Living in Multiple Worlds

Peace be upon you, readers of these words: it's Ramadan. This year, by rare convergence of calendars, it's also Rosh Hashanah, and may well be other celebrations too: peoples who attune themselves to the natural cycles of the planet frequently count time by the moon, and the moon has just been born.

Last night, if I had ventured out just after sunset to some hill that offered a clear view of the Western horizon, I might have spotted a hairline of curved light, the first silver crescent, which in the moon's infancy shows itself for only a few minutes before following the sun beyond our sight. Then I would have known for certain that time had changed, that something new had begun. The fact that I did not do this, but instead checked a website weeks in advance and made a note of the date in my planner, speaks eloquently of what we have gained and lost in the world we inhabit today.

"The world we inhabit" has always been two worlds. There is the natural world, in which the moon grows light and dark, appears and disappears. And then there is the social world, in which stories are told, explanations are sought, and decisions are made. How we coordinate our presence in both worlds has always been the most subtle and vital of human enterprises. It is a slippery and changing thing, rarely looked at directly, difficult to pin down for long. Yet nothing is of greater importance.

I mean to reflect on these two worlds in the coming weeks, and I hope you will join me. Ramadan is a time for large thoughts -- the size of a planet, or even larger.

If we are going to converse, though, personal introductions are in order. Some of you may already know me through my "Heartbeat" column in Fellowship magazine, as the founder of the Muslim Peace Fellowship, or etcetera. The child of a Jewish father and a Christian mother, I've been a practicing Muslim for nearly thirty years. Despite (or because of) that, I've been known to hang with Buddhists, Wiccans, and martial artists. As the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said, "Knowledge is the stray camel of the faithful, and wherever they find it, they are entitled to it." Consequently, though the bedrock of my spiritual education is classical sufism, I'm a twenty-first century cosmopolitan through and through.

How to accommodate many different perspectives in a single coherent entity, one of the great social questions of our time, is therefore very much my question. I'm hoping you will see it as your question too, and send in your own thoughts and responses.

Ramadan is a fast ending in a feast. Our whole time can be seen in that light. Let's cook for each other here.

The natural world and the social world. The many incommensurate, now constantly interacting, centers of knowledge in the social world. These form our situation, the vessel of our existence, under which burns the fire of human need. Throw into this pot the meat of justice, the water of compassion, and the salt of humor (without which nothing is edible), and we may end up with quite a stew with which to soothe our hunger at the end of this very long day.