I go to this kind of lodge on Mondays.
I was late yesterday.
In fact so late that I really had no time for anything other than heading straight for the door, after I'd parked the car and paid a parking fee in Østerbro that could have kept a family in Africa fed for two weeks.
But as I cross the pavement in front of the lodge building, four young Muslim men call out to me.
I just manage to think - could they have misunderstood one of my posts? The thought lasts a second, no more. Because I know where I stand, and why I stand there, and everyone who meets me in reality can sense I mean well. Clearly. So I stop.
They smile. Look questioning and step down from the stairs, as it's completely visible that I'm on my way into the enormous building they're standing there observing.
They'd just come home after half a year in the Emirates and had been standing looking up at the six-pointed star on the facade, while they tried to work out what on earth goes on behind those two big columns.
"Is it some kind of elite club - or what is this place!?"
They'd seen it all on YouTube. Deep voiceover. Dramatic background music, hidden hand signs, world domination, forbidden rituals - you know, all the usual. And then I suddenly stood there, in the middle of the pavement in full dress suit - though without top hat and sword☺️ - and they asked, with wide eyes and genuine curiosity, if all of it was true.
Everything in me said - "through the door, now. You need to be there from the start".
But the moment pulled at me, the same way it pulled at them, and there are things you don't walk away from when they stand right in front of you waiting for a meeting.
They were clear in the eyes and seemed like good young men who were on their way to finding their place in life.
So instead I answered them with a question and a wink -
"how much of what you yourselves read about Islam on the internet is actually true, generally speaking?"
That turned the conversation in one stroke. And then we laughed, first time of many that hour.
Because then we stood there, almost an hour, in the middle of the pavement, and talked about the biggest things that exist. About creation, and what it means that the world is ordered and not random. About Logos - the Word, that was in the beginning. About who Jesus was, who for them is prophet and for me is the Word itself, made flesh. About how Man has a soul, and what it does to a person to believe he doesn't have one. About what Truth is, and whether it exists, where it exists, or if it's just something we vote on. And about the question that lies beneath all the others - how a Man is raised, so that he fills what he's created for.
Two traditions. Two completely different answers about the Law and society. And yet the same direction in our gaze.
Upward.
And none of us could tear ourselves away.
They were well-dressed, polite, sharp and funny, and they laughed at least as much as me - standing there in full dress suit looking like someone YouTube had warned them about. It was open-hearted all the way through. None of us gave up anything. None of us needed to. It turns out you can stand in complete disagreement about some answers and still recognise each other in the question.
I recognised myself clearly. In them.
But what hit me most was the moment when we turned around together and looked at the Western world.
Many of my posts don't exactly mince words about what I see, and I knew in advance what they saw. So I allowed myself to guide them from within, from our own tradition, until their eyes were as big as teacups.
Because they see the same thing I see. And let me say it as it is - in their diagnosis of our, the Western world's, sickness they're right about more than we care to hear.
They see people who've been given all the Freedom in the world and can't bear it. They see the Holy made into commodity and the Body made into billboard. They see families dissolving, fathers disappearing, women who don't want to be mothers and children raised by screens. They see a culture that has abolished shame and yet is drowning in it - just without the forgiveness. They see a people who talk about values and can't name a single one clearly and distinctly when you ask. A people who've forgotten what they believe in, because they've forgotten their deep faith - and therefore no longer know what to say no to.
None of the four looked at us with hatred. They looked with disbelief. As if, as I've written many times, they couldn't understand what they see.
And then one of them said what I can't shake off -
"Most people here can't be themselves without falling".
It's true.
And here lies the crucial point - because what we disagree about isn't the diagnosis. It's the answer.
Their tradition lays the Law down over man, from outside, as framework, honour and duty. It holds, but it holds fast.
Ours - when we remember it - plants the Word in Man, inside, as Conscience and Freedom under Responsibility.
Those are two different models -
Foundation without Freedom on their side.
And right now, with us - Freedom without Foundation.
I told them - because no one had ever taken the time to - that the West was the place in the world that insisted on both. And that this was never a given.
It was a burden someone carried. And it's no longer carried by itself.
And then we talked about what you almost never hear anyone talk intelligently about these days - brotherhood across the traditions.
They said it themselves, honestly and plainly - that Islam, as they know it and live it, doesn't function as it should without Sharia. That's not my interpretation. Though it is my interpretation. Those are their own words, and they said them calmly, the way you state how your house is built.
"The foundation stone is laid here and this column is central".
And precisely therefore the question became real between us - also because they'd just come home from the UAE and had experienced it in their bodies themselves.
Whether answers could be found here, with us, of a different character than those the Zayed and Abraham Accords have arrived at for their own civilisational order down there. Answers that let faith remain faith - without Sharia having to be raised on European soil, and without anyone having to live with fewer rights than their neighbour.
They listened. I listened. Everyone thought.
Because they sense the tensions in society, more clearly than most. And they were glad - they said so themselves - to talk with someone who respects and acknowledges their deep faith without judging, and who took the time to explain the Christian and Western perspective on the same questions they've been raised to - and live in the faith that - are settled once and for all in the Quran. Someone who will talk, not to tear something down. But to show that there's another place to stand and see the same thing from. And they seemed almost pleasantly surprised to finally meet someone who understood where they stand, and why they stand there - in reality, as it is, and not in the theory about it.
And the longer I stood there, the gladder I became that I'd stopped. Because exchange works both ways.
When we finally parted, with handshakes and thanks all the way round and a last laugh about the hat I wasn't wearing - they thought I looked "totally styled", as they put it - I went through the door. Very, very delayed...
And I can say it quite simply - it was one of the most rewarding conversations I've had in a long time. And it laid a completely new dimension over the rest of the evening, though naturally I can't share the content here.
Because what we work with in there behind the columns is basically the same question the four young men asked out on the pavement - how a Man is raised. Not as theory. As work. Stone by stone.
Outside stood four young men from another tradition searching for it. Inside sat men from our own who'd never let it go.
You don't defend a house you've left.
You come home to it.
Thank you for stopping me, boys.
❤️🔥🪽
Good Tuesday evening, friends ☀️
