Apr 11 | In the Midst of Us (Radical Love Journal #6)

On the evening of March 3^rd I was invited to Seemi’s house for a concert. The Rajasthani folk singer Mukhtiyar Ali was in town, and she had invited him to play in her home for a gathering of Sufis. Mukhtiyar-ji, a bear of a man with a twinkling smile and that beautiful depth edged with mischief that I’ve encountered in all mystics, arrived as we rearranged Seemi-jan’s living room to accommodate all of the guests. He and his Hindu drummer set up in her living room.

I’d met him a few days before at a workshop in the Asian Studies Department at UBC. He doesn’t speak English, so Seemi-jan explained to him that I played the harp and sang. My heart nearly exploded as he said casually, “Oh – you should bring it when we go to Seemi’s house on Wednesday.”

I did just that.

We crammed about forty people into Seemi’s living room, and dear Masa served steaming hot smoky chai as Mukhtiyar-ji played and taught us Sufi poetry, with various members of the audience translating for English speakers. I had never really been to a concert like this before; it was a truly astonishing blend of worship and entertainment. The closest cultural analogue for me would be a ceilidh, but it also wasn’t like that, because a ceilidh’s worshipful elements are subtextual and this was all out in the open. But it wasn’t exactly like a sohbet either, because Mukhtiyar-ji was sharing the wisdom of other teachers, sometimes with his own tunes. As a storyteller he’s more of a keeper of past knowledge.

I also felt entranced by the unspoken dialogues that blossomed out of the performance. An old man sitting across from me nodded and watched with great delight, and regularly put out his hand, fingers touching each other, as though he were picking the poetry out of the air and admiring it. Mukhtiyar-ji looked at him for long periods, pouring forth the wisdom to be scooped up. It was so intimate.

Eventually, Mukhtiyar-ji, again with that impossibly casual air, invited me to play. I was terrified – he played the harmonium, and the modes were totally foreign to me, but as he played a chord for me to find, I discovered that, for the harp, it was a simple F. He nodded, grinning, and then we began. Like with my first time playing for Baba, things flowed easily – clearly I was picking up on the energy in the room. He even left space for me to do solos, which gave me a wonderful and whoopsy feeling like being on a rollercoaster unsure if the next drop would send me flying from the car.

As we played, the carpet before us was rolled up to leave a space, and dear Raqib, dressed in his tennure, arrived to turn. People also turned and danced in the kitchen, including a man I knew to be a court judge.

Time had absolutely no meaning. Culture, language, skin colour had no meaning in these fleeting moments. We were all burning in the garden of ashk.

As I sit in my home, socially isolated and laid off from the one job that took me out of the house the last few weeks, I think back to that evening with a complex series of sensations. There is joy at the memory, gratitude that I received such a gift as that image of forty people clapping and laughing and cheering as Mukhtiyar-ji plays and Raqib turns, eyes closed and with a smile of pure glee, but there is also a piercing sadness. I have a weird feeling of awe at the fact that we were all crammed in there so tight – already now I get anxious when I see too many people in an enclosed space and it’s only been about a month.

Last night, I spoke to Masa and Eda on a video call, and wanted only to be able to hug them.

Before I could say so, Eda said, “I am feeling right now that I want to hug you, so much. It is so strong.”

I know the beloved community exists beyond our physical bodies. I know that God’s love and energy is not hampered by physical distance.

I know that tomorrow, Jesus will rise from the dead, and the fasting of Lent and the long waiting of Holy Saturday will come to an end.

But the waiting is so, so hard.

10^th century saint and scholar Ibn al-Husayn al-Sulami writes,

“After suffering the pangs of love

I have no place to go

How empty it is

when the beloved is gone

To live away from those whom we love

is not living at all”

On Maundy Thursday (a night which Masa tells me is referred to as “The Night of Secrets” in Damascus; what an amazing title!) Jesus must have looked at the disciples and mourned the end of their nights of prayer and teaching and song and feasts. Perhaps he felt like I do, a bittersweet sadness mixed with gratitude. Or perhaps there was only the prickly fear of anticipating his betrayal and death. It must have been so many different things. In the Gospel of John, he performs the amazing sign-act of washing their feet, and gives them his last teaching, his last sohbet: They are to love one another. In their love for one another, he will be present again – but before that can happen, he must go through the terror and bloodshed of what is to come.

Persian poet and hagiographer ‘Attar writes:

“Whatever you have

give it away

here

there

everywhere

The Qur’an says

“You won’t attain to good

until you freely give away

what you love”

You have to give away

everything

Even your soul

That too

must be given away.”

I discussed this with Masa and Eda last night as they asked me to tell them more about Good Friday. I told them about a sermon I preached a year or two ago, which centered around a video I found of a man with a blindfold standing, arms wide open, on the roadside with a sign saying “I trust you – do you trust me? Hug me.”

“This,” I said, “is the same posture that Jesus had on the Cross, gathering all the world into his embrace. It’s very vulnerable but also radically accepting, and this is who we’re called to be.”

“Can you say more about how you do that?” Masa asked.

“It’s something Christians talk about a lot,” I said. “Trying to find the balance between protecting yourself and being open to others. That’s the work of a lifetime, I think.”

“We talk about that a bit in the Surah we read today,” Eda said. “Surah 73.” She passed it along to me via WhatsApp later.

Verses 9-11 read: “[He is] the Lord of the East and the West: there is no deity except Him, so take Him as Disposer of your affairs. And be patient over what they say and avoid them with gracious avoidance. And leave Me with [the matter of] the deniers, those of ease [in life], and allow them respite a little.”

“You shouldn’t meet violence with violence,” Eda explained, “but you don’t need to subject yourself to it.”

This is one of those moments of difference between Christianity and Islam, I thought. For Christians, we are traditionally told to accept persecutions on behalf of Christ, imitating him in his act of purposeful nonviolence. On Good Friday itself we remember we are called to take up our own crosses, whatever those may be. What I’ve been struggling with in the last few years, though, is the question of who is helped when we allow ourselves to be utterly degraded and broken on the wheel of pain. If we stand before the oppressed as a shield and are mown down by an uncaring apparatus of subjugation, the oppressed are surely no more saved than they ever were. We must find this balance between accepting persecution for prophetic beliefs and standing firm in order to be prophetic. And I do think that looks like giving something away – giving away our certainty, our security, our ego, our all, for the sake of the beloved community.

Because indeed, the beloved community is not outside of us. It is us. In caring for them, we care for ourselves.

Rumi says,

“You’re clutching

with both hands

to this myth

of “you” and “I”

our whole brokenness

is because of this”

Jesus says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20).

The strangest gift (if we can call it that) of this pandemic is that it has shown us without a doubt that we are all one. We are all affected by it (it doesn’t discriminate), but we can also save each other by caring for one another in a way that few of us have ever done before. So many of us are accustomed to going above and beyond for others, and this is a beautiful thing, but it can so easily become an act of busyness, an act that makes us feel that we are worthy, an act which can become just as much about making ourselves feel better as making the other better. Physical distancing, while a terrible sacrifice, is perhaps one of the most beautiful acts of all, for at its best it is devoid of ego. We care for one another by staying apart. We might help them with tasks they need done, but even then it is different, because we are forced to ask them what they need, rather than making assumptions or thinking we know better. We even enter into a dance when we’re out and about, forced to watch others before moving into their space.

It has shown us a brand new facet of the jewel that is community.

Today, I wait. I wait for the bells and colour of Easter, but I also wait for my heart and soul to be fed in the Eucharist and the physical gathering of the community once again. I work out my salvation through fasting from others, in order to keep them safe. And though we are physically apart, we are still connected, through what Baba sometimes whimsically calls “the heart telephone.”

For as Rumi’s dearly beloved friend and teacher Shams-e Tabrizi says,

“God commands us

to pray in the direction of the Ka’ba

Imagine this:

People all over the world

are gathered

making a circle

around the Ka’ba

They bow down

in prayer

Now

imagine:

Remove the Ka’ba

from the middle of the circle

Are they not prostrating

toward one another?

They are bowing down

toward each other’s hearts.”

Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, who heals and teaches and saves even in the midst of solitude, fear, uncertainty, and pain. Let Love rise up tomorrow, and call us by name.

Ameen, ameen.