I have had a few of you express interest in our visit to the local mosque yesterday.
It was beautiful. Beautiful. I am very sorry I didn't take more pictures for you to see what beauty is captured by people from different places sitting around one table. Talking about their common American pride, their children, their different faiths in one ancient Abrahamic tradition.
I had gotten in touch with the lay leadership of the mosque by email a few weeks back. I told them that I was beginning an adult forum in my congregation to talk about Islam, which prompted me to reach out. In the short number of years I have been in this area, I have not yet had the pleasure of getting to know any Moslems. Their immediate reply was to invite me to come visit, and to bring some friends.
Two weeks later, there we were around one table.
As Steven and I walked up to the building, we were greeted by teens and children enjoying the beautiful day in the parking lot. The entryway held shoe cubbies and shoes of all shapes and sizes. We found our way into a large carpeted room, our feet padding quietly across the floor to meet the padding feet of our hosts, eager to greet us. Eight men and two women welcomed us with bright eyes, warm smiles and handshakes. We sat down around a large table and talked about Bethlehem and our class on Islam being a blind-leading-the-blind kind of experience. They offered to come help us! We talked about our common religious heritage through creation to Abraham. We talked about the different ways we understand Jesus and other messengers of God. We were invited to observe one of their daily prayers and I admitted to some holy-envy for their communal commitment to the daily ritual of prayer. We were grateful to be in one another’s presence so recently after the election, over which they expressed concern about the Islamaphobia that has been encouraged, especially for people in other parts of the country, and they affirmed the blessing of the timing of our meeting for them. They even expressed that they feel it is important to engage in the political leadership of their communities, state and nation and how proud and blessed we all are to be a part of a democracy with the freedom of religion.
And it was easy. To be together, to celebrate how much we have in common, to feed the curiosity that God put in each of us, and to wish we had brought our children, that they might know and grow in friendship with children from another religion and with skin tones different from their own.
It was easy. And it was beautiful.
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