Between Belonging and Beginning Again
I had the honor of being a keynote speaker at "Inspiring Stories: Interfaith Family Life Across Three Generations" on July 20th, a program of The Guibord Center / Religion Inside-Out and IslamiCity. The invitation was to speak out of my experience as an Episcopal Priest married to a Muslim man. The event was so beautiful - what incredible organizations doing such inspiring work! Here's what I shared.
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My now husband and I met almost fourteen years ago while we were both living in California. Neither of us was native to this place: Haamid is a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan who had come to the U.S. as a student over a decade earlier, whereas I was a Christian woman from the faraway land of Ohio - Cleveland, to be more precise. When we met, he worked in IT and I was beginning the process that would lead to my ordination as an Episcopal priest. We both had vibrant lives in San Francisco, a supremely secular city, and our friends were of many faiths or no faith at all.
Because my Church was and is extremely inclusive, once we started dating, our relationship was celebrated by my priests, my congregation, my Bishop, and the many, many, many committees - so many committees - that had to approve my ordination. Haamid was welcome and beloved (he’s a pretty lovable guy, if I do say so myself). That said, I knew from the beginning that my faith was something he celebrated but didn’t exactly share. The first time he came to Church with me was the first time he had ever set foot in a Church. The music, the rituals, the community - which were so familiar to me that they felt like a kind of refuge - were foreign to him. All of which is to say, he was welcome, but it wasn’t his home. We knew that our common faith in God - a creating God, a god of mercy and compassion - was something to treasure and cherish, but we also knew that we spoke of this God in different languages, approached this God in different ways, and so would have to learn to encounter this most familiar God together anew, if we were to encounter God together at all.
It wasn’t until we moved to New Haven, Connecticut so that I could get my Masters of Divinity from Yale, that he was occasionally asked if he planned to convert to Christianity. The question always came from well-meaning, friendly Christians-in-training. He did not, nor would I have ever asked, expected, or even wanted this of him. I built a religion minor as an undergraduate out of courses that focused on Islam and Islamic history, and had even studied Arabic for several years. I had read the Quran, had stayed with Palestinians when I visited Jerusalem, had studied abroad in Turkey in order to visit the beautiful mosques and learn more of the ancient history of the faith. I loved (and I still love) that my husband is Muslim. It is a beautiful faith, and it is a part of him.
The Episcopal Church had never taught me that people who aren’t Christian are “damned” or “wrong” or “going to hell,” so, thankfully, I didn’t carry any of these beliefs into our relationship. I also had a Jewish step-father and Jewish step-siblings, and my siblings had married a Buddhist, a Roman Catholic, and an atheist, so I guess I come to the inter-faith family thing pretty naturally. I’ve always believed that there are many good and life-giving ways to experience our connection to that which is most sacred, most true, which I call the divine but not everyone does, and was delighted to share my life with someone who shared my values, practiced his faith, and was infinitely curious and deeply kind.
Just days after I finished seminary in 2014, by then married and pregnant with our first child, I boarded a plane bound for Pakistan where I would meet Haamid, who had gone a few days earlier, and finally meet his family. (I mean unless you count WhatsApp video chats, which I usually do.) A few days into the trip, one of his relatives asked me if I planned to convert to Islam. Her English wasn’t very strong and I don’t speak Urdu, so I simply said no, and the conversation moved along. Haamid spent much of that day with his brothers and friends at the mosque, slipping effortlessly back in the routines of prayer and meals. We laughed about this question later that night. I was literally just weeks away from being ordained a priest! He had explained to his family that I was Christian and even studying to be a minister, but it hadn’t totally clicked. A lot had been lost in translation - across languages, across cultures. It didn’t bother me, but it did make me think.
What I realized even then is that this question - “Do you plan to convert?” - came from a genuinely good place. What I think both my classmates and Haamid’s family member were really trying to say is, “We like you, and we want to welcome you, but we’re not sure how to do that if you aren’t one of us.” I understood. I do not, and cannot, fully inhabit my husband’s experience of Islam, just as he does not, and cannot, fully inhabit my experience of Christianity, even as we celebrate and support each other’s faiths. I think it is important to name both what is beautiful about being in an inter-faith marriage - the learning, the wonder, the growth, the mystery - while at the same time acknowledging that this can live right alongside a kind of spiritual loneliness. Both Islam and Christianity emphasize individual piety and communal observance, and that communal piece is something we cannot fully share. We, too, do not always know how to welcome one another into our traditions. We name this, because naming a thing helps us accept and hold it. We acknowledge the limits of our understanding.
And … and … there is beauty. While I was in seminary, I became keenly aware of the ways that we were already praying together. We pause before dinner, giving thanks to God, naming the blessings of the day that has passed, expressing our gratitude for each other and the life that we share. We spend time outside and we celebrate creation. During Ramadan, Haamid gently shakes me awake in the darkness before dawn, and I sit with him drinking coffee while he hurriedly eats - full fat yogurt and chickpeas, or some other food that lasts - and then he prays, and I pray, each in our own way. At Christmas he folds himself into the celebrations of my family, giving gifts, helping to cook.
Now we have kids - two beautiful, brilliant little humans, ages five and seven. We tell them stories from each of our faiths. We tell them about God and God’s goodness. They attend the school founded by my parish, a Reggio-Emilia inspired spiritual-but-not-religious kind of place, and I teach them and their friends mindfulness exercises, and read them books about compassion and working together and respecting nature, and we do yoga, and we ring the singing bell and breathe. We whisper into their ears as they are falling asleep that they are the greatest blessing of all.
They come to Church, sometimes. They learn about Muslim prayers and practices from their dad, sometimes. I’m not honestly sure if they think of themselves as Christian, or Muslim, or both, or neither. We don’t talk with them much about labels. We talk to them, instead, about love and courage and empathy and respect. We welcome their questions. We wonder with them. We laugh a lot. And we are both quick to say, “what do you think?” and “I don’t know,” when we don’t know, which is much of the time. I’m sure there will be more detailed conversations to come. We’ll welcome them. We will teach them that they belong to both of our traditions, and that we belong to one another. But mostly, we will teach them that they belong to God, as do we all, and somehow, I believe this will be enough.