Authors: Greg Kincaid
Ted made a complete list of his questions, the things he needed to know, and the arguments he might be able to make, with citations and cases to support them, then closed the laptop and slipped out of the lawyer zone.
There was a knock on the door. “Are you alive in there?”
“Barely.”
“Hurry up. I want you to meet Mashid.”
Ted dressed quickly. He and Argo joined Angel and No Barks at the kitchen table and the four of them waited for Mashid to emerge from the guest bathroom. Angel had showered and changed into a skirt and light blue T-shirt with a darker blue dolphin leaping over her shoulder. Her crossed legs swung back and forth as she ate a piece of toast. Ted tried to move his thoughts to their studies. “I’ve been thinking more about your aunt. I have some theories, but I need more information.”
“That’s good. We’ll be in South Dakota in a few days. You can dive in then, but today let’s work on the levels.”
Suddenly, Angel stood, walked across the kitchen, and embraced a dark-skinned woman in a hijab and blue jeans. Ted was taken aback. This woman was strikingly beautiful. What was a woman like this doing in the desert of the American Southwest? Ted realized his jaw was hanging open and tried to close his mouth and regain his composure.
Like most of the other coconuts, Angel had known Mashid for years. Just as Father Chuck was committed to showing the true path of the Jesus ministry, Mashid worked to bring an upper-level perspective or awareness to adherents of the world’s fastest-growing religion—Islam. Angel gave her friend a strong, warm hug. “How wonderful to see you again. You look radiant.” Angel then pulled away and made her introduction. “Ted, I would like you to meet my friend Mashid.” Mashid held out her hand and Ted nervously accepted it. To his surprise, she playfully pulled him closer. Ted felt a glow of warmth and acceptance emanating from the young woman. In a rare moment, Ted trusted his intuition and stepped closer to give her a heartfelt embrace. He stepped back and said, “Angel has said many wonderful things about you. I love your house! It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
Mashid chuckled, turned to her old friend, and said, “Angel, your first student. How exciting!”
Angel did not want to belabor the point that her traveling practice had not been a smash hit, so she kept the focus on Ted. “And he’s a good one, too.” Angel took them both by the hand and led them back to the kitchen table. “Let’s sit and talk. We’re so grateful to you for sharing your morning with us.”
Ted let out three deep breaths and relaxed into a small pressed-back chair with a cane seat. He felt strangely comfortable around Angel and Mashid. A few weeks ago he would have been put off by their unconventional clothes and out-there lifestyle. But now being a student at Spirit Tech seemed
normal
. In some ways it wasn’t that hard. He just listened, asked questions, and let the curriculum unfold.
“Mashid, what took you to Denver?” Angel asked.
“I was at the airport. I just got back from doing a spot on BBC One in London. Tomorrow morning I’m off to Dallas to speak at a Sufi retreat. I’m doing the Enneagram.”
*1
Ted had never met a television personality and was impressed. “What did you do in London?” he eagerly asked.
“I was a guest on a talk show. It was about being a lesbian and a Muslim, but more than that, I spoke about tolerance and the true nature of our life’s quest.”
Angel hummed knowingly and Mashid continued, “Tolerance and Islam are too often estranged these days. It is part of the Islamic crisis that we were discussing on the show. My faith is being torn apart by extremists, and I maintain that it is younger Western Muslims, like myself, who must lead the charge to defend the faith from first- and second-grade fundamentalism that detracts from Islam’s true message. What Father Chuck is trying to do for Christianity I want to do for Islam.”
Mashid grinned. Even she would admit that she enjoyed her role as the hip spokeswoman for her generation. Of course, she paid a price for this role. She worried about the threatening phone calls, the hate mail, and the fact that she had to call the sheriff every time she received a suspicious or unsolicited package. There were those who hated Mashid’s brand of Islam as much as Mashid detested the hatred and violence produced in the name of fundamentalism.
Angel knew that Mashid was a very busy woman, and she wanted to use their limited time together efficiently. She got right to work. “Ted has some general notions about Islam, but we need you to fill in some blanks. We have just begun to work together on the vertical levels and the introductory exercises. Ted is progressing very quickly. He’s ready for the third level.”
Mashid reached out and grasped Angel’s hand. “I’ll do my best to answer Ted’s questions about Islam.”
Ted interjected, “I tried to read the Koran and found it was, well, difficult.”
Mashid looked sideways at Ted, and her green eyes were so luminous that for at least a moment he allowed that Angel was not the only woman in his universe. He was wondering what her hair would look like if she let it down, when he noticed that her eyes were turning red.
Ted reached across the table and offered Mashid his napkin. “Was it something I said?”
“Oh, Mashid,” Angel gasped, “I’m so sorry.” She clutched Mashid’s arm.
“No. No. It’s not Ted’s fault. But now is such a troubled
time for Islam and for the world as a whole. We are, you see, at a pivotal point in human history. Christianity and Islam are both in chaos right now for the same reasons. Islam has so much potential for humanity, but that potential is not being realized. Still, I have hope.”
Ted tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Mashid. Father Chuck made the same apologies for Christianity. He said that both religions have moved away from the teachings of their founders.”
“That sounds like Father Chuck!” Mashid said. “He’s right. This is why a discussion of either Christianity or Islam can become so difficult right now. Depending on the individual and their progress along the spectrum of awareness, these religions can look unappealing to an outsider trying to peer inside a mosque or a cathedral.”
“I read somewhere that Islam is the fasting-growing religion in the world,” Ted said. “But there’s all this extremism around the world and Islamophobia in the news. How does all that get reconciled?”
Mashid regained her composure and said, “Of course this is where I should begin. I’ll try to make this simple. Christianity and Islam are both grounded in events that may or may not have occurred thousands of years ago. The more time passes, the more adept our archaeology and scholarship become, the more we come to realize that much of what is described in the Bible and the Koran simply cannot be historically accurate. Perhaps it made sense to describe spiritual events in this way two thousand years ago, but not now.”
Ted offered his own explanation. “Or perhaps these stories
were never meant to be interpreted literally in the first place. It’s not the ancients that were naive; it’s us!” Ted turned to his own private spiritual consultant for affirmation. “The literalism of the first- and second-grade worshipers pushes the rest of us away from religion altogether. Maybe that’s a shame.” Angel nodded. “I think you’re almost right, Ted. Critically thinking and well-educated people, like yourself, too often throw out the baby with the proverbial bath water.”
“Why?” Ted asked.
Angel rested her hand on Ted’s wrist and said apologetically, “At the point of realizing that the Bible and the Koran cannot be literally true, it’s tempting to reject the entire texts as a primitive waste of time. This is the tragic shortcoming of third- and fourth-level students: they fail to realize that the holy texts still point, like road signs, to life’s great truths.”
Ted raised his hand. “I plead guilty as charged. I often find myself wondering if it’s even possible to be religious in a modern world. When someone starts talking to me about magical things that supposedly happened thousands of years ago, I check out. I find it impossible to believe that God would manifest once and only once for Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, or the Buddha—or anyone else for that matter—and turn a blind eye to the rest of humanity.”
Mashid excitedly leaned forward, realizing that Ted had reached the crux of the problem. “What made these men great was not that God chose them over the rest of us but instead that these men found the path to open up and experience what is potentially available to all of us: the internal
presence of God in life itself. We can be spiritual without disregarding science and eschewing rational thought. Thomas Jefferson, for example, created his own Bible by jettisoning the historical and magical-sounding material in the New Testament and focusing instead on the morality or the efficacy of the teachings of Jesus.”
*2
Angel interrupted. “Sadly, Mashid, while I agree with you, it seems like this approach, as much as it makes sense to you and me, too often falls on deaf ears. In many ways the fundamentalists have won the battle for the soul of religion, and this is why young, educated people like my friend Ted here are leaving religion behind in droves. What remains of Christianity and Islam is therefore too often extreme and less acceptable to modern and more moderate thinkers.”
Mashid was undaunted. “Ah, but Angel, the times they are changing again. I sense a great wave gathering. And that is what has me so excited. Literalism and fundamentalism have shackled the last thousand years or so of religion, and I feel in my heart that we are on the verge of shedding those chains.”
Mashid looked warmly at Angel, took a sip of her tea, and continued. “Father Chuck, Angel, and many more of us are looking to a third alternative: something transcendent, beyond both the nonthinking approach of the fundamentalists
and the overthinking, intellectual approach championed by the secular world. The Buddhists call it awakening or enlightenment. Sometimes I think of it as realizing that our lives right now are every bit as much a manifestation of God as a burning bush was to Moses.”
Angel brought her friend up to date on Ted’s studies. “You’re getting a little ahead of us, Mashid. So far, Ted and I have only explored the first and second levels.”
“Oh yes, I see. Well, Ted, I’ll be blunt with you. First- and second-grade Islam often has very little attraction to a Western intellectual like you or, for that matter, to a Sufi like myself.”
Ted interrupted. “What is a Sufi?”
Angel knew that Mashid’s modesty would get in the way of answering the question, so she did it for her. “Islam is very unique. Unlike Christianity, where the inhabitants of the upper levels are left to wander about alone, unable to support each other, the Sufis represent the most spiritually evolved Muslims, and they support each other and do the Work. If you have the pleasure of knowing a Sufi, you’re probably meeting someone at a very high level of spiritual awareness.”
Mashid tried to get to the bottom of Islam’s plight. “Ted, fifth- and sixth-grade Islam, like the upper grades of Christianity or Buddhism, offer a transcendental awareness that can only be experienced and not described. Once you experience it, you will be changed forever. The paradox is that if you ask me to describe Islam, I must naturally begin with the Koran and first- and second-grade Islam.”
Angel found another way to make Mashid’s point. “Most of us are oblivious to the first-grade thinking in our own religious worldview, but
your
first-grade religious thinking will stand out like spilled milk on the countertop.”
Mashid took a deep breath and dived in. “In many ways the story actually begins centuries before his birth, but nonetheless we’ll start with Muhammad, the Messenger. He was born among the Bedouin people wandering around the desert near Medina and Mecca in the sixth century AD. They were a tough, resourceful, and practical people. To survive in the desert they could not be otherwise. They were also quite barbarous by our standards, and there was a tremendous amount of fighting and killing in their world.”
Angel interjected, “As there was in the rest of the world in the sixth century.”
Ted shrugged. “Pick up the newspaper. It hasn’t gone away.”
Mashid continued, “These Bedouin had no organized religion, but they had codes of honor and were generally animistic and pantheistic.”
“Animistic?” Ted asked.
“Basically, the Bedouin projected human characteristics onto inanimate objects. If you stubbed your toe on a rock, it meant the rock was mad at you. Clouds formed shapes to offer us signs or portent.”
Angel whispered across the table, “This was a very typical first-grade religious worldview. Remember, for the first grader the self and its surroundings are not yet fully separated or differentiated, and so religious thinking is still very much tied
to the physical world of the worshipper. I can stick a pin in a voodoo doll and make you hurt.”
“That’s right,” Mashid said. “These early nomadic peoples were classic first graders in their religious thinking: many gods and other spiritual beings called
jinn
—plus spirits existing in inanimate objects like rocks, mountains, or streams.”
Ted stopped Mashid with a question. “By the sixth century, when Muhammad was born, both Christianity and Judaism were well established. Had the Judeo-Christian culture also made its way to Mecca?”
“Oh yes, a Christian and Jewish influence was definitely present and managed to exist side by side with these primitive Bedouin religions.”
Ted smiled to show his appreciation and said, “Tell me more about Muhammad.”
Mashid continued, “Shortly after his birth, Muhammad lost both of his parents, and he was raised by relatives. As a young man he went to work for a wealthy widow in the caravan trade, so here too he would have come into contact with Jews and Christians as part of his travels. The owner of the caravan was a woman named Khadija, and she was fifteen years his senior. They fell in love and she proposed to him. They married, and their relationship is looked upon as a model for marriage among the Muslim community.”
Angel added, “He was no wimpy dude, you know. He screwed around a great deal, massacred entire tribes of people, and robbed his way to power. At times he was compassionate and loving and at times he was angry and jealous. In other words, a human.”