Reflecting on life in the time of the coronavirus

As I have often mentioned here, religious high holy days are important moments for this atheist to think about existence in this cosmos that I do not comprehend.  Ramadan provides me with yet another opportunity to think about it, this time against the backdrop of a global pandemic.

Ramadan begins today, and it will be completely unlike all the previous years through the centuries:

Around the world, Muslims will not be able to observe the holiday as they normally do — with 30 nights of communal prayer and post-sunset feasting. Instead, they’ll spend the long days of fasting mostly in their own homes.

Such is life now in which we find ourselves locked up in our homes, unable to get together with friends and family.   Everything is shut down!

The virus has emptied Islam’s holiest sites at the most sacred time of year. The Ka’bah, the gold-embroidered shrine in Mecca’s Grand Mosque, is closed to worshippers along with the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina and Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque.

Caption at the source: A nearly deserted Ka’bah in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on 7 April.

The pandemic does not stop this Islamophobic President from offering juicy anti-Muslim red meat to his base.  "our politicians seem to treat different faiths very differently ... They go after Christian churches but they don't tend to go after mosques."

The deafening sound that you hear is that of 63 million people cheering him!

As I wrote in this post seven years ago, in 2013, Ramadan "is an intentional pause to our everyday lives.  A forced interruption that then makes us think, for at least a few minutes every day, about what we want to do with the little time we have on this planet."  Unfortunately for the rest of us, this President and his toadies have a clear and starkly different idea of what they want to accomplish with the little time that they too have on this pale blue dot that we call home :(

The following is a slightly edited post from July 10, 2013:
**************************************************

I suppose it can look contradictory for this atheist to post about religion but without critiquing it.  But, I have never been one of those militant atheists making a fanatical religion out of atheism.  As long as the religious do not impose their practices on me, I seek nothing but peaceful coexistence with them.  And enjoy food and laughter and conversations with the faithful.

Furthermore, I am not that different from most atheists in that we reach the conclusion not with ignorance about religions, particularly the religion with which we were raised.  Even through my agnostic teenage years, I was curious about the Hindu faith and its philosophy.  Which is also why I am so familiar with dukrijnkarane.  And then curiosity made me find out at least a tiny bit about a few other religions.

This being Ramadan time, I have been thinking more about Islam.  It is a tragedy that the hysterical suspicions about followers of that religion prevents us from even appreciating the arts and literature that grew out of that faith. Thus, Rumi and his mystical works are among the many that get sidelined.  Of course, according to Islamists, Rumi and other sufis were not "real" Muslims.  All the more the reason the world will be better off without those crazy Islamists who make it difficult for all of us!

The way I--an atheist--interpret the Ramadan is this: it is an intentional pause to our everyday lives.  A forced interruption that then makes us think, for at least a few minutes every day, about what we want to do with the little time we have on this planet.  Especially with Ramadan coinciding with the hot summer days in the northern hemisphere, it is a wonderful time to stop doing whatever it is that we do day in and day out and ponder some serious questions instead.

As we do, I bet we will immediately realize that Rumi was profound when he distilled the wisdom to this:

Inside the Great Mystery that is,
we don't really own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?

May our politicians gain this wisdom from Rumi!

Flash. Honk. Yell. Chase. Compete. Life.

A driver flashed his pickup truck's headlights while tailing me, clearly conveying his irritation than I was not letting him go faster.

A driver honked at me because I slowed down on the city's narrow surface streets.

The driver of a truck hauling a boat while struggling with the hilly terrain managed to catch up with my vehicle during one of the down-slopes, and maniacally kept tailgating while wildly gesticulating as if to urge me to speed up, till he fell way behind during the climb up.

The driver of a newish Fiat, almost side-swiped the vehicle that I was driving as she nosed out of the lane where the traffic moved slower, and then stuck behind me on the faster lane, causing me to worry about her and forcing me to change lanes so that I would be out of her maniacal path.

A lot of angry and impatient drivers on the road.

And that was not even in California, but right here in Oregon!

Maybe the world was always full of angry and impatient drivers.  Or, maybe I notice them more the older I get.  Maybe I was also an angry and impatient driver when young.  Whatever.  This world ain't made for us slowpokes.

But then we slowpokes are able to stand and stare, as the world rushes by.
We observe.
We ponder.
We question.
We know well that we are all headed the same way anyway.
We are in no hurry; as Rumi said:

Inside the Great Mystery that is,
we don't really own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?

Ramadan slows us down ... to think, again, about "why this competition?"

Taking the back road is always wonderfully scenic in this part of the world.  A writer's paradise. Well, a paradise for this wannabe writer too ;)

But, there are reasons why a back road, with only one lane in each direction, might not have been taken even by Robert Frost. The sight of dead deer is not for the faint of the heart.   Traffic, however feeble a trickle that might be, can come to a stop if there is any mishap on the road. Or, even when the traffic moves, it can be at a snail's pace because of farm vehicles, like what happened the other day.

I was about six miles away from the destination when the smooth drive was interrupted by brake lights ahead. And then we crawled at between fifteen and twenty miles per hour.  Five miles more and my mind worked out the math of the additional time this stretch would take because of the differential of forty miles an hour. (We will find out how good you are at math.)  I tell ya, there is no shortage of materials to keep my mind occupied!

Some of us take life the way it unfolds, and then there are others.  The driver in the vehicle that was immediately behind me was one of those others.  He (yes, it was a male driver) made clear he wanted to pass me by edging the nose of the vehicle into the other lane and then pulling back because of oncoming traffic.  I wondered what he could possibly achieve by passing me when there were at least six other vehicles in between me and the farm vehicle in the lead.

And then, just like that he shot into the other lane and jumped back in immediately in front of me.  I hit the brakes. I grabbed my cellphone. And clicked.

It was a long line of vehicles behind me.  Nobody was going anywhere until the farm vehicle was off the road and, yet, the impatient driver couldn't be patient.

Thus it was on a hot summer day that I was, yet again, reminded of Rumi:

Inside the Great Mystery that is,
we don't really own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?

Perhaps the driver of that Suburban has never thought what Rumi wants us to reflect on.

If only all of us thought more about that competition in daily life at least during the scheduled calendar dates of a Christian's Sunday, or a Hindu's Ekadasi, or a Muslim's Ramadan.

Caption at the Source:
In this photo taken in Sarajevo on Tuesday, July 15, 2014
a restaurant waitress dressed in traditional clothes of Bosnian Muslims prepares food for iftar

Ramadan slows us down ... to think about "why this competition?"

I suppose it can look contradictory for this atheist to post about religion but without critiquing it.  But, I have never been one of those militant atheists making a fanatical religion out of atheism.  As long as the religious do not impose their practices on me, I seek nothing but peaceful coexistence with them.  And enjoy food and laughter and conversations with them.

Furthermore, I am not that different from most atheists in that we reach the conclusion not with ignorance about religions, particularly the religion with which we were raised.  Even through my agnostic teenage years, I was curious about the Hindu faith and its philosophy.  Which is also why I am so familiar with dukrijnkarane.  And then curiosity made me find out at least a tiny bit about a few other religions.  Thus, it did not surprise me one bit when a Pew survey, a few years ago, found that atheists often know more about religions than the believers themselves.

This being Ramadan time, I have been thinking more about Islam.  It is a tragedy that the hysterical suspicions about followers of that religion prevents us from even appreciating the arts and literature that grew out of that faith. Thus, Rumi and his mystical works are among the many that get sidelined.  Of course, according to Islamists, Rumi and other sufis were not "real" Muslims.  All the more the reason the world will be better off without those crazy Islamists who make it difficult for all of us!

The way I--an atheist--interpret the Ramadan is this: it is an intentional pause to our everyday lives.  A forced interruption that then makes us think, for at least a few minutes every day, about what we want to do with the little time we have on this planet.  Especially with Ramadan coinciding with the hot summer days in the northern hemisphere, it is a wonderful time to stop doing whatever it is that we do day in and day out and ponder some serious questions instead.

As we do, I bet we will immediately realize that Rumi was profound when he distilled the wisdom to this:

Inside the Great Mystery that is,
we don't really own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?

So, hey, whether or not we are Muslims is immaterial to inquiring within about what we want to do for the time that remains for us on this pale blue dot in a vast universe.  And, maybe read a little bit of Rumi, too, this Ramadan season.

Caption at the source:
Women hold prayers on the first night of Ramadan at the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Tuesday, July 9

Sparkling waters, an old friend, and Rumi

While on my usual five-mile walk by the river, I stopped for a while to watch the flow.  It flows not for you or for me or for anybody else. The water simply flows. That is it. Some seasons the flow is more, and less it is in others. It just is.

If only I could similarly truly understand life as "it is what it is."

While watching the sparkling waters under the cloudless summer sky, I was reminded of my friend Shahab. The late friend, that is.

I wondered whether it was the anniversary of his death and whether, therefore, the cosmos was somehow reminding me about it.  Turns out it is not the anniversary, but this July 9th is real close--Shahab died on June 9th, 2008.

Shahab, who was from Iran, simply adored the poetry and message in Rumi's works.   I am willing to bet that, for Shahab, no translation into English could ever come anywhere close to the poetry in the original.  But, people like me have no choice but to only appreciate Rumi through the translated works.

Like this one, via my favorite poetry site  So simple, so elegant, and so profound.  I am sure Shahab would have enjoyed this in the original.

What was told, that
by Jalalu'l-din Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest. 

What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that's happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane, 

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

Life becomes wonderful when Rumi puts it this way, right?  I suppose that is at least one distinction between water flowing just because versus us humans who can appreciate the world around us and even those who are no more around us.