Deep Thoughts on Prayer

Really Deep Religious Thoughts

I have grown up in the Mennonite World and for the past two years I have lived in the Muslim world. It was my students who gave me the best insight into their culture and religion.  I was struck with the many similarities between growing up Mennonite and Growing up Muslim. I have had two long years in this little desert country to think, ponder, research and delve into the complex intricacies of these two religions, Mennonite and Islam. For example, did you know that the names of the followers of these two religions each begin with the letter M.  Don’t let that I in Islam fool you.

It is impossible to separate religion from the culture.  The two form an intricate interwoven fabric of values and norms that would be about as easy to separate as Siamese twins using 17th century surgical technology and know how.  The Islamic faith and virtually the entire basis of their belief system is often referred to as the Five Pillars. It is a rich architectural analogy that really seems to work, although I think it was Samson who pulled some pillars down in a rage over a really bad hair day he was having, but that could be more a Biblical than a Koranic reference.

The first pillar of Islam deals with prayer, ironical as I wrote that word prayer, I happened to be sitting in my office in Kuwait, in fact I can go one further, the call to prayer sounded at the same moment my I-Pod blasted out Placido Domingo singing Verdi’s Celeste Aida.  How ironic is that?

Personally, I have adjusted to the call to prayer and often wage a war of attrition with my I-Pod or TV set to drown out the call to prayer in its entirety  as it is projected from two giant minarets, sounds like a contradiction, I know.  Each tower is mounted with four loudspeakers so the Iman can be heard in surround sound. The minarets are situated directly across the street from our apartment at about the fourth floor level. Fortunately, our apartment is on the eighth floor and this affords us a small measure of acoustical relief.

During the call to prayer, each of the approximately 1000 mosques in Kuwait is actively broadcasting a similar message in 1000 different voices.  I have always felt, since living here, that Cat Stevens, now called Yousef and a devout Muslim, should be hired to make a Call to Prayer CD with a little acoustical guitar added in, so that all the mosques could pump out an identical message that had some musical merit.  Some Iman’s sound rhythmic while others just wouldn’t know their way around a Gregorian chat if it bit them in the ass.

The sound begins to bounce off buildings, echoes, and recoshes in every direction, like a 22 caliber bullet off a cement wall, to the point that the “call” morphs into an incomprehensible jumble of Arabic that I doubt many Kuwaitis could discern in any logical fashion. Yet it seems to work because as I look out my bedroom window I see the faithful begin to assemble from the four points of the compass and know exactly how to align their prayer mats with Mecca.

I have often wondered what the call to prayer actually means.  And I know as a reader what you must be thinking at this point, if I am such a hot shot Islamic/ Mennonite scholar/theologian why don’t I know what the call means.  The best way to interpret the meaning to the call to prayer, other than googling it, is too simply use sound recognition and basic phonetics. Its quite simple.

If your biological clock is not tuned into the schedule of the call to prayer, one only need get a copy of the Arab Times in which the prayer schedule is posted.  I am at the point at which my bladder is synchronized with the 3 am call to prayer. Sometimes I am up and semi awake and just tooling along the dark hallway to the washroom before the call even starts. Most often I could be back in bed before the “call” is finished.  I took it as a personal quest to do so.  During  many nights I don’t even hear the call to prayer any more.  I have hardened my heart.

Mennonites, like Muslims, are also expected to pray.  We are not on an exacting schedule and it is more up in the air (pun) as to what we say in our personal relationship to God and even when we say our prayers. Thank God we lack structure in regard to prayer.  I don’t want to be told when and where to pray.  We may pray in the car, in bed, kneeling down, on or off of a tiny rug, while walking, before meal time, at bedtime in rhyming couplets, free verse, or just as an inner monologue in traditional speech bubbles.  Basically, prayer is a free form open ended communication with out a cumbersome service provider and bad reception, using completely integrated and Apple compatible software.  The point is as Mennonites we probable pray a lot and for any number of reasons.  

As kid I prayed long and hard for a puppy, a new bike, a rifle, cap guns, snow days, White Christmas, a long and happy life for the Easter bunny and a heavenly host of other similar items, events or products.  I had mixed results with my praying and so the verdict is still out as to its effectiveness.  

I know as a kid, my brother and I shared a bedroom, actually we shared until we were in our twenties, despite the fact I had prayed for a separate room since grade 7; so I guess you can better appreciate my point relating to prayer effectiveness.  Perhaps praying for selfish things is not acceptable and if there is any pre screening or editing process for prayers on the way to heaven some of these more self centered wishes may get filtered out.  I don’t know for sure I can only pray for understanding. 

When my mom was in my room at bed time we always prayed on our knees beside the bed, in what I would term a regulation pose.  When mom wasn’t there, if I did pray, I would pray in a prone position in bed, under the covers moments before falling asleep.  As a teen ager I think my prayers grew to be even more self centered and often had sexual themes about girls I had crushes on in grades 9 through 13. In retrospect I believe this era of prayer was probably verging on blasphemy and explains why I had pimples into my twenties and was very awkward with girls.  God works in mysterious ways.

As a university student I had a moratorium on prayer.  University days were a time of self doubt, religious doubt, a lack of faith in governmental institutions, a fear of nuclear war, and sexual transmitted diseases.  University was a time during which many Mennonite youths likely drifted from their faith. It might be safer to say that I didn’t so much drift away as much as I escaped in a high powered speed boat, like the ones used by drug runners in the Bahamas, and I made a dramatic rooster tail as I temporarily sped away from my religious roots.  The problem with drifting or speeding from your faith is that it is difficult, if not hypocritical to pray for guidance along the way.  

You see the thing about prayer I think is that we have to become vulnerable, have faith and trust in God.  As a student, and even now I still have core questions as to whether prayer can be answered.  One school of thought is that God did not create Man.  We created God and in our own image, but in some circles I could get shunned for even having that thought.

Recently, I had a excellent opportunity to reconnect with my Mennonite roots while trying to explain just exactly what Mennonites were to a class full of my own Muslim students.  How on earth could they possible relate in any meaningful way to a conservative  based religion founded by holy prophets from isolated Middle Eastern desert countries?  How could they grasp a religion, such as mine in which women were often covered and dressed in black, a religion in which men held dominance and controlled everything from finances to family planning and who often had long beards and wore sandals.  It all seemed so absurdly theoretical.

How could I convey to my students the subtleties of my religion that originally had an agrarian base and a very nomadic existence as Mennonites in their diaspora settled around the world from Paraguay to Alma Ata on the Chinese border?  How could Muslim kids connect with the idea that we read from a holy book and often went to special classes, frequently held during the hot summer months, to memorize long passages of scriptures? How does one try to elucidate the concept of the importance of family and extended family over the importance of the nation state?  In so many ways explaining the characteristics of Mennonites to questioning Islamic students was like getting a camel through the eye of a needle.  It can’t be done.  My students just thought I was making it all up like I did most of my other lessons.

I soon grew to realize what a bizarre religion I had sprung from, even some of the stories we were taught in Sunday School don’t really hold up under heavy scrutiny.  I have heard these Bible stories over and over again to the point that it is difficult for me to write a piece of fiction without including Biblical allusions. Do you remember my reference to Samson in the introduction?

Bottom line is that I’m thankful I live in a multicultural tolerate country (Canada) which embraces religious freedom. I am most thankful that the Christian Bible was first written in English, I refer of course to the King James version, and not in some difficult foreign language that is read from right to left and from the back of the book to the front.  I believe, like most Christians, that the Bible was divinely inspired.  Had it been written in other languages like say latin, (no longer on the curriculum), Hebrew or even Greek each time it was translated it would lose some potency as meanings were lost in translation and before long it would be rendered almost meaningless.

Was the Earth really completely flooded?  Did Noah actually gather up 2 of every species or just a partial representative sample?  Does God answer prayer?  Why is there suffering in the world?  Why was my 2005 tax return audited?  Religions create more questions than they answer.

I can only be reminded of the words of the Dali Lama who once said, “ ..test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” I just pray the next time he is reincarnated the Chinese will give him his country back.

Amen.