Reflect, refract, illumine ([info]ywns) wrote,
@ 2007-10-17 06:52:00
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بسمه تعالى

anxieties and desires:

finding great employment, not settling for crap jobs, providing for my family, expanding the family to 3+, being able to work and do a phd program in less than 12 years, becoming a professional academic in the reasonable future.

actually, just finding a phd program, praying the UGA religion dept gets its act together & has a phd program for next year, looking at the handful of reasonable programs across the US & Canuckistan and feeling alternately elated, confident, terrified, and depressed. I know German, do I really need French, too?

without a community around me, a supportive community that is, I don't know what my spiritual practice is turning into. not writing my shaykh's teachings, not reading Arabic regularly, not learning more Qur'an, not not not. when can I just be. when can I just be real, alive, present, loved, loving, the love dissolves.

say 'allah' and leave them plunging in their playing

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[info]margots_coat
2007-10-17 09:54 pm UTC (link)
I'm struggling with the language thing. I want to go into linguistics so I want to study French (which I know) and Arabic (I haven't a clue, but I should learn it anyways). Now I find out I need to take German or Spanish??? >.<.

I'm not praying or reading Qur'an as much as I should, either. I seem to go in fits and starts. I do it a lot, then I slack off, I feel guilty, then I do it and see the positive benefits...and then I slack off?

I really don't understand myself sometimes.

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[info]allida
2008-01-04 06:34 pm UTC (link)
The answer about French is unfortunately probably YES you do need it. A lot of what is written about North-Africa is written in French, and some in Spanish because of the colonies there. (Algeria, Morocco, Cote d'Ivoire to name a few of the many places where French is still the main European langauge spoken)

It is difficult to maintain spiritual practice... but it is necessary. I have noticed this myself lately. Do you remember my arrogant whole faith? It is long gone. In its place there is often emptiness, but not when I remember to maintain. Faith is a discovery. I keep forgetting.

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[info]ywns
2008-01-07 02:24 pm UTC (link)
Hello hello
Now that I've talked to folks from Yale and UNC, I'm more comfortable with just good German: they emphasize reading primary sources over secondary. My Arabic is going to get stretched but it's the most important thing.

Faith in each moment, faith in the small reminders. Awareness of the most high in that pencil point, in the shape of the monitor and the feel of the keys, everything reminds and is itself that of which one is reminded...

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