Fighting the hole

As I spread my hands before me, with Your many names upon my lips fervently hung over Your attributes of Forgiveness, Giving, Listening, Answering, Knowing, Seeing, Hearing, All Ableness, and so much more... I fixate on the spot that looks like a hole. I see around that hole blessings abound; so many that I cannot count them one by one in thanks... but, I thank You for each and every one of them as only You would Know Best and hopefully Accept. But, the eyes... these woefully-possessed-as-if-uncontrollable-eyes keep getting drawn back to that one speck, which is not a mole, and keep looking at it as a black hole. It seems to have a fluctuating depth of hollow never-endingness or perhaps just a slight bend on the road of many gifts, depends on which state of peace the heart is in. As the soul fervently focuses on thanks and gratitude and humility, the eyes are perturbed by whispers of the devil... the nafs... the humanness? Which, I'll never know. But as the focus comes upon it, in all it's ebbs and flows, all it keeps looking at is that one blessing I could not get to hold on to. It came into my life plenty of times, but only to tempt me, make me weak, ungrateful, and so frustrated... because I could not hold on to it. It keeps piercing into the abyss trying to pull itself out of it, and in the struggle of the jump and the pull, it tires itself of the screams that are it's own recriminations. It slumps into the wet mess of it's own tears and continues thanking The All Knowing Able One Who has Made me who I am, to live the tests that have been written down for me, and hope not to fail, and hope to keep surfacing back up with thanks... For if the gratitude were to be lost, so would all hope of sanity and a blessed Eternity. Ya Ar Rahman Ar Raheem, Ya Ghafoor Ar Kareem - please Hold me as I feel like I am drowning... If You Save me not, I will drown myself in my tears. Please Hush my hankerings and Take me away from my human needs and wants that will suffocate me without Your Intervention. My salvation lies only in Your Holding me and Sufficing me. I plead You to Hold me and Suffice me. Ameen, Ya Dhall Jalaali Wal Ikram.




*Written to Sange Saboor playing out in the background. My Lord being my only Pillar of Patience whereupon I stop to cry.

Leela; Where I Paused, Breathed, and Prayed

I sit here tonight, my last night here insha’Allah for the foreseeable future. Tears stream down my face, for it is not just tonight, but every night that I need to be more grateful. It has been ever more heavy on my heart where I feel that I am unable to express my gratitude to my Lord. I have moments of no emotion and thoughts, while I live my now – and my now, when I stop to think about it, is grand and splendid and everything rich. It is my blessing. It is my now. Am I making the most of it? Am I being grateful enough? Have I taken advantage of it as I was meant to? Has it given me peace and contentment? Am I looking deeper into in a now that is not any deeper than I have already reached? Why am I feeling like I am missing something? I ache from a fear that I may be doing something wrong? I deliberately am not. I consciously am trying to do all things right. I pray I am not wasting my grace. I pray I am doing justice with the share that I have been endowed with and blessed with. I am surrounded by splendor and majesty; in spirit and in manifest glory. I am in the middle of it. Every ounce of me, when it just stops and feels, overwhelms itself to tears. Tears seem to have become my expression of happiness, joy, reaction to beauty, sadness, responses to pain, brokenness, and everything else in between. Are tears going to be my salvation as I tread forward onto a shaken path, finding myself again? If nothing else, I pray my eternity will remove all doubt and shower me with a union of unparalleled peace and happiness. I want to be grateful for everything else until then. I pray my fallen grace never fails to get back up and say thanks. I pray my hope never bleeds out. I pray that the overwhelming questions go to sleep and wake up to answers that will stand sturdy, take my hand, and all will be alright. Insha’Allah. Oh Allah, please accept my thanks, for everything. For every moment and thing and person who helps me remember You more. Please bless them. I love You.

When it rained in Makkah...

I saw pictures today, of the Ka’aba in Makkah… with water pouring down all its sides, and then pictures of Makkah being flooded...

My mind filled up with thoughts of how I last saw the mosque under heavy construction and renovations, just over 2 weeks ago myself – and my imagination ran awry with a barrage of what if scenarios; of what torrential rain could do in terms of wreaking havoc upon the many pilgrims and the hundreds upon hundreds of people visiting the Holy Mosque. My mind went into fast forward, crying instantly… worrying about how all these people from afar put their hearts and savings into bringing themselves to this House of Allah, to pour their hearts out and beg for mercy and miracles – and how they would be greeted with this hardship, making it ever more so hard… so hard because they won’t be able to pray surrounded by so much water… so hard because every ritual would become tougher and more testing… and in that short moment when I came upon this news, I started searching the internet for videos.

 The first one I found showed people praying in the puddles of water surrounding the Ka’aba, as if there was nothing out of place… I saw this and it made me want to cry even more – while my younger sister, watching from beside me said – ‘‘Think about how their dua’s are being granted as they make them – because not only are they in the House of Allah, but they’re praying while it’s raining!’’ and I thought – subhaanAllah… we really focus on things from such different places… we – the people i.e.

Then later in the day, I came upon a post from one of my favourite teachers::

‘‘The first thing, the last thing, and indeed everything that my teacher taught me, can be summarized as: always be grateful to the Lord. After the shocking floods in Makkah yesterday, I called him:

Me: Shaykh, are you ok?

Shaykh: We are drowning in His Mercy, not in the flood.

Allahumma lakal hamd ya Rabb, always and forever.’’

We – the people, have so much more to learn, so far to go… May our Lord give us patience, resilience and grace through the toughest of times, and may He bless us to be forever grateful, come snow, wind, hail, rain or shine – in all aspects of our lives – Allahumma Ameen wa lakal hamd wa la hawla wala quwwata illa billa wa la illaha illAllah wa AllahoAkbar

Waiting on Happiness?

Your heart bursts into innumerable pieces in happiness for the people who shared their news; Two very beautiful ones – a friend who got married after a long wait for ‘the one’, and another friend who had a baby girl. While you sit and cry out of joy for them – truly… deeply – you don’t know when that cry turns inward for yourself, bent upon focusing on things that you yourself never got. You appease your heart that Allah knows best, and perhaps your time is to be longer in length, more lengthy in wait, than what others your age went through – and with that reminder you wipe away your tears and smile wider for them in complete joy, for their happiness. May they be blessed with the best that this world has to offer and be carried to the best of the Final Abode too – Ameen. May my wait be accompanied by infinite strength to ride me through to the shores that are meant to be mine, and may my heart be content with it all – Ameen.

The Problem...

The problem with most of us as we grow older, is that we truly believe we are the ones who will change a person whom others have failed to change. We believe this deep in our hearts, and firmly resolve to get to it; changing the person/people. This can be seen in a picture where the woman believes ‘she’ will be the one to change the man (who all this while has refused to budge in his ways, many before her have similarly tried, lost, and walked out of the picture). The same goes for children with their parents. What’s even more striking is that when I personally think about this latter situation - I remember going through all the hopes and aspirations of bringing about a change in my house, its people - which my siblings (a decade and more my junior), now aspire to do so too. Perhaps my intentions came later, age wise, than do theirs – but the fact remains that I have tread the path that they are on, but sadly they will refuse to learn through my experiences because they insist on travelling the roads themselves. This is sad because most of us will insist on travelling the road ourselves, no matter the amount of advice that exists out there to help steer us away from expected failure.

I’ve noticed the pattern. I was once that age too. I believed in things being a certain way. I believed in home being a certain way, parents being a certain way, but then… life happened. How?

I tried.

I failed.

I tried again.

I failed again…

And this went on for some time, until some years into this repetitive dysfunctional twist, a mist of sorts began to clear. I realized, after all these trials and errors, that home was where the heart was… I realized that it wasn’t just an adage, but reality. It was simply inexplicable – it had to be tried. I resented the place I wanted to change, I resented the people who refused to change (in their ways, their mindsets) stubbornly unrelenting – and so I imagined a home elsewhere.

Where?

Away from here is all I knew then. But every time I ventured into an ‘away’, I was sorely lost, and wishing to return home. To the very place where the heart would not be at rest.

I guess that is the problem. The heart. It is fickle and easily swerved. It is quite easily tempered by the whims and fancies that the Shaytan and the Shaya’ateen scatter around it. It latches on quite easily, not letting go unless really worked upon from the inside. But for us to be successful in warding it off from the inside, we have to remain firm in our belief that all that is happening is just as it was meant to be, and in it being so, there is good. I must let go of everything else and just try and seek that good; attempt to understand it, and accept it whole heartedly. And despite finding ourselves having found that belief, we remain susceptible to losing it every now and then. We cave in to the misery that wishes to surface, and bemoan our current stand point; forgetting that this very now is where we are supposed to be, meant to be standing in. It is how we find a way out of it, without the resentment, that remains a Herculian task that has not yet been mastered. And so we find ourselves setting off to try and change those around us, in hopes of finding solace and peace with their change. But the solace and peace, in my opinion now, does not come from a change in those around us. I think it comes from changing our own perspective on things, and by being in control of how we respond to the unrelenting forces around us. And through it all, we need to be stronger and firmer in our faith. Insha’Allah, things will fall into place and He shall say Be; and it shall.

~ May He (swt) make this journey easy for us all, may He provide us with the right companion (as He did to Moses (AS)), may He keep us staunch in our faith always, may He forever guide us, show us the Light, keep us under His shade, forgive us our blights, slights, and pick us up to take us through all our falls, rendering us to be ever stronger, ever firmer in our path to Him and His Promises… Ameen!