Tender Mercies

Rev. Marisol Caballero
June 19, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The word rahmah appears more times in the Qur’an than any other to describe God’s attributes. In English it is often translated as “mercy,” but that doesn’t begin to describe what it means to a Muslim.

Call to Worship

Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Reading:

“My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears”
by Mohja Kahf

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears
to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,
wudu,
because she has to pray in the store or miss
the mandatory prayer time for Muslims

She does it with great poise, balancing
herself with one plump matronly arm
against the automated hot-air hand dryer,
after having removed her support knee-highs
and laid them aside, folded in thirds,
and given me her purse and her packages to hold
so she can accomplish this august ritual
and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares

Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown
as they notice what my grandmother is doing,
an affront to American porcelain,
a contamination of American Standards
by something foreign and unhygienic
requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray
They fluster about and flutter their hands and I can see
a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom

My grandmother, though she speaks no English,
catches their meaning and her look in the mirror says,
I have washed my feet over Iznik tile in Istanbul
with water from the world’s ancient irrigation systems
I have washed my feet in the bathhouses of Damascus
over painted bowls imported from China
among the best families of Aleppo

And if you Americans knew anything
about civilization and cleanliness,
you’d make wider washbins, anyway
My grandmother knows one culture – the right one,
as do these matrons of the Middle West. For them,
my grandmother might as well have been squatting
in the mud over a rusty tin in vaguely tropical squalor,
Mexican or Middle Eastern, it doesn’t matter which,
when she lifts her well-groomed foot and puts it over the edge.
“You can’t do that” one of the women protests,
turning to me, “Tell her she can’t do that.”
“We wash our feet five times a day”
my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic.
“My feet are cleaner than their sink.
Worried about their sink, are they?
I should worry about my feet!”
My grandmother nudges me, “Go on, tell them.”

Standing between the door and the mirror, I can see
at multiple angles, my grandmother and the other shoppers,
all of them decent and goodhearted women, diligent
in cleanliness, grooming, and decorum
Even now my grandmother, not to be rushed,
is delicately drying her pumps with tissues from her purse
For my grandmother always wears well-turned pumps that match her purse,
I think in case someone from one of the best families of Aleppo
should run into her-here, in front of the Kenmore display
I smile at the midwestern women
as if my grandmother has just said something lovely about them
and shrug at my grandmother as if they
had just apologized through me

No one is fooled, but I
hold the door open for everyone
and we all emerge on the sales floor
and lose ourselves in the great common ground
of housewares on markdown.

Sermon: Tender Mercies

It has been a tremendously sad week for so many of you who have been deeply affected by the massacre in Orlando last week. We are becoming ever-numb to news of gun violence, as CNN reports that “136 mass shootings in the first 164 days of this year.” But, the scale of this attack, with its final death toll still uncertain as several victims remain in critical condition, along with the fact that it took place in the assumed safe-haven of a gay club during Pride month, have rattled many of us to the core. In an interfaith vigil, I shared that to me, knowing how sacred Latino nights at gay clubs can be, what a sanctuary they are to the gay Latino community, it felt as if blood had been spilled on holy ground.

During June Pride month, LGBTQ folks tend to go out dancing more than they typically do. Even the homebodies are dragged out of their slippers and into a pair of skinny jeans. We are celebrating our community’s courage and resiliency. We are affirming the worth of ourselves and of each other. We dance knowing that there are still LGBTQ elders alive today that could never have imagined being so bold. We dance because so many who fell victim to the AIDS epidemic are no longer here to dance, themselves. We dance in their memory. We dance because we are surrounded by others who also have to choose daily whether to come out to anyone and everyone who presumptively inquires about relations with the opposite sex.

We dance because, in that club, we don’t have to watch our backs like we do in the streets. We dance to celebrate, and especially during the month of June, the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the modicum of progress some of us have made in being fully accepted by our family of origins. There is a peace, a freedom, a camaraderie in a gay club that, especially during Pride month, gives way to level of joy that can legitimately bring about a religious experience. I don’t mean this in a drunken, euphoric sense, but think about how or when you have felt connected or united with God, or Humanity, or the Universe, or whatever you call it. Where were you? What were you doing? Maybe you held your newborn child for the first time … Maybe you sat in quiet solitude on a mountain peak and breathed in the sweet air. .. Maybe you won a sports tournament, or ran a marathon, or experienced divinity while making love … All of these experiences can bring us close to what I often call the Divine Mystery by reminding us that we are part of a whole and that we can do things and feel love in ways we never imagined. This is what can be experienced in the safe haven of a gay club. Even more so, for Latino LGBTQ folks, the remnants of brutal colonialism – traditional gender roles and hyper-masculinity reinforced by conservative Christianities create a need for spaces where LGBTQ Latinos can reconcile these two identities. The guys can speak Spanglish in the women’s bathroom while applying eyeliner and the girls can be anywhere on the gender expression spectrum and be no less Latina for it, and the gender queer Latinos can feel free to bring new gender-neutral words into Spanish’s very gendered grammar, such as elle instead of el or ella, and Latinx, instead of Latina/o.

The Pulse nightclub was no less sacred than this sanctuary, or any synagogue, mosque, cathedral, or temple. So, when violence happens in a sacred space, when people are most at ease and have a sense of safety, it is surely a heinous act.

Also like many of you, I’m sure, cringed when we saw that the gunman was a young Muslim man. Before we had information that might point to him being something of a self-loathing homophobe with a hyper-masculine, verbally abusive father, all we heard was his name, his interest in ISIS, and that he was Muslim. We knew all too well what would follow. It’s why we have the banner up in Howson Hall that reads, “We stand with our Muslim neighbors.” And, sure enough, it took nanoseconds for the internet and cable news networks to be filled with Islamophobic rhetoric and frightening threats to Muslim communities. I was so proud by the turnout for our second annual Ramadan fast-breaking Iftar this past Wednesday! It was such a show of solidarity!

This year, June is more than Pride month because this year Pride happens to coincide with the holy month of Ramadan on the Muslim calendar. Many people in the US know very little about Islam. I will admit to knowing more about Buddhism and Judaism than I do about Islam. When I went before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the UU Association to be deemed ready and fit for ministry, I was asked the question, “What are you most drawn to about Christianity, Judaism, and Islam?” I had a small panic and then answered, “Christianity – the radicalism of Jesus and his bravery to stand up against a powerful empire, Judaism – centuries of tradition and the emphasis on ritual and on family, and Islam – the huge focus of universal the Love of God.” I thought I’d remembered a concept in Islam like this, but couldn’t be paid to recall anything more than I said.

Last month, one of my Muslim friends posted an article about the Muslim concept of Rahmah. It turns out, Rahmah was the idea that I had in mind when I took an educated guess at the interview question, but universal love of God seems to be an inadequate interpretation of the word. In fact, Rahmah is often interpreted as “mercy,” in English, though this, too, does not fully capture what it means. Rahmah is one of the most central teachings of the Messenger, Muhammad. He said, “I am not not sent here to curse, but I was sent as a Rahmah.” Not only is the word and words derived from the root the most prevalent word family in the Arabic Qur’an, but it is also the most commonly used term to describe the attributes of God, Allah. There are famously 99 different “names,” or attributes of Allah. Some include, Al-Basir, The All Seeing; Al-Ghafoor, The All Forgiving; and Al-Hakeem, The Wise. But the first two, Ar-Rahman, The All Beneficent, The Most Merciful in Essence, The Compassionate, The Most Gracious; and Ar-Rahim, The Most Merciful, The Most Merciful in Actions, are in the first sentence of every single chapter of the Qur’an except for one and that is the chapter devoted to Rahmah.

Bismillah’I-Rahman’I-Rahim. Is that first line. It is often spoken in conversation between devout Mulsims. It means, “In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.” These are very similar attributes, but Ar-Rahman means, “The One who is defined by complete and universal Rahmah,” and Ar-Rahmin means, “The One who continuously shows much Rahmah.” But, to understand this difference, we need to gain a better understanding of what Rahmah is if it isn’t fully explained by being translated as mercy. Like many English-speakers, when I hear that someone is being “merciful,” I usually assume that they are in a position of power and they have the authority to punish but have decided to be lenient. This doesn’t seem like a godly attribute. Aaron Persky, the judge in the recent controversial rape case could be called merciful by this definition, since he delivered a ridiculously mild sentence to an admitted rapist. Also, oftentimes leniency is not granted out of compassion. There are often ulterior motives, such as maintaining the ‘Old Boy’s Club’ as in this case, or for political strategy.

Guner Arslan, the speaker and one of the main organizers of last Wednesday’s Iftar, spoke to me a bit about Rahmah. “Does Rahmah mean that God is ever-forgiving of our sins?” “No” he said. “Rahmah speaks to the fact that God regards us with mercy and He has mercy for everyone and everything in creation. He has more mercy than is possible for anyone else to possess; Supreme Mercy.” I was still confused. I was stuck in my understanding of the meaning of the word ‘mercy.’ When I asked him if that is what he meant by mercy, he said enthusiastically, “No! Not at all.” “Well, then what does mercy mean?” “That’s hard to talk about” he said with a chuckle, “It’s like trying to explain to you what Love is.” He went on, “mercy is what a mother feels for a child. The child has never done anything to earn that love, but they are just freely given it, even before they are born. When the child is hurt, the mother aches, as well. Well, fathers, too, but Rahmah is often regarded as a mother regards her child.” “So, is Rahmah “Love?” “No. It’s this type of mercy. It contains love in it, but there are many types of love. Muslims must regard every person with this same feeling of mercy to try to please God.”

In the article, “Rahmah- Not Just ‘Mercy” Adnan Majid explains:
Of course, this connection of rahmah and motherly love is linguisticolly unsurprising, for rahmah is related to the Arabic word rahm, which means “uterus,” “womb,” and figuratively “family ties.” This close linguistic connection is so eloquently expressed in Allah’s statement as transmitted in a hadith qudsi, “I am al-Rahman and created the rahm (uterus) – And I named it after Me.” Therefore, if we are to grasp the rahmah that is core to God’s very nature, we must look to what this feminine organ symbolizes – the nurturing emotions we find in mothers and the bonds that tie families together. However, mothers are not the only ones characterized by rahmah; the Prophet himself embodied the quality when he would hug his grandchildren, kissing them.

In the patriarchal Bedouin culture of his day, this was considered an effeminate characteristic. “I have ten children and have never kissed any of them!” retorted a proud, disapproving Bedouin. But the Messenger, knowing the beauty of parental love in Allah’s eyes, warned the man, “He who shows no rahmah will be shown no rahmah (in the hereafter}.” And in another instance, he reiterated, “He who has no rahmah for children is not one of us. “

I am trying, still, to fully understand this view of mercy, but upon reading that Ar-Rahman is the attribute of Allah that means God’s grace, blessings, love, and yes, this new-to-me definition of mercy encompass everything and everyone in the universe. While I don’t personally believe in a deity that is a who? What? When? Or where?, I can begin to see strands of my theology in Ar-Rahman. Ar-Rahmin is a measurable, observable act of compassion by God. If a Muslim is in a terrible accident and walks away unscathed, they may then pray a prayer of thanks, invoking the attribute Ar-Rahim. On the other hand, according to the attribute, Ar-Rahmah, just like a parent has to pour stinging hydrogen peroxide or alcohol on a scraped knee, so does God sometimes place us in situations whose favorable outcome we cannot see for the awful current state of affairs. This, of course, falls in line with the Muslim belief in predestination.

Learning about this while listening to the constant stream of news coverage of Orlando was actually comforting to me in a surprising way. No, I don’t think that the Divine placed those happy, dancing people in the path of those bullets to make way for a predestined favorable outcome, but I do like to think that, in reevaluating what mercy means and how we can all strive for it, I felt personal agency in a crippling grief that could have very well given way to feeling utterly helpless. If we can both mourn the dead and maintain an unconditional love for humanity, as a whole, disturbed mass-murderers don’t come out on top. There is, of course activism to take part in, policy change to effect, but for the emotional helplessness, that remedy is needed. We will never make sense of such a massacre, but there are ways of moving forward that both honor and mourn the dead and experience a personal spiritual transformation in our mourning, through striving to know and love Rahmah, that feeling we can nurture that allows us to allow our hearts to ache alongside others in pain. We need not loose ourselves to that pain, but to feel it, even fleetingly, is a Rahmah, a nurturing, compassionate love.

During this Holy month for both our LGBTQ family and our Muslim family, and especially for LGBTQ Latinos and for LGBTQ Muslims, may you love Rahmah and may Rahmah be bestowed upon you. May it be so.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.