Thoughts and prayers, and alarm clock calls

Recently I spent a night in a Muslim country, and it brought back memories of my once paying a visit to a small Turkish town, several decades ago. On that occasion I had found myself a very cheap hotel as darkness fell. Being tired, I hadn’t bothered to check the location, and I was woken at dawn by the Muezzin bellowing his amplified call to prayer from the minaret of a mosque located only yards from my window.

I didn’t learn from that mistake, by the way; sometimes you have to be told something twice before you hear it. 

A few years later, again as darkness fell, I was driving through a town in the USA and I pulled off the highway to what looked like a fairly decent hotel. 

The room rate was reasonable too, and I was ready for the bed. At some unearthly hour however I was rudely awakened by the roar of jet engines, and on opening the curtains I realised I had been sleeping at the end of an airport runway.

Nowadays, I check these things; I like my sleep. So when I was choosing a place to stay on my recent visit to a country with a lot of mosques, I made sure it wasn’t too close to one of them. Even so, I awoke at dawn to the wailing of the Muezzin in the distance. 

It can be hard to escape modern amplification when a holy man is determined to remind all his flock to get themselves down to the mosque and ‘assume the position.’ I’ve never been in a mosque during prayers, but I have often looked inside with the curiosity of the Infidel.

Even in these more modern and cynical times, a surprising number of men, young and old, answer the call to prayer, at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and nightfall. Many more just roll out a prayer mat wherever they are, point it at Mecca, and take five minutes in prayerful reflection.

We have something similar here, with the Angelus bell ringing out from churches and even from radio and TV. Even though most people nowadays don’t do the praying part, there seems to be no appetite for getting rid of the Angelus bells.

I don’t have a lot of time for religions, they tend to cause more problems than they solve as we can see right now in the Middle East, but I see the merit in being reminded to stop and pray. 

I don’t mean babbling some ancient chants, but it is a good thing for people to stop what they are doing occasionally, slow down for a minute, and just be grateful for what they have. We live in a golden age of full and plenty, in a country at peace in a world that seems constantly at war, and we should pause sometimes and acknowledge our gratitude for all that.