Buddying: The Gift of Presence
When Nabila and I conceived of the idea to set up a buddying scheme at the Cambridge Crescent, we thought initially of the skills we might need to learn. Sitting in the back garden of the Cambridge Muslim College (CMC) on a blazing summer’s day, we listed the resources we would gather, the structures that would need to exist. We looked for problems so we might be prepared.
It wasn’t until months later that the heart of what Buddying might become would truly emerge. To help set up our scheme we’d hired an executive coach with a background in working with religious organisations. One morning, from his practice room couch, as he watched Nabila and I chatting away eighteen to the dozen, our coach said something like:
You two seem to get on very well – are you perhaps not already buddies – to one another?
My mind cast back to a coffee morning at the CMC a decade previously. I’d been a Muslim for two years at that point and after the other Crescent members had left, I approached Nabila tentatively. We were already friends and I needed to ask her something.
‘I’ve met someone,’ I finally said, ‘whom I think I might marry. I need to fly to his country to meet his family. Would you come with me?’
As new Muslims there are myriad resources open to us; people we can talk to, books, the internet, groups like the Cambridge Crescent who offer friendship and support. But a family of origin who understands Islam, someone with the cultural background to ‘get’ the world the convert is stepping into?
Nabila was that bridge for me – my buddy. And when we travelled together to Oman, as she conversed with my now husband’s family as though she were my sister, laughing over tea in the family living room, I felt safe and at ease, divine assistance pouring through the work of my friend.
I was extremely fortunate, in the early days of entering Islam, that I had a buddy (even without calling her so).
Of course, there are other areas at play – and these more practical considerations we explore in the training sessions for those of our Crescent members who decide to become buddies.
And now, when in my own work as a buddy, I sometimes wonder what the best course of action might be. How I might help my new Muslim buddy in the moment, I recall that friendship and buddying are not so different.
For I know that I am not a teacher, because there are already plenty of those. Nor am I my buddy’s guide, for there exists only One.
I am simply a buddy. Present, as my friend was for me.
Josephine Hagard is the Buddying Coordinator at the Cambridge Crescent
Feel free to contact her with any questions you may have about becoming a buddy at the Cambridge Crescent or if you are interested in being buddied by one of our volunteers.
