Ramadan 2025 Day Two: Revelation

“It was during the month of Ramadan
that the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for humankind,
and with clear messages giving guidance and distinguishing between right and wrong.
So any one of you who is a witness to this month should fast;
and anyone who is ill or on a journey should make up for the lost days
by fasting on other days later.
God wants ease for you, not hardship.
​God wants you to complete the prescribed period
so that you glorify God for having guided you,
​and so that you may be thankful.”
- Sura Al-Baqara

Can revelation be both sealed and unsealed? Anyone who knows me knows I love a good both/and - the more “contradictory” the better. As a Muslim and Unitarian Universalist, the nature of “revelation” in each faith appears, at first glance, to be completely opposed to the other’s.

The Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) is often called the “Seal of the Prophets” - the last messenger of a God who sent messengers to guide, and reguide again and again, humankind onto that “straight path.” Revelation is sealed with the Qur’an as revealed to him, and in how he lived his life and guided others to live theirs.

Unitarian Universalism offers that revelation is unsealed - constantly evolving and showing new ways of learning and being that reflect an evolving world. It is part of our journey as people of faith to learn and change throughout our entire lives as we encounter sacred truths we hadn’t known (or had perhaps ignored) before. The Holy isn’t static, and neither are we.

Both of these approaches to revelation live within and shape my faith. I do think that there is necessity in having a “North Star,” a qibla if you will, that we constantly turn and return to as an unyielding truth. That all life has worth. That there is a way we can be in relationship with this world, ourselves included, that is so vibrant and wondrous, that our imaginations as shaped by the current nature of the world cannot yet approach it. That we are not meant to, and cannot truly, exist without one another.

AND I do think that how that North Star glimmers, how the guiding truths take tangible and experiential form in reality, is ever evolving. That during this month of Ramadan, as we sit with a sealed revelation, we look to how it is not the literal words and commands but the guiding wisdom behind them that are what stay as the ongoing guidance from God. That what was revealed in that month and in Muhammad’s (pbuh) life, ARE a seal of sorts - a seal on a promise that God/the Holy/Love can be found and turned towards in any moment. And that when we turn back towards God, the Holy, Love, our central truths - we find new ways of understanding and being in a world where so many seek to disrupt that guidance for personal, and violent, gain.

We have been given a holy clay - what we mold it into depends on how we choose to respond to the needs of this moment and the possibilities of this world