What It Means - Day 313

This is normally where I post a selection from a Quranic surah or a saying of the Prophet (hadith), but actually I just wanted to talk about my experience from last night. Being a Friday I had already visited the masjid for the midday sermon. During his talk the Imam had been talking about surah 91, al-Shams, "The Sun," which I wrote about here months ago. He mentioned that the halaqa, a lecture/discussion, later that night would follow through on the same themes. I thought this was interesting, and while I don't get to the halaqa nearly as much as I would like to, I decided to definitely attend. Truthfully, I was also moved to attend because the Imam had mentioned the barzakh, which I had recently swapped emails with him about (and I wrote about last week). Anyway, I arranged my late afternoon schedule so that I could make it to the masjid in time for the 6:16 p.m. night prayer; as we've discussed many times, the prayer times moved depending upon the length of the day so right night the Isha'a prayer, the final prayer of the day, falls really early. What I had forgotten was that sometimes on Friday we push the Isha'a prayer back closer to the halaqa, and also the kids movie night. So, when I burst in at a quarter of six I had the place to myself, with the exception of a couple kids and moms running around upstairs. This meant that I had the first floor, the main section of the masjid, all to myself. I've confessed that when I pop into the masjid during odd hours for afternoon prayers, when it's often fairly deserted, I'm always afraid that one of the brothers will ask me to lead the prayer. As you know, I've also confessed that I, to my shame, haven't learned enough Arabic to do that yet, so in these instances I always have to beg off and allow the other brother to lead. One of my goals for this next year is to create a simpler life so that I can finally learn more of the Arabic that I need to more fully participate, including leading the ritual prayers when I'm tagged. Anyway, last night I had the whole main area to myself. I did my prayers, pulled won a copy of Nasr's Study Quran off the wall, and studied for a while, completely happy. I still had some time to kill before the halaqa started so I left to get some coffee and run an errand, and by the time I returned the masjid was much busier. The point of this poorly focused post is that I loved my time sitting quietly in the masjid, which it more proof that I think I've made the right choice.