Camel Cart Rides

When I have more time, and we're not being daily threatened by the zombie apocalypse, I'll try and make sense of the recent manic student trip to India. I suppose I shouldn't overstate its stress, because we did make it back across the border into the US with 11 minutes to spare . . .

Nevertheless, it ended up being a great trip, and now that I've finished my latest self-imposed writing challenge (as compared to my self-isolation) I'm going to start getting caught up on some posts.  On last year's trip I ventured to Rajasthan for the first time and I loved it, and the students loved, and the students loved it again this year. Pushkar has been a joy on both trips, and this time we actually had the opportunity to head around town in one of their famous camel carts. On the one hand it's rather touristy, but it's not as if the locals don't take camel cart rides themselves. Next time we need to get even further out into the desert, obviously, but no matter we'll definitely be heading back to Pushkar.

And here is our mini-cavaran of camel carts heading out. They came and picked us up at our glamping site (more on that later) and we cruised around for over an hour.

Naturally, the students, in this particular case Sara, loved the camels.

And here was a nosy friend on the ride back.

I really love Rajasthan, and my friend and colleague discussed running an entire course just based on Rajasthan alone, and it would be pretty epic .

What It Means - Day 365

And we've reached the end, or at least the end of this go-around, of my year-long reflection on faith, or at least my little corner of faith. As I've stated repeatedly, I don't speak for my faith, and one of the reasons why I became a Muslim in the first place is that no one truly speaks for the entire faith. I'm just a person trying to lead my life, live my faith, and use my faith to make the best decisions for the people in my life and the people not in my life.

There's never been a grand plan for the direction I was taking, nor a plan for having it all add up to anything. Rather, I just spend year - to paraphrase my excellent friend Sanford - just talking about what I'm talking about (or, maybe slightly more elegantly, thinking about what I was thinking about). I guess this is my way of saying that I wasn't building with an appropriately magnificent finish. That said, for some reason this final post makes sense in a way. When I was in India I had the opportunity to revisit the Taj Mahal, but I had never been there as the sun was coming up.  You should always visit the Taj Mahal, but if you ever have the chance to get there as the sun is coming up you should make every effort to take advantage of that opportunity. The light is extraordinary, and it makes it all even more magical. I snapped the picture of the Taj from the adjoining mosque, and it's a great shot. In addition, I took the opportunity to sneak into a quiet corner of the mosque and pray. It was still crowded, but because it was the morning it was not as insanely crowded as it normally is, so no one paid me much mind as I prayed in the corner. So, I guess the point of all this is, that while the whole of Islam is glorious and magnificent, my little corner is just my little corner, and that's enough for me.

What It Means - Day 364

" . . . when the pages are spread, and when Heaven is laid bare; when Hellfire is kindled, and when the Garden is brought nigh, each soul shall know what it has made ready."
Quran 81:10-14

I think this is the first time I've drawn anything from al-Takwir, the 81st surah, here rendered as "The Enfolding." It seems that we've touched upon heaven and hell a bit lately, which gave me the opportunity to, clumsily, always clumsily, on my belief that so much of that description is metaphoric. If, as we've been discussing, heaven and hell are just metaphors to describe your nearness or distance from God, then what does all the discussion of a final judgment mean? Yes, there may be a day when the moon is cleaved and the stars are shattered, but to me it's all a grand reminder of the fact that your actions, every single one of them, carries a weight and has a meaning. Not because I think that God is a great accountant, adding and subtracting with every act (we're not Buddhists, after all) but rather that we should understand that we are adding and subtracting with every act, and we should be mindful of the weight and meaning of every action.

What It Means - Day 363

OK, here's one of those odd days - and I'm running out of days on this year-long quest - wherein I don't start off with a passage from the Quran of the ahadith. And, no, I don't think the image, per se, is What It Means; that is, I suppose that I am a true Muslim at heart, in that I err more on the iconoclastic side of things. Nevertheless, I'll go ahead and post this image nonetheless. I picked this up in Agra on the recent India trip. We were dragged to one of the local shops, where, we were told, the descendants of the actual craftsmen who built the Taj Mahal still worked. Now, I had told the students before hand that along the way, at least once but probably more than that, our guides would miraculously suddenly remember that they knew of a place where we could go, that was worked by the actual descendants yadda yadda yadda. I'm not opposed to it, obviously because we all need to make a living, and I know that a certain percentage of the sale gets kicked back to the tour guide (so that if you like your guide you're essentially just tipping her/him) although the theatrics of the sudden remembrance is often pretty clumsy. I had told the students what to expect at the beginning so several of them had to try and hide their smiles. Nevertheless, I did go ahead and buy this one piece, which was marble with inlaid malachite - or at least something like marble with something like inlaid malachite (actually, I think it's a little bit of both, although probably of lesser quality of both, which is also fine).

Even if you don't know a lot of Arabic (and my own understanding of Arabic, shameful to admit, is brutish) you might recognize the word Allah. I had been wanting something with Allah's name on it, so this seemed like perfect opportunity to splurge and get myself something, which I don't often do.

What It Means - Day 362

"Therein they recline upon couches, seeing neither sun nor bitter cold. Its shade shall be close above them, and its clusters shall be made to hang low. And vessels of silver and goblets are brought round for them - silvern crystal that they have measured out with due measure. Therein they are given to drink of a cup mixed with ginger, a spring therein named Salabil. Immoral youths wait upon them; when you see them you would suppose them to be scattered pearls. And when thou seest, there thou wilt see bliss and a great kingdom. Upon them are garments of fine green silk and rich brocade. They are adorned with silvern bracelets and their Lord shall give them to drink of a drink most pure. Truly this is a reward for you, and your endeavoring is held in gratitude."
Quran 76:13-22

This passage, drawn, once again, from al-Insan, "Man," the 76th surah,contains some of the most vivid representations of heaven found in the entire Quran. Of course, what is being described is what paradise will be like for those who have, as we're constantly reminded, believe and performed righteous deeds. It's sometimes said that with each new incarnation of the Abrahamic faiths the vision of heaven and hell become more and more specific, and this particular passage would vouchsafe that proposal. Now, do I really think that paradise is like that? No, not really, not at all. I think it's a metaphor, while recognizing the danger of going down that path. It's a dangerous path, or at least a slippery slope (clearly I'm trying to mix as many metaphors here as I can), because if you passages in the Quran, or any holy text for that matter, as metaphors then you add a level of vaguery and human interpretation to any discussion of the divine, which is one of the reasons why the literal minded like literal interpretations. However,the ineffable is described as the ineffable for a reason, and thus you're reduced to using metaphors to describe the indescribable as best you can. Nasr makes the point in the Heart of Islam that the good is just closeness to God and evil is just distance from God, and I find that very understandable and compelling. Now, how does one begin to explain that level of joy or pain, and thus you come up with metaphors such as the one above.

What It Means - Day 361

"They fulfill their vows and fear a day whose evil is widespread, and give good, despite loving it, to the indigent, the orphan and the captive."
Quran 76:7

The 76th surah, al-Insan, is generally rendered as "Man." In this instance the passage is referring to the pious and how they are supposed to behave. Naturally, if you've been following along all year, you know that I chose this section because of the notion of feeding the indigent and the orphan. I seem to be automatically drawn to any passage that lays out a very tangible path of human conduct. I guess I'm feeling this now because in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic we're facing the prospect of potentially closing the Food Shelf here in South Burlington for a while. I don't know if it will come to that - I suspect we'll just end up giving our prepared food bags at the door for a couple weeks - but just discussing the possibility is distressing. I'm fortunate. I may be in between places to live at the moment, but I also have great friends who happily took me in and gave me a great place to live in their basement as I wait out the self-isolation phase that came with passing through Heathrow Airport on the way back from India. What I'm facing is an inconvenience, whereas way too many people are facing truly dire situations, so when we talk about temporarily closing down the Food Shelf is just pains me. Every time I see pictures of someone who is dramatically hoarding food or supplies in the face of this, or any other, disaster I'm just amazed that this person might also be identifying themselves as people of faith. Is not feeding the less fortunate the most essential act of faith?

What It Means - Day 360

"Does man suppose that he would be left aimless?"
Quran 75:36

This very brief passage is drawn from the 75th surah, al-Qiyamah, "The Resurrection." It seems like I've talked about it before, or maybe it was just a similar passage elsewhere in the Quran. I like this particular passage because it brings us back to the bigger core question of why any of us are here in the first place. Nasr makes the point that we were created because God simply could not not create us. The good always want to share their goodness, so by definition the ultimately Good will have to share its Goodness, and so we had to be created. This isn't like the Popol Vuh where the gods kept creating and erasing early creatures because they weren't particularly good at worshiping the gods, but instead in this instance humans were created because God wanted to share his Goodness, or maybe it's better to think about sharing the beauty of the world, even though at this moment it doesn't feel very beautiful. However, it doesn't stop there, because just throwing us in the deep end of the pool means that we're going to flounder more frequently than we'll going to win a gold medal in the 100 meter free style. So, there has to be a point to all of this, which also brings us back, in some ways, to the general question of free will. If we were created because of goodness, then shouldn't our lives be about goodness?  If we're good to our fellow human beings, then we're, I would argue, by definition being good to God, and thus there is an aim to life.