I met a man from Darfur; it was an early evening in August, I was walking in the livery staging area at O’Hare. The lot can hold about 200 livery cars and over 300 taxi cabs, a lively place to be on a pleasant evening. I doing what exercise I do, he the same, we walked and talked together for a while, I never saw him again.

The man told me that he had just returned from Darfur, that he had grown up in that area, emigrated to the U. S., had just returned from a visit. He described holding a child as it died, knowing there were other children in the village who were about to die, so many had died in the place he had grown up, so many more would die in the future. There was nothing he could do about it. He was sad, angry, confused, frustrated, and had to come back from that place.

He told me that he was a Muslim, but not a practicing one, that the religion based destruction and killing kept him from the rituals and ceremonies that he had learned growing up. They were responsible for the death of this child, the other child, and all of the others, they who were supposed to be his spiritual guides.

His angry argument against the religious authorities was familiar, I don’t imagine that there is anyone growing up in our culture who has not gone through the argument and history of religion based cruelty, it is something that we start in high school and keep through the early years of college: examples and blame, the frustration of not having a spiritual organization with clean hands. That there is no religious group that has not killed and injured. I don’t need to go through this old harangue, there isn’t anything new about it.

I suggested that he should temporarily lift the words from this business, Allah, Muslim, whatever the nouns are they should be set aside for now. Don’t throw them away, keep them close to hand, within sight and reach. Then go to how he had once felt, what feeling that the practice had given him, just the feeling experience. Stay with just that for a while. He understood what I was offering, agreed that it felt good, was a comfort against his frustration.

All of the words of a Spiritual life carry baggage, so much of it that it is almost impossible to grow from under that weight. Put aside God, Jesus, Christianity, Jehovah, Allah and whatever words, and let whatever it is that is behind those words rise to the surface. There is, always has been, something that needs to be felt, that can’t be ignored, it is the basis for all religions and cults. Just go to that place within, relive the feeling that that you find.

This is nothing more difficult than doing this, nothing takes more courage, and it is the most wonderful. Leave the safe words passed down from your father and mother, the authoritarian laws and directions that were to give lifelong guidance; set them aside, for a short time, be courageous.

The symbols, ceremonies, laws will always be there, they can be picked up and carried at any time—-but for just this short time set them beside me, when I come back to them they will have even more power than previous.

This piece has been the most difficult to complete, has taken nearly a week to get this far. It is far from complete, is disjointed, the words not exact. Writing about this is like engraving smoke. I feel as if I had done too much exercising, I am sore and creaky, and I have a headache; all for those couple of paragraphs. I’ll post this today, will come back to it again, and then once more.