Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Love, InshAllah

Home
Muslim
Relationships and Religion
I went down to the river to pray

I went down to the river to pray

Last updated on: November 3, 2014 at 11:18 am by Posted by The Editors

I went down to the river to pray 2014-11-03T11:18:17-07:00 Posted by The Editors

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Ed. note: This post won a Brass Crescent Award for being the ‘single most original and important post in the Islamosphere’ in 2012.

O sisters let’s go down,
Let’s go down, come on down.
O sisters let’s go down,
Down in the river to pray.

– Alison Krause, Down to the River to Pray

It’s hard for me to admit that light and darkness, love and rage, need and pain are entangled in my relationship with my mother. Every Mother’s Day, we go for brunch and pretend that love is pure and simple, that we’ve never been wounded or made each other miserable, that our hearts aren’t fists covered in each other’s blood.

I gave my mother an advance copy of my book on Muslim women’s search for love about a month before the release date. Although she knew the love story I was going to share, and had been a strong supporter of the book over the five years it took from conception to publication, after she read it in print, she disowned me.

Drowning in personal grief and anger as the book was acclaimed by media and readers around the world, I struggled to understand how the one who claimed to love me the most could leave me, cutting herself off from me overnight, disappearing from my life and that of her two-year-old grandson. How could the fear of what her community might say about my “shameful” actions be more important than our blood bonds?

It was during our painful estrangement that I heard the atheist philosopher Alain de Botton reflecting on how communal spiritual and religious rituals can help us accept the complexity of human relationships in ways that secular rituals cannot. Sacred rituals, he proposed, provide the safety from which to acknowledge the negative or frightening feelings that we harbor toward one another, help ground and release those feelings, and then bind us together in greater compassion and community.

De Botton mentioned the secular holiday of Mother’s Day as problematic because it acknowledges only one aspect of the mother-child relationship – the positive – when the truth is that most people both love and hate their mothers.

What would a healing ritual look like in relation to my mother? I wondered.

It wasn’t until I went to the Women of Spirit and Faith spiritual leadership retreat in Atlanta months later that I found out.

On the second day of the retreat, the women gathered on the banks of the Chattahoochee river to release our rage and fear, pain and anger, to yell out what we’d held inside, against whomever we had held it against, whether for days or decades.

At first, there was silence from our self-proclaimed crowd of shitstorm-kickers.

But, then the women, especially the younger ones, began to speak.

They spoke of women – grandmothers, mothers, sisters, friends – who ripped jagged holes in their sense of worth, love and beauty, holes they still struggled to fill as adults.

Of men – grandfathers, fathers, partners, friends, co-workers – who abused, twisted or mistreated them.

Of their own fears that held them back from fulfilling their greatest potential.

Of affection and pain and joy and anger inextricably twisted into fists jammed into stomachs and hearts, silencing throats from speaking or singing.

Rachelle, our First Nation guide, urged us to release our emotions into the river and let them be carried swiftly away by the broad, cleansing water.

I stood in silence, thinking of my mother, trembling with anger, choked with sadness and pain. Finally, I spoke the words I hadn’t been able to say for months.

“Amiji, I forgive you. I forgive you for loving me with all the drowning force of a tsunami, and then for disappearing into the desert of absence, leaving me no place of safety in between.

I forgive you for holding me to the standards of other people, for choosing them over me from fear and shame.

For all the desires you had for me that I couldn’t fulfill. For your own dreams that you had to drown, but still hoped I’d accomplish in your place someday.

I forgive you because I know you still love me, even though you’ve chosen to leave me – for now.”

I said I forgave her. But, it is truer to say that the ritual was the first step on the path to forgiveness, rather than forgiveness itself. It purified and watered my parched spiritual soil and then held open the space for the seeds of something better to germinate there instead, over time.

After the river ritual, we gathered in a drum circle to celebrate the release of all that had held us back, to ground ourselves in Mother Earth, and to honor our connection to each other through singing, bowing, and dancing.

Listening to the women’s joyful voices, I began to understand that no matter what life brings, I cannot sever myself from my mother, my blood, my family – regardless of our choices and cyclical distances. My family is the river I am immersed in, float upon, and will swim in forever – for better, and for worse.

But taking part in this communal ritual gave me the spiritual tools to navigate my troubled waters. I’m fortified by the knowledge that the water in my body is forever connected to that sacred ritual, healing stream, and circle of spiritual sisters who gathered to sing of joy, beauty and power by a river in Georgia.

Sometimes, while standing here in my kitchen in San Francisco, I can see the afternoon light slanting golden on Meredith again sitting on the grass as the circle began to wind down, and hear her singing, “I went down to the river to pray…” Her sweet, lone voice is soon joined and buoyed in my memory by the strength of many others.

The circle is the oasis that I carry within my heart and soul and drink deep from to face – and heal – the rapids to come.

—

A version of this post was originally published on Patheos, 7/12/12. Companion piece: Love, Withheld.

Ayesha Mattu is a writer, international development consultant and the editor of Love InshAllah. Her writing has appeared in CNN.com, The Huffington Post, International Museum of Women, and Religion Dispatches. Ayesha is working on a memoir about losing – & finding – faith and love, and blogs occasionally at Rickshaw Diaries.

Previous Post

July 25, 2012

Like a virgin

Next Post

July 27, 2012 Friday Love: Patricia Dunn!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Book Reviews Brown Girl Dreaming Editors Flirting with Fate and other Disasters of an Intersectional Muslimah Food, Love, & Memories Friday Love Halal Since 22 Integrity of Heart Life After Death Literary Mama Literature Love Inshallah Podcast Love InshAllah writers Media My Infidel Husband Not Without Love Poetry Monday Radical Love Reflections & Readings Reviews of Love InshAllah Salaam Love Writers Sex & The Ummah Single in the City Spotlight Story & Chai Book Club The Geekologist The Love Tour The Male Gaze Things I Wish I'd Known Thoughts of a Wasat Girl Uncategorized Your Sunny Side Up Your voices

Select a Month May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Gospel" mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Holy Word Sacred Story Good News God's Truth