Inshallah & The Creek Don't Rise

Lyn Rye
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Society & Culture

Exercises in American truth-telling. After all, truth comes before reconciliation. What could truth & reconciliation look like in America? There's a lot of stories that need to be told, stories that often come from "the wrong side of the tracks." Turns out a lot of communities are in crisis. Turns out a lot of our struggles are connected. Turns out, we need each other. A lot. Inshallah & the creek don't rise, we can actually do something about that. Audio & written versions available on Substack. Audio available on all podcast streaming platforms. Video versions are also available at https://www.youtube.com/@lyn_rye_music. lynrye.substack.com

  1. 15h ago

    Notes on Resilience

    This essay series often connects stories from different communities in crisis. The question of resilience comes up a lot when talking about crisis. The word can definitely get weaponized, especially by schools and workplaces and recovery programs, particularly against young people growing up in hardship. Living in poverty? You just need to be more resilient. Traumatized? You just need to be more resilient. Resilience has been weaponized to measure the individual against their circumstances, and therefore not being resilient enough becomes a personal failing. Within systems like schools and corporations and clinical spaces, resilience has sometimes become a code word for, “We don’t want to see your suffering.” “Stop being a problem.” “Be easier.” “Need less.” And so, the word resilience has also faced a lot of backlash, especially in progressive spaces and social media. As one organizer friend said during a recent conversation, “The schools in our neighborhood are always ‘resilience this’ and ‘resilience that,’ but has anyone stopped to ask why our kids have to be so resilient? They shouldn’t have to be this resilient. They shouldn’t have to go through the stuff they go through.” However, resilience always returns as an inevitable question during adversity. Many communities and people are going through suffering that is unjust, that they shouldn’t have to face. But how do we survive this? The question can be practical. How do people give their communities the best fighting chance on a day-to-day basis? What does that look like? What does that take? But the question can also be existential. What does it mean to suffer? What are the choices we can make when faced with unimaginable pain? What is the human spirit, where do people find the strength to carry on? In this essay, I would like to propose a concept of resilience that avoids weaponization but does not avoid the inescapable questions we face as humans who suffer. I would like to propose a model of resilience that everyone can participate in, not just the individuals who are the most stoic, tough, long-suffering, or heroic. What if we think of resilience more as the ability to protect the good, rather than the ability to endure the bad? What if resilience is not about your ability to get yelled at without crying, Or get cut without forming a scar. What if resilience is not about your ability to numb any signs of suffering in front of others, Or shrink your needs to fit the size of negligence. What if resilience is not about being able to take abuse without flinching, Or hide the cracks of a broken heart. What if resilience is not the ability to be palatable during adversity, Or give birth without a single stretch mark. What if resilience is not the ability to smile while insulted, Or survive the storm without being weathered. What if resilience is not about suffering the unimaginable and somehow remain unchanged, As if you owed it to the world to hide all of its consequences. What if we accepted that people are not going to make it through unscathed, And are going to bleed, despair, go mad, go quiet. Because these are what the evils of the world do to humans, And no amount of resilience can spare the cost of what is done. What if, instead, resilience is about the ability to protect the good things, The silent sacred things within yourself and the world That need tended. What if resilience is opening the door for neighbors even when you’re having a bad day. What if resilience is still watering the garden on the day of a funeral. What if resilience is still saying “thank you” on a crowded bus. What if resilience is a love called maintenance That remembers to change the furnace filters and prune the trees and apply grout To the rickety structures of life that hold us all. Resilience protects the hand that feeds. Resilience protects the heart’s ability to feel. Resilience patches the roof And lets a field lie fallow Every now and then. Resilience is whatever good comes to help When the crying and the scars and the big feelings and the big needs and the flinches and the flashbacks and broken hearts and broken smiles and stretch marks and weather marks All come to light. Resilience is not the absence of consequences and costs. Resilience is the good that comes to meet it. Resilience does not control what wild and wounded guests arrive at the front door. Resilience is the ability to run the guesthouse regardless. I used to work with an underground railroad for queer people fleeing Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. There was a gay couple from Syria that I worked with for three years. They now live safely in Canada, but their journey was extremely harrowing. They lost family members to the Assad regime and to ISIS. Then some family found out about their relationship and tried to get them killed by falsely reporting them as draft evaders from Assad’s army. They were tortured in a Syrian military prison. One of the men, who I’ll call M., was then forced into military service. After his discharge, the two planned their escape. When they fled across the Turkish border the guards shot at them. They faced homelessness and starvation in Istanbul. When they tried to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, the trafficker manning their boat beheaded someone to show who was in charge. In Greece, M. was captured by a different ring of traffickers and escaped by jumping out of a second story window. The couple spent years in hiding, running from safe house to safe house, before securing a sponsorship in Canada. Some years later, over late night coffee at a cafe in Toronto, I was talking with the couple about courage. M. said, “I’m not brave, I am always the weak one.” I looked at him, stunned. I said, “You’re one of the bravest people I know.” “Really?” he said. “Me?” I met his gaze, this man who had survived war and torture and betrayal and kidnapping and hunger and hiding and running and not knowing whether he would ever be safe again and being told by the world that his sexuality made his life worthless. “Yes, you,” I said. “But I get scared so easily,” he said. “Courage isn’t always the absence of fear,” I said, “sometimes it’s the decisions you make even when you’re scared.” “But I cry at everything,” he said. “The fact that you’re still able to cry after everything that happened to you is nothing short of a miracle,” I replied. This is the kind of resilience I am talking about. Through everything M. suffered, he never lost the good things about him. His softness and gentleness, his gigantic heart, his delicate nature, his sweetness and sass. What he took to be signs of weakness, I took to be signs of success. His fears and tears were not failures, they were merely his humanity showing as he survived the unthinkable. M., who had proven himself capable of both daring feats and steadfast patience, still thought himself weak because he feels so deeply. But in my idea of resilience, he is one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. I currently live and work at a sanctuary house for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers in Chicago. Most food in the house we share communally. This is a practical necessity in a house where people are sharing kitchen space and refrigerators. Sure, everyone can have a couple things just for themselves, labeled with their name in Sharpie, but the basics have to be communal. For years, we upheld our food sharing system with no problem. People in the house came and went, people in the house had their conflicts with each other, but the food sharing held. No matter how bad the conflicts got, people still shared the rice and beans and eggs and milk. Then a group of five guys moved into the house all at once. We had never had so many men in the house before. Some big drama erupted between them and one morning I came into the kitchen to find gallon after gallon of individually labeled milk, carton after carton of individually labeled eggs - the guys had divvied up all the food, refusing to share with each other because they were fighting. This was surprising, petty, and also practically impossible. There is not room in our kitchen for every person to have their own individual gallon of milk. The way I’m thinking about resilience, this group of men was less resilient than all prior groups in the house, not because they had conflict, but because as soon as they had tension they failed to protect the good things that literally fed them. Resilience in this case is not the absence of conflict. It is whether or not the beneficial structures of life come to a sudden, screeching halt when there’s strife. All the previous years in the house showed that it was possible to protect the collective good even while enduring interpersonal troubles. I’d like to think that this is a type of resilience that everyone can participate in. I’d like to think that this type of resilience involves skills that can be taught, learned, practiced, nurtured. You don’t have to be someone who never cries, who never gets mad, who never has a bad day, who hides all your emotions, in order to stay committed to the idea that the big bag of communal rice is for everyone. You don’t have to be at peace with everyone all the time to still use the same bottle of cooking oil. You don’t have to get along with everyone to still maintain the essential rhythms of daily life. So my test of resilience is not how tough and unfeeling can you be - it’s…what does it take to knock you so off course that you can’t even share a container of salt with someone? What kind of stress makes all your good habits go out the window? What kind of stress makes all your good character traits dissolve? During Ramadan I attended a talk led by Muslim Black Panther elders who had spent decades as political prisoners. The elders discussed spiritual preparation for calamity and what it means to be ready for extreme times.

    Notes on Resilience

  2. Jun 3

    Rural Indiana Report-Back

    I spent the first 22 years of my life in Indiana. I’ve maintained connections there even since moving to Chicago. For the past three years I’ve attended an annual conference organized by the IU Center for Rural Engagement. The conference brings together people from all disciplines and fields (literally) who are fighting for the well-being of rural and small town Indiana. At this yearly convergence, I’ve met nurses who formed underground networks in counties that lost *all* of their maternal healthcare post-Roe. I’ve met queer organizers from Spencer, Indiana, the smallest town in the U.S. with an LGBTQ+ community center and Pride festival. I’ve met university students collecting oral histories of Black rural elders. I’ve met community members who are sustaining their county’s only women’s recovery house by hunting wild game, growing vegetables, and baking bread. In other words, I’ve met people who are the definition of rural resilience. They rarely get any spotlight. But I think we could all learn something from them. Every conference I’ve attended since 2024 has been deeply impactful. But this year had bite. So much funding has been lost. The state of Indiana has gleefully slashed budgets in tandem with the federal government. An already-patchy safety net has had giant holes punched through it as life continues to get more unaffordable. Can you guess what Indiana’s minimum wage is? It’s $7.25. Yep. You read that correctly. Around 41% of jobs in Indiana don’t pay living wages. What happens when almost half of the employment in the state does not cover basic necessities? Take another guess - how many new data centers have been proposed in Indiana recently? 36. Thirty. Six. Is it all connected? You tell me. The bleak news is nothing new. Rural and small town America have faced challenges for decades. Hundreds of rural hospitals nationwide have closed and roughly 30% more are at risk of closing soon. Over half of all recorded drug overdoses in the U.S.A. have occurred just within the past 5 years, with fentanyl-laced meth being one of the main culprits, hitting rural America especially hard. Rural America often has higher rates of homicide, incarceration, suicide, overdose, and poverty than urban America, despite our society’s obsession with demonizing urban life. Academics and activists speak of this as the rural “sacrifice zone.” Again, nothing new. What is new is that more and more of the country is waking up to the fact that rural America is a frontline. It has been for decades, but our society too often does not pay attention. Our collective neglect has built cover for power to move in the shadows. The zeitgeist may not pay attention to rural America, but Meta and Google sure do. Oil and coal industries sure do. Rare earth mining companies sure do. Cartels sure do. The lifestyle of urban America is maintained in part by the natural resources and labor of rural America. Not only that, people in power rely on having a place where things can be made invisible. Reservations for Indigenous people? The infrastructure of mass incarceration? Pipelines? Nuclear plants? The Silk Road of drug cartels? The scariest environmental degradations? The human trafficking of agricultural labor forces? The roll-back of child labor laws? Cancer rates that should be a “canary in the coal mine” for us all? A nation with lots of skeletons needs a closet. Rural America is too often a place where collective sins get disappeared. Thanks to the amount of media attention towards data centers, more and more people are paying attention to rural areas. However, the media doesn’t always tell the stories of the kind of people you can meet at this yearly conference in rural Indiana. It doesn’t always reflect the decades of experience in rural survival that people are bringing to these most recent fights. I’m no media outlet, but if I can offer any platform whatsoever to highlight how people are fighting back on the frontlines of Indiana, I’ll do it. If we turn away, we do so to our own detriment. Ok, let’s get into it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

  3. Feb 23

    Projecting 2026

    Reflections on what it means to fight a world-building project, and why our stories matter during the fight. At the beginning of last year I released an essay called Projecting 2025. Today I am revisiting that essay and sharing new observations as we move deeper into 2026. We discuss White Christian Nationalism as a world-building project. We discuss the "iceberg" model of conflict and what it means to take responsibility for our own stories floating beneath the water as we fight the good fight. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

  4. 12/18/2025

    "Truth Comes Before Reconciliation: An Exercise in American Truth-Telling"

    To read the full text, go to this link: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/njaj/vol2/iss1/4/ On November 7th, the Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice published an article that I wrote about the history of Nemaha County, Nebraska, where my mother’s family has been farming for six generations. The article explores what local and family history reveal about America and how the future of family farmland in Nemaha County points towards bigger questions about the future of rural America. The article offers its research and storytelling as a model for truth-telling in America on our long, ongoing road to reconciling injustice. The article was the result of 1.5 years of research. I wrote the first draft in the days between Juneteenth and July 4th, 2024, inspired by a quote I read in a book by civil rights leader Reverend William J. Barber II about how this period of days between Juneteenth and July 4th should be time when Americans dedicate themselves to the pursuit of true freedom for all. At first, I just shared the research with my family. But then a family member tipped me off that a journal at the University of Nebraska College of Law was accepting submissions of non-traditional scholarship. I sent a draft to the Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice the day my maternal grandfather died, November 16th, 2024. We layed him to rest in Nemaha County shortly thereafter. The piece is dedicated to him. I had no idea I was going to submit this research to a law journal when I wrote it and did not format it with legal scholarship in mind. In a profound vote of confidence about the eventual value of the piece, which I’m sincerely grateful for and humbled by, the editorial team at NJAJ worked with me for the entire year to make the research ready for a law journal. Law journals require a citation for (basically) every single sentence and the citation must specify a page number and sometimes even a specific paragraph. The work had well over 100 sources. As you can imagine, going back over the research to make it law-journal-ready was an arduous task. However, I am glad that the work was pored over by a team of lawyers for the last year. In an age of misinformation, it feels significant that this work was picked through with such a fine-toothed comb. This is not a claim that the article therefore contains watertight, objective, and absolute truth. On the contrary, it is a comment the our methodology of assembling stories. We examined every single thread of information using the journal’s standards for evidentiary burden, asking, “does this story really exist in this source the way we’re telling it?” We changed the document many times to reflect new and deeper understandings. We collected photos of physical documents that only exist in local libraries or family archives. We laid out the map: “This story is documented here. This story is documented here.” You could retrace every single one of our steps if you wanted to. The result is what I’ve been calling my “recreational dissertation.” It is a repository for a tremendous amount asking, seeking, thinking, reading, talking, digging, feeling, and writing. I am going to make other media with this material - media that is more conversational, accessible, and bite-sized. But as the research exists in it’s full form, it’s basically a short book. An audio book you can finish on a few commutes. A slim volume about hyperlocal history you’d find at an independent bookstore. Frankly, I think the research itself is a good read. Yes, it’s dense, but at its core, it is just a lot of stories. A local legend who was fabled to rescue people on the Underground Railroad from drowning in the Missouri River? Secret hobo hieroglyphics? Meth moguls? A cameo appearance by Willie Nelson? This history isn’t exactly dry. It is also important. One of the quotes that I include in the article is from a 1965 speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King said: “I fear I am integrating my people into a burning house. We are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised.” In the article I refer to this speech to make the following point: if dominant/white society is a burning house, rural and small town America is where you can smell the smoke. I recently saw a video by a scholar named Dasia Sade in which she references this exact same speech from Dr. King. In her video she states: “The house is on fire, so my culture is water. Water and escape. Resistance or escape. That’s it. The people who understand the importance of our culture being water right now are who I am looking for. That’s where I’m at.” Same. Big same. That’s ultimately the goal of all of this work - building a culture of water in the midst of a burning house. If that goal speaks to you, I hope you consider spending some time with this article. To read the full text, go to this link: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/njaj/vol2/iss1/4/ Otherwise, sit back and listen to the full audio version attached to this Substack post and available on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. With gratitude, -L.R. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

  5. 11/16/2025

    Teargas in Chicago, Cartels in Nebraska

    A very 2025 story about the failures of people in power and how urban and rural struggles are connected. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

  6. 09/14/2025

    I have thoughts about the Charlie Kirk assassination

    CONTENT WARNING: Graphic language, descriptions of violence Social media and traditional media alike are buzzing with discourse about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Most of the discourse I’ve seen seems to focus on Charlie Kirk’s character and hand-wringing about political violence. I see all the signs of classic online discourse - people present their hot take and then defend it against detractors. I have seen very little conversation so far that goes deeper and considers, whatever your hot take is, what is the ethical framework you are using to reach that conclusion? What is the worldview that informs your belief? And how does your position serve some kind of strategy about building the world you would like to see? In other words, the bigger questions about ethics and strategy. I often find that conversations on social media fail to examine ethics and strategy. I think this is one of the reasons why social media discourse frequently fails us, leaving us with in-group jargon and sectarian talking points, but not much of a holistic understanding of our neighbors’ worldviews or strategies to solve problems. I would like to see us collectively discuss: what are the ethical frameworks and worldviews that say the assassination of Charlie Kirk is justified? What are the ethical frameworks and worldviews that say his killing is not justified? I would also like to see us discuss: What is politically strategic about the assassination of Charlie Kirk? And what are the strategic pitfalls of the assassination of Charlie Kirk? I ask these questions not as some sort of intellectual “gotcha.” I don’t have the “right answer” either. This is not me pushing up my glasses and going “well, actually…” I ask these questions because I think they are unfortunately very relevant to our current trajectory as a society. I think we are headed into times where more deadly violence is going to happen. I think we will continue to be in the position of responding to violent attacks and, potentially, weighing whether to participate in violence. I think these are questions that people who are in community with each other should discuss. Whoever’s fate is intertwined with yours when the proverbial s**t hits the fan…we should talk about this stuff. Now. We should start working through some of the differences we have about these issues. I care about ethics and strategy because I think it’s going to matter. In this essay I’d like to offer some potential answers to my own questions, not necessarily as an exposé about my own beliefs, but as examples of what a deeper discussion could yield. Off the top of my head, here are some ethical frameworks or worldviews that might justify the assassination of Charlie Kirk: Let’s start with the “violence against fascists is justified” argument. This is the idea that you cannot defeat fascists with persuasion. Whether the violence is in the future or now, it really only is violence or the adequate threat of violence that reigns them in, so the argument goes. There is the argument that fascism is distinct from most other “political differences” or “differences of opinion.” A comedian and influencer named Mohawk Johnson recently posted a video on Instagram articulating this exact point. Mohawk Johnson states: “Instead of saying ‘Charlie Kirk had ideologies or beliefs that I don’t agree with but that doesn’t mean he deserves to die,’ I want you to say what the beliefs are…Don’t be vague…I want you to hear yourselves. And if you still feel that way, fine. But instead of saying Charlie Kirk had different beliefs, say, ‘Charlie Kirk believed that gay people deserve to be stoned to death, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to die.’ Say that. Type it in the comment section. Type, ‘Charlie Kirk believed that the Civil Rights movement was a mistake, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to die.’ Say, ‘Charlie Kirk said that women aren’t good for anything but breeding and they don’t deserve human rights, but I don’t believe he deserved to die.’ Say the stuff he said. Say, ‘Charlie Kirk believed that it was okay that children died from gun violence, because as long as we got to have the Second Amendment that was the price we have to pay, but I don’t believe he deserved to die.’ Say, ‘Charlie Kirk called for public executions…and said that we should bring children to those executions, but I don’t believe he deserved to die…Say the s**t he said, and if you still believe it, fine. But say what the f**k he believed instead of hiding behind the word ‘belief.’” I don’t know how Mohawk Johnson would describe his own worldview. But there is a worldview which argues that the battle with fascism is not really a “sectarian” conflict, it’s not a conflict between social groups that somehow need to find a way to co-exist in the end. It sees fascism as an existential threat. Now and always. This worldview argues that we need to get over any squeamishness about killing fascists and recognize that it is a justifiable form of violence. This ethical framework says: If you’re okay with “historical” versions of fighting fascism, you need to understand you are living through history right now. Another rise of fascism is here and now. Then there is the “oppressed groups will strike back” argument. This line of thinking goes that if you publicly call for certain groups of people to be harmed or killed, then it should be no surprise if someone is violent towards you as an act of preservation and protection. Threatened people defend themselves. Oppressed people eventually lash out. There’s only so far you can push people until they push back. This is nothing new and no cause for pearl-clutching, so the argument goes. Then there is the argument that “people in positions of power are fair game for political violence.” This ethical framework asserts that “ordinary people” or “civilians” should not be targeted for killing, no matter how abhorrent their personal worldviews are, but people in power are acceptable targets. It’s why someone might believe it is fair game to kill Charlie Kirk but not the college students who came to listen to him. It is the ethical bedrock beneath the idea that even oppressed people have the moral responsibility of picking the right targets for their resistance. Slave owners, imperial officers, politicians, cops, corporate executives, soldiers, prison guards, domestic abusers, militias…these people wield direct power over life and death and therefore their life and death is fair game. This argument does not justify assassination for “thought crimes” but rather for “power crimes.” It’s not so much that a target deserves death for their personal beliefs but rather because of their positions of power. This worldview acknowledges the reality that plenty of oppressed people also hold views that are misogynistic, homophobic, or prejudiced towards another ethnic, religious, or racial group. This worldview holds the ethical line that you don’t kill people for being wrong, you kill them for being powerful and dangerous. And to that point, propagandists are sometimes considered powerful and dangerous, and have been punished for their use of that power, even if their influence over life and death is more indirect. One prominent example is the radio DJs who were successfully prosecuted for their role in the Rwandan genocide. Charlie Kirk could certainly be viewed as something of a radio DJ for white Christian nationalism. Off the top of my head, here are some ways that one might view the assassination of Charlie Kirk as strategic: Some people might believe that it is time to give a warning to fascists, to let them know it is possible to kill them. Others might believe in the strategy of using assassinations to inspire insurrection. This strategy is less about proving a point to the enemy and more so about proving a point to the populace - “You can fight back.” The strategy has historical precedent. Assassinations of imperial officials helped spur decolonization in many countries. Assassinations of British officers in India come to mind in particular. But this is also the logic behind the “accelerationist” perspective on the far right. This might be a good moment to mention that the exact political orientation of Charlie Kirk’s assassin is still unclear. Early media reports labelled him as left-wing “antifa” based on what was found written on his bullet casings, but other people have asserted that the bullet casings were references to alt-right memes and that he might be a “groyper.” For those who are unfamiliar, “groypers” are a faction of the far right led by influencers like Nick Fuentes, who believe in “accelerating” a race war, and who frequently viewed Charlie Kirk as being too mainstream. We don’t know the killer’s true motives at this point in time, but we can still safely state that multiple political perspectives may view assassinations as a strategy to foment insurrection. Off the top of my head, here are some ethical frameworks and worldviews that might say the assassination of Charlie Kirk is not justified: One such perspective is that “many people deserve to die but we do not deserve to become their executioners.” This is a point of view that I see articulated by death penalty abolitionists in particular. These activists often acknowledge that there will always be crimes so heinous that death feels fair - but do we deserve to become their executioners? As individuals and as a society, do we deserve to take on that moral injury to our own humanity? Earlier this year I had the unique experience of talking down a teenage boy who intended to kidnap and kill the man who raped his mother. Our conversation focused on exactly this point - maybe the man did deserve to die, but the boy did not deserve to become a killer. Thankfully, the boy changed

    I have thoughts about the Charlie Kirk assassination

  7. 08/24/2025

    The Bullet From Behind

    A concert I was scheduled to play in Glencoe, IL sparked backlash due to my stances on Palestine. The day of the concert and the aftermath proved an interesting case study in the politics of outrage, conflict, and "the bullet from behind." This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

    The Bullet From Behind

  8. 06/08/2025

    This Eid I Wore a Crocheted Shawl

    This weekend Muslims around the world celebrated Eid Al-Adha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice. Over the years my relationship to this holiday has grown deeper and my understanding of the story that inspires it has blossomed. But it’s a challenging one, one that required a lot of working through before something finally clicked. This essay is an attempt to share what I’ve learned from Eid Al-Adha with a broader audience. Many hearts are troubled these days and looking for sources of courage. I hope to walk you through my understanding of the Eid Al-Adha story and tie it to our present moment in the world. For Muslims, I hope it enlivens your connection to this tradition. For everyone, I hope you take some inspiration, and that you feel more connected to the stories and people in your life who help you face the biggest, hardest questions. This whole essay series, this whole Inshallah & The Creek Don’t Rise project, it’s all about the power of story. And the reality that many communities are facing crises at the same time. And that we need to tell our stories. And that we need each other. Today, we’ll touch on all of these themes through the story of Eid Al-Adha. First, let me tell you about Eid Al-Adha and how my understanding of it has evolved. For some of you, talking about the Quran may be familiar, for others of you, this may be a very strange, new experience. Thanks for diving in. Just remember, every culture has its stories, and every culture can get stuck within its own stories. But some storytellers are able to breathe new life into a story and help their people grow and heal. That’s what we’re trying to do here, inshallah. For those who are unfamiliar, Eid Al-Adha revolves around a story that is shared in both the Quran and the Old Testament: the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham, has a vision that he is commanded to sacrifice his son. In the Quranic version of the story, Ibrahim tells his son about the vision and the son submits willingly to the sacrifice. But God intervenes, provides a ram to sacrifice instead, and blesses them both for their virtue. For Muslims, Eid Al-Adha tends to be a somber, serious festival that celebrates the willingness to sacrifice and unshakeable faith. If this story about Ibrahim and his son causes some discomfort, you’re not alone. It raises a lot of hard questions: “What kind of faith would reward the willingness to commit human sacrifice for no apparent reason?” or “What kind of parent is praised as being virtuous because he became convinced God wants him to murder his child?” Plenty of Muslims ask these questions as well. It’s one of these really, really, really old stories that is hard to grapple with in the modern day, in no small part because of how much damage has been done by religion and people with religious power. Celebrating the idea of religious obedience can get real dicey. But that’s not the only way to understand the story. My first breakthrough about the Eid Al-Adha story came from my experience facilitating the Quran Study at Masjid Al-Rabia from 2018-2020. Masjid Al-Rabia was an Islamic community center in Chicago focused on the needs of marginalized Muslims. Many people who came to Masjid Al-Rabia had been abused in the past and had religion used to justify this abuse. Many came to our Quran Study hoping to work through that trauma and rebuild a relationship to their identity and faith tradition, whether that meant becoming a practicing Muslim again, or simply having a new appreciation for the beauty of their identity, free from the control of their former abusers, free to heal as they chose. The Eid Al-Adha story was always a tricky one. Many people who had experienced abuse being justified by religion found this story troubling and alienating. If the takeaway message of this story is obedience to the point of self-sacrifice, or obedience to the point of committing murder, that sounds a whole lot like real abuse that real people have suffered. In working through this story at Masjid Al-Rabia, I started to really zoom in on the fact that both Ibrahim and his son are described in the Quran as being gentle-hearted. The story begins with Ibrahim having a vision that he kills his son, but to me this sounds more like a nightmare. And Ibrahim, the gentle-hearted man, shares this nightmare with his son and asks what he thinks - “What do you see?” Ibrahim asks (37:102). The gentle-hearted son responds that he believes his father should do as he is commanded and says, “You will find me, God willing, among those who are patient” (37:102). But God intervenes and provides a ram to sacrifice instead. Something about the detail of these people being gentle-hearted cracked the whole story open for me in a new way. I was touched by imagining this as an intimate conversation between a father and son who are close confidants. Ibrahim and his son began to feel so much more like ordinary people. I began to imagine this story as a tale about a very gentle-hearted and loving person having a nightmare about the worst thing that he could ever imagine: being asked to kill the son that he loves. And he confides in his son about what is probably the worst thing the son could ever imagine too - having violence done to him by the father who he loves. Then the father and the son grapple with this nightmare together, affirm their trust in God, and conclude that they would both do what was needed, if that’s what it came to. This is where I really started seeing this story more as a representation of a deeper truth rather than a literal model of what obedience should look like. What is this deeper meaning? For me, this became a story of two gentle-hearted people trying to remain steadfast even as their worst nightmare is coming true. And I also see that the Divine’s main role in this story is intervening and stopping the nightmare from occurring and blessing these two people for their pureness of heart in the face of the unfathomable. In our Quran Study at Masjid Al-Rabia, I think it was far easier to feel kinship to Ibrahim and his son when we thought of them as representing ordinary and kind-hearted people facing their worst nightmare together. Perhaps in the case of this story, the worst nightmare is having to kill one’s own son, or having violence done to you by a family member. But in our discussions we connected this story to a whole range of things, whatever any of us might consider to be our worst nightmare. And what we chose to take from the story was not that we should practice unquestioning obedience, but more that we should ask ourselves - how do good people respond when their worst nightmare is coming true, or the most ultimate sacrifice is asked of them? We began to see the story as an invitation to ponder - What happens when ordinary people are confronted with no other option? When the end of the road comes, what would we give of our life, our livelihood, our liberty, or our love? What would we sacrifice in a situation in which our worst nightmare was coming true? In our Quran study at Masjid Al-Rabia, we started to reclaim this story as being a call to pureness of heart in the face of the unfathomable, not a call to commit the unfathomable. We realized we did not have to see this story as, “You should be willing to kill your kid if you think God is telling you to,” or “You have to let your dad do whatever he wants to you if he tells you it’s what God wants.” Instead, we chose to let the story ask us: “How would you respond if your worst nightmare was coming true?” We were proof that the Eid story does not have to be a call for religious fanaticism, obedience to the death, and pointless suffering. We chose gentle-hearted, poignant, and intimate questions about ultimate sacrifice instead. This was the first breakthrough* I had about Eid Al-Adha while working at Masjid Al-Rabia. But I had another breakthrough recently, this past Ramadan, when I heard someone tell an extremely powerful story and thought to myself: “This is the real-life, present day version of the Eid story. This person’s story describes exactly what I’ve been trying to take away from the Eid story for years.” The person who I met, who I heard tell their story, was Marcellus Williams Jr., the son of Imam Khalifah Williams. Imam Khalifah Williams was wrongly executed in Missouri in September 2024. The campaign for his life to be spared garnered international attention. Even the prosecutor who had originally sought the death penalty fought for Imam Khalifah’s life to be spared. During Ramadan this year, I got to hear and meet Marcellus Williams Jr., his son. His son spoke about his father’s profound faith and unwavering bravery in the face of his fate. Imam Khalifah was a devout Muslim. His last words were, “All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation.” He frequently made the traditional du’a (prayer), “If life is good for me, give me life. If death is good for me, give me death.” He gave advice to others on death row: “I’m not going to tell you it’s going to be okay, I’m going to tell you God carries you through all things.” He was a spiritual advisor to many, both inside and outside prison walls, and corresponded with hundreds of people. Close to his death, he wrote a poem about “The perplexing smiles of the children of Palestine,” and how the persistence of their smiles even in the face of genocide strengthened his faith. According to his son, he went to his death peacefully, even telling the prison guards, “Let’s go, let’s do this.” On the execution gurney, Imam Khalifah was dressed in a white robe and had his arms crossed over his chest, the position Muslims take for prayer. From the death chamber, he checked on his son repeatedly, asking if he was okay, asking if he needed to leave. His son stayed. In the case of the nightmare that this father and son faced, the roles were reversed. It was the son who

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Exercises in American truth-telling. After all, truth comes before reconciliation. What could truth & reconciliation look like in America? There's a lot of stories that need to be told, stories that often come from "the wrong side of the tracks." Turns out a lot of communities are in crisis. Turns out a lot of our struggles are connected. Turns out, we need each other. A lot. Inshallah & the creek don't rise, we can actually do something about that. Audio & written versions available on Substack. Audio available on all podcast streaming platforms. Video versions are also available at https://www.youtube.com/@lyn_rye_music. lynrye.substack.com

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