Archive for the 'NEWS' Category

Love is the star map (Fire in the Wineglass #5)

In today’s lesson, we went on to the first of several stories Rumi tells throughout the Masnavi, narratives which I immediately began to think of as parables.

On Wikipedia a parable is defined as “a succinct, didactic story in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles.” In the West we would most commonly associate this type of storytelling with Jesus, but it was actually quite a popular teaching tool in the ancient East, so I don’t personally think it’s inappropriate to refer to these stories as such.

Today’s parable concerned a king, a maiden, a healer, and a goldsmith. The king happens to see a servant or slave girl and becomes completely entranced with her. He secures her possession and brings her to his court, but when she arrives she immediately sickens. The king commissions doctors and healers to heal her, but none of them can (Rumi makes it clear that all of these healers are incredibly arrogant, and that the more tactics they try, the more she sickens).

Finally, the king, deeply grieved, runs barefoot to the mosque and wails out his prayers to God to help, drenching the rugs with his tears.

This is clearly the corrective needed to the arrogance of the doctors, and the king receives a dream that a healer will come who can help.

The next day, the healer arrives – a humble and gentle soul who comes and discovers the ailment: love.

The girl, he discovers, is heartsick over a goldsmith living in a town where she used to live.

The rest of the tale doesn’t go like how you’d expect! The healer and the king converse, and send messengers to bring the goldsmith to the king’s court! They lure him there with flattery, and he leaves behind his children and friends. He is then wedded to the girl, and they spend six months of bliss before the king fixes a poison potion and begins to slowly feed it to the goldsmith. As he sickens, his beauty and strength fade, until the girl loses interest. Finally, at his death, she is freed and falls in love with the king.

I was fascinated by this story and desperate to know how to interpret it, particularly when it ended and Rumi immediately chastises the reader for hating the king! He insists that the king is not doing wrong in poisoning the goldsmith, but I couldn’t fully understand why until I listened to Omid-jan’s lesson.

Omid-jan explains that, like any parable, the characters all represent something beyond their simple titles and individual lives. They are not separate beings based on real people, he said, but represent faculties or tendencies within all of us.

The king is the intellect, or spirit. These things which are often separated between cold logic and warm creativity in the Western mind are not necessarily separate things in Islam. The king is the desire within us for union with God, the one that holds wisdom.

The maiden is the jaan, or soul, a pure and innocent thing which is often subject to unhealthy desires.

The goldsmith is the ego, or the nafs. Omid-jan referred to it quite delightfully as “the Gollum self.” He only wants more, no matter how much he already has.

Finally, the healer is understood to be a spiritual teacher, although it’s not necessarily a figure outside of us. We have that figure within us too.

The parable therefore becomes a story about the intellect liberating us from the abusive ego.

Knowing this changed my understanding dramatically. My first emotion at the conclusion of the story was annoyance with the king. Omid-jan laughed as he said, “Those of us who are Marxists might not immediately like this story! The ruler always gets what he wants while the working man gets bumped off! But it’s not about that.” And the more I considered the story from this new perspective, the more entranced I was by the king’s actions.

The king chooses his jaan (he even refers to her as “the jaan of my jaan”) heedless of her poverty and invites her into a new possible world of delight and love. The intellect is not in conflict with the soul – it desires union. In her innocence, however, she immediately begins to miss what’s left behind in her old world, including this ego, an old love who seems fickle and easily flattered. He leaves behind everything at the behest of these messengers, including his children, not because he desires the jaan but because they flatter him, calling him noble and beautiful and praising his work as a goldsmith.

What struck me most was that neither king nor healer judge the girl for her heartsickness. In fact, they bring her the object of her desire, and give her time to indulge her love – and in the Richardson translation I used, it clarifies “until she is wholly restored to health.”

What really struck me, though, was reading this story with a lens of abuse. If we imagine this jaan-maiden in a sort of abusive relationship with the ego, the actions of the king become heroic. He doesn’t force her to fight her own battles against her abuser. He also doesn’t use strength or brute violence against the abuser himself. Rather he invites this abuser to his place, offering a safe environment to both of them where he can observe them both. He then uses subtle measures to show the jaan clearly what kind of a person the smith is, without judging her choice of him.

Rather than using force and the shallow attraction to beauty, both of which will fade over time, the king uses long-lasting tactics, like cunning. He allows her to see the truth, without forcing her or making decisions for her. He allows her to choose her own path forward.

How awesome is that?

Something else that really delighted me was the exploration of the astrolabe. I was first introduced to these Medieval star map devices through Omid-jan’s book Radical Love. I had never heard of them, and had a wonderful time marveling over pictures of them online. Omid-jan expands upon a lovely saying within this passage: “Love is the astrolabe of the mysteries of God.”

I wasn’t quite sure how astrolabes worked, and somehow knowing that through his explanation made the intent of the passage much clearer. When lost, say in the desert or at sea, one is meant to take the device and point it at the sky, lining it up with the stars that are visible. It gives us pinpoints through which to orient ourselves.

Love, Omid-jan then explained, particularly radical love, is our astrolabe to God’s mysteries. Looking through the lens of radical love will show us the way home, the way to God.

I actually bought an astrolabe pendant just before going into social isolation. I wanted to remember the saying. Wearing it now will give me an even greater joy.

Praise be to God, lord of the worlds, for the gift of love, and for the persistence of our intellect in bringing us to the garden of God’s delight.

Guests of the Heart (Fire in the Wineglass #4)

Last Friday’s lesson was incredibly rich and rewarding for me, but so much came up that I couldn’t get my thoughts together for a post that day. Since then, a lot of my thoughts have been poured into a sermon I’ll preach on Sunday, so I’ll tease out all that was left behind. Enjoy this one, late as it may be!

What struck me right off the bat as I listened to Omid-jan was a notion I’d never heard before: the notion that God creates us in order to better know Godself.

This blew my mind, particularly as a somewhat closeted process theologian! I’ve always considered the idea that God would create the cosmos in order to be in relationship – that would be the Trinitarian within me. But to imagine also that God would want to craft an imageof Godself in order to contemplate God’s own being…that’s amazing.

Omid-jan called this “temporary distancing.” Separation is not meant to be our lot forever. You can imagine how moving I found this considering the times we’re living in.

The first image that came to mind was of a mother carrying a baby in her womb. I can imagine that, however arduous pregnancy may be, there’s a sense of profound intimacy unmatched in any other state of being that’s hard to let go of. There’s no relationship quite like it on earth. And yet, how joyful we are when we can actually see the face of our beloved child! Perhaps it is so for God, our Mother – certainly St. Julian of Norwich, whose feast we celebrated on May 8^th, understood this. And while that intimacy may be changed, it does remain, for mothers also feed their children just as God or Christ feeds us.

Another thought that really caught my imagination came up shortly after this one. Omid-jan explained that Rumi teaches us that we must become vulnerable to pain in order to know love and empathy. If the desired state is unity with God and with all things, then we must allow ourselves to become permeable, to have hearts of flesh instead of hearts of stone. Rumi talks about opening the heart, but the word he uses is the same as one used for cutting or filleting meat – it’s a pun.

This on its own is beautiful enough, but what really got me going was Omid-jan’s labeling of emotions as “guests” who deserve hospitality.

I love this idea! To get personal for a minute, I spent most of my childhood being told to reign in my feelings. I was constantly referred to as “too emotional,” or “sensitive” (and I could tell it was always a slur). While it is true that my emotions tend to be big and loud, this criticism most often came out when I was reacting to being bullied by other kids. It made me hate my emotions, feel afraid or ashamed of them, like they would take hold of me and leave me a huge puddly mess incapable of communicating or keeping friends. I spent years trying to silence and banish them, and it’s only been in the last decade or so that I’ve begun to try to understand them better.

To think of them as guests is so helpful! What do we do when we have guests? We let them in, and allow them to make themselves at home. We tend to their needs, and ask them lots of questions. We are gentle and open and curious. We feed them and give them a safe place to rest.

It reminds me of a story Sherif Baba told us some time ago of a great Sufi leader who heard that someone had made plans to kill him. This man arrived at the leader’s office with a gun, and the leader’s staff, terrified, attempted to bar him entry. The leader said, “No, no, let him in.” The man arrived and shouted, “I’m going to shoot you!”

According to Baba, the leader said, “That’s nice. Would you like a cup of tea?”

The man stood there, stunned. The leader instructed his staff to make tea, and bring in snacks.

The two of them sat and talked for several hours. Finally, the man left…dropping his gun into the wastebasket on the way out.

If you treat emotions like guests, they will behave like guests.

This whole time, I’ve been conditioned to see them as robbers or criminals. I’ve bolted the door or locked them into one room in the house and crowded all of my furniture against it. What a gift it’s been to reclaim the idea that they are too loud and big for all of my attempts to push them away – to me, that means there is a strength within me that pushes back against the injustice I visit on myself, a holiness confronting the adversarial force or shaitan, if you will.

Let me be clear that this doesn’t make me stronger or better than anyone else who is able to tame their emotions or push them down. Despite my struggles I received plenty of strength from other sources, things that fed the desire to be in balance, things like love and friendship. I have been very lucky in life to have these things. We all have this voice, this desire, that speaks on our behalf and fights for us, but for some, it’s not given the food it needs to grow, and through no fault of the person herself. For some, basic survival is all they’re given the strength for – as if survival through any means necessary, including dissociation and self-harm, is a small thing.

This is the lesson we are given by Rumi. In order for others to feed their voice of love, we must allow ourselves to feed and model that voice.

I can’t tell you how many people have told me that those big feelings which I so hated as a child and a teen have given them the courage to speak their own truth. When I’ve made my anger manifest through speaking out against injustice, when I’ve allowed myself to cry in front of others, when I’ve testified to the joy I have in God, when I have given my emotions the vast expansive space they need through creating music and art, the people around me have felt safe to open the door to their own guests.

All of us are called to this, to open the doors of the heart.

It’s not easy, but I think it’s the only choice we have in the world we’re living in.

Wind through the strings (Fire in the Wineglass #3)

Omid-jan’s third lesson in the course focused on the first eighteen lines of the Masnavi, specifically the Song of the Reed passage which I’ve referenced in other pieces on this blog.

It’s funny what extra wisdom you can receive when someone is sharing in the learning with you, particularly the most obvious things! Omid-jan showed us a beautiful ney (reed flute) he had received as a gift from a well-known Sufi musician, and was explaining how these instruments are crafted. Pointing the end at the camera, he said, “You can see of course that this is hollow. Before being prepared for a musician naturally there would be no hole here. It would be filled. The reed must be hollowed out in order to make a sound. Then a white-hot piece of metal is applied over and over until it makes the holes for your fingers.”

The reed, says the song, makes a crying sound, a lament, because it is taken from its home, the reed bed. It is then subjected to pain, in a sense – the emptying out and the branding. But all of this is what is needed to make the most haunting, gorgeous sound, and of course most of the Sufi services that I’ve been to begin with this sound, alone, to remind us.

There really is nothing quite like it. My best memory was of waking up during the 24 hour sema I attended in Seattle around 3 or 4am, just to the sound of the ney. It really made me feel like I was in a whole other universe, one where, as Omid-jan said later in the lesson, “There is no you or I.”

The harp, of course, although not a reed instrument, does have a hollow place: the sound board. This is where the strings are anchored, and where the sound is concentrated. There are several ways to play the folk harp (smaller ones can be put up on tables), but the standard way is to be seated and to lean the instrument back against one’s right shoulder. When you do this, you can feel all of the vibration right against your heart. It’s a beautiful feeling.

It’s always interested me as well that the process of electronically amplifying the harp is counter-intuitive. I can’t tell you how many people have tried to stick a microphone right inside the soundboard (and you can imagine that when those people are men they rarely listen to me telling them this won’t work). There is almost no real enhancement of the sound when this occurs, and what does come out is muddy and dark. I’m sure there’s a more detailed explanation for why this happens, but my very uneducated guess is that the vibrations are simply too strong and thick. Each string to a human ear may only contain one note that’s perceptible, but really the tone itself is made up of multiple overtones that all sing in harmony together. Within the soundboard itself, which is somewhat enclosed, I imagine it’s much more difficult for a microphone to unify these tones. Instead of one pure note, you get a multitude, a choir even. One might as well try to mic heaven!

But something even more beautiful occurs with the addition to wind to my lovely harp-jan. When I carry her to wherever we need to go, if it’s windy, the wind will blow through the strings and make an incredible celestial sound. I’ve yet to record this sound but one day I’d like to very much so you can hear it. It’s hard to describe: “shimmery” is perhaps the closest one might get. She has her own voice, her own soul, in a sense, totally divorced from mine, and yet when I do sit down with her, we do become one being, one soul. I cannot replicate that wind-song on my own, and she cannot make my own songs on her own. We need each other, and yet we are not fully separate. Knowing this keeps me humble.

As Omid-jan would say, “It’s all God!”

Go deep (Fire in the Wineglass #2)

Today’s lesson from Omid-jan’s course explored the introduction to the Masnavi. Each volume of the work (there are 6) comes with an Arabic preface of sorts, which explains how they should be read.

It begins:

This is the Book of the Masnavi, which is the roots of the roots of the roots of the Way in respect of unveiling the mysteries of attainment and certainty; and which is the greatest science of God and the clearest way of God and the most manifest evidence of God.

“You could say it’s ‘the heart of the heart of the heart’ of the faith,” Omid-jan said.

In the season of Easter, I often reflect on bridal imagery as a metaphor for Christ’s new relationship to the Church in a post-resurrection world. Today I explored the notion of knowing oneself, perhaps even unveiling one’s deepest roots, in a new way.

Knowledge comes in different levels, Omid-jan explained. If you liken the experience of God to honey, for example, we might find ourselves looking at the word “honey” written on a board. If we can read, we understand what this means, and indeed we understand enough that we know we can’t lick the board and discover the taste of honey there! It would just be ink. But seeing the word brings up lots of thoughts and ideas.

The next level would be to have someone bring a bowl of honey to us, but not have us taste. For me, this experience is like the reading of a sacred text. It may be a passage from the Hebrew Bible, or one of the Gospels, or a surah from the Qur’an, or the Masnavi itself, or even a person through whom we see the divine (when I explore this concept with residents of Hineni House I call these folks “living sacred texts”). I can see the colour, perhaps feel the shape of the experience of the divine. But I can’t quite taste it. I wasn’t there.

Omid-jan says, “Is it possible to fully taste honey just by listening to someone else describe it? So much of religion is this very thing! A teacher stands before us and says, ‘I do declare that this honey is as sweet as they come!’ We are asked to bear witness to their experience.”

But, he added, Shams says, “How long will you ride this horseless saddle?”

I’m reminded of the stick horses I sometimes played with as a child. Perhaps it’s good to do this when we’re young in our spirituality. It’s definitely safer, and there’s something terribly beautiful about a child easily creating an experience she has never had through play – something terribly divine in fact. But if we want the bones-deep knowledge, the integration of fleshly as well as spiritual knowledge, we’ve got to find a “real” horse.

In the Christian calendar, we’re looking ahead to the feast of Pentecost on May 31^st. Pentecost is often celebrated as “the birthday of the Church,” a day when we remember an ecstatic experience shared among Jesus’ disciples as they sat together. The Book of Acts describes it thusly:

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts 2:1-4)

Many of us interpret this as the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise in the Gospel of John that the “Advocate” would be sent to enliven the disciples after he was raised. In this story the Holy Spirit comes among them and gives them the Sign-Act of communication. The story goes on to say that a crowd of people from all over the world gather when they hear the noise, and are able to understand the testimony of the disciples in their own languages. Today, lots of churches try to replicate this experience on the feast in a number of ways, including reading the passage in multiple languages at once.

In a sense, this is still the sharing of an experience, as Omid-jan says, but we are brought closer by having it “read” to us in our own language, our own words. And indeed, the teaching is done by those who were close to the teacher. If he was the root (of the root of the root), they have become the branches, and now they are tossing their fruit hither and yon to seed the earth of all the children of Adam.

Through these seeds, we may yet become children of God.

As we enter the season of Ramadan, let’s explore the root of the root of the root of what sustains us. Let’s go deep.

From Scars to Stars (Fire in the Wine Glass #1)

Lesson 1 of “The Heart of Rumi’s Poetry” with Omid Safi begins with a deep dive into the first 18 lines of the Masnavi. Followers of my Sufi reflections will not be surprised to hear that they are the text of “The Song of the Reed.”

This text, which I explore in my “Song of the Reed” series of posts detailing my experiences at RumiFest 2019, starts us off not in a place of comfort, but a place exploring the nature of grief. This is no mistake. Those who wish to be divine lovers, “Allah’s crazy ones,” all begin from a position of acknowledgment of life’s difficulty and suffering.

This is a most prophetic “take” in an era of unrelenting optimism, the New Age focus on “positivity” and “law of attraction,” and the evangelical Christian preoccupation with the same. One of my parishioners once posted a beautiful and deeply honest reflection on their own sense of anxiety as the new year dawned and the world continued to groan under the weight of environmental disaster and creeping fascism. This reflection was concluded with words from Lord of the Rings calling for stubborn hope during such times. Underneath this post was a flurry of what to me seemed rather desperate comments from various family members and friends to have hope in Jesus and stay positive. It made me sad. How can we possibly hope to conquer fear by denying it and “always looking on the bright side”? When has that ever worked? Ask anyone who suffers from depression. Empathy is the antidote, not denial.

As I sit and reflect on this after watching Omid’s first video during Easter Week, I can’t help but read the lines through the lens of the Gospel of John passage we always read on the Sunday after Easter, John 20:19-31.

It’s clear that we primarily read this passage because of the time in which the story itself occurs, which is a week after the events of Easter. Today, though, I wonder if there is a rather amazing kernel of wisdom in the assigning of this passage after the big blow-out of Easter. Everyone can ring their bells and cry “Alleluia!” when the church is packed full of people in their finery and we’re looking forward to candy and a big feast. But in the days following a momentous occasion, how common is it to feel a sense of letdown, a sense that maybe the grand truths we affirmed all together in a riot of sound and colour weren’t quite as true as we hoped?

Anyone who has experienced grief can tell you that the hardest part is after the funeral and the rush of visitors and helpers has gone. Then, life goes back to normal…without the one we loved.

The disciples sit together in the upper room where they observed the last supper with their beloved teacher only a week before. They are trying to hold onto what he taught them, and perhaps trying to process the nonsensical news of his return shared with them by Mary Magdalene. The doors are locked…and yet suddenly, Jesus is there, among them, speaking words of peace and forgiveness, and breathing on them to gift them the Holy Spirit.

But Thomas is not with them.

The text doesn’t say why. All we know is that when he eventually returns to them, the disciples try to tell him about what they had seen. Thomas refuses to believe unless he can see Jesus for himself – but not even just Jesus. Thomas wants to touch him, specifically the marks left from the nails and the spear of his crucifixion.

It is not enough to see the Beloved and hear him speaking words of love. Thomas wants to know, for absolutely certain, that Love returns speaking these words even after all of the harm caused by the terrorism of Empire, the betrayal of friends, and the slammed door of Death.

It’s all well and good to imagine the gentle and loving God some of us may have learned about in childhood returning to us with a happy smile and a hug. But Thomas wants an adult vision, one that is scarred and broken and still speaking love.

If the Beloved can return to us even after all that we have put him through, and not having denied any of that pain, then we know that the Beloved can weather anything, and truly is with us, forever.

In traditional Christian teaching, Thomas is often painted in an unflattering light, with his desires being shown as presumptuous. But the text doesn’t bear this out. Thomas wants something, and he receives it. The next time he is with the disciples, Jesus returns yet again, and invites Thomas to touch without any hint of annoyance or anger. “Believe,” he says. “Believe in Love. Believe in Love’s power to return from even death in pursuit of you. You thought you were Majnun, forever denied Layla through the tyranny of my having become married to Death. No, my jan. I am Majnun and you are Layla – and all that separated us is now only a veil that’s been lifted away. You are Layla and I battled through Death itself to find you again. You are now free to choose me no matter what. Nothing can keep me from you, and nothing has.”

Thomas responds, “My Lord and my God!” How else should we respond to such love?

The reed sings of longing, and this longing, this suffering, is what truly unites us as humans. It’s the one thing that we all experience. Even the richest and most self-absorbed among us have times where we suffer. Sickness, death, and heartbreak do not discriminate. But all exist in order to be transformed in some way. They are a byproduct of a great gift, which is the freedom to change.

In the month of Ramadan, observers make changes to their everyday lives. They sacrifice for God and for humanity. This is the greatest gift we can make to God: to make a choice to change the way we live, in order to glorify. It’s not the glory itself, for God takes an entirely different kind of delight in angels, who are constantly in a state of glorifying their Creator, and God knows that human acts of praise often fall short. It is the choice to glorify, the choice to orient ourselves toward God, the choice to make a change.

God reflects this glory back to us in the conscious choice to return bearing scars, rather than returning in a perfect, flawless form. This is a marvelous teaching: it tells us that we don’t need to hide our scars.

Rumi, in gathering his students, chose those who needed adab, spiritual refinement, the most. It’s only one letter from scar to star.

In seeking the best and most beautiful, we don’t need to hide our scars.

God didn’t.

Praise to the One who returns bearing words of peace.

Fire in the Wine Glass: A Journal for Ramadan

While working on the “Radical Love Journal” series in the season of Lent, I began corresponding with Radical Love author Omid Safi, professor at Duke University and scholar of all things Rumi. The pandemic has given him time to work on projects he has wanted to bring to fruition for many years, and one of them is an online course, “The Heart of Rumi’s Poetry.”

With his encouragement, I signed up. My experience with the Radical Love book and the necessary deepening of my spirituality in this strange time were only further reasons to do so.

It occurred to me as I began the work that the holy season of Ramadan was coming. Ramadan, the name of the ninth month in the Islamic calendar, is a month of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. I had been considering marking it in some way, and it seems now that I have the perfect opportunity to do so.

Cloistered in my home like so many of us, I sat at my computer to begin my new adventure, alongside some of whom Cem Aygodgu refers to as “Allah’s crazy ones,” to learn more about Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, one of (if not the) greatest mystical love poets of all time.

A great Sufi mystic, Rumi was born either in Afghanistan or Tajikistan to Persian-speaking parents. His father, Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, was a theologian, jurist, and mystic from Balkh, in Afghanistan. Rumi’s family profession for generations was preaching, and he continued this legacy.

Rumi had several influences besides his parents, chief among them the poet ‘Attar, whose work was quoted a few times in my Radical Love Journal. During childhood and adolescence, his family moved a lot in order to avoid trouble with the invading Mongol forces. Rumi met many Sufis in these travels and was formed by their wisdom. He passed through many places, including parts of Syria, before finally settling in Konya, Turkey, which is where Sherif Baba and Cem live, although he still traveled from time to time. Rumi inherited his father’s position as head of a religious school and was known as a preacher, teacher, and jurist.

In November of 1244, Rumi’s life changed forever when he met a dervish known as Shams-e Tabrizi. There are many stories of how they met and their deep, mystical friendship.

About four years after they met, Shams left and was never seen again. There are rumours that he may have been murdered. Whatever happened, Rumi was shattered, and spent a long time searching for him. During this time, he arrived in Damascus, and realized:

“Why should I seek? I am the same as He.

His essence speaks through me.

I have been looking for myself!”

Those who read the entry “Majnun on Fire” from my Radical Love Journal may remember Majnun’s ecstatic pronouncement: “I am Layla.” I did.

The rest of Rumi’s life was taken up in gathering students, who were drawn from all types of folks, many of them working class and rather uncouth, as Omid-jan explains (which is good news for those of us who fear our appropriateness as students of such an august teacher), and in writing truly stunning poetry. He spent twelve years dictating the Masnavi to his beloved student Hussam.

In December 1273, Rumi died in Konya, and was mourned by all, Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. He is buried there, beside his father, with the epitaph: “When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.”

The work of Omid-jan’s course is in exploring the Masnavi in sections of his arrangement. I’ll share my own reflections on the course, which follows selected passages, before, during, and after the month of Ramadan (it’s a twelve-week course).

To all who will be observing this holy month, blessings on your observances, and may the Creator, the Beneficent and endlessly Compassionate, be most pleased with you.

“Love will rise up,” (Easter Sunday Sermon, April 12th 2020)

This was meant to be preached at St. Margaret’s, Cedar Cottage, on Easter morning at the main service of the day in 2020. Of course, that was not to be. Instead, I went out from my house before sunrise and preached it on my phone on the beach. It wasn’t the same, but I expect I’ll remember it forever.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ ¹⁶Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

John 20:1-18

“And Love will rise up and call us by name.”

Jan Richardson’s painting which bears this title is arresting. A hint of silver at the top right suggests early morning, perhaps the silver moments just before the sun crests the horizon. A rich, heavy curve of black suggests a cave-like structure dominating the viewer’s eye. And within this cave, an emerging, almost solid wave of gold. Up near the top of the cave, the brushstrokes bend as though the light illuminates the inner walls. But below that, the brushstrokes shift abruptly, pointing straight outward, Love’s fire ready to surge forth out into the world, almost dissolving the edges of the cave, which appear ragged and torn, like a temple veil.

But what really caught my eye was an inexplicable dash of deep blue, right in the middle of the piece and also appearing torn through by light. What could this possibly be? I have a hundred ideas if I have none.

“And Love will rise up and call us by name.”

Medieval Persian mystic Abu Nu’aym Isfahani writes,

“O God!

Publicly I call you

‘My Lord’

But in solitude

I call you

‘My Beloved.’”

And perhaps this was what Mary intended to whisper as she staggered grief-drunk through the dark to the tomb of her beloved teacher – not to mourn a romantic partner or husband but to mourn a titanic spiritual figure in her life, her liberator from seven demons, her Moses, her Maker. This is no more and no less than an all-encompassing force that knows us more intimately than we could ever be known.

At the sight of Love’s wreckage, old ways of being that have been laid waste in its lovely fire – old ways of fear, pride, oppression, execution – Mary is shocked and afraid. Why shouldn’t she be? She thought Love a victim of these old ways, and now here she finds that not only is there no remnant of Love, there isn’t even any remnant of those old ways which were the supposed winner of that battle, old ways which were terrible and corrupt and rotting but at least familiar to her. Now there was nothing. What was she to do now?

She calls for her friends and they come – poor reckless Peter, faithless in life but now faithful in death, how strange; and the beloved disciple, who indeed is never named and certainly may have been a real person but who has come to signify so much more than just one life, for indeed that beloved disciple lives within us all even though more often than not we suppress that voice out of shame or anxiety.

They come and stumble into the tomb. There is a strange interplay rather like a dance – who gets there first? Who goes in when? Who comes out? What do they see? And indeed how often do we find ourselves wide-eyed and arms pinwheeling on the edge of a grand revelation, jostling past the warring voices within us.

The beloved disciple believes, but says nothing. Why? Perhaps, out of all of the voices within, this one alone understands the appropriate response to the infinite is silence. They go back, Peter probably more confused and heartbroken than ever, and the beloved one unable or unwilling to testify as yet, perhaps knowing more was to come.

And Mary remains, weeping.

Now even her friends are gone, and she is left with nothing.

And it is only then that she encounters angels.

What are they doing there? Why does she not seem to understand what they are? They ask her a question laden with subtext. She doesn’t seem to pick up on it. She skims only the surface with her answer.

But even that complete lack of understanding is rewarded, because suddenly, the one she has been seeking has found her.

And still, she does not recognize him.

Why would that be? Does he look entirely different? Has she been crying too hard to see him? Are they playing a lover’s game together? Ah, but he asks her a question she’s surely heard before: “Whom are you looking for?” in English, which obscures the fact that it is the exact same question Jesus asked of Andrew and the other disciple of John the Baptizer who decided to follow him all the way back in Chapter 1. The story begins again.

But Mary still doesn’t understand. Face to face, inches from Love’s great revelation, on the threshold of the bridal chamber, she mourns for the wedding robes he has discarded on the floor! “Tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.”

And now the time for games is over. Love will rise up, and call us by name.

“Mary.”

“Mary. I’m right here.”

But what a strange wedding, for as soon as she recognizes him, he says, “Do not hold onto me” – and yes, the Greek word hapto does carry an almost erotic connotation. One translation note also states “to modify or change by touching, touching that influences.”

Why can we not partake in the delights of the Beloved? When will we be able to, if we cannot touch before he is ascended, while he is still in the world?

The work wasn’t done yet.

Perhaps this is the splash of blue in Jan’s painting – the sharp pain that exists between disciple and Apostle, between the one who knew the earthly and the one who knows the heavenly, and yet will never fully be able to reconcile the two, scarred beautifully but sadly for having known the Beloved on earth and no longer being able to delight in the very particular sound of his laughter, in the very particular way the light caught in his curls, in the very particular way he walked and talked and loved.

And so perhaps we who have not seen and yet have come to believe, in these latter days of fear and uncertainty, these latter days of disease and distancing and despair, should at the very least count ourselves blessed that we are privileged to know both earthly and heavenly. We hear the stories of his friends and marvel at how particular they are, how different and precious each image of the Beloved…and yet how blessed we are to be able to also see him flickering like a candle within each other?

Today is unlike any other Easter in our living memory. Today many of us are not held together within the physical walls of the bridal chamber. Today, many of us are at home, or in places like where I’m standing right now. Today, we weep and mourn for the bridal chambers that stand empty all around the world.

But children, why are we weeping?

At the absolute zenith of longing and confusion, we are fated to encounter angels.

As the Rev. Jake Morrill writes, “This year, in fact, the churches will be empty. And the tomb will be empty.”

Whom are we looking for?

Do not mourn the discarded bridal gown.

The buildings are empty, and the church is free.

She is running wild over the earth today, and perhaps that is as it should be.

Yes, the bridal gown was beautiful. Yes, it made us resplendent and luminous. Yes, discarding it brings us back down to earth, looking as we always do, looking rather…quotidian. Rather…ordinary.

But that is not how the bridegroom will see us.

The bridegroom’s mind is only love. Only desire to see us as we really are.

And this is how we are: outside in the world, trying our best to take care of one another. Not because we have an image to maintain, but because this is who we were always called to be.

When we can return to our buildings and be together again, what a banquet it will be. What finery will ornament us. What music we will make and what a bounty we will feast upon.

But it’s not that time yet.

Today, we’re invited to return to ourselves. Naked, and unashamed. Today, Love rises up and calls us by name.

May we never forget this day.

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.

End of Radical Love Journal is coming soon!

Sorry for the delay, everyone – I just didn’t have the mental energy to produce something that would have been a good summary of my practice. I’ll do it ASAP. :)

Seeds (Lenten Music Reflection #6)

Life is persistent, and it has its own intentions completely independent of our own. In the hardest, driest earth, in the most barren places, despite sand and dust and Good Friday, life bursts forth recklessly.

Blessings for the upcoming week, and for the season of light and colour and love that I promise will follow.