Making space

‘Your body has taken the car keys away.'

I am part of a group called Rest, Repair, Recover. It is for people like me, who live with Long Covid, and it was set up by a coach and yoga teacher called Suzy Bolt. I found it in April this year when, after nearly a year of my health being like a rollercoaster, I knew I needed to do something to get myself back to stability. Initially, I'd hoped to carve out an hour or 90 minutes of my day every Tuesday and Thursday to join the Zoom classes, move gently, have some conscious rest and chat to fellow long-haulers. But meetings and work commitments soon eroded that time, and I was snatching quick half-hour slots when I could and promising myself I'd do the classes on catch-up.

At that point, I was on the upslope of the rollercoaster. I'd been on a walking and birdwatching holiday and had managed to walk nearly 10,000 steps some days. I had done my first in-person workshop at work since September 2022. I'd even managed to go to Jamatkhana for prayers. But as I climbed the heights of recovery, the demands accumulated. An onslaught of work projects. My sister's upcoming 40th birthday. A 2-day training programme for leaders in my religious community that I was designing. Making the cake for my friend's wedding. The usual round of domestic duties. Friends who were in tough places in their lives. Trying to carve out time for meditation, prayer and movement. My long-suffering partner who got the scraps of my time and energy that weren't going on work.

By June, I was clinging on by a thread at work. My carefully constructed veneer of competence was crumbling. Emails went unanswered, reports delayed. I found myself looking at a report that I could have edited in my sleep, and couldn't find the will to edit even a single word. One of my leadership team colleagues was already on sabbatical and another was due to go in September. I felt obliged to push through. 'Once I get this done, it will be better.' 'Once my new line report is more established in her role, I'll have more space.' 'Once I kick myself up the arse, I'll be able to tackle all the things.' I was going to bed thinking of all the things I had to do, and couldn't do. I was getting up the next morning telling myself that it was my own silly fault I'd had poor sleep, and that was no excuse not to get on with it.

My sister's 40th came and went. I made a slap-up afternoon tea for close family and friends, scones and all. We ate the leftovers for three days. My friend's wedding was the following weekend. I'd taken the whole week off. Thursday, I baked cake layers. Friday, I baked more cake layers, took the tube to the Ismaili Centre for the religious wedding ceremony, had coffee with a friend, stayed for prayers. Saturday, stacking and icing the cake, with a pause for lunch with my parents. Sunday, the wedding. The final touches to the cake went on at 11:30. At 11:40, my sister called. "I have a dent in my head, I can't come to the wedding!" It turned out she had fallen from a stool and injured her head badly enough to need stitches. By 1pm, I was in a taxi on the way to the wedding and she was in an ambulance. She was stitched up, and went home. I read a Rumi poem about love and toasted my friends with sparkling water. By the time I left, the dancing had only just started and there was almost no cake left.

Monday and Tuesday were spent in bed.

Still I did not learn. Back to work I went. I took a sick day each week. I went to an in-person bid interview. We did not win. I went on a weekend retreat and gave myself no recovery time either side. I spent my evenings training up the delivery team for the 2-day training. I kept telling myself that I wasn't enough, I wasn't doing enough, it wasn't good enough. I still needed to do more, be more. I was falling further and further behind. The rollercoaster, by now, wasn't so much on the downslope as derailed and heading for the skids.

When the crash came, it started almost imperceptibly. I had the merest suggestion of a cold. A half-day sore throat and nothing else... apart from fatigue that kept me in bed and as non-functional as I'd been in the first days of Covid over a year before. A day off work became a week, became a request to be signed off for two weeks. I spent a tearful weekend going back and forth in my head, and in conversation with my partner, about whether I could go back to work, and how I was going to deal with the huge backlog when I did. By this point, conversations happened in 10-minute increments, as I was too breathless for more.

The following Thursday, I shared my dilemma in the weekly question-and-answer session that followed our Zoom class. "Your body has taken the car keys away," said Suzy. I could no longer be trusted to look after my body, so it wasn't going to give me the option any more. I realised I had no choice. I had to make space for my recovery and health, and that meant something had to give. That something was work, or so I thought. I was signed off from mid-August until the end of the year. And almost from the moment I made the decision, my body finally began to relax. I could rest without ruminating. I slept deeply and without dreams. I shambled out of the house for stuttering 10-minute walks in the late August sun without guilt for all that was left undone. I prioritised breathwork, gentle movement and rest. Slowly, 10 minutes became 15, became 20. The first day I baked again, for pleasure, not obligation, was pure joy. I could pay attention to my friends again. I could be fully present with my partner.

I was still sometimes tempted to do too much. I still found myself saying 'but I have to do this.' I still found myself driven by the fear of disappointing people, of not being enough. But under the surface, a new way of being was starting to emerge. I was starting to pace myself. I was starting to set boundaries. I could say 'please have a backup ready in case I'm too ill to do this,' or 'I'd love to but I'll have to let you know on the day depending on how I'm feeling' or 'thank you so much for thinking of me, I'm flattered that you would ask, but I don't have the capacity to take this on.'

More importantly, I was starting to prioritise differently. Rest, breathwork, gentle movement and meditation became increasingly non-negotiable. Naps were planned into the day. I focused on the things that brought me ease and joy. I re-prioritised my spiritual practice, from which I'd been increasingly disconnected. I kept reminding myself that treating myself with kindness was for the benefit of all beings, that I am not separate from the world I so deeply want to heal.

Perhaps most of all, I am starting to see the possibility of letting go of the story that I am not enough. I am starting to wonder what it might be like to let go of being driven by the fear of disappointing people. I am starting to consider how it might be to step off the treadmill of always pushing through because I am scared to let people down.

And in the space left by the absence of that story, perhaps more can emerge. There is room for creativity, to write for myself, not for work. There is room to consider how I truly want to live and what I actually want to do with this one wild and precious life. There is room to go to the dark places and not be afraid of them taking away my functioning. There is room to be deeply with my friends, my partner and myself. There is room where the Divine Presence may, in time, once again make itself known in my life. There is room for gratitude, and generosity. There is room for not-knowing. And finally, there is room for healing.

Time to Talk, mental health and guilt-trippy Facebook posts

Now, this is a nice confluence of events. Over the last few weeks I've noticed a proliferation of guilt-trippy facebook posts that run something like this:

- Mention of mental health awareness
- Mention of being there for people, having chocolate etc
- Guilt trip - I bet X% of people won't post this

These posts have left me torn. I am pleased that people are mentioning the words 'mental health' without getting all weird about it. And the offer of chocolate, real or virtual, is rather nice. But then I read the guilt trip and my heart sinks. As though our moral worth is dependent on whether we copy and paste a facebook status. And all the lovely, open-hearted words in the rest of the post vanish into thin air. I've wanted to post a riposte, but other events have rather taken over in the last week or so.

And then today is Time to Talk day, spearheaded by the Time to Change campaign. A perfect opportunity to talk about mental health awareness and really being there for people who are suffering and struggling.

And in an even more interesting confluence of events, I read this today: http://www.frominsultstorespect.com/2015/03/14/from-psychiatric-name-calling-to-plain-humane-english/. It resonated pretty strongly with me, although I know I don't have a lot of experience to draw from. What I do know is that I have a really ambivalent attitude to seeing my own suffering as 'mental illness.' On the one hand, a label like 'depression' was really useful, at various points. It meant that people treated my erratic behaviour with a bit more kindness than perhaps they might otherwise have done. I think it helped me a bit to move away from the persistent 'you are weak, pull yourself together, snap out of it' stream of thoughts that plagued me. It helped me not to feel quite so much that it was a moral failing on my part. It had practical benefits too - a bit more time to finish my Master's dissertation, in particular.

On the other hand, I never really bought the 'brain chemistry' explanation for what I was feeling. I knew that my emotional responses were all over the place, and there was no apparent reason for me to feel so disproportionately empty, and angry, and bleak, and wanting to disappear. And yet, it did have meaning. My episodes of depression - especially the two more recent ones - have been followed by breakthroughs and new insights. Through plumbing the depths of my own suffering, I realised how much of it was caused not by my brain chemistry but by my lack of kindness towards myself and by some deeply ingrained false beliefs about who I was and who I felt I should be. It took a lot of hard self-examination, supported by very kind friends, teachers and therapists, to have those breakthroughs. It was painful, and I often didn't have the energy for much else. Not to mention that it was expensive. And perhaps if I'd believed in the brain chemistry explanation I wouldn't have gone down that road. I might have tried other, more medical means, to 'fix' myself. I might even have believed that I wasn't fixable.

I'm still not sure what really caused my depression, or how to think about mental illness in general, not just mine. There are more conversations to be had here, I am sure.

But there's also a more immediate conversation to be had. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about Time to Talk day is because I tried and failed to hide what was going on for me and it made it worse. I felt more isolated and more desperate. And when I shared it, I realised that people did understand, and they didn't think less of me, and, to my enduring shock, they love me still. And so it matters to me that you, reading this post, have somewhere that you feel safe to share your suffering as and when you need it - whether you call it mental illness or not. And if I'm that person, then that's an honour and a privilege and I will honour it as best I can.

One soul (reprise)

Scattered thoughts from a weekend in which the President of the USA banned all citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US, even if they had green cards.

By one stroke of the pen, families have been separated. Jobs, homes, marriages, university places can be stripped away in a moment. There are real lives, people like you and me, being affected by this policy. My heart cannot fathom how much pain they must be feeling, how much fear and terror and uncertainty there must be, and it hurts in empathy with them. 

'O mankind, we have created you male and female and made you nations and tribes that ye might know one another.' (Qur'an, 49:13 (excerpt))

There is so much pain. The pain of those whose lives have been ripped apart by this travel ban or who live in fear of such a rupture. And equally, the pain of those in the rust belt who can see only the loss of their jobs and livelihoods, who live in a grinding poverty that I can only imagine, and who understandably fear change and further loss. I read today a story of a white woman who grew up in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama) and saw her neighbourhood change to become somewhere that she felt unsafe. It made me uncomfortable in its racist overtones and yet there was real pain there. I can't ignore that.

I know two things:

1. This is an injustice and must be stopped.

2. I cannot allow this to make me hate or dehumanise anyone, no matter how deeply I disagree with them.

And yet how desperately hard it is to hold on to both of these things. And yet the Qur'an is so blindingly clear. 'Be aware of your Lord, who created you from a single soul.' (4:1 (excerpt)). If I believe that, I must find a way to act for justice, yet without hatred. 

I find myself aware of my privilege, too. I have a British passport. I speak English with an accent that does not give away my ethnic or religious background. I am well educated, middle class and well off. I look white, mostly dress white, and pass as white, for all that I identify as brown. I am not the target of hate on a daily basis. All of these are a privilege. How do I use that privilege to speak out against injustice, without patronising those who have direct experience of that injustice?

Standing against oppression

Without knowing chapter and verse, I have always believed that my faith entails standing against oppression and for justice. I was always told that the Qur'an condemned oppression (see, for example, 42:39-44), and the stories I loved of the Prophet and Imam Ali reinforced that lesson. But it goes deeper than that - it goes back to the 'one soul' premise. If I'm serious about that premise, then I cannot let injustice stand, even if it happens to distant others. And that's as true of police brutality to black Americans (#blacklivesmatter) as it is of this travel ban.

So I will be standing outside 10 Downing Street tomorrow. I can't think of anything else that I can legitimately do from here (please do send further recommendations). If I get time, I will be standing with a sign that quotes Matthew 25: I was a stranger, and ye took me in... Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25: 36, 40 (excerpts)). By all accounts, Theresa May is a committed Christian, so these words should have some resonance.

Only love will destroy hatred

In this world

Hate never yet dispelled hate.

Only love dispels hate.

This is the law,

Ancient and inexhaustible.

You too shall pass away.

Knowing this, how can you quarrel?

(The Dhammapada)

Reading this again, I know it to be true, in my own heart and experience. I can't explain it and it probably isn't rational but I have faith that if we can embody love, in all that we do, rest in the Source of love, however we might experience that (call him Allah or call him al-Rahman, to Him belong the most beautiful names), it does make a difference. I am called again to live with love, to love even those I don't like, to meet every stranger with love as best I can. I'll be doing a formal loving-kindness (metta) meditation every day this week, and calling Ya Rahman Ya Rahim whenever I have a spare moment, and I have to hope that that helps somehow, if only in soothing my troubled heart and making me more open to loving others.

Hee Munjo Deen Ai post 4 - Sherbet and Cake

79 years ago today, Prince Karim al-Hussaini, now the Aga Khan and the 49th Imam of the Shi'a Imami Ismaili Muslims, was born in Geneva. Every year, the Salgirah, or birthday, of the Imam is an occasion for huge rejoicing, for jamatkhanas everywhere to be packed to the rafters with people dressed up to the nines.

It's a celebration not just of one man and the tremendous difference he has made to the quality of life, spiritual and material, of millions of people across the world, but of the presence of a living spiritual guide. It is an outpouring of joy that there remains on this earth someone descended from the Prophet and from Ali, with both the authority to interpret the faith for the present day, and, somehow, the "light" that can't quite be explained, that enables him to do so with a level of wisdom and compassion that are extra-ordinary. It is an occasion to remember that, as he tells us so frequently, his guiding, supporting hand is on the shoulder of each one of us, upholding us in his love and care.

(There will be more posts on the Imam, and on the concept of the Imam, but to get some measure of the man, have a listen to his recent lecture at Harvard University: http://www.theismaili.org/news-events/increasingly-fragmented-planet-need-cosmopolitan-ethic-hazar-imam-tells-harvard-audience).

In the South Asian tradition of Ismailism, any big happy occasion, including weddings and religious festivals like Salgirah, is celebrated with "sherbet and cake." Sherbet is a drink of sweetened milk flavoured with rosewater, coloured pink and topped with chopped pistachios. Its rose pink colour, studded with green, and delicate flavour, are indelibly associated with rejoicing in my mind. (It helps that I love the taste of it, too). After the jamatkhana ceremonies tonight, everyone will gather in the social hall, have a glass of sherbet (or several) and a piece of cake, bemoan the long queues to get said sherbet and cake, and catch up with friends and family, including those whom we might not see very often.

Prevented by illness from attending jamatkhana tonight and enjoying sherbet and cake in the company of friends and family, I created my own tribute to this little celebration by making a cake flavoured with rosewater and studded with pistachios (pictured above). I will recite the ginan, the devotional poem traditional for this occasion, which calls on us to rejoice in the presence of the True Guide, and I will savour my sherbet-flavoured cake, and I will be thankful beyond words for the wisdom, love and guidance of the man who is my spiritual father and mother, my Imam, whose words are truth and whose actions are love.

Salgirah Mubarak.

Hee Munjo Deen Ai post 3 - one soul

O mankind! Be conscious of your Lord Who created you from a single soul and  from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multitude of men and women. (Qur'an 4:1)

I have loved this verse of the Qur'an since it was chosen as the motto for the Aga Khan's Golden Jubilee in 2007. In choosing this verse, the Aga Khan (the spiritual leader of the Ismaili tradition to which I belong) was, I think, making a powerful statement about the unity of human beings across those frontiers which traditionally divide us: race, gender, class, religion, language, our own sense of superiority and inferiority. That year, as in previous years, he emphasised again and again that the so-called "clash of civilisations" was really a clash of ignorance. He underlined over and over that the diversity within the Ismaili community - global and local - was a source of strength, and urged us, his followers, to come together as the brothers and sisters we claimed ourselves to be.

I always associate this verse with a ritual that takes place at the end of the Du'a, our set prayer. We turn to the person beside us, whether we know them or not, take their hand, look into their eyes and wish them "shah-jo-didar." It's hard to translate that wish - it's essentially wishing for the other person to be blessed with Divine Light, to which no worldly joys can compare. It's the highest thing you could possibly wish for someone. In that moment, no matter how different we are, we share that same deepest longing - for love, for light, for freedom, for something beyond all of this - and we wish it for each other as we wish it for ourselves. It's over in a flash, but sometimes I am shaken by the stark openness of that connection.

Some days I feel the weight of this verse lay heavy on me. Can I look Donald Trump, or Muhammad Emwazi, face to face, eye to eye, and feel in my blood, in my heart, that we come from a single soul? My ego screams "no," it wants to assert its difference, its distinctiveness. They are not like me. I would not be like them. And yet, and yet, the Qur'an is so clear, so strident. Who am I to argue with the Divine Word?

And if I'm honest, I sense it, too, our common humanity. These actions that are so different from my own probably stem from the same fears and needs that I have, that are part of the human condition, that we all know (but would rather not admit to). The need to be seen, to be valued, to be loved, the need to make a difference, the need to be right, to be known to be right, the need to feel safe and secure, the need for control and power. And the fear, the deep irrational all-consuming fear - fear of loss, fear of the unknown, fear of seeming less than I am, fear of isolation. I have no choice but to come face to face with my own darknesses in the darknesses of others. To quote the science-fiction author Orson Scott Card: "sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand."

This also crops up closer to home. I notice my tendency, when I am in conflict with someone, to be dismissive of them "he's just a jerk, a dickhead, an idiot, a narcissist. She's just a bitch, she doesn't know what she's talking about." But the vision of the world that I have, centred on this verse, doesn't let me do that for long. If I'm going to take this world-view seriously, if I really believe that we're created from one soul, I can't just toss people aside like this. I have to stop, and breathe, and recognise their humanity, and that they may be as right in their own eyes as I am in mine, and try and find some understanding, some compassion. It slows me down. I'm less invested in being right, when I take this view, and more interested in finding common ground.

Funnily enough, I've found the Buddhist loving-kindness (metta) meditation practice the most powerful way of connecting with the sense that we are created from one soul. It takes it beyond an intellectual proposition into something experienced and deeply felt. I resist doing it (that ego again) but I notice that when I do, I can relate more openly to people. My experience of relational meditation practices, sitting face to face with a partner or in a circle, and sharing what matters, bringing openness and kindness to listening and speaking, has also put me in powerful and immediate contact with the otherness, and the single-souled-ness, of another person. Sometimes it's as if all the barriers melt away and we are just there, in all our complexity and rawness and vulnerability, face-to-face and heart-to-heart, and I know with absolute and unshakeable certainty that we are of one essence. Any my eloquence is simply not up to putting the beauty of that into words.

Hee munjo deen ai Post 2 - praying for peace

Allahumma ya mawlana anta as-salaam wa minka as-salaam wa ilayka yarju' as-salaam. Hayyina rabbana bi's-salaam wa adhkilna dar-as-salaam. Tabarakta wa ta'alaita ya dhu'l jalaali w'al ikram.

Oh Allah, oh our Lord, you are peace, and from you is peace, and to you returns peace. Oh our sustainer, enliven us in peace and enter us into the home of peace. Blessed are you, and the Most High are you, O possessor of majesty and reverence.

This supplication is part of our set prayer, the Du'a, which we recite daily. I think I was told once that it was a prayer that the Prophet used to recite. Although I don't know that for sure something in me likes that idea - that we are praying to Allah using words that have been passed down to us through generations from the Prophet himself.

Growing up, I learned the Du'a by rote, and its translation by rote, and it was something that we just had to do. I don't remember much emotional engagement with it. I had huge emotional engagement with the ginans, our devotional poems, but almost none with the Du'a. That changed a little when I started to learn Arabic and gained a much deeper sense of the connotations of the words and the structure of each section. But it really changed during a time of desperation when it felt like surrendering to God was the only thing I could do. Nothing else made sense anymore. I'd been an educator within the Ismaili community for a few years by then and was fairly knowledgeable, in an intellectual sense, but my engagement with faith had been almost entirely intellectual. I hadn't really prayed except on rare occasions. Looking back, I believed in God, as a "ground of being" type God, the force that integrated, that made all things one, that I dimly sensed sometimes. But did I believe in a God that I had a personal relationship with, that I could pray to? I don't know that I did.

It wasn't a dramatic shift, not really. It's been more like a slow dawning, a gradual deepening of relationship. But there has been a change from a distant God out there to a much deeper sense of being in relationship. And it was this passage from the Du'a that I really connected with during the early period of that relationship. Somehow, and to this day I still can't explain how, I had a felt sense of a peace that was somehow beyond all my turbulence and despair and rage and could hold all of those things, and that I desperately needed. I prayed this passage in desperate need, crying out for peace for myself, for respite. I had no thought for others, then. Later, I prayed it in gratitude, for the gift of that peace that I could sometimes touch. Still later, I prayed it for myself and others, for a world that seemed to be in the same desperate need that I felt. Sometimes, when I remember during a period of turbulence, I still pray this passage, on its own. Often it's still the passage that opens my heart when I recite the Du'a.

The text hasn't changed. It's the same text, and a relatively simple one at that. And in a way my belief in God hasn't changed - I still think of God primarily as a "ground of being" beyond anything I can really explain or put words to. But my relationship to God, and to this text, has changed. It now speaks something of my trust in a divine Presence that embodies peace, with which I can somehow be in relationship, that takes me beyond my small-mind stuff.

If there's a moral to this story, it's that we should be wary of fixing interpretations of religious texts. The reading of a text depends on what we bring to it - our history, personal and political, our prior beliefs and world-view, our being in that moment. Our relationships with sacred texts change as we do, and that's part of the beauty of it.

Interlude - what to say to someone with an "invisible illness"

The vestibular disorder I thought I had 99% recovered from way back in 2010 has reared its head again, for no reason I can work out, leaving me wobbly (literally) and unable to move around as much as I would like. I am seeing it as an opportunity to work with some of my persistent habits of mind, in particular self-judgement, a lack of self-compassion, and believing that I have to be perfect to be loved.

I know from having gone through this the first time round that people with invisible illnesses of all kinds, from something relatively innocuous like dizziness and balance problems, as I have, to chronic fatigue, to mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, tend to face a certain amount of ignorance and "but you don't look sick." Many of these conditions, including mine, can be unpredictable, with good days and bad days, and no clear idea of how long recovery might take, or if it's even possible. Which might explain the vast number of "what not to say" lists. On the other side, as a friend or family member of someone struggling with an invisible illness, it's probably pretty hard to know the right thing to do or say, and you might well be scared of saying the wrong thing, not helped by the "what not to say" lists.

So here's an alternative list, inspired by and adapted from the wonderful friends and family that have taken such good care of me over the last couple of weeks.

"Don't worry about pleasing anyone else, do what's best for you. Trust yourself and your body." I only have limited energy, as my body is putting so much into trying to stay balanced. I can push beyond my limits every so often for things that are really important to me but I know I'll get the payback the next day. And it feels selfish to use that limited energy for things that matter to me but aren't really my responsibility, like going to choir rehearsals or doing "fun stuff" instead of work or cleaning the house. But at the same time, those things are what keep me sane when I spend so much of the rest of the time stuck at home feeling slightly rubbish. So it was lovely to hear my sister affirm my choices and remind me that it was okay to choose to put myself first, and not to feel guilty about it.

"When would you like me to come and see you? I'm free on X day. I'll bring groceries/food/anything you need" So many of my friends have offered to come and spend time with me, knowing that I can't get out very much. It's bloody lonely and I'm missing out on so many lovely things I could do if I were more mobile, so the fact that someone cares enough to come over and hang out with me and do little practical things to make my life easier makes me feel very deeply loved.

"What do you need me to do?" Two of my friends, who came over for dinner earlier this week, asked me very openly what practical help I needed. I don't think I'd have got up the courage to ask if they hadn't offered. But I felt cared for enough to ask them to go out for short walks with me if they had the time - I can't go very far by myself and am scared of getting stranded somewhere that's too far for me to get back if I have a dizzy spell. With someone else, I can go a bit further, and that will help my recovery in the long term. It's a tiny thing but it makes such a huge difference and makes it all feel a bit less isolating.

"It's okay that you feel .... (whatever it is)." It's amazing what has shown up emotionally - there's been a lot of fear, and a lot of guilt, and a lot of "is it my fault? Did I cause this to happen?" and a lot of loneliness and fear of isolation. I've cried more this week than I think I have for months. I'm sure that some of my friends who've been on the receiving end of that on the phone have heard some pretty crazy and irrational stuff come out of my mouth. But they've been so kind and accepting and open-hearted. Just allowing those feelings to be there, not judging or trying to explain them away, has been a wonderful gift.

"Sending you hugs." Lots of my friends are a long long way away and I know they want to help but the distance makes that impossible. So it's lovely to get little messages on social media that let me know that they're thinking of me. Being ill and living on my own means I spend a lot of time by myself, which is fine as I'm an introvert but can still get a little wearing eventually, so it's lovely to be reminded that I'm not as alone as I sometimes fear myself to be.

There's a pattern to this, I notice, as I write it - which is that the things I've appreciated have been the practical things, yes, but also those things that have made me feel loved and cared for. It doesn't matter how clumsy the expression of it might be, if there's genuine love there. Being ill sucks, but it has been a wonderful opportunity to recognise how loving, caring and generous others can be, and to feel a very deep gratitude for that.

Hee(n) munjo deen ai Post 1 - lessons from rubbish

It was a picture book with a dark green cover. The title was in white: "Prophet Muhammad and the unkind woman." There was a stylised drawing of a woman on the front cover, in a square frame. I was young, maybe four, and proud of my ability to read by myself. I must have read it hundreds of times. Some stories seep into the bones, into the blood, and remain there to be drawn upon and lived into. This is my retelling of that story:

It is said that when Prophet Muhammad was still in Mecca, and when Meccan society had set its face against him, and persecuted him for disrupting the town with his talk of one God, of peace with all, of a divine reckoning for human action, he would walk down this one particular street, past this one particular house, and a woman would throw rubbish down upon his head and shout accusations at him. Every day, if he passed that street on his way to who knows where, the ka'aba, perhaps, or the market, or to meet his tiny, marginalised, band of followers, there would be the same woman, the same accusations, the same descent of rubbish.

It is said that the Prophet never reacted. He just continued on his way.

One day, the same street... but no woman, no rubbish, no accusations. Just silence. He stops. He stares up at the window, wondering. He makes gentle enquiries. The neighbours tell him that she is ill, that she has taken to her bed, and she has no one to look after her. They have their own lives, they cannot help.

It is said that the Prophet himself nursed her back to health. Perhaps he brought food, or water - a precious commodity in the desert. Perhaps he provided whatever passed for medicine in the desert in the 7th Century. Perhaps he just sat beside her, offering his presence and his kindness. It is said that when she realised who had been taking care of her, she broke down and wept with remorse, asking his forgiveness then and there, and, so it is said, accepting Islam.

It was the woman's tears of remorse that affected me as a four-year-old. It's the first time I can remember feeling empathy. In the intervening years, it was the Prophet's actions that inspired me. A steady, patient kindness, with no arrogance or "I-told-you-so." How far it so often seemed from my volatility and need to be right! But I knew then and know with even more conviction now that it is exactly this kindness that we need.

Writing it now, I find myself empathising with the unnamed woman again. How sharp that pain must have been, to see so clearly her own blindness and prejudice, confronted with the humanity and the love that faced her. Those tears of repentance are my own.

There is of course a narrative neatness to the fact that she embraced Islam - and I find that very neatness uncomfortable. But it struck me tonight, for the first time, that at the time that must have been a very courageous action, even if it was impulsive.  I'm not sure if this took place after the rulers of Mecca declared a boycott of Muslims, such that Muslims were denied even the basic necessities, and to be caught helping or even speaking to a Muslim was a punishable offence. But even if it was before that, she would have been giving up all of her worldly status, even to the point of being cast out of her tribe - almost unthinkable in a tribal society, as Mecca was then. But she must have seen a truth in the Prophet's being and his actions - the sort of truth that you can't un-see - and knew she had to honour it, whatever the cost. Could I be similarly courageous, I wonder?

Hee(n) munjo deen ai (This is my religion) - Introduction

Two days ago, I was all set to write a ranty blog post about all the "Islam is the problem" rhetoric that I've seen since the Paris attacks. And then I went to jamatkhana, and the piece of guidance that was read out was about how to respond to misconceptions of Islam. It was clear and uncompromising: explain, explain again, and then leave people to their judgements, but do not get angry.

I realised then that I wasn't so much angry as hurt and bewildered. How can this religion that I love, this tradition with so much richness and beauty and wisdom, be turned to such hate and destruction? I feel as though something I love has been violated. But loving it does not mean that I am blind to the faults of parts of the tradition - parts of the Qur'an and the way that it has been lived out, and I also want to be uncompromisingly honest with myself, and you, about that.

I want to share with you the parts of the Islamic tradition that I love, that have spoken to me over the years, that have helped me to love others better, to become kinder and wiser and more thoughtful, to have insights into how things are. And I want to share with you the parts of the Islamic tradition that I have struggled with over the years, that I still find it hard to understand. All this, in the hope that it might be a way of shedding some light on Islam, and of illustrating how much our Islam is shaped by our history, our geography, our temperament, our family, the books we read, our place in the world.

Finally, a note on the title: my dad once told me a story about my Bapaji - my maternal grandfather. Bapaji never learned the ritual prayer, the Du'a, and went to jamatkhana at my Nanima's request. He must have been talking to Dad about it at some point, and my dad remembers him saying, in Kacchi, our mother tongue, "This is my religion. Do not harm anyone, do not cheat anyone out of money, do not lie to anyone." A simple creed, perhaps, but one that resonates with my childhood memories of a man doing his utmost to live up to these uncompromising principles. I often do not.

Peace until the rising of the morn

I am still landing from the LBC's Women's Intensive meditation retreat. So many insights, and many that I am sure will find their way into this blog. I am still absorbing it and may be for some time.

But this piece of writing - not sure if it's prose or poetry - came almost fully formed on Wednesday, the middle day of the retreat, while out on a walk. It is an extended reflection on two lines from a poem read out that morning, which seemed to rip through me emotionally. May it bring you a taste of peace as you read it.

"The human body at peace with itself
Is more precious than the rarest jewel."
And rarer still, for such instants of peace
Come seldom, and swift.
Un-grasp-able.
Like a flash of blue -
A diving kingfisher's wing
Caught by the sun.
Or a darting swallow,
Or a rabbit running for home.
Or the bloom of a rose,
Or the sun breaking through cloud,
Or a raindrop on a green leaf.
Hold them lightly.
Let them come,
Let them go.
Let the earth bear witness.
Offer them up to the shrine, to be received
And pass away.
For a flash, a taste, is enough.
Like the light from a flickering candle,
A breath of incense,
A sip of tea
From a warm mug
Cradled in the hands.
A smile, a kind glance, a brief touch.
More precious than the rarest jewel -
This human body,
Received kindly,
Just as it is with its many faults,
At peace with itself.
May there be peace
Om shanti
Shanti
Shanti.

On "home"

"But one day we woke to disgrace; our house
a coldness of rooms, each one nursing
a thickening cyst of dust and gloom.
We had not been home in our hearts for months."

From Disgrace, by Carol Ann Duffy

As I return back to my room in my temporary Reading flatshare, having spent the weekend sleeping on the sofa in a friend's living room in London, and having had various conversations on the concept of "home," I find myself wondering what "home" means in my current semi-nomadic state. Having not long returned from six months away, I keep telling people that it's "good to be home." But do I mean Reading? London? The UK? Or something else entirely?

One friend of mine talked about putting down roots (metaphorically), planting trees (literally), that she can't see herself moving away from where she now lives. Her "home" has a clear sense of place, and room for others to share it but no single other person that makes it a home. For another friend, also currently semi-nomadic, home is "with the person you love." Yet for her, and for me, "the person you love" no longer has a reference. There is no longer one single person to whom that refers.

I think it was once true for me that home was with the person I loved. I clung to him as to a refuge, a port in the storm, a sense of safety that had been missing. It was a visceral, physical thing, this feeling of being safe in someone else's presence, in his arms. A breath released, a letting go of tension in the shoulders. And one day we woke to disgrace. We had a flat, but no longer a home. Bewilderment. Disorientation. Suddenly feeling once again a stranger in a hostile world, with nowhere that felt safe. Kind friends told me then that I had to create my own sense of safety, to carry it with me. I didn't know what that meant, or that such a thing could be done.

And yet sitting here in this temporary sanctuary I realise that some years later I do carry with me a sort of portable home, both in the sense of tangible items and memories that I take refuge in (sometimes perhaps a false refuge) and, increasingly, in the sense of having just enough comfort in myself to feel at home even in unfamiliar places. So where is "home" now?

Home is a room of my own, a private space where I can close the door on the world for a while.
Home is standing on stage with one of the choirs where I belong, where my voice, however fallible, both blends in and keeps its uniqueness.
Home is a particular spot by the lake in Regent's Park, watching the ducks.
Home is letting the door close behind me in the foyer of the Ismaili Centre in London, hearing the water trickle from the blue granite fountain, and those rare moments of sensing a Presence in the prayer hall... or anywhere...
Home is those precious email exchanges, phone and Skype calls with people I love, scattered all over the world.
Home is groups of fellow meditators and practitioners of Insight Dialogue, and the immediate and powerful feeling of safety and connection.
Home is not having to do or be anything other than just as I am in the moment, with those few people who accept whatever that is.
Home is standing on the earth, feeling it under my feet, breathing deep.

Dowsing for Sound: "Unpredictable" four years on. Some hazy memories and cliched reflections.

January 29^th, 2011. Great St Mary’s Church. I think I remember it being freezing cold. I certainly remember being a bag of nerves and going to the loo three times in the half hour before we were due on stage. I remember the deeply unpleasant experience of tasting a Vocalzone for the first time. I remember huddling in the vestry and vanilla schnapps and whiskey being passed out in tiny plastic shot glasses. I vaguely remember a mad scramble to get Andrea a tin whistle in the right key.

I remember the start being delayed because there were so many more people than we expected, filling the ground floor of the church and extending up into the balcony, and my mounting excitement as I waited. I remember the opening chords of “White Sky” giving way to the joyful, exuberant “hello, hello” in “Alive” before I could so much as blink. I remember sitting in the pews, shivering but excited as an intrepid rower talked about her solo Atlantic crossing. I remember singing “The Book of Love” and it being the last time I truly believed in it. I remember the dropped guitar at the beginning of “Hoppipolla” and the feeling of losing myself and soaring on the melody as that wonderful piano and string line swelled out. I remember the mounting excitement throughout “One Day Like This” and the incredible sense of togetherness as we cheered each band member at the tops of our lungs. I remember the sense of how bloody fast it had all gone. I remember the applause and the chants of “more” and the absolute disbelief that these were for us. I remember my euphoric, dizzy happiness all through “Radioactive” even though we had no idea what we were doing, and to this day I need only hear a few bars of it to be brought straight back to that moment. I remember bouncing off the stage, jumping up and down all the way to the back of the church squeaking “We did it! We did it!”

Four years and a number of gigs later, the memories have faded into something of a haze. But that feeling of euphoria, the tremendous buzz and rush of having actually performed on stage, for the first time, that doesn’t fade. Closing my eyes for just a moment, I can feel it as vividly as ever.

I think I can only express the significance of that moment in clichés. It was the moment a new world opened for me. It was the last moment of perfect happiness before my world slowly fell apart over the course of the ensuing eight months (and has been put back together since, with the help, love and friendship of the Dowsers, among others). It was the moment I realised I could be myself and belong to something greater without sacrificing either. It was the moment I understood the value of doing something for the joy of it without having to be perfect or be the best. It was the moment that the Dowsing magic to which so many in the Dowsing Sound Collective casually refer, took hold of my soul and has not yet let go.

The Dowsing Sound Collective may have gone on to bigger and better things, but to use another cliché, you never forget your first time. And despite all the tremendous and wonderful experiences that Dowsing has given me since, that moment when less than forty of us, on three months of rehearsals, took on Great St Mary’s and did so with joy and flair and fun, is one never to be forgotten.

Pushed too far: a liberal and proudly British Muslim responds to the ink spilt over the Charlie Hebdo attacks

I thought this time it would be different. I read article after article of thoughtful, nuanced commentary. I applauded writers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, who referenced Islam’s rich history and diversity. I nodded gravely at the equivalences that some writers and cartoonists were drawing between the latest spate of cartoons and the racist and anti-Semitic cartoons of the past (http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/jan/09/joe-sacco-on-satire-a-response-to-the-attacks?CMP=share_btn_fb). I cheered at those who pointed out the inconsistencies of our stance on free speech. I grieved for the cartoonists – he who takes a life, it is as if he has killed all of mankind. And I thought, maybe we’ve grown up. Maybe we can deal with complexity. Maybe we can examine ourselves and acknowledge the complicity of our nations, corporations and political leaders in horrific events taking place in the world – that we see and do not see. And then I read the comments below Pankaj Mishra’s latest Guardian article and I finally snapped. (http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/jan/20/-sp-after-paris-its-time-for-new-enlightenment)

 

Because after hearing yet another person mock religion as being a childish sky-God fantasy of no value, and hearing yet another person naively champion the Enlightened West against the Backward Other of Islam, and hearing yet another person confidently state that Islam is inherently conservative, inherently violent, and so dismiss 1400 years of a complex history, I have had enough. Enough being told what I believe by complete strangers. Enough mockery of a tradition by whose wisdom I do my best to live, even as I challenge and critique it and sometimes even rail against it. Enough implications (no matter how subtle) that no matter how white I look, or how middle-class and law-abiding my lifestyle, or how liberal and pluralistic my values, or how straight-up BBC my accent, I do not belong simply by virtue of my religion. Enough valuing of some lives more than others. Enough looking the other way as the political leaders for whom I did not vote are complicit in the mass killing of innocents in the guise of stopping terrorism.

 

I am not opposed to the careful critical analysis of the doctrines and history of the different interpretations of Islam. I am not opposed to speaking truth to power, even (especially) when that power is conservative religious clerics who take their partial, punitive, historically myopic interpretation of Islam and try to impose it by their military and economic might. But I don’t think the Charlie Hebdo cartoons were either of those things. There were a million other ways of satirising some of the more ridiculous, or oppressive, interpretations of Islam. The cleric who condemned the building of snowmen as idolatry is a pretty soft target. Western journalists could even have taken a leaf out of the books of the Persian and Central Asian cultural traditions and told Molla Nasreddin jokes, many of which poke fun at the presumptions of the religious establishment. By targeting the Prophet, by demonising Islam rather than those who oppress others in its name, the so-called upholders of free speech do no more than alienate their potential allies, those Muslims who are deeply critical of the oppressive policies of many Muslim states and who see themselves as proud citizens of the countries in which they make their homes. I count myself in that.

 

I am on the liberal fringe of an already-liberal Muslim community, one that has assimilated into British life without much fanfare and got on with the business of being productive citizens and giving back to society through volunteering, a community that places emphasis on human dignity, has built girls’ schools in remote regions of Northern Pakistan, and is often persecuted in Muslim-majority countries. I am deeply grateful for the freedoms that I have in Britain and deeply appreciative of the rich artistic, scientific, literary, academic and cultural heritage I have grown up with living in London. And even I have had enough. I would suggest that when even your most liberal, proud-to-be British, Muslim citizens are trying to tell you that there’s a problem with the way that some people demonise and mock Islam and Muslims, maybe there’s a problem.

 

I did not expect that I would be this angry. I will channel my anger into fighting back with the pen (or the keyboard), into showing at least my small corner of the world how much wisdom, how much richness, there is in this religion that I love and live by, while not being blind to the oppression and injustice carried out in its name. I will continue to speak truth to power. I will channel my rage into seeking to listen and learn and understand and find better ways of living together. But I now understand, in a way that I did not before, that were I less privileged, more marginalised, more excluded, less hopeful, this same anger would have found more destructive outlets.

 

We cannot afford to go on mocking, marginalising and provoking our minorities, be they “benefit cheats” or “sky-God fanatics.” We may not agree with each other, indeed, we may think that the other is fundamentally wrong or misguided or even dangerous, but that does not take away the other’s humanity and dignity. And while words may not be sticks and stones, they have power – to hurt or heal, to dehumanise or uphold. So I find underneath my anger a resolve to be more sensitive to my own language and to use words to seek to understand, rather than to denigrate. It’s not much, it’s hardly a drop in the ocean in the face of these seemingly insurmountable problems, but it’s what I have. 

On fear and fearlessness: two ways of being

Fear always stopped my every wish to give.
I opted out, broke hearts, but most of all
I broke my own. I would not let it live
Lest it should make me lose control and fall.
Elizabeth Jennings, Words from Traherne

I have noticed recently the prevalence of fear in my experience of life. Fear of letting people down, fear of failure, fear of being “found out” as less than I appear to be, fear of getting it wrong in some non-specified way, fear of losing the friendships and other relationships that mean so very much to me. So I have been paying attention to the experience of fear and how it drives my behaviour.

The physical experience of fear is very powerful, almost overwhelming. Tightness in my chest, heart pounding, tension across my shoulders, the proverbial sweaty palms. And there is too a sense of narrowing, of the world constricting and space closing down, closing in. And I often react by opting out, breaking my own heart in the process of trying to avoid that painful feeling of fear. I don’t give my all to a project, or I don’t stay open and present in a conversation. Sometimes I can go whole days being so driven by fear, without realising it, that I am absolutely unable to be in the present moment, and I distract myself by playing games or reading on my phone, or living in memory, or doing anything other than face whatever it is that I fear. I condemn myself to a curious half-life, meeting the world at a distance, joylessly.

And yet I know it doesn’t have to be this way. I have tasted another way to be – a way of being which is joyful and expansive and deeply engaged, where it feels as though I have stepped through a narrow gate into an open field with the sun shining and the grass green and I can run and dance to my heart’s content. I’m a terrible dancer, but in that state of being every movement feels like dancing, as though there is both complete freedom and complete inevitability.

It’s a stark contrast. I know I want to live more of my life in that second way of being, so how do I do that? The answer is at once blindingly obvious and completely counter-intuitive – and far easier said than done, of course. It is to approach my fear with kindness rather than running away from it, to expand the space around it so that my heart can hold the fear and everything else at the same time. It is to open up rather than close down, to step in towards the fear and to let it be as part of the ever-flowing stream of life. And in the moment that comes down to noticing it, noticing the thoughts and the physical sensations and breathing into them, telling myself that it’s okay, this is just what’s here right now – and not trying to change it but not fixating on it either.

It feels as though I have come to a watershed moment, a turning point. There is a line in the sand – this far and no further. I am no longer willing to allow myself to be held back by fear. I no longer want to continue to break my own heart by opting out. I want to give, open-heartedly and fearlessly. I want to live, to lose control and fall and trust that I will fly.

On humility, self-deception and forgiveness

I’ve been having some interesting conversations lately with people about the meaning and purpose of prayer, and it’s led me to reflect on my own religious practice and why, despite my own doubts, questions and tensions, I still find something in that practice that is worth returning to.

We often say, especially within the tradition of Islam that I belong to, that part of the meaning of prayer is to be humble before God – after all, that is the significance of the gesture of prostration, and even more so the idea of islam itself as submission to God. Yet how often is that humility just an act, a way of showing other people that you are humble? It’s very easy, I think, for people who pray regularly, especially in congregation, to become slightly self-righteous about this, to take it as evidence that they are good people, better than those who do not find it so easy to pray regularly.

The shifts and turns of my own personal life in recent weeks have made me alive to the many and varied ways in which it’s possible to fall prey to self-deception, to try and make myself seem better than I am, to portray myself as a victim rather than as someone who made bad decisions, or who acted in bad faith. I am sure that I am not the only one who, when talking about the difficulties that I face, somehow finds it easier to express how others’ actions have hurt me, but finds it hard to admit that I have also hurt others, sometimes even deliberately. I don’t want people to think less of me, even people who are supposed not to judge those things. And even to myself, in the stories that I tell myself, I am of course always the heroine, never the villainess. In some ways, counselling plays into exactly that. While the best counsellors will cut through some of the self-deception, it’s all too easy to simply go into counselling to seek validation for my feelings and actions, even when I know that they were wrong or misguided. Very rarely do I willingly ask myself the hard questions about how much I am responsible for my own difficulties, even though I know that for counselling to be successful, this is what I should do, that really it should be about me taking responsibility for my own weaknesses and working on those. But it’s far easier to blame those weaknesses on someone else, on my childhood, on my past experience, on anything other than my current choices and behaviour.

For me, this is where religious practice, if it is to be meaningful, has to play a role. In front of God, how can I lie to myself? If it is true that in some sense (and I tend to think of these things metaphorically rather than literally) God knows everything that there is to know about me, then I cannot hide from that. I have to strip away the layers of self-deception, of pride, of arrogance and come completely clean about my own weaknesses, my own bad choices. I have to look at myself with clear eyes, and ask myself the hard questions about whether I truly acted with the best of intentions. For me, prayer and remembrance of God, when I do remember, help me to see myself more clearly and face the worst of myself. Sufi sources tell us that remembrance of God is a polish for the heart, and I at least try (though often I fail) to pray and to remember in that spirit.

This is where, I think, rituals of forgiveness become so important. Once I have become aware of my own bad choices, how do I move on from them? The ritual of forgiveness within my own tradition, which sees me asking that “if the community forgives, may God forgive,” is, for me, one of the most powerful and moving rituals of the whole tradition, perhaps because it’s so hard for me to forgive myself, and to ask forgiveness from others. There is a sense, across different religions, that our sins must be acknowledged, and somehow purged, and then we free to move on. I wonder whether that sense of humility, of asking for forgiveness, and then of trying to move forward and to continue to battle with our lower selves, has a secular counterpart. What forms of reflection exist as a mirror, as a check against self-deception, outside of a religious community? Is this one way to explain the increase in psychotherapy - that it does in fact provide a space for this kind of reflection? It seems to me that as an increasingly secular society, and one in which people often display striking arrogance and lack of willingness to admit their faults, these forms of reflection have a crucial role to play.

Edited to add: I wish I'd looked at this BBC article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13154300 before posting this!

Memory, history, truth

I had the honour and privilege of being in the same room as the great Michael Frayn yesterday at the Cambridge Wordfest. Frayn has recently finished writing a memoir of his father, and came to talk about his father, the book, and the process of writing it. Quite apart from the humbling and inspiring impact of being in the presence of genius, I was struck by Frayn’s comments on memory. As he was writing, he found that he couldn’t be sure which memories of his were true, and which ones were made up. As he said, when we see an event our brains actually construct a coherent picture from the flashes of information that we get, so that even as we experience an event for the first time we are making selections about what is relevant, and filling in details, without ever being conscious of it. And then, when we attempt to retrieve that event, we retrieve that construction. To some extent, that explains why people remember the same event differently. He also talked of the way in which we narrate our memories, and then the next time that we remember the same event we remember the words that we told it in, and those become part of our memories, too. And sometimes the logic of the story takes over and we find ourselves inventing details or exaggerating because the dramatic impetus of the story demands it.

Just that morning I had had my first experience of Traumatic Incident Reduction, a technique which works by enabling you to access memories of traumatic events and replay them until the memory no longer has power to cause pain. I found it a strange process for a number of reasons. First: my episodic memory is not very vivid at all, and that I could not replay the incident in my head, although I was able to remember details as I talked about it that I hadn’t noticed when I was “replaying” the incident silently. Second: as I replayed the memory time and time again, I felt as though the crucial bit of information was still lost to me – the trigger that caused me to react in the way that I did. Third, and most importantly, I found that, like Michael Frayn, I wasn’t sure which details were accurate and which were invented to fit the story that I tell about myself. And this was a recent incident. How much more this is true of my painful childhood memories, which have the shape of patterns of thought and behaviour, where I can recall the pattern and how I felt about it, but not a single specific incident, more a composite of different incidents. But have I created, in some sense, those memories? Have I invented or privileged them in order to fit a certain story that I tell myself about why I have become the person that I now am? This line of reflection led me to wonder about the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, and how powerful those stories become, and how difficult it is to change the narrative that we have about ourselves. Deciding that the narrative that we have about ourselves is no longer healthy and trying to change how we tell our own story is hard, because it feels as though we are losing some part of ourselves without which we do not quite know how we will be.

But how far can we change the stories that we tell ourselves? Do we have endless freedom to create a narrative of our past which lets us live the way we want to live? Or are we constrained, in some way, by what really happened, by some truth about our lives that we cannot escape? Does memory, eventually, bow before fact? If our brains construct experience to start with, does that mean that we can never be sure that something we remember really happened? I know that I, for one, am more sceptical about the validity of memories than I perhaps was. For me, this raises serious questions about history and historical truth. If we can never be sure if a particular memory was invented, then how can we be sure that historical events happened in the way that they were said to have happened, or indeed, happened at all? As Michel de Certau put it, history is never sure. But at the same time it seems wrong to say that there is no such thing as historical truth. At least the bare facts must be true, mustn’t they? The kinds of things one memorises in school, dates, kings, queens, all of that, must be true. Yet who decides what is selected as a fact? Can we really make a rigid distinction between facts and interpretations, or are we, as Geertz suggested, interpreting all the way down, even down to whether someone winked at us or just twitched? All I know is that I am much more careful now of claiming that my memories are true, or claiming that something is historical fact. But scepticism is an unsettling place to be.