Sometimes, you have to travel to the farthest mosque in the most hotly contested real estate on Earth to discover a peaceful normalcy. Privileged (in every sense of the word) to spend time and laylatal-miraj in Masjid Al Aqsa in Jerusalem, where I attempted to practice my new discipline of digital detox - trying to absorb the moment using only my human senses without concern for digital posterity (Oh, the irony as I write this on...Facebook) After maghrib (sunset) prayer, I sat in the middle of a living, breathing mosque, listening to the dervish birds bust out their improvised jazz session. Its populated by laughing children playing hide-and-seek from the entrance to the mimbar, mothers and grandmothers chasing after them, elders chilling and cycling through their dhikr beads, exhausted fathers using water bottles as inventive sleeping pillows, and international supplicants releasing their prayers and burdens with palms to the sky. The entire Temple Mount is in perpetual animation, colored foremost by the Dome of the Rock whose golden sheen never ceases to dazzle - especially in the moments of quiet darkness. The sacred space is built not by bricks, mortars or stone, but a living history, mixed with love, pain, longing, belonging and yearning. I pray that all could spend a day here and write a verse in its ongoing narrative, and that we could play its spiritual jazz in our own homelands. Inshallah.
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 22:16:14 +0000
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