Last Saturday we made the journey to Touba to visit La Grande Mosquée; as we bumped along the sandy road, I looked out over the vast Senegalese landscape dotted with sturdy Baobab trees and thought about what it meant to be on, what is for African Muslims travelling to this spiritual center, a sacred journey.
In my life experience so far, I have never found in organized religion a home for how I see and relate to the world and my presence in it; however, I do live in and live out belief.
I conceive of my belief as that which I find to connect us all in our humanity and that which guides me as I attempt to live a life of meaning and a life that promotes and supports lives of meaning for all others. And so I do not profess belief lightly; but as we drove along this road to Touba, I suddenly felt a desire and ability to articulate my beliefs, as I understand them in this moment on my path. So I found a scrap of paper and messily scribbled, as the bus bumped and jolted over potholes beneath me, that which I hold to be my truth. It is in this I believe:
(written 30 November 2013, in raw form)
– I believe in good, in an inherent capacity for good in humans and that in all things good can be found
– I believe shit and struggle, sometimes explicable and sometimes not but never ‘for a reason,’ happen and they suck, but I believe growth and learning will always follow if you are open to and grateful for it
– I believe in kindness, I believe in holism, I believe in presence, I believe in gratitude
– I believe our souls do not disappear in death, but are carried on by those people and places whose paths crossed ours
– I believe in living intentionally, in living in gratefulness, in living in joy and curiosity, in living in acknowledgement of the humanity of all
– I believe in togetherness and the importance of self-work
– I believe in creating, appreciating, and holding dear those many forms of family
– I believe in the need for us all to sit with, to listen to, to be alone with, and to hold each other in our sadness and in our happiness
– I believe in constantly striving – to be and to live better, to love and to care more deeply, to learn and to grow more fervently, to live out gratefulness more evidently
– I believe in compassion
I do not pretend to see my beliefs as exceptionally profound or the necessary truth of others, neither do I pretend to walk my path entirely assured of my belief, nor to live out my belief each day as fully as I wish. But in this moment, as I found myself on the bumpy road to Touba and as a continual work in progress, it is in this which I believe.
callie daniels-howell 