"This is bitter medicine, so bitter that we instinctively recoil from taking it. The sickness remains chronic and the disease becomes incurable. Great men have endeavoured to perform two cycles of Prayer without having any internal conversation about worldly matters, only to find themselves unequal to the task. No hope, then, for the likes of us! If only we may be safe from temptation during half of the Prayer, or one third, so that our deeds are at least a mixture of good and bad!"
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Inner Dimensions of Islamic Worship
Anyone who reads Saint Augustine's Confessions, and we should all read Saint Augustine's Confessions, is always taken by the line, "God grant me chastity and continency, but not yet." This statement is not a celebration of sin, but rather a declaration of how difficult faith is. I guess it's not surprising that this line popped into my head when I was reading al-Ghazali's comments, wherein he's continuing his reflection on the difficulty of praying without thinking about the events of the world or even noticing who is praying next to you. There's that dumb line "dance as if no one is watching you" that makes its way around Facebook every so often; maybe we need to reach the same sense of release wherein we pray with the same freedom.
Oh, and this is inspiring me to reread the Confessions (because I clearly need more to read at the moment). I remember it being a deeply moving work, although I read it over thirty years ago and long before I was technically a person of faith (whatever that means). Or maybe I was always a person of faith, but not officially a person of faith (again, whatever that means).
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Inner Dimensions of Islamic Worship
Anyone who reads Saint Augustine's Confessions, and we should all read Saint Augustine's Confessions, is always taken by the line, "God grant me chastity and continency, but not yet." This statement is not a celebration of sin, but rather a declaration of how difficult faith is. I guess it's not surprising that this line popped into my head when I was reading al-Ghazali's comments, wherein he's continuing his reflection on the difficulty of praying without thinking about the events of the world or even noticing who is praying next to you. There's that dumb line "dance as if no one is watching you" that makes its way around Facebook every so often; maybe we need to reach the same sense of release wherein we pray with the same freedom.
Oh, and this is inspiring me to reread the Confessions (because I clearly need more to read at the moment). I remember it being a deeply moving work, although I read it over thirty years ago and long before I was technically a person of faith (whatever that means). Or maybe I was always a person of faith, but not officially a person of faith (again, whatever that means).
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