samakti: Spring, Easter, Rain, Qalb

Easter is just around the corner. Holy week is here and I must say it's one of my favorite times of the year. This week is filled with reflection, meaning, spiritual understanding and awakenings for the soon to be new. I have strong and vivid memories from last year at this time. I was in a different place emotionally, spiritually and mentally. It's hard to wrap it all in one, but it was very difficult and my own personal suffering and crosses, whether big or small were in my mind and heart and in my prayer often and usually daily. I was either writing them down on paper or voicing them into a mesh of words. During holy week, I was trying to remember Jesus's own suffering and all that he went through and did for us. Somehow, it felt somewhat distant because all I could hear were my own thoughts, struggles, worries and such. They were clouding up my vision and what I was supposed to be focused on, the holiest week of the year, and the most important and powerful celebration, Easter.

My heart was somewhere else. I was focused on what I was going through and some days it felt hard to express it all. My heart wasn't entirely focused on Jesus's death, suffering and rising. I was more focused on the great leaps of sin that I caused Christ and solely that pain rather than just as importantly focusing on His great desire and love for us. I had a direct view of Good Friday and it was more bitter, remorse and sad than focusing on the greatest depths of sacrifice and thirst to save us as well as pour out His love for us. This year, it has been a lot of focus and reflection on Christ's deep love for us and the sacrifice of dying on a cross for his beloved. It's not a week to take in lightly and I find each year to be different and each passage, character and Mass to showcase and represent something a little bit deeper.

The heart is something very intricate, real and powerful. In Arabic, the word is qalb. The book that I recently finished reading talked about this word, qalb in one of the chapters, and the differences in meaning and association compared with English. How interesting it is! From the book, "When I asked Google to switch qalb into English, I got heart, center, middle, transformation, conscience, core, marrow, pith, pulp, gist, essence, quintessence, topple, alter, flip, tip, overturn, reversal, overthrow, capsize, whimsical, capricious, convert, change, counterfeit...My own concept of heart did not include flip, capsize, or reverse. Our two cultures did not have the same idea of what was happening at the core of our beings...Whatever it was, qalb seemed more fluid and less constrained than anything I had imagined happening inside of me."

I think there is a lot of movement within our hearts and God taps into this control, yearning for our hearts to be closer to Him, strong, mighty, happy and full. But what happens when our hearts, our beings are not full of joy and radiating a sense of strength and contentment? Hindsight is 20 20, and the slumps that I was going through last year, the pain and even heartache was allowing God to enter into my being and my qalb that needed more, essentially needed His strength and love.

What can I say, life is always changing, progressing and transitioning, but Christ's love is there for us throughout each moment. I am very grateful to be on the other side of this slump, and uncertainty of where I am and how to play whatever role I'm supposed to be in well. My qalb is still beating, hoping, and it's been breathing and dancing way more than it did a year ago. I've been trying to allow some time taking in God's immense love especially during this time of reflection, prayer and preparation for Easter.

These photos remind me and produce vivid memories from Spring time/Easter 2017: