SPIRITUALITY IS GRAFT
Work is instinctual to humans as it is to animals: ‘Verily We have created man into toil and struggle’ [90:4].
The need to feel useful even spurs toddlers to expend their efforts: always ready to help mom and dad. Unfortunately, parents are not always receptive to the burgeoning zeal of their cute little minions and dismiss their efforts, often viewing them as a hindrance rather than a help. We should be mindful, for such enculturation can dim their work ethic instinct and inadvertently make them associate wanting to work with failure or disappointment.
Nurturing this love within children to feel valued through contributing to our homely occupations is a profoundly spiritual practice. Because it’s intrinsic, we need not teach it to them, only to keep the flame alive. If we do it well, we will supply them with the engine necessary to drive their faith and emotional well-being.
Work is spiritual, and spirituality takes work, which means our spiritualness will flatline and decline if our desire for toil is lacking.
Verse six of Surah Fatihah infers that spirituality takes maintenance and graft: ‘Guide us to the straight path’ [1:6]. Faithfulness and spirituality are not constants, hence the need to return again and again, a minimum of seventeen times a day, every day, one day at a time, for the rest of our lives, while in obligatory prayer and begging God to keep us straight.
The spiritual life is an inside job. And as with any job, it requires graft.
LOVING YOURSELF
In most cultures, the heart is used metaphorically to allude to various states of being: she is kind-hearted, he is hard-hearted, my heart aches, my heart is light or heavy or soft, my heart skipped a beat, my heart is bursting with love, joy or pain.
When it is the latter, we often wish to inflict harm on the perceived objects of our pain.
When desiring to exact retribution or exhibiting dark feelings towards others, it precipitates into pools of more pain. When untreated, the pools turn stagnant and putrefies the inner self, corrupting the heart.
Every virtue has a nemesis, a vice antagonistic and parasitic towards it. For forgiveness, its antagonist is hate. Thus, forgiveness is the elixir for a heart harbouring hate and resentment.
When we sincerely and wholeheartedly respect ourselves and our well-being, we will forgive as swiftly as the Prophet (s) did.
The Prophet (s) suffered egregiously at the hands of his enemies, but he (s) still forgave them, just like Prophet Yusuf, peace be upon him, forgave his brothers of attempted fratricide, knowing that forgiveness relieves the heart from the grip of the past and the pain, and frees it up to experience beauty in the present and spread peace in this hate infested world.
People believe that a dog is man’s best friend.
I hate to say that they’ve been wrong all along. A book is man’s best friend.
We must change the narrative by proliferating the adage: A book is man’s best friend.
I am not a dog hater. I have loved a dog before.
Wyatt was my neighbour’s Rottweiler. I never knew I could love the breed. But love him, I did. He had a wise countenance, and his comportment was right and proper, unbefitting of my preconceptions. The late Wyatt affected me so profoundly that he still occupies my heart.
Still, a book is more patient, versatile, compact, less jealous, and more of a companion than Wyatt ever was to me or his master.
And here’s the final point to settle the debate: A book can be anything, even a dog. Read White Fang or Kujo.
But a dog can only be a dog and can never be a book.
Until next week, InshaAllah
Zaahied Sallie
Author of The Beloved Prophet – An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme
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