<\/em><\/p>\nOur eyes down in the presence of His Majesty, the opportunity of congregational prayer also a challenge: Can I live in the world\u2014around other people, their fidgeting, their odors, their manners, their frustrations\u2014and still put God first and foremost?<\/p>\n
Because it is easy to pray alone.\u00a0\u00a0It would be very easy to be a good person if there were no other people.\u00a0\u00a0This, I think, is the wisdom of congregational prayer.\u00a0\u00a0I need to quiet my mind, ignore how annoying some of the other congregants are (for a while, the guy next to me is swinging around as if he\u2019s a small child first learning how to dance), and think of God.<\/p>\n
Ramadan is about God.\u00a0\u00a0About cutting out everything else in the way, and realizing our absolute and utter dependence on Him, and tasting the sweetness of solitude with Him.\u00a0\u00a0Nothing in creation compares, because even the greatest thing created is still a creation of His.\u00a0\u00a0And to get that in the midst of many, to be able to sit down and have a meal with close friends and family, and still put Him first\u2026<\/p>\n
I\u2019m staring down where my head will touch the ground, and I realize that we begin our prayers speaking of God. Not\u00a0to <\/em>God. The humility must come first; the awesomeness of the Divine.\u00a0\u00a0We don\u2019t yet have the right to address Him.\u00a0\u00a0And it occurs to me why we praise Him.\u00a0\u00a0Get in the mosque, and first you greet the mosque.<\/p>\nThen your obligatory prayers.\u00a0\u00a0Then your extra prayers.\u00a0\u00a0And then you address Him directly.\u00a0 Only then. \u00a0You need to give Him the respect He deserves, and humble yourself till you are ready, till your self is out of your way.\u00a0\u00a0Only then can we feel the way we should during Ramadan, when we\u2019re in the mosque, in prayer, and we wish we could stay in prayer forever, that the coolness and calmness of worship would last, and we didn\u2019t have to go back out to the world.<\/p>\n
It feels like realizing what it means to be fully and truly human.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Praise I\u2019m standing about six rows back from the Imam, surrounded by mostly Afghan and Pakistani men, and during the very first cycle of the prayer, it hits me.\u00a0\u00a0Here I am, before my Creator, and the sudden awareness isn\u2019t in my mind.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s in my heart, where it should be, leaving me overawed and reduced.\u00a0\u00a0Each verse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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