photo from Wikipedia
I have a favorite mosque that I like to walk to for taraweh, the extra prayers said each night during Ramadan. The mosque has a large courtyard and takes up a small block. The streets are blocked off so that counting inside the mosque, courtyard and surrounding streets, there are about 4,000 people attending the prayers. I love to pray there, always outside, as the night breezes begin to cool the city. It is about half a mile from my house, though, and this year I simply did not have the energy to trek there and back again after fasting 16 hour days in triple-digit heat.
There is another large mosque just 3 blocks away, but it has no courtyard and just as I expected, the first night I went there it was miserably hot inside. Still, I wanted to make taraweh at the mosque rather than alone at home. The taraweh prayers are optional, as is going to the mosque to say them. But the beauty of the rectitation and the spiritual energy of crowd in the cooling air was something I craved. The next night I resolved to just take my time and get to the further mosque.
That evening I left the house with a trashbag in hand. On the way to the dumpster the bag leaked all over my hands and feet. I stopped at a store and bought a bottle of water and rinsed myself off on the sidewalk. I was nearly at the mosque when I realized I'd left the stool on which I sit for prayer on the sidewalk where I'd bought the water. I hurried back, praying my stool was where I'd left it. It was, but by then I knew I was late.
I reluctantly started to go to mosque where I'd have to pray inside. That's when I made a wonderful discovery. This smaller mosque faced a busy boulevard, but the back of it open onto a small side street that was blocked off. I never took this route past this smaller mosque on the way to the larger one during Ramadan, and so I had never seen the people praying outside. But here they were.
From the chain of events starting with that leaking trash bag, Allah led me to a Ramadan mercy. I could pray close to home and still be outside after all.
