Love
by Zarinah AliI sat very briefly in my room....briefly, that was all it took for me to realize the answer to a question that had been steadily forming in my brain. "Why the hell am I still on this planet?" Maybe that question was a little vague.
Recently, I have been in the lowest emotional state I have ever been in my entire life—and I have been at some drastically low points in my short fifteen year life span. So it is quite a mystery to me exactly why I am, very slowly, emerging from this emotional state rather unharmed, and well, OK??? I have been in emotional states not nearly as low as the one I am coming out of, and been considerably more damaged (not necessarily in the physical sense) from it all. The answer, it seems, is my faith, which has been developing rapidly for the past year and a half or so. Yes, you read correctly, a sanctified Unitarian!!
For the past week or so, as I've been on the rise from my dismal attitude shift, I have been feeling somewhat unstable so to speak. In other words, I'm not entirely sure what's going on inside me emotionally. I try not to dwell on it too much because it tends to give me a slight case of acid reflux, which only adds to my frustration. The instability is, more often than not, a negative instability. But today I briefly, very briefly, pictured a chalice, my symbol of love, and that love replaced the acid and instability in my swelling heart and chest. I cried not because of frustration, fear, and anger, but because the intensity of love in my spirit and pumping through my veins. It all became clear. I suddenly understood why I was surviving the lowest low of my life and coming through it unscathed. Safe. Hopeful. Even now as I try to convey the way I feel in writing and put the extensive love that runs rampant through my body, on paper, my eyes fill because it is so entirely OVERWHELMING to be in direct connection with my soul and spirit. To be experiencing this pure, raw, real love, not from a book, not from somebody else—no, not even from church—but to be experiencing it from MYSELF is so utterly spectacular and amazing.
A while ago, even as I was building this faith of mine, I never would have believed you if you told me that I was bound to be a spiritual person. Half of the reason for that is because I didn't entirely understand what it means to be spiritual, and how unique spirituality is to every individual. Oddly enough, my name "Zarinah" is Arabic for "of God." I had a conversation with my mother on Sunday about how she came to give me this name. Apparently she had a few "mystic experiences," as she called them, that filled her with a divine intuition that her child (me) would be an extremely spiritual person and have an awesome connection with the Almighty Creator/Spirit—who some (including her) call God, and what I call Love. My mother was a devout Muslim at the time, and when she came across "Zarinah" she knew instantly that it would be the name of her newborn child.
I am steadily growing into my name, slowly but surely. I've always envied the deep connection that other religions seemed to have with their Higher Being/s. They seemed to find salvation, and never-ending happiness. My mother's inner channel with her God, her Allah, always astounded me. Why couldn't I have that? Why are other churches let in on some "secret" of how to get this connection that led straight into their spirits and fulfilled it constantly. They seemed to automatically have it, almost. I was slightly frustrated and angry at my church as well as my religion and I started to branch out. I visited other, Christian, churches. I started reading the Bible, intending to read it from beginning to end, and even dusted off my old Qur'an and read through some of the translations. Although I found some of the stories from the Bible interesting, my spiritual being was more confused than enriched and I laid off for a while. Various experiences since then such as my coming of age and several conferences I attended (including Continental Conference (Con Con) and Chaplain Training) have contributed to the beliefs I now carry, and my rather new spiritual stability. For once, and possibly the first time in a long time, I feel that in the future I won't need to depend on others for happiness and well-being, I will be abel to depend on what's inside of me. I have my savior, my deep connection, my never ending happiness. Love.
Zarinah Ali is a youth from Chicago, IL.
For more information contact youth @ uua.org.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
