Ravished

Impressively slow Internet speeds and a wobbly hotel connection mean it's been difficult to post from here in Medinah, where we've been stationed since yesterday.

However, it's difficult to feel like complaining since we happen to be within a five minute walk of al Masjid al Nawabi and we've been on a steady high as we've been doing all our prayers there since the congregational prayer yesterday. Impressive is too frail a word to describe the effect of worshipping in the Prophet's (peace be upon him) own mosque. Awesome is a bit better, though devalued by current usage. Transformative is the best I can do for the moment.

Yesterday as I arrived for the Maghrib prayer - and then stayed on for Ishaq, which was only about an hour and a half later - I underwent one of the most intense aesthetic experiences of my life, stunned as I was by the sight of the evening sky framed in a sort of open courtyard that lies deeply inside the masjid. The sky turned imperceptibly from a deep blue, to indigo, to navy blue, to close to black as the lights in the interior glowed more and more brightly over the two hours for which I stared at it - at the times when I was not actually praying. All this accompanied by birdsong and the sight of the green dome and a gorgeous minaret, framed against that sky. Oh, and if I turned away from that I had the repetitively, unremittingly beautiful mosque interior to admire.

Actually I felt a bit guilty that I was enjoying just looking so much, almost to the point of extravagance, when prayer was in order, but then I recalled: God is beauty, and loves that which is beautiful.