Monday, August 9, 2010

Weddings and Religion

As salaam alaikum,

So, I have jury duty tomorrow at 8:15am (a time where I'm usually sound asleep for another hour before I drag myself out of bed for the morning), which means I'm getting up at 7am, which means that I should be sleeping now, but these past few weeks at home have really gotten my sleep schedule off and yeah, I'm not sleepy yet. After lying in bed for 30 minutes, enough was enough and I grabbed the computer from downstairs (where our fan had turned on by itself...again!) and here I am.

A lot happened today, and my mind is racing so I don't think anything I say now will do it justice. Suffice it to say I experienced the three major Abrahamic faiths today, which is probably why my mind is swimming.

(1) My mother volunteered the entire family to go to church with my father yesterday. My father's been going to this church in Ann Arbor for the last several months and so this was our first visit as a family. My father did not tell us until the very end, though, that they make communion at the end of every service. Umm...yeah, my mother and I cannot take communion for obvious reasons. We explained that and he was shocked. He understood my mother not taking communion, but not me. He looked at me and asked me, "Don't you believe in the teachings of Christ?" I calmly began to answer about my position on Jesus (as) as a Muslim, but heh...that was not a conversation for the 20 minutes before the service was set to start, so I said I'd talk to him later. On the way to my friend's wedding, we started the conversation. It's like, the conversation that I've eluded to...oh, probably for the last five years. The whole explaining to my father how and why I'm Muslim thing. It's something that I'd dreaded, but he asked me earnestly if I was considering converting to Christianity, and I answered honestly...no.

He was disheartened, and I feel a little bit sorry because my mother thought today was worth it because she saw him excited "like a little boy" when we said we were coming to church with him...

...and if I may digress for just a little bit...after church, I couldn't say very much of anything. It wasn't because the sermon was offensive to my sensibilities (there were actually some things that were a little bit offensive to my sensibility as a Muslim, but...there are worst things people have done for the love of parents), it's just that...I feel like I'm playing monkey in the middle sometimes. With this whole going to church bit, I felt like a pawn in a game my parents are playing. Not that their game-playing...but going to church with my father did nothing but encourage him that perhaps I would accept Christianity, and open my heart to it...whereas my mother attending was simply a supportive role.

I...just didn't appreciate that, and as I rode back home in the backseat with my brother from church with my parents, I realized that...

(2) When I come home, I'm an overgrown child to my parents. My mother often makes jokes about not letting us sit out in the heat or someone will call the police on her, to which I say that's grotesque. But she's referred to us as the kids, and I realized...because of my brother's disability, my parents are probably in some ways stuck seeing me as their child in a way other parents of adults my age wouldn't. I think my relationship with my parents is stunted in a way. It's not just them--I assume that roll, too, in the extent to which I depend on my mother's emotional support for life events, and the way that I see myself in the family. I don't know--maybe having few close friends to confide certain things in and no significant other has driven this, but it's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg, Catch-22-type deal.

(3) My best friend's older sister got married today. I've known the family for the past 10-11 years, so it was exciting. It's funny...I was like, one of three black people there with hundreds of guests in attendance, and I was the only one not dating a South Asian person. Going stag to weddings is hard...I eventually found a group of Huron High grads to tag along with, and even then, they were the bride's friends and therefore a year older than me. But yeah, the Invisible Muslimah attended her first nikkah! Granted, it was an interfaith wedding...so the bride (Muslimah) and the groom (Jewish) got married twice, once in the Muslim tradition and once in the Jewish tradition (it was pretty frickin' awesome, if I may say so...), but yeah, now I know! So there was Arabic and Hebrew and mabrook and mazel tov all around... And it was really touching to see this very delicate ceremony take place, with at least the conservative Muslims representing on the brides side...no one on the groom's side looked particularly orthodox. It was touching to see the joy of the parents at their children marrying, even with the differences in culture and (more starkly) the differences in faiths. They really found each other, for sure...

(4) Summation: Duuuuuude. I just pray for guidance every day of my life, protection in every step that I make that I may stay alive long enough and tread long enough on the straight path so that I may know the truth of things one day, so that I may live in the presence of my Lord in time to discover the meaning of all of that which didn't make sense in this world. From starting to explain to my father why I'm Muslim to seeing my first nikkah with a happy couple, a happy couple like one that at times I feel like I'll never be...today was too much at once. Today had so many hours and it seemed like it'd never end, but an important thing happened today with respect to my father. The at first insurmountable is getting closer to being surmountable, and I think a lot of it has to do with the realization that I'm actually an adult and there's no reason to fear my father as I would have as a child. It's time to grow up and move on. Everyone else has. People have jobs and are getting married because they matured past the point where I am right now, or I was yesterday. Explaining this to my father is the first step to emotional independence...

Okay, now it's past midnight, and I'm still a little bit not sleepy. Oh well. I'll be cranky in the morning...

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