CHAPTER 6
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” — 1 Peter 5:8
Getting back to the main story now. So that morning when I left the house of imam Mohamed, my heart was light and happy, filled with expectation and anticipation for what the future will surely hold. My mind was made up and I was ready to join the Dervishes with their relaxed approach of using music and meditation to connect with Allah.
What are the Dervishes you might ask. Well in short they are Sufis, but with a very special focus on the universal values of love and selfless service to others.
To become a Dervish you must be willing to let go of the illusions of egotism and materialism in order to find a close and meaningful connection with Allah.
This included the practice of dhikr, meaning “remembrance”, which is a number of different physical exertions and religious practices that will help the dervish to go into a kind of trance to in order to reach Allah.
Most people will only know of one of these rituals called Sama. Sama means “listening”, and are well known in the western world as the so called “spinning dervishes”. It is usually accompanied by singing, live music performed on instruments, specific dancing, and other rituals such as praying and poetry recitals.
This sort of mystical Islam very much appealed to me. I had by then grown to hate the dead sort of symbolic worship that my father and his era of thinkers where akin to. In the Dervish approach I saw a way of actually finding a path to the Creator and finally figuring out the meaning of life.
Little did I know that my faith would be tested before even getting there.
I had left the house of imam Mohamed, walked to the bus station some 3 kilometers away, bought a ticket and sat ready for action waiting for the wheels on the bus to start going round and round. I sat there in my seat thinking of how I would soon be enlightened with true religion to guide my way.
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It was a long 9 hour journey to the small town of the whirling dervishes of Konya. At first my excitement kept me awake and the daydreams kept flowing of what my new life would be like. Soon enough day dreams gave way to real dreams and before I knew it a deep sleep had overtaken me.
Suddenly something broke my slumber. A hulking bearded man was shaking my elbow and looking at me confusedly while talking so fast and angrily that my still sleepy mind could barely make any of it out.
“What are you doing here!? Get off get off now!”, came the scalding voice as I tried to grab all my stuff and got thrown off the bus.
I had barely touched the sidewalk when the bus took off again with the angry man still yelling as they disappeared into the distance with the sun setting in the background.
Slowly things started to piece together in my mind. I was supposed to change buses at some point, but must have been asleep, so the bus went on, or back, or.. I had no idea where I was. There I stood somewhere next to the road in the middle of nowhere. Not a sign, house, car or a person in either direction.
This was not the situation that I was hoping for or planning to be in at all. This was a kind of hell for my young mind. At that moment of pure loneliness with no help in sight, fright took over. I sat there crying. Broken by this event.
How could such a thing happen to me, was I not on my way to go and find a way to get closer to Allah. Surely he should be helping me to get where I need to go. There, for the first time in my life, I was angry at Allah. This was not a normal sort of anger, but a mixture of doubt, frustration and all those horrible feelings of fear all rolled together into a ball of anger and hate.
Many years would pass before I could look back at that day and see for myself how Jesus was leading me through this horrible experience. Before this day I had no doubt in Allah at all. Then this horrible experience came over me and a seed of doubt in Islam started sprouting. This is something I needed in order to finally let go of my past and give my life to Jesus, but that’s a story for later.
Eventually a ‘dolmus’, small bus, came by and I managed to find out where I was and they dropped me just a few kilometers from where I was heading.
It reminds me of a verse in Psalms that says, “Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as our God?” ( Psalm 77:13)
Never forget that whatever your and my plans might be, we have no idea what God is planning for us. Many times it might look like we have been abandoned and left to our own devices, but God has a plan for each of our lives and his plan is not always obvious, but it always leads us closer to a meaningful relationship with Him.
“Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you.” — 1 Thessalonians 3:11
