Our monthly Zoom call will be a week early this week because I will be traveling. So, next week. I do a book giveaway on each call, you don’t want to miss that!
Join me on Wednesday, June 23 from 7:00-8:00 pm GMT+3
Topic: Pillars Book Club Zoom 3
Time: Jun 23, 2021 07:00 PM Djibouti
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87156345904?pwd=OHVkZjNXTGNoMFpzdUJRYjArM0ZaQT09
Chapter 13 Jinn
Have you heard of or had any experiences with jinn or other types of invisible spiritual forces?
What are your own ideas and beliefs about things like jinn, demons, angels, ghosts…?
One thing I have especially appreciated about Islam is the physicality of it. How do you experience your faith in physical, tangible ways?
Chapter 14 Outsider
Have you ever felt like I did at the party, left alone while everyone else is praying? Did you want to join? Why or why not?
What do you think about the term “spiritual expatriate”? Does that resonate with you? How would you describe your own interactions with people of different faiths?
Chapter 15 Unsettled and Resettled
In this chapter, I meet Amaal. Oh my goodness, I love this woman! I hope that comes across in the book. She has been such a gift and a delight over all these years. Do you have a friend like that? Someone you can point to and say, I would not have lived her so long or with so much joy if not for you?
One lesson, which should have been self-evident but I needed to learn it, was how diverse Somalis are, how diverse Muslims are. From Somaliland to Djibouti, from individual to individual, we need to encounter people on their unique terms. Of course there are broad strokes of similarities, but also people are fascinatingly unique. How have you experienced this?
What else strikes you from these chapters?
(don’t forget to join us next week on the Zoom call!)
I think the quote that stood out to me the most from these chapters is “I had thought Somalis would envy my freedom and informality. Instead, I found people were satisfied for the most part with their interaction with God.”
I know that I was brought up with this idea that “people have a God shaped hole they are seeking to fill”. And we are to talk to our neighbors and friends so they can realize about the hole and we can tell them the solution. I now wonder at the arrogance I carried. There is little empathy to see that people’s lives and experiences are valid to them. I was listening to a podcast the other day where someone suggested that all Christians who go overseas do so with an assumption of superiority. I want to deny it but I am concluding much of having to undo our white savior complexes is because we have internalized that fixing things is our most loving contribution.
(Also, apologies if I am reading too much into that quote but that’s what it got me thinking about).
I really resonated with your descriptions of being a spiritual expatriate and that longing to join in and connect spiritually with a place and a people. When I taught at a high school in Tanzania, my Muslim students would go to a tiny room for their daily prayers. For months, I saw them doing this and my curiosity grew and grew. Then during Ramadan, I saw them sacrificing their own comfort for their faith (especially surprising in 13-year-olds!) I told them that I'd like to fast with them. They gave me lots of pointers, and we chose a day. On that day, one of my favorite students came to get me from my room. She shyly asked if I wanted to pray with them that day because I was fasting with them. She carefully instructed me how to clean myself, how to wrap my headscarf, and placed me in the back of the room to participate to the best of my ability. I stuck out in so many ways in Tanzania and I often had my outsider status reinforced to me, but, in that moment, I felt a connection beyond words. I was so grateful for my students' acceptance and trust and welcome. I was scared to tell my supporters back home about it, and honestly have never really written or spoken of it before now. But I'm so grateful for that memory and that moment.