Aylan loves Allah, Allah loves Aylan (Part 1/2)

When I entered our spiritual center a few days ago, after a Growing in Love session I wasn’t able to attend, my attention was caught immediately by a message written by one of the children on our whiteboard. My eyes welled with tears, and a deep sense of gratitude filled my heart.The message wrote: “Aylan loves Allah, Allah loves Aylan.” Otherwise said: “God, the ‘All-There-Is’ loves Aylan, Aylan loves God”. What a profound yet simple message. A message that pierces through your heart and strikes you by its depth and simplicity.

What else do we really need in order to grow in love? And truly, what other way can we grow in love? How can we love if we don’t know that we are loved? 

This child wrote this sentence on his own; No one dictated this message to him, nor no did any one explicitly say these words in front of him. This is a foundational teaching from the Quran in Surah-al Maida verse 54,  often translated as “God will bring people He loves and who love him”. For a more comprehensive translation and deeper understanding I would say: “The Divine Presence draws to her people who are aware of the Reality of the Divine Love, people who realize that God loves them.” We often hear of gaining “nearness” to Allah; However, “nearness”  is a realization. You become near when you realize that you are already near. You are loved when you actually realize you are already loved. You get it when you get it.

This child is a brilliant example of “getting it”. He did not say these words because he was given a tafsir from the Quran; He got it from being nourished by the “Growing in Love program’s” safe space where kids and parents sit together and sing in harmony. Songs like “Allah, I love you” with lyrics calling us to sing “I see your beauty everywhere, I want to meet you in my prayer. Allah I love you, I love you Allah”. As well as songs like “ I am a child of God”. In this song, lovers are called to go deep into the well of love with lyrics that gently call us to remember “ I am a child of God, a beloved child of God. A child of the One who remembers us all”. Aylan’s profession of Love is a direct influence of these two songs. 

I am proud to say, and deeply humbled to be able to share that there is nowhere else, that I have witnessed, where people and children are given the opportunity, and the space, to nurture a genuine, healthy and authentic relationship with God that is rooted in love. In “classic” or “mainstream” islamic environments you wouldn’t even hear about love at all. Love is not a thing at all. It”s about fear. It’s fearing Allah. It’s about fearing God, the master who gives and forgives out of “grace” understood as “favor”. In classical Sufi spaces, we hear about love and It’s all about love, in reality, but only from one side. The teachings are about how to love Allah and his messenger more than your wealth, your family and even yourself. I have spent 20 years, at least, in the journey of Tasawwuf (Sufism), mostly in the orthodox/traditionalist Islam Sufi circles, and I was never told “Allah loves us”. There was not a single teacher that made it a priority to nurture the foundation of “trusting that God loves us” no matter what.

It was a realization that came to me in a moment of weakness, vulnerability and resistance to sin, fearing the sin would make me fall from grace, and lose the love of God. I remember as I was praying in a moment where I was made to realize my vulnerability, and  made to see that it was very possible for me to fall into sin again, after many years of sobriety. I prayed and cried “Please, don't let me fall; Please, Please hold me tight and don’t let me fall”. And, In the midst of my sobbing, praying and fearing and hating my human condition, an image came to me of myself as a little boy sitting on a high branch of a tree, scared from falling and holding with all his strength to the branch, not daring to move towards the ladder to come down off the tree. With image, I remembered the voice of my father telling me “Let yourself fall. Let yourself fall. I’ll catch you in my arms.” He repeated this again and again to me, comforting me with reassurance as he told me “I am here and I am strong enough to catch you; Just let yourself fall”. “Fall in my arms” he told me.  

My state of vulnerability and the vision  was such a deep and powerful moment for me, that I woke up with the realization “If I fall, I’ll fall in the arms of God. Let it be if it has to be”. I felt so loved by God for the first time; Not as a compensatory kind of love, or as a reward kind of love. This was not a love that you need to earn, work hard for or even deserve; But, an unconditional love. The feeling of being loved unconditionally by God filled all of my heart, until I felt there was nothing that could take that love from me- not even the worst of sins. The voice that told me “Fall in my arms” didn’t come out of entitlement or taking God for granted, but out of trust. From that moment, I deeply trusted that no matter what I may or may not do, Allah, The All-there-Is, would indeed catch me and continue to love me unconditionally. 

After this profound epiphany, I felt ashamed when I finally understood that when I was begging God “Please don't let me fall”, I wasn't praying out of love for God, but actually, out of longing for nearness. However, Isn”t God nearer to us than our nearest self? How could we stop at the veil of nearness, when we could instead leave it behind and unite with God; Dissolving completely into God once letting go of any attachment to expectations, privileges, wants and desires related to our separated self; Or, perhaps better described as “the self living in separation”. This Dissolving completely may even require us to also let go of the notions and labels of “sainthood”, “nearness”, “purity” or “uprightness.”

Aylan loves Allah and Allah loves Aylan! A true “salah”, being that the literal meaning of “salah” is connection. What a deep and true prayer indeed.

This teaching was given on November 11th in Ottawa