Sunday, June 12
Day's recap:
Office drama exists everywhere, no matter where you are in the world, or in what type of office you work in. Our office is not exempt from this rule. I feel no need to go into the details, but the one lesson that I learned from my observations today is: do not delete anything. Rather, print out and retain records (i.e. of emails), so that in the case of clarifications and "she said he said"s, the hard print will always be available to refer back to. I'll talk more about the office in another post.
After getting back home, I decided to go for a walk around my neighborhood, trying to find the beach, as I'd been told that our apartment was really close to the water. After wandering in the wrong direction for a while, I finally found it, and it is so lovely! There's a nice little park - called the Al Ghubrah Lake Park, although it's more of a pond than anything - for people to walk around, and with a coffee shop conveniently situated at the head of the park as the path leads down to the beach, it's quite cute. I think I'll be coming back here much more often, and I look forward to it.
As I wandered around the beach and was walking through the park on my way back home, I caught the sound of the 7 o'clock prayers drifting out of a nearby mosque's loudspeakers, interrupting the song playing on my iPod. Since I've never really paid attention to the prayers before, I took out my earphones this time and took a seat at one of the outdoor tables by the coffee shop, and just listened. And as the imam's voice and his prayers washed over me, I couldn't help but think of my own religion, Christianity, and my own spirituality.
In Islam, Muslims traditionally perform salah five times a day: around dawn, after noon, in the late afternoon, at sunset, and later in the evening. In a Muslim country, the sound of prayers pervades the city as they are sung through the loudspeakers at each mosque. It's so integrated into daily life here that it's not unusual to see the hustle and bustle of affairs to come to a pause for 15 minutes during each of these times, or to see some people disappear into prayer rooms while non-Muslims continue their work undisturbed. Most non-Muslims have learned to tune the prayers to the frequency of background noise. As I sat in the park, listening to the song-like prayers, I couldn't help but wonder: how can this imam (and the millions of faithful Muslims) sing prayers for 15 minutes without pause, 5 times a day, and I have trouble sitting still for five minutes each day to talk with God? And it's ironic, that it takes listening to the evening prayers in a language I don't know for a religion I don't follow, in the middle of a Muslim country, to realize just how lacking I am in my own spirituality. It scares me and it challenges me and it humbles me incredibly all at the same time.
Day's recap:
Office drama exists everywhere, no matter where you are in the world, or in what type of office you work in. Our office is not exempt from this rule. I feel no need to go into the details, but the one lesson that I learned from my observations today is: do not delete anything. Rather, print out and retain records (i.e. of emails), so that in the case of clarifications and "she said he said"s, the hard print will always be available to refer back to. I'll talk more about the office in another post.
After getting back home, I decided to go for a walk around my neighborhood, trying to find the beach, as I'd been told that our apartment was really close to the water. After wandering in the wrong direction for a while, I finally found it, and it is so lovely! There's a nice little park - called the Al Ghubrah Lake Park, although it's more of a pond than anything - for people to walk around, and with a coffee shop conveniently situated at the head of the park as the path leads down to the beach, it's quite cute. I think I'll be coming back here much more often, and I look forward to it.
As I wandered around the beach and was walking through the park on my way back home, I caught the sound of the 7 o'clock prayers drifting out of a nearby mosque's loudspeakers, interrupting the song playing on my iPod. Since I've never really paid attention to the prayers before, I took out my earphones this time and took a seat at one of the outdoor tables by the coffee shop, and just listened. And as the imam's voice and his prayers washed over me, I couldn't help but think of my own religion, Christianity, and my own spirituality.
In Islam, Muslims traditionally perform salah five times a day: around dawn, after noon, in the late afternoon, at sunset, and later in the evening. In a Muslim country, the sound of prayers pervades the city as they are sung through the loudspeakers at each mosque. It's so integrated into daily life here that it's not unusual to see the hustle and bustle of affairs to come to a pause for 15 minutes during each of these times, or to see some people disappear into prayer rooms while non-Muslims continue their work undisturbed. Most non-Muslims have learned to tune the prayers to the frequency of background noise. As I sat in the park, listening to the song-like prayers, I couldn't help but wonder: how can this imam (and the millions of faithful Muslims) sing prayers for 15 minutes without pause, 5 times a day, and I have trouble sitting still for five minutes each day to talk with God? And it's ironic, that it takes listening to the evening prayers in a language I don't know for a religion I don't follow, in the middle of a Muslim country, to realize just how lacking I am in my own spirituality. It scares me and it challenges me and it humbles me incredibly all at the same time.
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