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Status: Offline Posts: 3 Reputation: 31 Rep Power: 0  Join Date: May 2005 Location: Manchester. UK. Gender:  Way of Life: Muslim |  Pilgrim's revert story -
05-12-2005
From ‘Me alone’ to ‘God Alone’
I was born into a family without any particular religious propensity.
This in turn meant that my religious experience was pretty much limited to school time religious education classes, which I always found intriguing, (though playground etiquette demanded I show no external evidence of this).
As I entered my teenage years, spiritual issues went somewhat on the back burner as I focussed on more financial and temporal concerns. Upon leaving school, I started a publishing business which produced a youth focussed magazine. This was to be my pathway to success and riches. Due to my lack of experience in the publishing arena, the business eventually failed and I had the unpleasant duty of laying off the 5 people I employed. This dented my confidence somewhat and I was particularly gutted at letting down my employees.
My early adventures in the publishing world benefited me in as much as it gave me experience which other publishing firms sought to utilise and I found myself gainfully employed and earning a large salary for someone under the age of 20.
The questioning of my life in a spiritual sense really began in this period of my life. I had always expected that upon cementing myself into a lucrative career, I would reap the promised satisfaction and fulfilment inherent. Sure, I had a good life with lots of fun and socialising etc. but as time progressed, I found myself becoming more and more depressed at what I increasingly found to be the futility of my shallow life.
A serious examining of major world faiths ensued, (excepting Islam though, as it seemed so archaic and extreme to me at the time) I spoke to Hare Krshna’s, Buddhist’s and street preaching charismatic Christians, but found myself unable to commit to any particular path, fearing the seemed encroachment on my freedoms.
But still, deep within me, this pain kept growing, I was the loneliest man in the world, an anguished and tormented lover, vaguely sighting the object of my affection but without the strength or courage to reach out and embrace.
I continued in this style until my early Twenties, when a mixture of apathy, weariness and what I can only remember as a complete and total disinterest in life, led me into experimentation with drugs. I very soon found the days and months becoming an accelerating roller-coaster ride of ever harder to attain highs and ever decreasing lows. One evening, I returned home exceptionally drunk, feeling hopeless, despondent, I had physically, mentally and most importantly spiritually reached the end of myself. I had always been self-sufficient and jealously guarded my right to self determination, but I was an exhausted and powerless wreck, the personal freedom I had refused to relinquish had now virtually destroyed me and I fell onto my knees weeping, crying out to God to forgive me, to save me.
At this point, my memory took me back to a conversation I had with a young Christian street preacher I had been mildly mocking, one drunken night out, several years previous. This young lad had said to me, in all sincerity, that if I wanted God in my life all I had to do was invite his son Jesus into my life and he would surely come. As I lay in my bed late that evening, it became profoundly apparent to me that God had always been there waiting for me, but I had been unprepared to release control of my life, it was my property and belonged to me alone. God was never going to impose his will upon me, in time I would discover for myself that I was not in fact the architect of my own destiny. A new reality entered my life, my whole existence is from God and too him, I gave my life, I then prayed as suggested by that young street preacher for Jesus to come into my life. I was a Christian.
To be honest with you, I really did not have much concept at this time of the complicated nature of the Christian faith. All I knew was that I had repented of my past life and accepted Jesus as my saviour and now I needed to find me a church to belong to. As my understanding of the different types of churches was limited, my choice of denomination to attend was pretty much decided by my fear of perma-grinned Jesus people types, I just knew I didn’t want to end up with them. So I chose the United Reformed Church, a haven of tradition and gentility, just the ticket for a burnt out junky.
The church I joined was named St.Columba’s, Columba was an Irish monk who settled a small island off the west coast of Scotland called Iona and established the first Scottish monastic community. Though I enjoyed my time at this church and relished the opportunity to preach and lead groups within it, the protestant tradition seemed unable to guide me in what was most important to me, communicating with God through prayer. I was offered formulaic written scripts for prayer, but I wanted to share my very heart with him, I began to feel disheartened with church life, a simple progression of one administrative meeting to the next, left me feeling spiritually barren.
Explaining my feelings to the Minister of the church, he suggested that I take a trip to the aforementioned monastic island of ’Iona’, as it would be a good place to ’recharge my spiritual batteries’. A couple of weeks later I had arrived on this tiny weather beaten outpost of Christendom and experienced my first taste of early Celtic monasticism.
It was to become a notable milestone on my quest towards the imminence of my creator.
Iona was a revelation to me, although there was no monastic community in existence there anymore, there was a thriving community of laymen and women living in the restored monastic buildings. The Iona community as they are called, consist of folk who come from the world over to dedicate a certain period of time to living and worshipping God in this ancient place. The attitude and ethos of the Iona community is very much grounded in the form of contemplative prayer and life rhythm of the monks who once lived their lives out on this remote island. My time on the island instilled within me a great admiration for the commitment undertaken by the monks, lives given in totality to God, out of pure love for God.
This life of complete abandonment to God began to haunt my every thought. I somewhat naively at the time surmised, that as these men gave everything of themselves to God, he must surely make himself closest to them in response. I couldn’t get it out of my head; I wanted to live totally and completely for God alone.
Upon my return from Iona, I began to make contacts with Roman Catholic monasteries. This communication brought to my attention the vast spiritual writings of the Catholic Church and I devoured them, one after another, feeding on their ancient wisdom and guidance. I soon decided that the path I must follow was to become a monk and therefore a Roman Catholic. I in time decided to join a Benedictine community in Scotland. My routine within the monastic confines was regimented by the ’Rule of St Benedict’ calling me to prayer 6 times a day, the earliest at 6am the latest 9am. The rule also clearly designates periods of study, manual work and refreshment. I found the monastic life incredibly rich and rewarding, the time portioned for silence and prayer helped me to a stillness and point of surrender it is hard to fully describe.
Never having experienced such a vast quantity of silence before, it was impossible to know how one would react in such circumstances. What I would say now is, silence is the most relentless stripper of the many personas we as modern people fabricate to hide our true selves. The initial monastic experience is painful, as God shines the light on you and reveals the ugliness shadowing what you have the potential to become. It does eventually become easier and less painful, but never stops being revelatory. After about 3yrs, it became quite apparent to me that I was not called to monastic life, thoughts of loving a wife and having children filled my thoughts to the point where I had to make the sad decision to leave. I still have contact with the Brothers and in hindsight, feel very much blessed to have been granted the time to grow and develop in that atmosphere.
Another personal and spiritual development I put down to my time in direct prayer with God at the monastery was, a certain distaste for the idolatry inherent within the Catholic Church, I also found it very hard to swallow that I needed to communicate my sins via the medium of a priest in order to receive forgiveness from God. I knew just through personal experience that this was untrue, as I repented of sin everyday to God personally and knew I received forgiveness there and then.
After leaving the monastery, I drifted somewhat spiritually as I attempted to re-adjust to the world outside the monastic compound. In the mid 90’s because of my involvement in the church, I was offered the opportunity to study at Oxford University, which I grasped eagerly (as who wouldn’t). I studied in Social Administration and psychology.
The next step in my journey brought me somewhat back full circle as I moved back to Scotland, left the Catholic Church (as my conscience would no longer allow me to remain) and rejoined the Protestant fold via the Congregational Church. The polity of the Congregational church suited me fine, no huge hierarchical church structure, we made our own decisions for our own community. No idols in the sanctuary and a nice straightforward evangelical theology. I eased back into preaching and was asked to become an elder which was great.
Praying for God’s guidance re my next step, I became of the firm conviction that he was calling me to full time ministry in the church. I put this to my local church, who upon voting agreed that they would nominate me for training at seminary.
Upon arrival in Manchester for my training, I was immediately struck by how ’Liberal’ the theology and lecturers were at the college. Within the first 2 months a death blow was dealt to the doctrine of the Trinity, the validity of vast swathes of the Gospels and Epistles of Paul were shown to be incredibly shaky at best and the Godhead of Jesus himself was given up to our own interpretation. Over the next year or so I was amongst a number of students who left training, after much further research after having my eyes pretty much ripped open theologically speaking by the college, I decided that I in conscience could no longer preach the Christian message, as I no longer believed in the most important parts of it.
During my period in theological training, I had taken the opportunity to read into Islam. This was the first time I had done so, as it had never interested me previously. What I found within the Qu’ran was an answer to my many irritations within the Christian scripture. The Qu’ran confirmed a progression of revelation from Abraham and the many proceeding Jewish prophets including Jesus through to the final and seal of the prophets Muhammad. The irregularities in the Christian scriptures become very much apparent when measured beside the testimony of previous revelation and particularly so when highlighted by God himself in his last scripture, Qu’ran.
Finding myself very much in agreement with Islam at a theological and conscience based level, I took to scouring the internet for information and contacts re reverting and how one should go about it. The response I received from Muslims on the net was always helpful and encouraging, but I myself was beginning to run into what I would call emotional barriers to embracing Islam.
All in all, I spent nearly 3 yrs leading up to my decision to finally embrace Islam publicly. One of the things that prolonged my decision was an imbedded fear that as one who had previously preached the Gospel, my apostasy would make me about as ****ed as you can get (as per the Christian scriptures). Another fear that kept me from embracing was how my wife would respond, bearing in mind she fell in love with a Christian preacher, I wasn’t sure if she would be able to handle ending up with a Muslim. And, believe it or not, having to give up alcohol felt like a massive bind, not that I’ve ever been the world’s biggest drinker, but the fear of losing the choice to drink made me really uneasy.
On the 25th April 2005 a few days after finding my way onto the ‘Why Islam’ website, I contacted a fellow revert of 2 yrs standing and asked if he would take me to local Masjid. Upon arrival there I said my Shahada and became a muslim. I was greeted into the Deen enthusiastically by all the brothers present (and even got a free meal at a special table!).
I consider myself very fortunate to have been guided through so many varied and enriching experiences by Allah, but his greatest gift he saved till last, he has made me a Muslim by his grace, from ’me alone’ I have been led to submit my life to ’God Alone'.
Only by his Grace and mercy,
Your Brother in Islam
Gavin(Pilgrim)
Last edited by Ansar Al-'Adl; 05-16-2005 at 04:45 PM.
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