My (earnest, irate) thoughts

As Ramadan comes to a close, I am reflecting on hunger and poverty.

I have always loved the Beatitudes. They are the verses in which, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus described the qualities of those who would be in heaven. Hunger, poverty, simplicity: these are the characteristics of the soul that is with God.

Blessed are the poor [in spirit], for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger [for righteousness], for they shall be filled.

The parts in brackets are recorded in Matthew, without brackets are recorded in Luke. That’s interesting, because perhaps Jesus described these archetypes more than once, and in slightly different ways to cover a multitude of meanings.

In the first Beatitude, maybe poverty is both literal and figurative. The impoverished people of the world must surely be rewarded with heaven, but so must those who take, eat and possess only what is vital, as long as they are poor in spirit — that is, humble.

In the fourth, maybe hunger is both a physical and a spiritual state. The starving people of Africa and southeast Asia must certainly be heaven-bound, but so most those people who fast to remember God, as well as those who hunger metaphorically to possess divine qualities.

I’ve read that Sufi ascetics follow the example of prophet Isa (Jesus). Both the Christian and Muslim literature indicate his advocacy for the ascetic life. When Jesus was taken to heaven, according to eighth-century Arab sources, he possessed only a woolen garment, two sandals and a slingshot.

Some eighth-century Arab sources have hadiths, or quotes, from the prophet Isa that are phrased exactly like Beatitudes. I read these in The Muslim Jesus.

Blessed is he who guards his tongue, whose house is sufficient for his needs, and who weeps for his sins.
Blessed is he who sees with his heart, but whose heart is not in what he sees.

“Weeping for sins” sounds like the second Beatitude… “Those who mourn” could be those who weep for their shortcomings and cry out for God’s mercy.

And if one’s heart is not in what one sees, it implies being in the world, but not of it. A heart that is not in this world is a heart that remembers the other world constantly — a meek heart? In the third Beatitude, though “meekness” implies a gentle, quiet person who submits to the wishes of others, and the exhortation to be meek seems to encourage obedience to other humans… what if “the meek” are those who are obedient to God? In the movie Kingdom of Heaven, the Christian wife of Guy de Lusignan is quoted as saying, “Their prophet [Muhammad] says ’submit’; Jesus says, ‘decide’.” But it’s right in the Beatitudes: Jesus encouraged submission, too.

May God bless our fast, and replace our physical thirst with a spiritual thirst for Him, and replace our physical discomfort with a spiritual jihad — which does not translate as “holy war” — the soul’s struggle to possess divine qualities. May we remember that one square foot of Paradise is better than this entire world and all that it contains.