Common Starling

Divine play

Original photograph by John Atkins, design by Wietske Merison

It has been a rough day. Not that I have anything to complain about. I have a roof over my head, am surrounded by people I genuinely love, and have never known true hunger in my life. But still, in the midst of all these blessings and privileges, sometimes a day is simply rough. You know? When the internal and external chaos increases faster than you can adjust your expectations, and patience feels like an increasingly impossible demand. That kind of a day.

It’s usually the small things, inconveniences, that get to me when for a moment I forget to remind myself of their foundational futility. A broken glass, a lost wallet, a wet sock. Then I remember, and it is as though the curse is magically lifted when I simply smile, sigh, and utter, “It is not the end of the world.”

At other times, it’s bigger things that perhaps don’t seem so foundationally futile. The death of a loved one, a physical attack, the loss of a sense of purpose. Life is indeed suffering. As much as life is happiness, life is also sadness. Life is anger and fear. The 13th-century Persian Muslim scholar and poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi famously taught us that all of these feelings are but guests in our guesthouse and are to be treated with hospitality whenever they visit. But we should never make the mistake of thinking that we, in our essence, are our visitors. We are but humble servants, giving them their due. Sitting with them for a while and listening to their stories. Until they are ready to move on, and we remain, left only with their lessons, if we’ve listened well.

“Ya Rabb, don’t let this person be just another lesson for me,” I have so foolishly prayed more than once. “Ya Rabb, help me learn all the lessons this person has to offer me,” would have been a better prayer instead. For isn’t that what truly matters? Isn’t that why we’re truly here on earth - to learn and get closer to true knowing? To grow and become a better person in views and actions?

In Surah Al-Mulk, ‘The Dominion’, the sixty-seventh chapter of the Qur’an, we are told: “Blessed is the One in Whose Hand is the Dominion. He has Power over all things. The One Who created death and life to test you as to which of you is best in deed. He is The Ever-Mighty, The Ever-Forgiving” (Qur’an 67:1-2). Or as the brilliant rapper D Smoke said it: “It is just a quiz from God, this is our test - ah, yes.”

But many of us never particularly enjoyed exams and tests, even in school. When I look back at my high school days, I mostly have fond memories of friendships and banter. The thought of seeing my friends and having fun is what made me excited to go to school. And in hindsight, my favorite teachers were the ones who knew that and didn’t try to change it. Instead of separating me from my friends and enforcing a totalitarian regime of discipline and silence, they allowed me to work with my friends and looked for ways to make the fun and banter a part of our learning process. For their classes, I hardly ever had to do any studying for exams, simply because I actually learned in class. They made learning fun.

Children learn by playing. By unleashing their imagination and having fun. But what is ‘having fun’? It’s not really an emotion, though it often leads to feelings of happiness and contentment. When trying to dissect the essence of ‘having fun’, I find two core components: a sense of freedom and genuine engagement. Without freedom, there is no fun. Replace freedom with force, and fun will change into a sense of dread, even when the activity is genuinely engaging. I didn’t fully understand the blessing of education when I was in high school. I mostly saw school as an obligation. As such, I hardly enjoyed high school whereas I thrived in university, when I had a sense of agency, purpose, and, ultimately, freedom.

Many of us do not categorize religion as something ‘fun’. Perhaps it’s related to perceptions of religion as both forceful and unengaging. Authoritarian institutional religion often seems to limit our freedom rather than liberate us, and to reject our imagination, reasoning, and creativity rather than engage us. Perhaps it is also related to the fact that so often the people we perceive as ‘more religious’ are not necessarily the people we expect to have fun with. But the more I play around with my thoughts, the more I become convinced that if religion is not fun, we have stripped it of its heart.

The Qur’an teaches us that freedom is at the core of religion, and there is no space for force. In Surah Al-Baqarah, ‘The Cow’, the second chapter of the Qur’an, we learn “There is no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clearly from falsehood. So whoever renounces false idols and believes in God has certainly grasped the firmest, unfailing hand-hold. And God is All-Hearing, All-Knowing” (Qur’an 2:256). We often miss the point here when we talk about religious obligations. Take the example of prayer. Unless a person actually wants to pray and voluntarily chooses to pray the five daily prayers, prayer can become rather ugly. But prayer is beautiful, greatly enjoyable, and nourishing, just like the meals we eat every day. I eat three times a day, but I do not do so out of force. I do so because I enjoy it and it sustains me. Prayer out of obligation is as sad, dull, and tasteless as obligatory meals.

As for a sense of genuine engagement, after renouncing the idea of force, the same verse from Surah Al-Baqarah explains to us why we freely choose religion: because truth stands out clearly from falsehood. We are invited to search for the truth in order to build a well-rooted deeply intentional engagement with religion based on conviction and genuine interest. Returning to the example of prayer, in another chapter of the Qur’an, Surah Al-Mu’minun, ‘The Believers’, we are reminded that those who succeed in their beliefs are the ones who have khushu‘ in their prayers (Qur’an 23:1-2). This rich Arabic term relates to a sense of humility, awareness, and concentration. A presence in one’s prayers that, I think, would not be mislabeled as genuine engagement. When we truly have fun, we can forget all else but the activity we’re freely engaged in. At times, we might even lose our sense of self, and feel as though we’re simply part of a greater ‘happening’ as our actions dissolve in a greater ‘doing.’ Time loses its grip on us, and, for a moment, we’re just a puppet in a greater Divine Play, for however long our state of khushu‘ lasts. For however long we’re ‘in the flow.’

But somehow, it feels almost sacrilegious to label religion as ‘fun.’ I think that’s because so often we associate fun with hedonistic activities and a state of forgetfulness. The kind of fun that has been commercialized and advertised to us as fun, so others may profit from selling it. The kind of fun that has become the entertainment industry, so we may buy an illusory escape from the very system that keeps us captive with our purchase. After all, since we have to pay to have fun, we need to work for our freedom. The less genuinely engaging our increasingly bureaucratized work becomes, the more we work to spend money on things that genuinely engage us and give us a sense of freedom from our suffocating nine-to-five. Forgetfulness becomes bliss.

But the fun that blossoms from remembrance is so much richer. And with remembrance, seemingly vain or futile play can become like prayer. Like the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, joking with his companions and racing his wife. Or like the Prophet David, peace be upon him, singing songs in unison with the mountains and birds. Or like Jalal ad-Din Rumi, playfully arranging words to create the most beautiful poetry.

“If you want to reach enlightenment, you may want to lighten up a little,” a teacher of mine once said in the midst of a heavy theological argument. During rough days like today, it is a much-needed reminder. And so often, that reminder comes from the birds at my bird feeder. Regardless of the pain and suffering in the world at large, as well as in my little microcosm, I simply cannot help but smile when a feathered friend arrives for a quick snack; when a boldly colored red Cardinal switches turns with a group of Starlings whose feathers seem to hold the maps to distant galaxies. There’s so much to learn from these masters of freedom and genuine engagement. These masters of divine play.

I have vivid memories of seeing one of nature’s most impressive spectacles from my bedroom window in the Netherlands: a murmuration of Starlings - thousands of birds moving like one body, creating the most beautiful forms, dancing through the heavens like a whirling dervish, like freely flowing ink that attempts to write all letters at once.

Many researchers have attempted to solve the mystery of murmurations. Why would all these birds come together to perform an aerial spectacle when the sun sets? Why would they spend so much energy moving through the skies? Western science has never found a conclusive answer, though many theories have been offered. Some say it is for protection - the birds are safer in a flock. Some say they are trying to find a place to sleep, indecisively flying back and forth. And then there is my favorite theory - some say they do it just for fun. As an expression of freedom and genuine engagement.

The Qur’an teaches us that animals are in constant surrender to God, so how then could they not have fun? In a famous narration, the Prophet Muhammad said, “This world is a prison for the believer.” When you try to live a principled and beautiful life, sometimes days are simply rough. Sometimes life is suffering more so than it is happiness. But even in prison, some wise fools cannot help but smile when they realize Who is their Guard, and laugh when they realize He gave them The Key.