Maybe I Should Hide My Qur'an...

I just finished another conversation trying to explain why in the world I would want to read the Qur'an. Someone even said, "Isn't that that terrorist book?" I realize that was surely, surely, a joke, that this is the Bible belt, that I can stand on half the street corners in these small southern towns and see anywhere up to 3 Christian churches at one time, but are we all really this tunnel-visioned? Yes, the Bible has loads of truth in it. As does the Qur'an, and the Tao Teh Ching, and The Bhagavad Gita. I would never call myself a Universalist by any means; I don't believe we're all on different paths up the same mountain to the same God sitting at the top. However, I do believe in some great Absolute (we can call it God). I also believe that truth is available to everyone, at all places, at all times, and that this Absolute will use anyone and anything to reach us, no matter how deficient. As one thinker put it, "all the world's thoughts, all the world's most beautiful languages and literatures, are but vehicles for that ineffable message which comes to the heart in rare moments of ecstasy... For me the embodiment of that voice has been in the noble words of the Arabic Qur'an" ('Abdullah Yusuf 'Ali).

For me the embodiment of that voice has been in the words of Jesus Christ; but when I look for it, I find truth everywhere. As it says in Jeremiah 29, "You will search for me and find me when you search for me with your whole heart. I will be found by you." When I read the Bible, I find stories of love and a God that sacrifices everything just to have us. When I read the Tao Teh Ching, I find order, balance, and something universal uniting us all. When I read Nietzsche, I see what sexist, racist, ageist, nationalist man turned bitter looks like (this is a joke...). The point is that every text I read gives me a slightly bigger picture of all this--of life and God. Why wouldn't I read the Qur'an?

I'm tired of saying we're Christians when we've never read a single Sutra or Surah or Veda, much less our own Bible, and the same goes for professed atheists. We say we're Christians or atheists or whatever, but we're really just ignorant. And as far as Agnostics go, you can't choose doubt as a philosophy of life any more than you can choose immobility as a form of transportation (Life of Pi). Agnosticism may be a stage in life (I'll attest), but it's no place to stay.

Whew. Glad I got that out of my system. Here's what God used to speak to me this morning:

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The Holy Qur'an  C.23 & 24


But he [Muhammad] grew steadfastly in virtue and purity;
Untaught by men, he learnt rom the, and learned
To teach them; even as a boy of nine,
When he went in a trade caravan with Abu Talib
To Syria, his tender soul marked inwardly
How Allah did speak in the wide expanse
Of deserts, in the stern grandeur of rocks,
In the refreshing flow of streams, in the smiling
Bloom of gardens, in the art and skill with which
Men and birds and all life sought for light
From the Life of Lives, even as every plant
Seeks through devious ways the light of the Sun.


Nor less was he grieved at Man's ingratitude
When he rebelled and held as naught the Signs
Of Allah, and turned His gifts to baser uses,
Driving rarer souls to hermit life,
Clouding the heavenly mirror of pure affections
With selfish passions, mad unseemly wrangles,
And hard unhallowed loathsome tortures of themselves.

We Are Disconnected

We are disconnected.

My little brother says I don't know how to keep a girl. He walked up to me, and I could tell he had something troubling him, that he had been thinking about something heavy for a while. He said, "Keith, I'm worried about you. You keep losing your girlfriends. College is the time when you're supposed to find a wife, and you only have two more semesters left. You need to take this more seriously, Keith, or you're going to end up unmarried and unhappy for life." He's 13, and he already knows more about life than I do. He says he's not going to start dating until college, because high school dating is immature and troublesome. He also says that when he starts dating a girl, he's going to pick her right and then keep that sucker for life. I've decided to start going to him when I need relationship advice.

On Monday, a kid I met on a F.O.C.U.S. trip a couple months ago called me wanting to talk about his girlfriend, who he thought was cheating on him. I realize I probably should have just handed the phone to my little brother. But anyways, he was really upset and didn't want to lose her, but it was pretty clear she didn't hold their relationship in a position of as much priority as he did. Also, over break, I fussed at another friend of mine for being so exclusive and intense in his relationship with his girlfriend. Yes, their love sickens me, so that's part of it. The other part I just couldn't grasp was how needy my friend seemed, how being connected to this other person was necessary for their happiness.

Last night, I had a dream where I started dating my seventh grade girlfriend again. It was a crazy dream full of drama and romance, an episode more than worthy of appearing on a Spanish Soap Opera. The night before, I dreamed about my future wife. We were sitting at the table and talking. That was the extent of my dream, and I never saw her face, so if dream-wife is the same as future real-life-wife, I have no clue what she looks like. The night before that, I had another dating/marriage dream. I know, I'm asking the same question you are: what's wrong with me? To that, I answer... Well, I have no clue. I guess all of this stems from the same thing for me. I don't want to be alone in life--none of us do--so I connect myself with lots of people, dating being one of the ways to do that. What my track record tells me is that for some reason I feel separated from something or someone, and I have this deep, driving need to be in relationship. I know I've been using girl-guy/dating examples, but I think you can take sexuality out of it and it still be the same issue. I'm inadequate and incomplete alone, and I'll do anything and assume any label to surround myself with others, even if I never build any solid, lasting relationships with anyone. I would say it all boils down to belonging to someone, whether that's a wife or a father or a child, just belonging.

We are disconnected.

I feel closest to God when I'm away. I hear God's voice and see reality clearer when I'm away, away from technology, and away from electricity, and away from buildings, and away from civilization. Into the wild: that's where I find God. Over Easter break, I woke up early one morning, threw on some sneakers (I love the word "sneakers." I realize no one says this anymore, but I love it), grabbed my iPod and my Bible, and started walking. For any of you Gardner-Webbers out there, I left my suite and started walking through my woods across from Broyhill. My woods. It's where I go when I want to get away. God gave them to me. About a mile into the woods, I realized how stupid I am: I'm trying to get away from civilization and technology, and the whole time, my earplugs are in and music is blasting, and I'm checking my phone for new text messages. So I put my iPod, cell phone, and even my Bible in my bag and left it beneath a tree, walking further into the woods without my ties to the human world. (sidenote: took me forever to find that blasted bag a couple hours later. Go figure.)

It's amazing what you hear when you take your iPod out of your ears, get away from cars and buzzing and ringing and the noises of civilization. Life. You hear life. Stuff that seems small--like wind rustling leaves above your head, sticks crunching beneath your feet, birds singing, bugs clicking, water trickling--suddenly seems so real, so alive. I know that probably sounds dumb, but it's true. When that hit me, I felt like I had received some private revelation from God. Being alone with just God and nature is how it's supposed to be. I just kept walking and listening to life. I crossed some woods, a field, some small streams. I saw deer tracks and what I think are raccoon tracks. I saw lots of birds and insects. When I was crossing the field, I saw four wild turkeys. Life everywhere, and beautiful. And then... (I hope you hear the subtle change to a more ominous tone)...I saw a person. A person! These are my woods! What are people doing out here! Contaminating and polluting the beautiful world God privileged only me with! And that's what I genuinely was thinking. I was thinking that there's no way this person appreciates nature like I do. I immediately turned around and started walking out of the woods. That person ruined it for me.

On my way out, I saw a pipe leaking thick, murky liquid into one of the streams. It smelled like garbage. I guess at first I was thinking about how this world was untouched by people, which was something I liked about it. Maybe I was just looking for signs now, but I began to see evidence of people everywhere. I saw old fire pits with aluminum foil left in the ashes; I saw coke bottles, and candy wrappers, and even a freaking condom. Really? A condom? My progression of thinking throughout all of this and all of the trash I saw in those woods--trash I did not even pick up--tells me a lot. It tells me that there's some sort of gap between nature and humanity. Somewhere along the line, we lost our vision to see the innate beauty and value in nature. Somewhere along the line, we lost our responsibility to nature.

We are disconnected.

Going off of the whole nature idea, sometimes I like to think of myself as living by the Tao of Emerson and Thoreau. However, I'm clearly not a transcendentalist or a Romantic--as much as I'd like to think I am--, and the second I realize I'm not that, I label myself with this. When this falls through, I label myself with another that. Christian. Universalist. Universalist-Christian. Republican. Socialist. Democrat. Feminist. Student. Teacher. Role model. Friend. Boyfriend. Leader. Follower... I like labeling a lot. I mean, it's all about power, right? If you can label something, if you can name a thing, then you have power over it. With a label, a thing becomes suddenly less intimidating and dominant, more easily controlled and manipulated. I hate that I like labels.

I especially hate that I so often feel the need to label myself. What that tells me is that I'm not comfortable just being. Being what? Exactly. I feel like I have to be something and then prove it. I have to be a _____ (fill in political, religious, social affiliation or whatever), then prove it, then prove why my label is better than yours. I can't just be; I have to be _____ (fill in the blank). Just being "Keith" is not enough. Hell, I don't even know what that means. When I reflect, I see my desire to label myself as evidence that I feel apart from something, something I should belong to. I have some need driving me to connect and belong and associate with something, someone other than myself. Just being? Not enough.

We are disconnected.