Mad Libbed

Was my last article a little too Eat Pray Love-y?  I feel like my last article was a little too Eat Pray Love-y. I hope you can bear with me if any more sentimental-study-abroad-blog, gag-if-I-see-one-more-Instagram-of-your-cultural-experience moments arise. This time I hope I can kick that association by taking spiritual guidance from a former porn star.

It’s about 12:30 p.m. in Istanbul and the sound of ezan – the Islamic call to prayer – is rising from about 3,000 mosques across the city. The chant begins with “Allahu Akbar” or “God is greatest.”  In this Turkish metropolis, however, the words echoing beautifully across the hills are not sung in Turkish. They are Arabic. Under Atatürk, leader of the Turkish national movement, which involved sweeping reform and secularization of the country in the early 20s, the government mandated that all mosques call the ezan in Turkish. As both an anchor in the city’s soundtrack and the predominant religious group’s spiritual timetable, the tongue of one’s country or the tongue of one’s holy scriptures becomes embedded in daily life. The chosen language for the ezan has deep cultural implications. Arabic was reinstalled after a change of leadership in 1950.

I love hearing the ezan. I am thrilled if I can hear the full song when out on the balcony eating breakfast or walking through some alleyway at dusk. My Turkish flatmate, a Muslim and self-professed Kemalist, a strong supporter of the principles behind Atatürk’s secular republic, doesn’t like the sound of the ezan. He doesn’t want to hear Arabic thickening the air five times a day — he wants to hear Turkish, the tongue of his country and his father. Islam is his religion but Arabic is not his language. For Turkish Muslims, the particular language of the magnified call has the power to alternately effect a kind of linguistic imperialism, inspire proud nationalism or not even make it into the iPod-plugged ears of the new generation of “global citizens” and their growing indifference to their heritage.

Another Turkish friend told me about a time his Palestinian friends came to visit Istanbul. They attended a mosque for Friday worship. The Turkish people present began to cry upon listening to the imam’s Arabic teachings, overcome by the holy moment. At the end of the worship, the visiting Palestinians, the only people present beside the imam who spoke Arabic, asked, “What did those people think he was saying?”

“Perhaps the sacred words of God,” said my friend. The Palestinians looked bewildered and shook their heads.

“The imam was discussing the part of the Qur’an that enumerates very boring property laws.”  The assembly was trying to participate in their worship that was not presented in their own language.

You guys remember Mad Libs, right?  Those simple short stories with fill-in-the-blanks for nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. chosen at random?  The words that the players write in sometimes eerily work in context, but more often render the story nonsensical and funny. Maybe it was really late at night and maybe I’d spent too much time reading the archived blog posts of a recovering addict and porn star, but I started to think of how human interpretation of religion is very often like a game of Mad Libs. If Arabic means as much as Gobbledygook to a devout Turkish-speaking Muslim, but he is still moved to tears in the moment, he is replacing those unintelligible words, those mystifying blanks, with what whatever words he needs to hear or whatever words he thinks might fit.

I would be inclined to encourage belief in whatever magic storm has the power to move you. Even feelings brought on by imagined contexts are valid. However, it brings me pause. If more than just one’s internal spiritual life is built on such penciled-in foundations, I think that the misunderstandings, the garbled messages, the self-told truths are often reasons for irreparable schisms between people.

But the Mad Libs concept is not only a wreaker of havoc – it is also the multivariate way we can stay honest and defiant. God bless fill-in-the-blanks. Recovering porn star and addict of many substances Jennie Ketcham was all over reality TV shows and book deals and keeps a blog with a large following. In 2009, in her early AA days, she wrote in response to interrogation of her beliefs in light of another porn star’s sudden religious extremism:

“What bothers me even more is the fact that I’m trippin’ off what other people think … I can’t even say God in the serenity prayer in AA. I replace it with the word gravity. Gravity is my higher power. It is stronger than me and certainly more consistent. Occasionally I mix it in with Buddha. Buddha, grant me the Serenity. Even Love. Love is my higher power. But the G word has always wigged me out, especially the fundamentalist nonsense that Shelly spews. The revelations I am experiencing have nothing to do with God, or crazy Shelly, they have to do with ME. And only ME. And maybe gravity.”

In AA they make you choose a higher power like a fill-in-the-blank question until you actually land on something you sincerely believe in. May we all be as self-possessed as Jennie Ketcham when faced with that blank space – open to the moments that move us, unafraid to expose our confusion and vulnerability, and accepting the absurdity and misinterpretation that is all part of the game.