interfaith combustion

Light Explosion by MindStep

I recieved a comment today on this post about Islamic stages of life that made my day and reminded me what this project is about. Janie writes:

"...as I try to catch up on your postings, I am overhelmed at the vast similarities in different faiths. I feel like I could take my faith (LDS) and our beliefs of the Plan of Salvation and check off all of the similarities to these beliefs. We too believe we lived before this life - this life is a short journey - we will all be in the spirit world waiting until judgment day - and denying God after you have truly KNOWN him is a very heinous sin - but many people who consider themselves 'religious' have not developed a knowledge of God. this is so fascinating I talked my husband's ears off about your blog late into the night - and I said my night nightly prayer in the submission pose like a Muslim does, just to see if I felt the spirt stronger. I did think it helped me to listen in my heart better after my prayer was done. "

When I started this project, it was NOT because I wanted to write yet another theological or academic book on women, feminism, or religion. The only "Academic" part of my project is the research I've done into the religions as I write, but only so that I understand where they are coming from, not so that I can delve into theology about fundamental belief systems. This project is, and always has been, about how women relate to God in the context of their faith.
 This has always been a project about uniting women with similarities, rather than dividing them with details. The women I have met on my journey thus far have been open, warm, welcoming, and inviting and have given me the great privilege of glimpsing their hearts and pieces of their spirituality.

I know this one thing:

Women are capable of inifinite amounts of

compassion, love and empathy [when we choose to be].

Too many times, the small differences such as the context in which we see God distract us from our larger similarities. We allow the name by which we call God to separate us from relationship with our sisters on earth. That is wrong. Because...well, we're all praying to the SAME GOD.

Emily's God is the same as Dawn's Lord, is the same as Rachel's Allah, is the same as Mary's Yahweh - the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is worshiped in every faith tradition I have studied so far, and yet the differences in [how we worship] and [how we pray] and [what we eat] separate us from the shared human experience of trying to learn how to love this Divine Being who holds our hearts. 

I am writing a book about women and spirituality in America, yes. But I am most interested in hearing women's voices. Giving them a platform to share their relationship and spirituality with those from another label. This is personal for me.

Growing up with my parents in ministry (southern baptist, then charismatic), and being in church leadership myself, I never questioned the fact that Christians held the patent on right.

About a year and a half ago, when I read The Fourty Rules of Love, by Elif Shafak, and it forever changed my context of God. Shams of Tabriz (a central character in the book who mentored the mystic poet, Rumi) described this incredible devotion to God, so emotional, so real, so connected that it was impossible to ignore. I thought that only Christians knew the "right" way to love God, but this Muslim Sufi was describing an experience of loving God that was so powerful, I could not remain unmoved. It spoke to the part of my heart that loved God in every way I knew how.

The experience of this Muslim recounting his passion for God and his desire to tirelessly pursue God's grace spoke to the part of me that had met the Divine in a quiet moment and was forever changed by that encounter.  

It was a dangerous moment for me because I stood on the brink of walking back into what was familiar and "right" about my walk with God, and opening my mind to a new experience of God, through the lens of other faiths. I made a choice in that moment to allow myself to see God OUTSIDE of the box I had created for him, and allow myself to experience God through the lives and voices of other women.

I wrote the following post in October during my month of Islam, and it is the post that Janie was referring to in her comment above. I reposted it below.

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Repost from October 13, 2010

Note: this is the layman's version of the Islamic stages of life and should be read as such.

A few weeks ago, on a Thursday morning, my ex-father-in-law woke my children, fixed them breakfast, helped them get dressed, and made sure their backpacks were full and zipped. Their dad had left before dawn to go to work that day, so Grandpa was helping out, and after buckling them up in his truck and driving them to school, he kissed them goodbye.

Lunches in hand, my children got out of his truck and walked into their school, never realizing that it was the last time they would see their Grandpa. That morning with my children was his heart's last act of love. As he drove out of the parking lot of their school only minutes after dropping them off, he had a massive heart attack, and kept driving beyond this world to the heavenly one.

He was a good man and a wonderful grandpa. In a family that I married into and treated me as an outsider, he always showed me love and grace. During the ordeal that was my divorce, he prayed for me every day, calling me "daughter", telling me that through all of the bitterness, that he loved me and prayed that we would all reach a place of peace. His prayers were daily, throughout his life. He first bowed his head and heart to God in the mornings before greeting his day. His head bowed at Thanksgiving, he would weep with gratitude at the blessings God had given him and all of us. His death unexpected, we were unprepared, surprised, gripped with the sadness that accompanies unforseen loss.

Throughout all of time, people have needed to know what happens after death. Where do loved ones go? Are people rewarded and go to a place of peace and rest, when they have lived a good life? Are evil people punished after death? Every religion I know of adresses the afterlife, and Islam even adresses the pre-life. In Islam there are 5 stages of life

Stage 1. There are no new souls. The first stage of life was at the beginning of time. God created all of the souls that would ever exist and spoke to them. He told them that he Created them, and they agreed that he was their Creator, and he was God. In reality, all souls according to Islam have accepted submission to God before life is even breathed into their body.

Stage 2. Life on earth is only a short portion of Life overall. When a soul inhabits a body at conception, it begins life on earth. That life continues until death. It is possibly the shortest phase of life in Islam, but also very important. It is only during this phase of life that you can choose relationship with God both intellectually and emotionally. It is only in this phase of life that you have the option of ignoring God altogether. It is in this phase only that your relationships with other souls matter. And in this phase, you can help others reach heaven.

Stage 3. Purgatory is also a place in Islam. After death, you are transported to a waiting room, where you will wait until all of the other souls cross over from pre-life through the earthly world, into the waiting place. You take with you no possessions, but you take deeds - both evil and good. I think of it as two buckets, a good bucket and a bad bucket. If you have accepted Islam and loved God, there is also grace that can make up the difference between the good and bad, should they be placed on a scale and the bad outweighs the good. Also, those left on earth can make supplication for you, do charity in your name, and those things still being done on earth can contribute to your good bucket. Your love of God, even if you don't know the "true" way of Islam is contributed to your good bucket as well.

Stage 4. Judgment Day. When all of the souls have crossed over from the beginning place through the earth and into the "purgatory" waiting room, God will judge every person. I think this probably takes a while. Can you imagine waiting in line and trying to work out in your head what God will say when you get your turn in line? Sounds like a stressful place to be, especially if you're not sure where you stand. God takes all of your good deeds and places them on a scale. Then he puts all of your bad deeds on the other side of the scale.

Stage 5. Heaven and/or Hell. Here's where it gets a little tricky:

a. If you have converted to Islam, you are covered by a "bridge policy" between your good and bad deeds that will hopefully make up the difference in grace, but only if you really loved God and lived a life that tried to please him. Those people will usually go straight to heaven.

b. If you had Islam (submission to God) presented to you in its truth and authentically, you are held responsible for that. If you reject the truth that was offered to you after you have seen it in authenticity, you are sent to hell. Rejecting God is the only reason you would get sent straight to hell, regardless of how good of a life you lived.
HOWEVER, if you had Islam presented to you, or you found out about it, in a way that was not true to the spirit of Islam (for instance, the only thing you knew about it was that Muslims flew into the towers on 9/11), you are not held accountable for having heard of Islam at all, so you fall into the next category. As well, if you have never heard of Islam at all, you fall into the next category (c).

c. If you did not convert to Islam (but did not reject submission to God in its truest form), you are judged based on your deeds without the "bridge policy." If your good deeds outweigh your bad, you can go on to heaven (keep in mind that people can add to your good deeds after you're dead). If your bad deeds outweight your good, you are "sentenced" to a term in what I call "hell prison." This is not death row, and after you serve your sentence, you can go over to heaven.

In essence, the only people who get a one-way ticket to hell are those people who either reject God altogether, or ascribe diety and equality of God with something else that is not God. For instance, if you believed in God/Allah, but you also believed the goddess Athena was equal in power and status as the main God.

It is comforting to think of your loved ones in the waiting room, waiting for you to cross over, and its also comforting to think that you can still work while on earth to assure their future with you in heaven.