Spirituality and Childhood
Here are links I received to two short poems for today's post on spirituality and childhood. They are by Irving Karchmar and dedicated to the birth of his children. There follows a link to a short poem I posted last May, then the text in full of an essay by Sabah Negash on children and prayer. Thank you Irving and Sabah.
Little Girls, Like Butterflies (for Becky)
When a Child is Born (for Matthew)
Sky Smile (Scroll down a little ways after you click.)
Belief Comes Even to the Hearts of Children
Definitions: Allah = God; Masjid = prayer house; Dua = prayer; Alhamdulillah = all praises are due to Allah
My mom (May Allah (swt) have mercy on her soul) instilled in us at an early age that Allah (swt) listened and answered the prayer of His servants. Of course, as children, we simply believed because our mother believed and we always knew her to be a truthful woman. But our faith in what she said would one day be tested.
My mom raised us in the high desert of California. She wanted us to be raised in as near an Islamic environment as possible; since living in a Muslim country was out of her reach, she chose an isolated place (desert) where we could be raised islamically. I can remember spending hours and hours exploring our "desert land" with my younger sisters, something we could have never done in the city. The highlight of any day would be to find "desert treasures" which ranged from beautiful stones, lizards, desert flowers, and the occasional lost items of desert travelers.
Near our home there was a huge hole that had been dug to build a masjid. While the masjid was never built in that spot, the hole served as a recreational center for my sisters and I. We would ride our bikes up and down the slopes wishing we could be like the boys with their bike flips, trips and flies. We would also have little tea parties, play hide and seek. It was our wonderland. It was also a spot to take our spoils from our scavenger hunts.
On one particular day, we found what looked like ordinary stones but once cracked open, turned out to be beautiful on the inside. They had somehow crystallized on the inside of the stone. We had hit the jack pot! Now, we had only one problem, remembering the stories of the gold rush, we had to protect our new treasures, especially if we were going to get rich off of it. So, we decided to hide our precious stones.
Our mother always told us the power of dua, so we decided to put it to the test, after all, this was important. We found a nice spot in the big hole to bury our treasures. We put our stones in the hole and made dua, "Oh Allah, please protect our treasure and don't let anyone ever find our stones. Ameen” After a couple of rained in days, we went back to check on our treasure but could not find it in the spot we put it. We knew it could not have be stolen as one, no one lived out there except us, two, it had been raining, and three; the place had not been touch since we left it. Then it suddenly dawned on us, we forgot to exclude ourselves from that dua, Allah (swt) was answering our dua, no one was going to find our treasures, not even us!
Well, from that day, we learned to coin our duas to say exactly what we mean :) But we also learned that Allah (swt) does indeed answer the dua of His servants. From that day on, we truly believed in the power of dua, not just because my mom said so, but because it had truly worked for us. That was not the last time we made a dua that came to pass. Years later, Alhamdulillah, He continues to answer our prayers and somewhere in that big hole lies protected our beautiful stones.
Copyright © 2007 by Sabah Negash
Little Girls, Like Butterflies (for Becky)
When a Child is Born (for Matthew)
Sky Smile (Scroll down a little ways after you click.)
Belief Comes Even to the Hearts of Children
Definitions: Allah = God; Masjid = prayer house; Dua = prayer; Alhamdulillah = all praises are due to Allah
My mom (May Allah (swt) have mercy on her soul) instilled in us at an early age that Allah (swt) listened and answered the prayer of His servants. Of course, as children, we simply believed because our mother believed and we always knew her to be a truthful woman. But our faith in what she said would one day be tested.
My mom raised us in the high desert of California. She wanted us to be raised in as near an Islamic environment as possible; since living in a Muslim country was out of her reach, she chose an isolated place (desert) where we could be raised islamically. I can remember spending hours and hours exploring our "desert land" with my younger sisters, something we could have never done in the city. The highlight of any day would be to find "desert treasures" which ranged from beautiful stones, lizards, desert flowers, and the occasional lost items of desert travelers.
Near our home there was a huge hole that had been dug to build a masjid. While the masjid was never built in that spot, the hole served as a recreational center for my sisters and I. We would ride our bikes up and down the slopes wishing we could be like the boys with their bike flips, trips and flies. We would also have little tea parties, play hide and seek. It was our wonderland. It was also a spot to take our spoils from our scavenger hunts.
On one particular day, we found what looked like ordinary stones but once cracked open, turned out to be beautiful on the inside. They had somehow crystallized on the inside of the stone. We had hit the jack pot! Now, we had only one problem, remembering the stories of the gold rush, we had to protect our new treasures, especially if we were going to get rich off of it. So, we decided to hide our precious stones.
Our mother always told us the power of dua, so we decided to put it to the test, after all, this was important. We found a nice spot in the big hole to bury our treasures. We put our stones in the hole and made dua, "Oh Allah, please protect our treasure and don't let anyone ever find our stones. Ameen” After a couple of rained in days, we went back to check on our treasure but could not find it in the spot we put it. We knew it could not have be stolen as one, no one lived out there except us, two, it had been raining, and three; the place had not been touch since we left it. Then it suddenly dawned on us, we forgot to exclude ourselves from that dua, Allah (swt) was answering our dua, no one was going to find our treasures, not even us!
Well, from that day, we learned to coin our duas to say exactly what we mean :) But we also learned that Allah (swt) does indeed answer the dua of His servants. From that day on, we truly believed in the power of dua, not just because my mom said so, but because it had truly worked for us. That was not the last time we made a dua that came to pass. Years later, Alhamdulillah, He continues to answer our prayers and somewhere in that big hole lies protected our beautiful stones.
Copyright © 2007 by Sabah Negash
Posted by Paul at 5:02 PM Permalink
10 Comments:
Ya Haqq!
o_O
Keshi.
MATTHEW: That line got my attention too, but, lol, I don't know what in the world your emotocon means! Probably everybody knows but me, I'm slow with those. For years I was going "What's with the colon and parenthesis?" (I exaggerate, but not that much.)
Sabah's story strikes me as well written and with real charm. I think more than one level of meaning, too.
KESHI, thank you -
The desperation of living in such a hostile enviwrongment really triggered some creative thinking on our part.
I love this story and I could visualize those adorable little girls in their GIANT playground...
and finding out what real treasure is.
HOMOESCAPEONS: Me too - I think the story's told well enough that it would work even where the reader may not have the same point of view as the author on the effectiveness of prayer.
sorry for the late (very late) response. Thank you :)
Hi Matthew, not sure what expression you were trying to make :D but here is the meaning of that sentence, growing up, we were quite literal kids. We thought are prayers (if and when answered) would be answered literally. Have any of you read the book "Amelia Bedelia?" The maid who literally did everything she was told? While we were not that extreme, we did take things literally. I know, as an adult, that prayers can be answered the way we want or the way God wants it. but as kids, we said a prayer and in our minds, it was answered as we said it. But the point of my story is that, even children have some spirituality especially if their parents spend enough time to teach them.
Homo escapeons:
I happened to be blessed to travel the world around, but my time in the desert was the best time of my life.
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