My love is a besotted moth
flying deliriously in a labyrinth
of mirrored passages;
my Beloved is the glowing lantern
hidden within its center.
I am a vessel of senses and impulse;
Whenever I run with my love to Her flame,
I find only my own reflection –
for Her light is around every turn
and I burn in the unfound-flame desired.
Drawing by dear friend Arshia Qasim
I have spent a lifetime trusting men I’ve never personally come to know particularly well on this earthly plane and dimension, and they have never let me down. Rather, it is those I think I know all too well that let me down. But they are not to blame.
It is not in the “known,” but the “knowing.” Perhaps what I know so well in others, that came with so much concentration, becomes just a mirror of myself. And hence, it is I who let myself down. So who applies the polishing cloth to whom?!
It is the process of knowing, in which we are closest to the essence of that which is known, which itself is its absolute divine conception before it manifested; for all things created must first come from its idea within the creator. The path of knowledge implies a willful action of transcendence; what is known must pause at a place and time and becomes muddled with judgment, bias, and a general lack of exploration. What is known sets the “what” aside, detaches it, and disconnects us from further engagement with it. Seeking knowledge of the idea (knowing), perfects its creation (as a process) and its manifestation in its known state of “what-ness.”
I hear one thing with interested ears, but I listen to its other with only a compassionate heart.
Your ebullience becomes the gilded leaf
to my aging pages,
a lingering touch along precious edges.
Each golden blade shows your mettle,
turned slowly into the flesh of a heart.
Every sliver, the mete for eyes and ears,
for the pain of your passing precedes your death
and each day you live, I die a year;
weeping Braille joyfully
for a blind man to read
off the tear pitted parchment
while he traces red arcs of wine glass ringlets,
until his fingers become dizzy.
This book is my cup filled to its lip,
every sip, a spill,
every word a taste
of my beloveds
salted kiss.
These ruthless acts do more than further the divide between the nefarious and their victims. Still in the wake of yesterday’s Paris events, those of us who survived now risk becoming a venomous two-headed snake, striking at itself, while the evil instigators slither away, recoiling in the shadows.
For each of us left, the candle in our heart presents a delicate flame; so easily blown out by vengeful thoughts… so easily blown out by sorrow. How do we shelter this light when we must boldly hold it up to the darkness? There is a place in our awareness where the breeze is still and the fragrance strong. Lost in a cloud of self-righteous judgment, we seldom go there and so the flame is flickering to near extinction.
The sun setting on an ocean’s western horizon looks the same as another’s sun rising on its east. East reflects west, west reflects east – but the mirrors Plane of reflection is forgotten as we toil with which of us is the real and which is the illusion. How is your Mirror?
Mine reflects on the other 106 murdered in Beirut and throughout the Middle East and Africa this month, and the 102 killed in Ankara, Turkey the previous month and the other more than 500 killed in the same region in October. I am so confused. I have no explanations.
It’s not accountability I seek. When the entire world is seen as the cause for this or the cause for that, where do I ultimately feel its effect? The answers to all these questions begin with “I” followed by love… or not.
Be still with your neighbor, hold your candles up
My heart is a winding
painted canyon,
carved by my beloved.
I followed her echo
out to the ocean
And below her surface
I dove.
I emptied myself
into her depths,
beneath the currents
of unspoken worlds
and breathless I rose,
her eyes,
my pearls.
Her lips, the wings
of an albatross
we sheered crested waves,
kissed in halcyon
above deep parted canyons
and then
beyond.
It seems that inspiration resides in the interstitial space of aggregated thoughts. The indescribable essence of creativity that connects independent structures of the mind – no accidents happen within these hidden channels. Intentions echo through their hollow halls.
Contemplative prayers are to artistic inspiration as deft hands are to soft clay. So, I am thankful for the observation of subtle contemplation whether manifested in art, craft, or mystery.
I felt the pounding below my feet lighten with my steps… running through suburbia on an unusually warm late fall day. As I moved along, I noticed next to me a single spiders web stretching a great distance between two nearly leafless trees. I marveled in this, as I’m inclined to tinker with the mundane. And I thought of friends who’ve yet to meet each other, and those whose relationships depend on the connective gist of a gossamer thread.
Hand over hand, each of us silently pulls along our lifeline back to the source. But what of the connections we foster between beloved friends? We universal town criers; we meditative match makers; seekers of gathering birds-of-a-feather; running out the rhythm of our melodious contemplations, gathering the accompaniment of stunning harmonizers. Friends follow nothing less than a love for the scent of each other, counting beads strung along the silk sequence of their sound.
I have heard their amazing stories – blessed by these deep listening minds and gathering awareness. To some extent, I’ve walked through the mansions of their hearts. We all do this, and may we never leave our houses unattended for too long. So long as I have the occasional visitor, I may never leave.
We cannot always capture beauty with our cameras; it’s often more captivating to absorb and become the beauty we hope to reveal through its instrumentation.
Upon further reflection…
Christmas is not a holiday where a particular religion has been placed on the mantle of humankind, but rather one in which all humankind is placed at the foot of the mantle of God. Jesus said,
“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Why make idols of religion; bow humbly toward your own center. Why not – considering that the messengers to whom we ascribe (in error) multiple disparate religions – came not to compel, but relieve us of idle compulsion and to soothe discordance and imbalance; humbling the haughty, and exalting the oppressed under the common salve of real love.
From the time we were made aware of a loving Singularity, we’ve walked as brothers and sisters along parallel paths through the heart. None have walked alone, whether in acceptance or denial of whatever truths they sought.
Come among us have been those especially blessed, who arrived to clear both the path before us and the paths towards others beside us; that we might find peace through clarity, and clarity through peace. They proclaimed a harmonious unifying gift that could not be divided into to shares, but shared by all in its totality.
These prophets came in succession from the story of Adam, each perfecting the manifestation of a single essence of religion… Braiding and re-braiding the frayed tassels of religion as men desperately tried to part the threads of the same unbreakable rope handed to them, prophet after prophet. Indeed, faith is like spokes of a wheel, coming from all distant directions toward the same center.
As we walk the path, look right and left and say as each of us has been taught, “may the peace and mercy of God be with you.” And say this on the eve and day of celebration and then all seasons after to whomsoever you meet. Say this when it seems you are alone, because you are not –
“…the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in this world.” (Jesus)
I pray that we all deeply explore this quote by Jesus.
Are you of the limited world outside, or the limitless Kingdom within? Your soul spreads infinitely vast within the universe of your own secret. All of mankind sits at your supper table before the hearth of your own heart, and seated there finds warmth and infinite nourishment; for they have the same secret to tell and hear as you – whether they whisper, shout, or wait silently.
This is also the time that our Muslim brothers and sisters celebrate Mawlid, the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. Do not be hasty in your mindful judgment of the differences in these two auspicious events and men – rather humble your heart to see their connections, for they are indeed threads in the same rope.
The story, not just the books, goes this way – Jesus spoke as an infant, saying
“I am indeed a servant of God: He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet; And He hath made me blessed wheresoever I be, and hath enjoined on me Prayer and Charity as long as I live; He hath made me kind to my mother, and not overbearing or miserable; So peace is on me the day I was born, the day that I die, and the day that I shall be raised up to life (again)!”
What is especially noteworthy is this quote is revealed by Muhammad in the Quran, 19:30-33.
The same message has been carried from the dawn of man, through Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad – the message is a single river elegantly carving the intricate hearts of all mankind.
Their paths are parallel, let us look right and left; they are spokes of the same wheel, let us spin together; they are each tributaries from the same source toward one Ocean, let us submerse ourselves in the message of love and peace.
Merry Christmas and Mawlid Mubarak to all.
In this last month of 2015, much of the world has celebrated the birth of the Prophet Jesus and Prophet Muhammad – each respectively attributed with the message of Christianity and Islam. Yet neither came to establish a new religion; men did not invent and anoint them as political warriors to represent their God. They emerged from within themselves amidst a vast contrary. Paraphrasing one my most favorite quotes by Dr. Omid Safi, “…no messenger of God ever came into the world and said, ‘Hey, everyone listen; let’s just keep everything the way it is now!’”
On the day of the Prophets’ births, “now” was “then.” The world suffered its present state more than it awaited its rescue – and their contemporary societies waited. They waited, some for a “who,” some for a “what” and all for a “when.” People unraveling, swaying with shifting winds; hardening in the cold – standing outside the warmth of a light that would not shift toward them – unless they took a step toward it. And every day, decade after decade, century after century, mankind ever so gradually became numb… all they’d become from what their ancestors taught would simply calcify into stasis.
They filled their hands with idols as memories drained from their hearts. They knew not enough to wait, but knew too much to listen for the inkling of change, for it is subtle at first. And at some point, they stopped waiting at all.
And then the Prophets arrived. Each born in hardship into the conditions of his time and place, yet each set upon the earth to put in motion change far and wide, and deep into the unknown future. The people stirred. It was at first slow and dangerous. The Prophets were persecuted, pursued, assaulted by the languishing majority. The subtly of truth will not be contained for long.
The people stirred. They stirred not just in their minds; some sparked from deep within the unknown centers of their hearts. Every man who began to listen, willingly carried the same risk and consequence as his teacher. Jesus had his disciples and traitors, Mohammad had his. They put their word before the sword; they would rather die beseeching faith within others, then leave all to die without it.
As history had shown before them (and still reveals today) others would choose instead to use “the word as the sword” and so, once again, losing their “religiosity” through the fog of “religion.” Society falls to ruins and the cycle repeats.
Considering the above thoughts, I wonder if we would know a Prophet if we saw him or her today? And do we require another?
In their angst for finding a solution, men have resurrected prophets as loud speakers for their own dictum and have thus disrupted a religion perfected by God in the beginning and the end. But we have trouble with intangibles and seek exterior measures of religion. But there is something pristine and crystalline in our hearts – something that awaits, searches, and beckons NOT for answers emerging from the chaos, but for stirrings from within.
The Prophet have brought revelations as prescriptions for behavior and belief – yet I submit that these words (behavior and belief) have important different meanings; they complement, they express, they conflict, and each may be a metaphor for the other, or for something still deeper. You may call religion what you will – but of religious scripture, be aware of what is intended for behavior and what is intended for belief.
I find this passage in the Quran (5:33) particularly interesting:
“This day have I perfected for you your [religion, way of life] and completed My favor on you and chosen for you [Islam, submission] as [a, your] religion.”
In the various translations I could find (which sadly, I hear, do not move so easily into English) this surah does not say “the” religion, or the “only” religion. Simply “religion.” In essence reaffirming, that submission to God (islam) is the way of religiosity – and its continuance. For this reason, Muhammad is called the Seal of the Prophets. Not because he came to replace Christianity, or Judaism, but to restore the underlying premise of religion as a submission to God and to oneself; to lift religiosity from the confusion of religion.
We do not need another prophet. I have replaced the waiting-on-all-around-me to the search-of-the-prophet-within-me. It’s always been there, woven with the very same thread of Adam. Nothing has changed, but me.
Heraclitus said,
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
So I am brought to this similar quote and extension of Heraclitus, modern day poet from songwriter, Ben Gibbard (front man for Death Cab for Cutie):
“These roads don’t move, you’re the one that moves.”
I believe the constancy of change is actually the immovable channel bed through which the divine flows. There is not a succession of multiple religions, rather there is one religiosity among a succession of men.
