Reflections: God Bless Our Mobile Home

The first time I spoke in person to my Shaykh, God bless him, it was a windy, December night in Manhattan. There, on the floor of a crowded suite in the Grand Hyatt, I was sitting with a collection of other aspirants from around the country. Having been raised in rural Virginia, and having lived an hour from the house I was born in, I found New York City among the most anxiety inducing places imaginable. Despite growing up with scenes of the iconic New York skyline fed to me time and time again through movies, the face of this man was the only familiar sight I had witnessed so far, despite meeting him only minutes ago.

Over time I would come to learn my experience was far from unique. When people meet Shaykh Mahy, there is a distinct impression that you have known him for some time or, perhaps that he has known you. There, in that hotel room thirty floors above the pulsing sea of lights and motion, I sat and watched him with the most distinct feeling. Later on, I would travel to places far more foreign to me than New York and feel it, again and again.

Years later, now kneeling on a different floor, Shaykh Mahy spoke to me again.

“Welcome to your home”

After two days spent in Fes, visiting the resting place of Sayyida Shaykh Ahmed Tijani r.a., our group of American aspirants had arrived in Madina Baye, Senegal. We had landed in Dakar, taking a taxi three hours through the heart of Senegal. For a Nelson County boy, accustomed to stretches of empty highway winding through hills broken only by the odd porchlight, those three hours deep into West Africa were a permanently altering experience. From the Blue Ridge Mountains to the expanse of West Africa–a stranger in a strange land.

Now, at nearly one in the morning, in Shaykh Mahy’s room, he welcomed us home. I knew with certainty that this statement was more than excellent etiquette, and spoke to something deep in the heart of every believer. 

Most converts to Islam, perhaps especially in the United States, are quite familiar with the saying of The Messenger of God, Sayyudina Muhammad, may God bless him and keep him in peace.

“Be in this world as if you were a stranger or a traveler along a path.”

There is no shortage of signs in our daily life that illuminate this wisdom in our mind. We might put faith in a passion, a person, a career, only to be reminded that we live on an ever-shifting sand dune. Nothing is guaranteed. The feeling of disassociation from what we once thought to be the stuff of life left outside the box I spent years building. . I think, however, the way we truly recognize our path as the stranger, is in the canyon that now seems to loom

between our heart and what it used to love, our mind and what we used to trust.

In our society, hope is given to us from a young age, that if we just play the game, we might win, and if we win, we might be at peace. Tiny little eyes stare up, barely comprehending, absorbing the feverish onslaught. Pain, accountability, effort and fear can be conquered, we are told, we just need to join the collective effort to crack the code. 

Thus, worldly life marches on, chasing its reflection infinitely. Civilizations rushed to create the master race, to create a completely equal world, now they are tiring themselves trying to unlock their authentic selves… A hotel hallway, two floor-length mirrors facing one another comes to mind. A narrow path, each door the same, but only the room numbers change on long stretch of carpet. When I, and most others on the path, looked at the great lie in the face and realized I couldn’t pretend to place confidence in it any longer, I began to feel myself walking the stranger’s path through unfamiliar terrain. However, by virtue of his/her strangeness, every stranger in a strange land comes from somewhere and thus has a home.

There is something to the collective yearning for home. I have heard it said that a society's classic songs speak to the shared yearning of its people. If we are to believe this, look no further than the immortalized words of John Denver. “Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong”. 

“Home is where the heart is” and its second cousin “home is whenever I’m with you,” have been repeated ad nauseam across housekeeping magazines, cross stitched wall ornaments and countless doormats in our great land. Trailers have a unique variation, adapting for the transient nature of their inhabitants. “God Bless Our Mobile Home” is the supplication adorning innumerable transient family homes. We shouldn’t let the cliche nature of these sayings blind us from the secret hidden within. Afterall, The Messenger of God, may God bless him and keep him in peace said: 

“You are with who you love.”

Leaving Shaykh Mahy’s house, into the steamy air of a Senegalese morning, it was clear that our band of strangers had not arrived but returned. Returned as we do each day, into the mobile home of our situation. Two worlds, always imposed onto one another. Strangers on the path, at home in the company of the ones we love. Traversing a world of illusion, while remaining conscious that “whatever is in the heavens and the earth constantly glorifies Him”. Home is where you are recognized, and where you recognize. It is where you are from, and where you return to. Again, John Denver may have been onto something when he said “life is old there, older than the trees” in his ode to home.

The popular magazine Good Housekeeping seems to define home as striking the correct formula of decor, ambience and seasonal deserts. One might dare to argue that good housekeeping should be defined as god-consciousness, patient commitment to our practice and righteous company. Home, however, is summed up well by the cliches mentioned earlier. Cliches, I think, are so often repeated for a reason. 

If “Home is where the heart is,” then be a traveler no more.

If “Home is whenever I’m with you,” then remember “And He is with you wherever you are.”

If you recognize that place, home, at a gathering of dhikr, a face on the street, in the winding streams of the Blue Ridge Mountains or eyes of your Shaykh, say:

 “God bless our mobile home.”