Religion Revisited 01-12-08
On my way back from Thanksgiving with my family, I stopped in Fez to recover. At that point I had been traveling for about 38 hours straight… so I got a hotel near an area I know pretty well, and spent some time wandering the streets through the cold rain and more time chillin’ in the neat place called CafeClock. It’s a place where expats, students both foreign and domestic, and occasionally PCVs mix. They have good food, decent drinks, a cool culture of art display and (most importantly!) free wireless internet! So I came in, and found an open couch in the library area, and set up. A little while later two Moroccan-looking women came in and greeted the woman sitting next to me, and then commenced to speaking in excellent English! It turns out one of those two "Moroccan-looking" women was a cultural British ethnic Pakistani taking some time out of her teaching career to learn Arabic and immerse herself in a Muslim culture.
Now, all three of these women are well educated, intelligent, motivated, and religious people. So they started chatting about this, and that, and then the conversation moved to religion. Different experiences they have had, lessons they have learned, methods of prayer and worship they have tried… I am NOT used to listening in on these conversations! It was amazing!!! It was also a kind of trippy experience, because the way they were talking, even many of the lessons they had learned about God and about themselves were so very, VERY similar to what it sounds like when I get together with my close girlfriends who care as much about following Jesus as I do. Like, learning the benefits of repentance, or the beauty of certain prayers, or how difficult it is to balance modern life with religious life, or how frustrating it is when people of religious conviction use religion to continue to keep women "under control." I sat there listening for a very long time, an hour at least, and then finally screwed up the courage to say something about all these thoughts. I had chimed in here and there before, but it took me a while to chime in on the religious conversations.
And they were so understanding, welcoming, and pleased that I was joining in. I remember one of them saying, "well, of course this reminds you of your religion, for it is said ‘there are many roses, but only one water source.’" Which I still think is very beautiful. Forget for a moment all the debates about who is saved and who isn’t (I am SO glad I am not God and don’t have to make decisions like that!!), it was amazing to find this common ground with these young women, and to have that conversation. So often here, I feel isolated, just as that British woman feels surrounded and edified, by the religious life here. And I wonder if she feels like that in England??… maybe, but the general public here are far, far more religious than the general public in any other country I have been in. Secondly, it was amazing to get the educated feminine perspective on religion here. There are one, maybe two other women in my village who have been to college in my village. One is the doctor at the clinic and the other is nurse at the clinic. So often all I get for my questions here is "because God wants," or "because God doesn’t want" for an answer. And to just hear these women engaging their religion emotionally, spiritually AND intellectually was a huge, huge breath of fresh air. And made me take a step back from what I had been thinking. I admit it, I had been just about fed up with this seemingly close-minded, insistent, rule-heavy religion. And here, for once I found the fabled tolerance, devotion and thoughtfulness I had heard of. So, l-Hamdulillah (Thanks be to God) for the opportunity to meet those remarkable women!
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