You Must Move

Allah is like a hawk,
His eyes are drawn to motion.
If you don’t want Him to notice you, do nothing.

If, however, you crave His attention,
if you long for His caresses and His care,
you must move.

You must laugh like an idiot,
dance like a bridegroom,
and sing like a sparrow.

It isn’t piety that will make you irresistible to Allah,
it’s the irrepressible joy found
in simply living your life.

So sing loudly, dance wildly, speak bodly
love wantonly, give generously, pray sincerely
work hard, hug tight, kiss wet.

There’s nothing to be gained
from being small.
God is great—go and be great, too.

Vision

Oh, dear. I know that look.
Allah has come upon you.
Do come and sit down before you topple over and hurt someone.

Drink this tea.
Catch your breath.
And tell me what happened.

I remember when it last happened to me.
I was at the well, getting a drink of water.
And Allah fell upon me like a cat pounding from a roof top,
claws extended to clutch at my shoulder.

It was all I could do to remain upright.
My brain felt like it was on fire,
and I saw reflected in the well all of the worlds and their myriad creatures.

I was lucky I didn’t fall in.
And yet, in a way, I did fall in.
I fell into the mind of Allah, and I will never be the same.

It has happened before, don’t misunderstand.
But every time is different.
Every time you see something new that you did not see before.

And every time it illumines all that is shadow,
exposes everything that is a lie
and turns me once again to face Mecca in my heart.

I do not know why Allah does this to people
and you can never predict when it happens.
My advice is to see it as a blessing
rather than the uncomfortable imposition it feels like now.

But Najat does know one thing.
Once it has happened to you, you will sell everything
—even your soul—to make sure it happens again.

The Teacher's Wisdom

You come to me, and you call me “teacher.”
I make you tea and call you “friend.”
We with focused attention before Allah and we call it “prayer.”

Don’t look to me for answers. Don’t suppose for a minute
that I know what I’m doing, here. I don’t.
It isn’t my wisdom being spoken into the silence between us.

I open my mouth and the winds of heaven
move my lips, or they don’t.
When we are finished, we will be fortunate if we are both a little wiser.

I am not the teacher. I am the tea-maker.
Allah is the teacher.
You and I are both students, and always will be.

My love, if I ever get to the point where I say, “I can answer that”
please do not strike me dead.
But kindly persuade my wife to inform me that my teaching days are over.

For if I think I have any answers,
If I am foolish enough to believe that I know what I am doing
If I am ever arrogant enough to suppose that my own wisdom exceeds yours

then my usefulness in this world is at an end
and my time is better spent wetting myself and drooling into a towel
until the angel of sleep closes my eyes forever to this good life.

Najat is only skilled as a teacher
by knowing that his own wisdom is only slightly more valuable
than his excrement.

Gift

Allah’s embrace can end worlds or begin them.
Allah’s embrace can bring hope or despair.
Allah’s embrace can lead one
—kicking and screaming—to heaven or to hell.

Allah’s embrace can kindle resentment or affection.
Allah’s embrace can bring clarity or madness.
Allah’s embrace can snuff out your life or redeem it.

And the mystery of it is that these opposites
—life and death, sadness and joy, suffering and grace—
are always performed with one and the same act.

How you perceive it is largely determined
by the posture of your hand:
is it open to receive, or is it balled into a fist?

Najat knows life can be hard.
I’ve seen my share of blessings wrapped in pain.
I, too, struggle to behold all that Allah gives as a gift.

Imagination

I have no interest in proving to you
that Allah exists, or in persuading you
that His eye and His care is always upon you.

For such things do not fall into the realm of reason,
regardless of what the jurists argue.
This sort of thing involves the imagination and the heart.

I imagine that Allah is there, and He is there.
I imagine that Allah cares, and it is clear to me that He does.
I imagine that Allah speaks to me, and His voice is plainly heard.

You are quite right that I might be making it all up,
that Allah is a figment of my imagination.
I find it just as likely, however, that you are a figment of His.

Consider, for a moment, that the imagination
does not conjure up only fantasies, but might in fact
be an organ of perception, like unto the eye or the ear.

Consider, please, the fact that everything
that human beings create must first be imagined
and only then do they take form.

Are songs, stories, buildings, furniture,
clothing, food, or even children imaginary?
And yet all of these things were imagined before they took shape.

Allah imagined the world, and it came into being.
Allah imagined you, and you came into being.
It seems to me that you might, at the very least, return the favor.

Preparing the Heart

The body acts.
The mind thinks.
The heart loves.

Allah shaped the body,
Allah inspires the mind,
but it is in the heart that Allah makes His home.

All sensible people love the body
and care for it
as one does one’s own house.

An untrained mind
will believe anything
and may betray you.

But—and I think this incredible—
many people neglect the heart,
as if it were not a necessary organ.

Listen to Najat: if you have not prepared your heart,
If you have not learned to love even those things you do not love,
you are not yet prepared to welcome the Beloved.

Wake Up!

Your soul and my soul are not different things.
We behold the same glory through windows
that we either clean, or we don’t.

Your soul and Allah are not different things.
His glory is yours,
so how ready are you to shine?

This entire world radiates from the blazing heart of Allah.
Every creature is a revelation of the glory of God,
and testifies to his faithfulness and mercy.

Every moment we live
is the cry of the muezzin, calling all to prayer.
Every action is a prostration.

If you don’t live like this,
you have forgotten who you are.
Najat’s teaching is your coffee. Wake up!