Posts tagged Muslim

I lost my way some time ago. Some days I wish I could pin point exactly when so that maybe I could figure out what it was that I did so wrong. Lately, I’m just hoping I can find my way again. I listen to him preach sometimes. Sit there in a solemn corner away from judging eyes and callous hearts, just listening. His voice feels like heaven, his words feel like home. With every scripture follows the bereaving cries of my mourning heart, ridden with guilt and sin. Faith has often thwarted my belief, so I can’t say I have much left to believe in. But the echo in his voice, the sound of God whispering in my ear, has my soul begging for contrition. I can feel the tingling sensation of conviction run down my spine, taste the fading allure of creed. Maybe I’m not so lost after all.

I’m standing in uniform, that is to say hair, skin, bosom covered. Hands clasp against my chest feeling the beat of a savaged heart. My body is clean but that seems to be more than I can say for my impious soul. I’m unfocused. My mind is lost in delirium, running through a course of irreverent thought. I’m reciting words I’ve yet to look up the meaning to, chanting phrases of devote intent yet I lack the intended devotion. Tears stream the canvas of my face in helpless misery. I’m begging for salvation with a faithless heart. I’m on empty, fueled by sin and retribution but I’m on bended knees pleading for some kind of conviction. I can’t remember the last time my prayers were answered.

Religion seems eager to find me but these days I can’t decipher between faith and reason. Mid-prayer I find my heart beating against my chest, hard, ready to break through my walls of contravention. Tears border the bridge line of my eyelids, floating in melancholy devotion. My hands clasp heavy against my palms holding together this conviction. I want to be faithful, desperately searching for the liberating confidence of belief. I’ve got creed chasing after me but I can’t seem to keep myself from running. Bruises brand the essence of my soul from the weighty grip of piety, leaving me tarnished by my own immoral transgressions. I am heavy with sin, astray in a benevolent world of irreverence, seemingly unfocused and imprudent. I’m trying to succumb to revelation but I’m still waiting on a sign of your existence. God, are you listening to me?

I’m a sinner at heart, in the most immodest way.

I’ve grown up in an interracial culture, constantly battling the deeds of my heart and mind. Relentlessly questioning the correlation between my faith and my actions, between my words and my thoughts.

How can someone feel so lost and so at home at the same time?

I’ve never thought of myself as wrong but I often try to convince myself that I’m made up of nothing but transgressions.

Word of the month: Transgression (of the holy month needless to say).

This Ramadan I was in limbo, teetering back and forth between sinning and sainthood. It all felt so… right, as wrong as that is to say.

I found myself amidst prayer, convoluting conversations with God, talking to Him as if He were my best friend. In silent solemn I asked for forgiveness, not of these indiscretions, but rather of my lack of piety.

I’ve always been a woman of faith, that is to say, I never stopped believing in God. Yes, at times I’ve questioned His existence, but even then my distressed prayers had always been aimed at his mercy.

I’m a sinner at heart, conceited with contravention, blatantly misguided by shorthanded virtue. But I’m a saint, because we’re all flawed.

Fifteen days down, fifteen to go. Half way through this holy month and I seem to have transgressed further away from sanctity than ever before. When did religion become so immeasurable? All these rules and regulations have me feeling faulty. I fast away impurities only to invite them back in come the hint of sunset. Fighting off thoughts of tainted divinity as I battle notions of furtive indiscretions. My body suffers the bruising of imprudence, tarnished by an imperfect conscience that tends to sway at the sight of infidelity. Nothing seems more difficult than the commitment of commencement. This inaugural sentiment of purity and righteousness baring heavy on this seemingly blemished soul. I’ve yet to conquer a faithful will.

I haven’t been a model Muslim this Ramadan. It seems as though sin has tangled it’s web so tightly around my conviction that these choices don’t seem so willful anymore. I’m bound by the clasp of my own transgressions. Every prayer sounds like a plea for help. I’m down on my knees five times a day begging for mercy. I’m a sinner God, and I just can’t seem to help myself. These vices are premeditated. Every deviation is somehow excused by the moral aptitude of this weakened soul. My heart has dealt with more anguish than it’s grown accustomed to, so to cope I find myself in lustful pursuit of misconduct. Finding homage in complacent imperfections. 

It’s nights like these when religion doesn’t seem fathomable. When God can only be found at the bottom of an empty bottle or the bed of a reticent lover. I tried praying but my sins speak volumes, drowning out the verses of hymns I recite in monotone recollections. Does faith count when it’s faithless? This all feels too routine. I can’t remember the last time God and I spoke but it must’ve ended on bad terms. My prayers seem to have gone unanswered. Do these fasts even count? With a mind that wanders through thoughts of sin, eyes that partake in treachery, hands that itch at the sight of sunset, tingling at the essence of lost virtue. I’ve been counting down the hours, minutes, seconds up to this momentary lapse of inhibitions. Temptation etched on the palms of a clandestine lover, heavy with indulgence, reeking of coaxed immoderation. I can’t hide these thoughts from Him. I spend my waking hours consciously fighting back my own conscience, deciphering right from wrong, calculating my every transgression. Is it considered belief if I’m constantly questioning?

It’s officially the first day of the holy month of Ramadan and somehow I’ve never felt more unholy myself.

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last eight months of the year committing more time to sin than religion. Maybe because I’ve told more lies than truths, kept more secrets and made it an incentive to become a more selfish person.

This time of year is for the purification of mind and body but how does someone purify their soul? Yes, I can commit myself to conceding food and water. I can keep my thoughts occupied with work, family, friends and even religious scripts. I can pray. I can spend the next thirty days confined to faith.

But what happens on the thirty-first day?

What happens when Ramadan is over and all that surrounds me is no longer consumed by religion? What happens when we all go back to eating while the sun is out, sinning when it sets and absorbing ourselves in the lives we led before August 1st? How does thirty days, more or less, purify the talking demon from within?

This year I’m starting Ramadan with more questions than answers. It’s the first year I find myself questioning my faith…not in religion, but in myself. Do I want to be the holier version of myself? Am I ready, willing, to give up indulgence for creed? Maybe the answers lie within the questions themselves. If I am questioning my own conviction than where does that leave my soul?

Ramadan is an emotional journey. Every year we devote ourselves to a month of blatant worship, obligating ourselves to mandatory prayer and conscious faith. With every growling stomach comes the reminder that religion is an everyday part of life. It is a necessity, like the water and food we’ve forfeited. Ramadan is a concentration camp. It is a deliberate awareness of faith.

Day one and I am already feeling faithless. Can thirty days of religion cleanse a sinner’s heart?

“The month of Ramadan is that in which the Quran was revealed, guidance to men and clear proofs of the guidance and the distinction; therefore whoever of you is present in the month, he shall fast therein…” Quran 2:185