Grand Perspective: My Journey to the Grand Canyon

Bright Angel trail in the South Rim of the Grand Canyon

GRAND CANYON - December 20th, 2015

I was surprised. I came here with the intention of reviving my spirit, seeking my independence from humans, and reestablishing my surrender to my Creator, the Creator of this canyon.

As we approached the canyon on foot, seeing the tip of the 6,000ft high layers of sedimentary rocks, I was reminded of another feeling. I had a flashback to the first time I was approaching the inimitable House of God in Mecca, the Kaba. The excitement was similar, but not the same. I even made a joke to my best friend who travelled with me on this hopefully rejuvinating trip: have your first dua ready!

We walked closer, arm in arm, with big smiles and small giggles, awaiting the grand reveal.

And there it was.

The rest of the 6 million years of plate tectonics gone awry and the powerful erosion caused by insistent and stubborn water. It was quite amazing. I stood in silence for a few minutes, mumbling the words of praise that came to mind.

But my heart did not stir. I did not feel what I expected to feel. There was no elation. There was no spiritual ascension. There were no tears, and there was no urge to place my forehead on the ground in reaction to viewing this masterpiece.

I tried not to think too much about my heart's lack of reaction, since the first explanation that came to mind was that my heart was not as alive as it should be. That I am, perhaps, not as grateful to God as I should be. And that maybe my faith was not as strong as I'd hoped it was.

And so I brushed off these thoughts. Instead, I focused on taking in the magnificent beauty and grandeur of the creation of The Creator. I focused, instead, on worshipping anyway. 
I focused, instead, on giving God what He deserved but did not need.
On thanking Him.
Remembering Him.
Praying to Him.
Praising Him for creating a beautiful landscape and granting us eyes with vision to witness it. Reflecting on how His creation, and it's grandness, was only placed as an indicator, a reminder of how grand The Greatest is.

Kaibab Trail 

It was an uplifting experience, and far more real than the one I had expected. But I still wondered why my heart wouldn't stir at the sight of something like this. And it dawned on me slowly, and finally hit me at sunset on the next day.

We had discovered another hiking trail (to the right), another path with breathtaking beauty. One that echoes the ecosystem in the film Avatar. It was surreal, magnificent. And I couldn't imagine that this existed without our knowledge. The path carved into the wall of the canyon, and the enormity of the erosion was far more visible. And the sky was competing strongly with all of this. The sky.

The Sky

Kaibab Trail 

God mentions the sky many times in the Quran, and in the rules of how to recite the Quran (tajweed) we are supposed to elongate the vowel, which would make you linger on the word. For years, I had always wondered why. Why would God create the word for "sky" to be one that requires elongation?  I recently started looking more at the sky whenever I would find myself outside. If someone keeps repeating the name of something, and that something is nearby, your bound to eventually turn your attention to it. 

I looked at the sky, and I looked for the science of space, beyond our earth, beyond our sky, and realized how unfathomably small we are. And in contrast, God is unfathomably and infinitely larger. If God is so great, how can His promises not be true, how can there not be a heaven and hell beyond the scope of what is visible to the human eye. And that's when the sky grounded me, and the foundation of my iman (belief, faith). Whenever I needed a reminder of The Almighty, of His greatness, His all-capable nature, or His mercy, I would just look up.

Back to the Grand Canyon

Kaibab Trailhead at South Rim of the Grand Canyon

I found myself among fantastic rock formations and a phenomenal combination of many ecosystems in one place, all painting a portrait unmatched by any human creation or invention. And despite that, I was still looking to the sky. 

God has not assigned the Grand Canyon sanctity, holiness, or spiritual remedy in its air, to our knowledge. It is another creation that reminds you of Him, but has no holy quality in itself. This is why my heart didn't stir. This is why my eyes only became wet when I was praying to Him, vocalizing my awe of His creation to Him.

I travelled hundreds of miles seeking peace, ease, and upliftment. But all I had to do was look up. You don't technically need to leave your home to find Him, because He tells us two very important things:

و "هو الذي خلق السماوات والارض في ستة ايام ثم استوى على العرش يعلم ما يلج في الارض وما يخرج منها وما ينزل من السماء وما يعرج فيه وهو معكم اين ما كنتم والله بما تعملون بصير"ر 

It is He who created the heavens and earth in six days and then established Himself above the Throne. He knows what penetrates into the earth and what emerges from it and what descends from the heaven and what ascends therein; and He is with you wherever you are. And Allah , of what you do, is Seeing. [Quran: Al-Hadid, 57:4]

And the other, which really drives my spiritual journey home:

 " الا بذكر الله تطمئن القلوب "

Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest. [Quran: Ar-Rad, 13:28]

Personal Gravity

In physics, we learn that when an object has forces acting on it, and when the forces all cancel themselves out, this results in the object remaining in one place without moving, it results in equilibrium.

Your personal gravity, the one that is pulling you down, be it sadness, difficulty, anxiety, loss, betrayal, pain, confusion, or any tribulation, is equivalent to how much strength is inside you.

This is not a reach, this is not an attempt to tie in your life with  science. This is connected to a verse that we often hear and recite, "God does not burden a soul except [with that within] its capacity." [Quran, Al-Baqara, 2:286] You will not be crushed down by calamity, by loss, by illness, because you have the strength to counter those forces.

The more hardship you have, the stronger you are. They key is in the fight. You have to have the fight. You can't wait for the power to kick in, you have to use those muscles to work against the tide that is trying to drown you. You must pick yourself up, limb by limb, thought by thought, prayer by prayer, and fight. No one else will fight this for you, and you have all the human capacity to do it.

When you feel that pressure, that hurricane, that gravity, push yourself, stand back up, cancel those forces with your own, even if it is against your will, even if you want to simply collapse and surrender, even if it seems impossible, and your efforts seems fruitless, or insincere. Even if you feel as if you are faking it, know that is it in these times that true strength emerges, when you don't have the will. Stand up. And say, "This is what strength is made of."