大象传媒

听

There was a time many years ago when I felt anxious, lost and uncertain. Even smiling was a challenge because I felt I had nothing to smile about. One day, I made my way to the mosque for Friday prayers. I stepped inside, removed my shoes, and looked for a place to sit quietly on the patterned carpet. It was a full house, but I managed to squeeze in next to a woman who was murmuring sacred invocations.


As I waited for the call to prayer to sound off, I felt the warmth of her body heat reach me, as if it were gentle embrace. I felt calm, reassured, safe. It dawned on me that if i could feel that much peace in the warmth of one stranger, how much solace I could find in the warmth of the One who created us both. I felt in that moment I had the strength to carry on, even though life never stops hurling its challenges at me and beyond.


I see so much uncertainty, so much pain in the world around me, that sometimes I begin to doubt humanity itself. But that is exactly the point where hope ends and despair begins.听 I can鈥檛 let that happen. The words of the American Muslim author, Yasmin Mogahed, tell me I can鈥檛 let that happen.


She says, 鈥淚 tell you to keep going, not because it's easy. Not because it doesn't hurt. I tell you to keep going because there is no other way. To stop is to die. Life is in motion. In growth. In change. Life is in seeking and in finding. Life is in redemption. Each moment is a new birth. A new chance to come back, to get it right. A new chance to make it better.鈥� Yasmin is right of course.

I鈥檓 not a machine that can take endless news, hammering me into the ground like a rusty old nail. I鈥檓 a soul that refuses to have its wings clipped. For me, hope is survival, hope is struggle. Hope is humanity. The warmth I felt in that moment when I most needed it reminds me that come what may, there will always be Hope.