Call to ‘prayer’..

As you may know, or can guess from the photos attached to this blog, I’ve been on a recent adventure travelling around Morocco. 

One interesting thing came to me perhaps after the twentieth or thirtieth time of hearing the call to prayer, of passing a mosque, of hearing our guide talk about the five times a day that observant Muslims must pray. 

Fear not, I'm not getting into opinion about organised religion but what struck me was that, whatever you believe or don't believe in, actually, wouldn't it be good for all of us to stop, to pause the life chaos five times a day just to notice, breathe and be thankful for whatever small or big thing makes sense at that time.

It could be devotion to something beyond ourselves, or perhaps a simple appreciative moment for the gifts in our lives. Yes, five times a day might seem a lot but each of those pauses could be thirty seconds, or if we even aimed for stopping once a day, that could be once more than we normally do. 

My point is that devout Muslims put that prayer time and their faith before all else, and there is no question that they wouldn't stop, or adapt their routines to be able to pray, to show that awareness and devotion. And my thought was that yes, we too should stop everything else - on regular occasions - to remember who we are, what we have, and just appreciate. 

I feel it's a nice coincidental tie-in that, as I post this, committed Muslims are observing the holy month of Ramadan. Whether you’re religious or not, could you be inspired to pause, and acknowledge something you’re thankful for?

Our values have become skewed and the things we believe are the be-all and end-all in life really require much less devotion than this acknowledgement of the miracle of just existing!