Faith Walk

Today I went on the Faith Walk in South London I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

We had been given a piece of paper that looked like a treasure map, and the meeting point was outside a mosque down a quiet side street. When I arrived, there were about half-a-dozen people including Q, the Muslim friend who had invited me. Plus home-made placards bearing the symbols of the different religions: a touch I hadn’t expected but rather liked.

As more people gathered, we walked into the mosque, the women covering our heads and all of us leaving our shoes on racks inside the main door.

The mosque is a converted church, beautiful, full of light and with a large balcony running nearly all the way around the building, where the women pray. We didn’t go up there though, men and women together we went into the ground floor.

I hadn’t expected to be so emotionally affected by the simple act of entering this place of worship and sitting down. It’s difficult to describe and I’m still not quite sure what happened, but I found it difficult to blink away tears. Perhaps partly the joy of companionship with others whose purpose was to learn and to reach out in friendship to other faiths. But it was more than that: something about the building, the beauty of the Arabic script around the walls, the simplicity, the welcome I felt, the reverence, the strong presence of God.

A young man greeted us and introduced his Imam, whom he explained was Turkish and as yet spoke little English. He told us that this mosque’s congregation happened to be mostly Turkish immigrants. He gave us an interesting slide slow and talk of the history, beliefs and practices of Islam.

Then the Imam recited some verses of the Holy Qur’an* to us. I’ve heard some recordings before, but it was extremely moving to hear in real life, beautiful and lyrical.

I read a story somewhere recently (which I can’t now find) of a woman who could not read, but moved her fingers over the script of the Qur’an as if to take the words into her body through her fingertips. That’s a bit like my experience of hearing the Arabic words of Allah in the Imam’s beautiful voice. I had no idea what they meant, but nonetheless they had meaning.

After that experience we went to another mosque which was equally welcoming. This congregation was part of the Nigerian Muslim Association. The man who spoke to us had a real gift for speaking, and answered some difficult questions with grace, good humour and a knack for wrapping his answers up in story-telling.

Later, when we were shown around the building, we came upon a young man teaching the Qur’an to a class of attentive children. This made me think of the issues raised recently by Maya and which I picked up in my post Faith learning.

So then we set off on the next leg of our Faith Walk, to a Christian church about 40 minutes away. And this part of the day both amused and moved me. There were about 25 of us at this point, men, women and one child, all ages, creeds and colours. We ambled off rather aimlessly, crossing the big busy roads of South London holding aloft our multi-faith placards and accompanied by the drumming and chanting of a Buddhist monk who was with us.

Passers-by either stared or carefully did not stare, some motorists honked their horns. Perhaps they thought we were some strange protest movement. The experience of being part of this brought me back to my constant theme of community: here we were, this rag-tag little group of people most of whom had never met before, making a bit of a spectacle of ourselves, holding up traffic and forming ourselves into a community the whole while.

(I have to admit though that there were several moments when I longed for a tambourine and the nerve to start chanting “Hare Krishna“…)

We had a delicious lunch at the Christian Anglican church. A lovely church: simple but beautiful and light. Reminded me a lot of the first mosque in appearance. Then the rector gave a talk introducing Christianity. And how strange to hear an introduction to my own faith assuming no prior knowledge of it. When he talked about prayer, I was delighted to hear the rector stressing the importance of beauty, ritual and reverence in liturgy.

And this was the end of the day for me, because the walking had aggravated a problem I have with my ankle. So I made my way home, disappointed to miss the Buddhists. I’m glad I did bale out then though, my ankle is swollen and very painful, and I am about to attack it with a bucket of ice water.

The day has been wonderful. It has given me a wider sense of community, and a great deal to think and pray over. The experience at the first mosque, especially, will stay with me for a long time.

* I’ve seen this written Koran, Qu’ran, Qur’an and Quran. If anyone can enlighten me as to whether one is more or less correct, I’d be delighted to hear from you!