On my day off this week, I was visited by a Muslim friend. After lunch and a walk we went to the church and I gave him a tour of the building. It was time for him to pray – one of the five daily sessions traditional in Islam. He pulled his prayer rug out of the back of his car and I invited him to lay it out in the church sanctuary. He invited me to follow along in the bowings and prostrations and Arabic chants of the prayer.
My friend is a freckle-faced Midwesterner who grew up Lutheran and converted to Sufi Islam as a young adult. This mystical school of Islam has a long tradition of tolerance and openness toward other religions, so he felt right at home praying to Allah in our church.
He is in the Oriental carpet business, so as he unrolled his prayer rug, he apologized. “It’s kind of cheesy,” he said. It was made of synthetic fabric, with a printed image of the Ka’aba, the rock at the center of Mecca around which millions of pilgrims walk during the annual Hajj. And just below the image of the Ka’aba was a compass sewn into the rug. Its degrees were marked in Arabic numerals. On the compass was a dark arrow aiming at the Ka’aba, positioned so you could line up the rug to aim toward the east. A self-“orienting” Islamic prayer rug. My friend wouldn’t be caught dead displaying a printed, synthetic rug in his store – but he likes the compass!
When he laid out his rug, I discovered that our church aims to the northeast. Toward Scotland, homeland of the Presbyterian Church! – appropriately enough. My friend and I went through the sounds and motions of the prayer, repeating the phrase “Allahu Akbar” – God is Great – many times.
Muslims pray toward the Ka’aba, but they don’t pray to it. They don’t worship the rock: they just use it to get “oriented” toward God. At Sausalito Presbyterian, we pray toward the altar, facing toward Edinburgh. But we don’t worship our building, nor do we worship anything in Scotland. The altar is something physical which mystically assists us in becoming spiritually “oriented”.
There is plenty to disorient us from our ultimate Source and Goal. We can lose our bearings and head in the direction of pride or selfishness. We can go off course and wind up in the territory of resentment and disrespect toward ourselves and others. There are plenty of arrows aiming us at everything and anything except what really matters. Billboards and websites are replete with these arrows – directing us to spend, and often waste, our time and money and energy on things that don’t get us any closer to the love that is God.
So it does take some effort for us to get re-oriented with humility, love, compassion, awe, and wonder. It does take some discipline to remember where we really want to be headed. Lining up in pews on Sunday morning, facing northeast, singing and praying – that can help. Bowing in holy submission on a prayer rug five times a day – that can help. Writing regularly in a spiritual journal – that can help. Making a habit of serving people who need our care – that can help. Silently repeating your sacred mantra as you hike up a mountain – that can help.
“Allahu Akbar” – God is Great. Greater than the Ka’aba in Mecca, greater than Mount Tamalpais in Marin, greater than any Presbyterian steeple from here to Scotland. So let us pay attention to the compass, sewn into our souls, which orients us to the greatness of the divine....