“In sha’allah,” I like to say. “God willing,” or “if God wills it.”
These simple words have come into my consciousness – and my vocabulary – in later years. Before our cultural lens widened to include the people and the practice of Islam as their faith, I had not heard this expression.
But I like to say it now – often. Sometimes I say the words quietly, to myself, and sometimes, I say the words so that someone hears them. Either way, the beautiful words serve as a reminder: so much in life is, very simply, out of our control.
There’s a simple beauty in the Arabic words, “In sha’ allah,” and simple truth, as well. And there’s a simple truth about life, about life’s uncertainty. From day to day, we are in control of so little – the weather, the actions of others, the politics of our time, how other people act – or don’t act, what my spouse chooses to do – or not do, and even the outcome of my own actions.
To me, surrender forms the center of a life. We can act – we must act – and then we surrender to what happens, to what is, and to what will be. “In sha’ allah.”
“In sha’ Allah“, photo of window at Bethany United Methodist Church, San Francisco, CA, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 11/17/2024
Bedtime comes earlier in our house now than it did at the beginning of the COVID sheltering that started in March of 2020. As the sheltering began and as we all adjusted ourselves – our schedules, our social activities, most of our activities – Jeff and I adjusted our daily schedule, as well. Some of the adjustments were in response to the sheltering – but most not. We simply shuffled into the time of sheltering – “for how long?” we might have wondered – and our daily routine shuffled itself into something new.
We both woke to the alarm at 5:30 AM and started the day sitting together in the living room of our beautiful Craftsman house, talking, looking at the news articles online, checking our emails. And the day started with a nice cup of coffee, made fresh, cup by cup. After a while, Jeff would leave the front room where I still sat to cross the yard behind our house to his studio, where he’d spend the early morning. Each day had its own rhythm, broken only by online classes and meals together, a ZOOM call with a friend, walks in our neighborhood, and in our case, friendship time in the backyard. A few of us would sit in a circle – sometimes wearing warm coats and with scarves tied around our necks – with a small group of friends who had ventured out for some face to face time with other human beings. “We’re still alive,” we seemed to be saying to one another by our presence. In the early evenings, often, Jeff and I would get into his car and drive somewhere, a local place. Over the months, as COVID sheltering went on – did we ever think we’d be sheltering for months and months and months??? – we drove in the early evening, as the sun set, into many neighborhoods in Oakland, finding and exploring places we’d never been before, although Oakland had already been our home for many years.
Were the days long? As I piece together my memories of that time, it’s hard to remember whether time seemed to go slowing, and it’s hard to understand how we did it, those days and weeks of early sheltering dragging on, month after month. Every day, we listened to the NPR News Hour as the losses of COVID were numbered and sometimes named. Every Friday, Judy Woodruff honored five of the week’s dead by recounting the stories of their lives in a few sentences. Things were tough in Italy, in New York City, in China, we learned. After a time – when the sheltering went on and on and on – she stopped the practice of telling life stories of victims.
All along, Jeff and I went to bed early, often chatting before we fell asleep, and as often as we could as we lay awake, saying our good night to one another: “Night now.”
Another long and strange day had ended with those simple words.
*
Over the years, those simple and gentle words have guided us to sleep. When our nephew Rainier came to live with us when he was a student at San Francisco State University, he listened and watched us carefully. His folks had divorced when he was a child, and he had grown up without some of the simple joys of witnessing a couple. And so, while he observed us, he too, took on some of our simple traditions. “Night, now,” he’d say to us.
When we visit Rainier and his family in Seattle now, he makes sure to end our days together: “Night now.”
“Night now” comes as a comfort to us, even now.
Birch at Sunset, 4454 photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 11/2024
In my memory, the words of wisdom: “You learn something new every day,” were spoken by my mother. Many times. Just recently I asked my sister, Suzie, in an email, if she remembered these words of wisdom. Yes, she answered: she remembered Dad saying them. Many times.
So much for memories. At any rate, the mantra, “you learn something new every day” has not left my memory, regardless of the source. As I’ve gotten older, and since my twenties, as I fashioned my own life in the world, my memory is accompanied by my own judgement. “…Yes, I do learn something every day, something about me, about how I manage to live my life in the world, something about my inner life, something about how life in this world works” – an important companion to me in my own journey.
I expect that my mother was thinking that we learn some new fact, some interesting detail, every day. I am grateful for the way she was interested in life, in other people, in new events, in changes. Always interested in Milwaukee, her – and my – hometown, she would send me clippings about new happenings in the city, even when I had moved across the country to the Bay Area of California. I could count on her hand-written notes to reach me, along with several newspaper clippings from the Milwaukee Journal. I read every single one she sent.
In my thirties, and as my inner life grew, I turned to therapy and body-work to grow in understanding – “consciousness” of myself, of how I ticked. Most of my companions, beginning with my days in seminary and later, among my colleagues, used the same tools to grow, to “learn something new every day.”
Along the way, I’ve come to be grateful for my mother’s – or my father’s – words. They’ve given me a mind that is interested in life, in the world, in other people. And those words, lived out in my experience, have opened doors to understandings that I had never imagined.
This morning, I worshipped in a small church a distance from our home in Oakland as I accompanied Jeff, who was filling the pulpit. He surprised me when he told a story about me as an illustration. I’ve recounted before that holy moment: when the idea occurred to me that I might be a pastor – at a time in my life when I had not ever seen – or even heard of – such a woman as pastor. “By faith, Abraham started his journey, not knowing where he was going…”
I learned something new today, and about my own journey. Thank you, Mom (or Dad…).
Surely even the trees learn something new as they grow… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert
