Mennonite
Central
Committee

Living in new ways: A devotion by Laurie Pierce

Laurie and Matt Pierce studied in Qom from 2003 to 2006. This is a devotion Laurie gave for MCC's annual meeting shortly after they returned to the United States.

 

During our three years in Qom we were in contact almost exclusively with conservative Shi'a Muslims who took the practice of their faith very seriously. While we often struggled with differences of belief and perspective, we also found ourselves challenged by the spiritual lives of our Muslim friends. Each year the Mennonite Central Committee chooses a theme for its work, and this year's theme was "living in new ways." One of the new ways in which Matt and I lived while in Iran was to seriously consider the spiritual practices of our Muslim friends, exploring them to see how they could inform, broaden, and deepen our faith as Christians.

Shortly after our arrival in Iran we were enrolled in a class on Islamic Mysticism, called 'erfan or Sufism. We quickly found that this is one area where Christianity and Islam have much in common. Islamic mysticism focuses on the grace and mercy of God, our complete dependence upon him, and the necessity of turning our focus from the material to the immaterial. Christians of course can easily relate to these concepts.

Mystical practices form a significant part of the spirituality of many Muslims. Perhaps the central mystical practice in Islam is called Thikr. The Arabic word Thikr is most simply translated as "repetition," or "remembrance," but its broader meaning signifies a practice of constantly remembering God and repeating his name. This concept is mentioned numerous times in the Qur'an. In the 14th verse of the 20th chapter, or Sura, of the Qur'an, God says "Surely I am Allah, there is no god but me, therefore serve Me and pray continually in remembrance of me."

Many Muslims take this command very seriously and attempt in a variety of ways, some of which I will talk about in a moment, to keep God constantly on their minds. The idea is that when a person constantly remembers God he or she is less likely to become entangled in the things of this world, and more likely to be able to live life in a constant state of worship and unity with God. Thikr is also said to keep one from sin—as Sura 29:45 says, "Continue in prayer; for surely prayer keeps (one) away from indecency and evil, and certainly the remembrance (or thikr) of Allah is the greatest (thing in life)."

Thikr takes on a variety of forms. Many Muslims carry prayer beads with them wherever they go. Sometimes they simply mention the name of God or one of his many attributes as each bead slips past their fingers, going round and round the string throughout the day. Many of you may have seen pictures of Sufi dancers called whirling dervishes, whose dancing consists of spinning round and round. These Sufis are worshipping, mentioning the name or attributes of God with each repetition. Other Muslims simply attempt to focus their minds on the name and person of God in all waking moments. Spiritual fulfillment comes through thikr, and verse 28 of Sura 13 of the Qur'an says "Surely through the remembrance of Allah do hearts find satisfaction."

Christian parallels to the practice of thikr are easy to find. Many Christians use rosaries, and Biblical imperatives like the instruction to pray without ceasing imply that we are to be in constant communication with God. In spite of these parallels, the practice of thikr might have remained something abstract and outside of my experience had I not also during my time in Iran read through a book called The Cloud of Unknowing, which is an instructional treatise on the contemplative life by a fourteenth century Christian mystic whose name we do not know. As soon as I started reading The Cloud of Unknowing I was taken aback by how similar it was to the books on Islamic mysticism that I was reading at the same time. In The Cloud, the mystic urges his pupil to "Think only of God, the God who created you and guided you . . . . A naked intent toward God, the desire for him alone, is enough. If you want to gather all your desire into one simple word that the mind can easily retain, choose a short word rather than a long one. A one-syllable word such as "God" or "love" is best. But choose one that is meaningful to you. Then fix it in your mind so that it will remain there come what may. This word will be your defense in conflict and in peace. Use it to subdue all distractions." (p. 56).

The Christian mystic's description of "fixing this word in your mind" is what Muslims would call thikr. We remember and repeat the name of God or one of His attributes—we pray without ceasing—so that we can live our lives in a state of constant worship. In Matthew 7:7 Jesus promises "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you." Muslims say that by repeating the name of God we are asking Him to grace us with his presence. By fixing the name of God or one of His attributes in our minds we are asking for Him and seeking His presence. Each repetition of the name of the Lord is a knock on the door to God's presence that Jesus promised will be opened to us.

As human beings who desire God, we often find that we fail to have any real and consistent sense of His presence. Both Christian and Muslim mystics talk about barriers that exist between human beings and the God we worship—barriers that keep us from experiencing the presence of God we so desperately want to see in our lives and in our world.

Both Muslim and Christian mystics say that these barriers are of two kinds. The first kind are barriers that are the result of our failings as humans and our inability to disentangle ourselves from the concerns of this world. Muslim mystics call these types of barriers "veils of darkness." The Christian mystic describes the "cloud of forgetting" under which we should seek to bury our worldly concerns. The other kind are barriers that are a result of God's divinity—the fact that He is incomprehensible to our finite minds. Muslim mystics call these barriers the "veils of light." The Christian mystic calls them the "cloud of unknowing."

Both say that thikr, or the constant repetition of God's name, expressed out of our desire for him, can help us pierce these barriers between ourselves and God. Repeating God's name and attributes can keep our desire for Him alive in the midst of the thousand distractions from Him that our days hold. It can also help us to continue in worship when we feel His presence but have no understanding of Him or His work in our lives or in the world.

Trying to constantly remember God by repeating His name or one of His attributes in my devotion times and throughout my daily affairs was one of the most important new ways of living that I learned in Iran. I haven't come anywhere near a constant awareness of the presence of God, but in striving towards this I have experienced spiritual growth. I have found that trying to fix the name of God in my mind as I move through my daily activities helps me to keep my desire and search for His presence alive, which has in turn increased my awareness of that presence.

I would encourage you to try repeating the name of God or one of His attributes that has special meaning for you throughout the days to come, not as a "vain repetition" of the kind Jesus warns us of, but as a way to keep knocking at the door, to break through the barriers that prevent us having an experiential realization of the presence of God. In the Psalms David says "Your name, O LORD, is everlasting, Your remembrance, O LORD, throughout all generations." Let us be a generation that keeps the name and the remembrance of our Lord alive in our hearts and minds as we seek the presence of God in the midst of our busy and often troubled lives.

 

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