I’m not innately a person who orders her life with precision. I am a person who craves structure. My week in a Benedictine abbey a few years ago had me convinced that I was born to become a nun. ( My mom entered the convent for a year to consider taking vows, so maybe it’s in my genes.) My body didn’t want to rise with the bells in the early morning hours but it moved knowing there are were other bodies willing their bodies to move and join in prayer in the quietness of the small chapel.
This summer has been a gift to know about and reflect on the season of Ramadan after having traveled to Oman in May. Ramadan is a holy period of fasting and praying for people of Muslim faith. It began in mid June and ends tonight at dusk. There is a quiet delight in the mornings knowing that billions of people are doing the same motions together;
together moving,
together fasting,
together eating,
together praying
and together not knowing.
I discovered last week that Night of Power is a night during the last ten nights of Ramadan where it is believed angels and the very spirit of God descend down to earth. “There is peace until the rise of the dawn” writes columnist Omid Safi. This night is special and cherished by Muslims. The beauty lies in that no one knows which night it will be. And that is just fine with everyone.
What does it look like to accept this not knowing not only in this season but in all seasons? We know from experience how not knowing can also be quite painful.
How long will this depression drink up all the happiness and energy out of my body?
How long will I be working day and night in this country, sharing a house with relative strangers, while my wife and family is back “home”?
How long will my partner and I keep trying to a have a baby with fragile hope that it’s just around the corner?
How long will I keep showing up to church on Sundays, waiting to feel something, some word or emotion, some sign that God is here?
But the grace of being part of a faith community is that you are not alone. And this is what I find beautiful about Ramadan; it reminds me we can enter into these rhythms of not knowing with others.
We are not asked to hold the not knowing alone. We are not asked to grieve loss, live into hope, wait for peace to break onto the earth, all alone. No, we share the not knowing, the questions, and the suffering with one another. It becomes bearable that way, the waiting. And by some mysterious grace it secretly becomes joyful because it is transformed.
This posture of waiting is then animated by curiosity instead of our fear. Waiting becomes a welcome opportunity to learn anew to find the face of God in unexpected places. Our waiting becomes a searching, not marked by the throes of restlessness, but by such a growing desire to be known by the love and mystery of God, who is “ hidden in plain sight.”
Waiting becomes blessing.
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