class
and had some items in front of him.
When the class began, wordlessly,
he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise
jar and start to fill it with golf balls.
He then asked the students if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of
pebbles and poured it into the jar. He shook
the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open
areas between the golf balls.
He then asked the students again
if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand
and poured it into the jar. Of course,
the sand filled up everything else
He asked once more if the jar was full.
The students responded
With an unanimous ‘yes.’
The professor then produced two cups
of coffee from under the table and
poured the entire contents into the jar,
effectively filling the empty space between
the sand. The students laughed.
‘Now,’ said the professor, as the laughter
subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this
jar represents your life.
The golf balls are the important things - God,
family, children, health, friends, and favorite
passions… Things that if everything else was
lost and only they remained, your life would
still be full.
The pebbles are the things that matter like your
job, house, and car.
The sand is everything else -
The small stuff.
‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued,
‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.
The same goes for life.
If you spend all your time and energy on the small
stuff, You will never have room for the things that
are important to you.
So…
Pay attention to the things that
are critical to your happiness.
Play with your children.
Take time to get medical checkups.
Take your partner out to dinner.
There will always be time to clean
the house and fix the dripping tap.
‘Take care of the golf balls first -
The things that really matter.
Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.’
One of the students raised her hand
and inquired what the coffee represented.
The professor smiled.
‘I’m glad you asked’.
It just goes to show you that no matter how
full your life may seem, there’s always room
for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.’
May God Always Bless and Guide You !
