The Bucket List
Passing forty, the exit might be closer than the entrance.
Welcome to Sunday Schooled, the gently-edited reflections of a middle-aged (transplanted) Midwestern Muslim stepdad, my thoughts on faith and family from my new home in what’s unfairly called flyover country. While, from time to time, I’ll share my updates on my work—especially my next book, Two Billion Caliphs: A Vision of a Muslim Future (April/Ramadan 2022)—those aren’t the main reasons I’m writing.
I’m writing because I kind of don’t know what I’m doing.
And while I (also) don’t know if that’s okay, we can only start where we are.
Some months into the COVID pandemic, I left New York City, where I’d lived for almost two decades (before that I was in New England; cue coastal bubble stereotypes), and made my way to suburban, southwest Ohio. Needless to say, neither my family nor I had ever lived much outside the Northeastern corridor. (Case in point: My father recently asked how much the Acela to Cincinnati was.)
And speaking of family, that’s kind of why I’m here.
Not only am I new to Ohio, and relatively new to middle age, but I’m new to something that’s kind-of, sort-of a much bigger deal than either of those.
I’m a stepdad.
Specifically, to three kids—two girls early into their teenage years, and a boy who’s in fourth grade.
Learning how to take my place in a family system, in a multigenerational household, is significant enough. Learning how to be a stepdad is daunting enough. Except I might have made it harder. You see, some months into my marriage, I sat down with my wife and asked her how I might be a more involved, more engaged stepfather.
She thought on it for a few days, and came back to me with an idea, which she thought was well-suited to me.
Given that I had spent almost two decades of my life teaching about, learning about, and writing and speaking about my journey through faith—specifically, my faith, Islam—and given that I had an upcoming book out, which meditated on the future of that faith, wouldn’t it be a commendable idea for me to supplement the kids' literal and substantive Sunday schooling with what I knew? In effect, she asked me to organize a weekly halaqa, or class, for all three kids.
One that would teach them what I thought was most important about their faith and their identity; needless to say, with the least bit of reflection, this quickly became a far weightier and more immense task than I expected. But I started it, all the same. Once a week—or, at least in theory, once a week—we’d sit down for about an hour, sometimes more and sometimes less, usually on Sundays, and learn about the things I thought were most vital and critical in Islam.
In the process, I learned more about myself, my religion—and my stepkids!—than I could have imagined. In this Substack (better late than never), I’ll share this adventure in stepdadding and Sunday schooling, meditations on what it means to hit middle age, how my (perspective on) life has (overwhelmingly) changed, what I learned and what I taught (and whether it seemed to stick), and the loved ones, friends and family, who guided me on the way.
But, like I said, I’ll also pause, from time to time, to share immediate updates about what I’m writing, about my next book, about public talks, sermons, and appearances, as well as things I’m reading (and possibly enjoying).
That's mostly it.
The stuff I used to write about, years ago?
It’s not that I’m not interested in politics, or that I don’t think it’s important, but I’d like to keep the focus smaller, more intimate and immediate, and simultaneously vaster, more global and cosmological. About us and our place in the universe.
As I grow older, I not only have fewer pretensions that I can change the world, but also have come to see that it's easy to talk in generalities. Hard to live in specifics. It's more work to engage those who have obligations on us.
A lot of the things I used to think mattered now seem hollow. Dubious. Even dangerous. And things I never thought about are now pretty much all I can focus on. Because now I have responsibilities of a kind I never had before.
What am I supposed to do with that?
Of course, I certainly don’t think I have all the answers. Even many answers. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have any answers. I’m writing because there’s not a lot of resources for people like me and not a lot of places for people like me, struggling to figure out the right or best thing to do. For people who find themselves where I am, how I am, and, crucially for religious conversations and considerations, when I am.
For people who might have been challenged by the local mosque, or even the idea of a mosque; for people whose ideas often put them outside of the so-called mainstream. For people who cared about faith, yes, but not often in ways that accorded with what those in authority proclaimed it to be.
And while parts of this newsletter might be that much more compelling if you believe like I believe, underlying it are questions all of us ask, regardless of where we come from, or what we do or don't believe—or, at least, should ask.
When we are gone, what kind of world will we leave behind?