It is amazing how time flies. I evidently wrote this as I was beginning to put together some reflections of my spiritual journey. Here is what I said:
My spiritual journey has been a long and circuitous one. My spirituality was nurtured early in life through my Baptist upbringing, influenced by my mother’s Southern roots. My mother was a Preacher’s Kid (PK), and so my ten siblings and I had a very religious upbringing facilitated by Greater St. Stephens Missionary Baptist Church. Shortly after I began college I went through my “God is Dead” period. I became a Marxist-Leninist and traveled to Cuba for three months. My sense of social justice as a change agent was being nurtured but I was still spiritually restless. So I continued my journey.
Soon afterward I became a practicing Muslim for ten years. First in the Nation of Islam, then the American Muslim Mission, then the Sunni community and finally, Sufism. Christianity gave me my religious foundation including Jesus, and sacraments such as prayer, worship, and giving. Islam gave me the discipline of praying five times a day, piety and sisterhood. Separation of sexes, that is, purdah, provided a strong compulsion toward the embrace of sisterhood since it was almost the sole social outlet. Sufism and Islam, in general, deepened my spirituality through spiritual practices unique to Islam. And when the prohibitions as a woman and mother became too restrictive and no longer allowed me to express fully who I was, then I moved on.
Qiyamah Rahman, MDiv 2008, Meadville Lombard Theological School (MLTS)
I had the honor of bestowing on the visiting minister from Transylvania the stole she is wearing as a gift from Meadville Lombard Theological School.
