Mar 06 | Holy Play (Radical Love Journal #2)

In late October of last year, I attended sohbet at a friend’s home with Sherif Baba, a Sufi sheikh and teacher. For Sufis, sohbet, which means “conversation,” is an address of the leader to the community. I had attended a few with Baba and his translator and student, Cem, in the last couple of years, and of course those who follow this blog will remember him from my “Song of the Reed” series documenting my experience at Rumi Fest 2019.

Baba’s sohbets are all fire and love and storytelling. Although he does offer time for questions, mostly it is an act of deep listening on the part of students to the teacher. I was caught up, as usual, in the beauty and humour and wisdom of this truly lovely soul.

Afterward, I came to sit at his feet with my friend Samime, and was given the gift of a name. Of course I bent deep to hide my tears, but they could not be hidden. He put his hand on my head, and it rested there for a long time. Samime hugged me. Then Baba offered me his plate, and I ate a piece of fruit from it.

It was a deeply holy experience.

Some time after, outside waiting for my taxi, I turned to find Baba picking his way up the stone stairs leading down to the semahane. He came and stood next to a tree close by which had a swing hanging from one of its branches.

Holding one of the ropes, he beckoned me. It had to happen all in gestures, because he doesn’t speak much English.

I came forward, curious.

He motioned for me to sit in the swing. Although I could, it had clearly been set up for a child, with the seat very low to the ground. I sat in it with my knees up around my ears, and giggled.

He tugged at the rope, swinging me gently. I rocked forward on the balls of my feet, then back slightly onto my heels, then forward again. Now I started laughing. I must have looked ridiculous, but also I thought of how amazing this was, how wild and beautiful to do something so playful and whimsical with a Turkish Sufi teacher.

Some women came up from the house, saw us, and started to laugh themselves. Baba grinned widely at them and, indicating me, cried, “Perfect baby!” in his lilting accent.

Later, Samime mentioned to me that he had spoken to her about how we are all, like little children with their mothers, called to “hold onto the skirt of ashk.”

Ashk is a word that figures hugely in Baba’s teachings. On his website it’s defined as “divine love; a love with no end[.]” It’s meant to evoke passion and fire, the love that binds us to endless searching, endless desire for God. I suspect as well that this is the word that Omid-jan translates as “radical love.”

And yet, in this instance, Baba showed me that while ashk is rather a serious matter, like romantic love it can also be very playful.

This makes perfect sense. God knows that all sentient creatures play. I once saw a grown man bring his pet rabbit to Kits beach and play tag with it by letting it chase him around a tree, then chasing it back. My cat will do the same thing with me around the corners of my kitchen.

But it’s not just that we play. We play in order to learn. Kittens learn to pounce on feather toys. Puppies roll and growl and nip. Monkeys hang onto their mothers before swinging themselves.

Not all divine wisdom comes in lightning bolt bursts or waterfalls of peace and wisdom. Sometimes it’s more like a tickle, or tossing a ball, or a shared giggle.

Mystics, full of divine wisdom, are often noted for this humour. Omid-jan translates a delightful passage from the great Persian master dear Abu ‘l Hasan Kharaqani thusly:

One night Abu ‘l-Hasan Kharaqani was praying to God.

He heard a voice from beyond:

“O Abu ‘l-Hasan!

Do you want Me to tell people

everything I know about you

so that they stone you?”

Shaykh Kharaqani answered back to God

“O my God!

Do you want me to tell them everything I know

about your loving mercy and forgiveness,

everything I see from your generosity?

If I do,

no-one would ever bother with acts of worship,

no-one would prostrate in prayer!”

The voice of God answered:

“You say nothing;

I say nothing.”

This passage was such a delight to me, because a few lines before I had read a different passage from another Persian poet Qa’ani Shirazi that brought me to tears:

My only shame

is this

On the Day of Judgement

I won’t have sinned

enough

to match

the enormity

of Your forgiveness

It was such an incredible sentiment, one I hadn’t actually heard before, that I was caught up short. I pondered on it for a long time, full of emotion. Then I turned a couple pages on and found the Kharaqani story and burst out laughing. Only a mystic, and indeed only God, could lead us along such a bumpy road as this!

So often, there is laughter among us. Sometimes the explanation for it is simple. A funny story. A running joke. But sometimes, there is little explanation beyond the fact that all mystics share a common language, and once you’re among that family, you recognize it and delight in it. It’s almost like being in a marriage, or a very, very long friendship. You know each other so well you can’t help but giggle at the things you know so well, the way my best friends and I once did – and still do.

Laughter is only the response to the play, of course. And as I consider this, I remember beautiful Cennet, one of my other Sufi soul friends, wise beyond words and almost luminous with grace, telling me that sometimes while singing the old hymn “Lord, listen to your children praying,” she would switch out the words: “Lord, listen to your children playing.”

Shabli says:

“The mystics are

children

in God’s lap.”

May we all learn to lean into the playfulness of prayer, and the prayerfulness of play.