"Of course, all are welcome in God's house," the tallest of the men replied. I had approached a loose circle of congregants standing under an oak tree in the recently expanded parking lot of the Bentonville Islamic Center and asked if it would be all right if I prayed with them. The group smiled a collective smile, and without conveying the slightest bit of curiosity concerning why a priest wearing a clerical collar might want to join in their prayers, they explained the Friday prayer service had just ended. "But please," another man offered, "come back next Friday. The prayers begin at 1:00." "Yes, I will. Thank you," I answered.
I arrived, as promised, promptly at 1 p.m. the next Friday afternoon and opened the basement door designated for the men in the congregation. I entered into a kind of locker room containing benches, cubbyholes for shoes and coat hooks on the walls. Rounding the corner, I encountered a youngish man drying his hands on a paper towel.
"I was wondering if it would be all right if I prayed with you today," I asked.
He warmly extended his hand in greeting and said, "Of course, please do." He showed me where to hang my coat and explained it is their practice to remove their shoes and socks and wash their hands and feet before the prayers.
"Are you interested in converting?" he asked. I smiled broadly at the thought.
"No, just curious," I answered.
As we sat on side by side on an elaborately tiled bench in front of several pair of water faucets mounted on a tile wall, my new Muslim friend explained, and demonstrated, the detailed process of ritual cleansing Muslims perform before praying. With every motion punctuated by rhythmic prayers spoken in Arabic, and a steady steam of warm water flowing from the faucets, we methodically washed our hands and arms to the elbows, our faces and necks, and our feet to the ankles. We cleared our nostrils, and then, using our forefingers like toothbrushes, cleansed our mouths.
I felt as if we had taken what could have been a mindless "washing up" and turned the act into something holy -- much as Christians impart meaning to baptism, foot-washing, and the washing of hands practiced by priests before presiding at the Eucharist.
We made our way upstairs to a living room-size hall where the men were collecting for prayer. The deep purple carpet of the furniture-less hall was divided by parallel rows of tape, partitioning the room into a series of rows where the men began to kneel or sit side by side. The Imam, an elderly gentleman, began to speak in heavily accented English. He spoke of kindness, of love for one's neighbor, of care for the poor, of right action and justice -- precepts that find their way into the homilies of pastors, priests, rabbis and teachers from all the world's great religions. The crowd filtered in as the Imam spoke. Some listened attentively; some appeared distracted by their own thoughts -- the varied kind of congregational reaction most preachers face on a Sunday morning. The new friend who had earlier guided me through the ritual cleansing sat on the floor beside me, occasionally whispering in my ear an explanation concerning the proceedings.
After the sermon, the Imam firmly instructed us to stand side-by-side in a series of straight lines, shoulder touching shoulder. Unexpectedly, I felt an instant sense of solidarity with this group of men who had gathered to pray and had so kindly included me in their number. Guided by the motion of those around me, we moved through a sequence of prostrations, punctuated by prayers of praise and remembrance, said in unison. Because I didn't know the prayers, I could only stand and kneel and prostrate, as the others did. But by the third prostration, with my forehead, my palms and knees all on the floor, I felt an overwhelming sense of humility -- recognizing, with my body, how frail and inadequate we are as human beings, in the presence of an almighty God.
Muslims are expected to pray five times a day. Christians have relegated the practice of "praying the hours" to monasteries, finding ourselves too busy to so frequently acknowledge the presence of God.
Worship for many Christians takes place almost entirely nestled in a well-cushioned pew or enveloped in comfortable theater seating. In our liturgical tradition, we stand to sing, kneel to pray and sit to listen. But aside from that bit of movement -- and an occasional bowing or making the sign of the cross -- we too are largely sedentary in our worship. The "body prayer" of the Muslim worshiper has a way of engaging the whole being in prayer, in a manner those of us who pray with words alone tend to miss.
With its movement toward modernity, the practice of Christianity lost a level of commitment, devotion and engagement of the whole being that is still alive and well in the worship of devout Muslims. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim a direct lineage and a spiritual connection to Abraham, the patriarch. In a world in which our brothers and sisters in the Abrahamic tradition are more often feared than loved, we might benefit by regarding Muslims as teachers and allies in the faith, rather than enemies -- and thus enlist Muslim aid in helping Christians regain a distinctive characteristic of worship we seem to have lost.
NAN Religion on 05/16/2015