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My heart is a wine glass and only Allah can make it sing. Only He can fill it. Only His touch to the lips of my heart has the right pressure and friction to produce the resonance that makes it sing and shatter into a million pieces. Only the voice of God can speak my pieces back into the Oneness that can only be filled by Him. I long to be Sufi.
Whether I be Sufi or Christian, I don’t know. I know the basics of what I believe. I know what my heart believes. I know that my faith always seems to be walking on the razor’s edge. CERTAINLY i don’t boast with this. So much i wish i had a normal faith like everyone else that is easily “explainable”. Will I always struggle with this feeling of being an outcast? Jesus was an outcast, and look. So I should be thankful of my “problem” I guess. Maybe belonging to man’s delineation of God’s Kingdom is not my purpose. I don’t know. All I know is that Allah chooses to fill my cup through the Sufis and the Christians. For some reason I don’t find fullness in Sufism or Christianity alone. My cup is filled through Allah and Christ. I know my God, because even when I think I don’t, He knows me. I rest in that.
Christ is in our midst, Insha’Allah.
If you were married or had a Beloved you would come to realize…
The good you do for your beloved is the same good or actually better than the good you do for yourself.
Why serve yourself for the moment, when the fruits of serving your beloved in the midst of suffering, make your heart and belly full of peace, love, joy and satisfaction?
To serve The Beloved is to serve my beloved. To serve my beloved is to serve The Beloved and to serve My Beloved beats serving myself. If only I could finally learn this lesson…
may you have deep peace…
So this is what I got on this question. Very open to input on the answer.
I was asked by someone recently:
“Why should we pray the same prayer over and over if scripture says, ‘Do not pray in vain repetitions like the pagans do.’?”
To say that the Remembrance of God’s Name is part of the History, Tradition and Ritual of Christ’s Body the Church, seemed to have less of a convincing impact than the following arguments … in other words, ’show me in Scripture and Reason’ and I will believe. So here are my thoughts on the subject of the constant remembrance of the Name of God.
There are a few ways of looking at this question, first there’s reason, next there’s syntax, after that the context of scripture and lastly (my favorite) there is the wisdom of the heart. In other words, from what or where do you draw your motivation for prayer and meditation?
So what about praying in vain repetitions?
If you had a statement that read, “Do not pluck and eat unripe or rotten fruit!”, would one gather from this statement that one should not gather or eat fruit period? Of course not! You would say, “Good fruit is good to eat and good for the body and is a gift from the Creator for our nourishment and well being. Unripe fruit should be left on the tree to mature. Rotten fruit should be allowed to fall to the ground and return to the dust of the earth!”
What about praying with repetition?
The scripture does command prayer without ceasing. It speaks of an unceasing knocking on the door of the heart waiting for God to answer. If knocking is not repetitive then I don’t know what is?
What about praying in vanity?
Prayer does not require repetitiveness to be vain. There are practically endless ways in which prayer can be vain or self serving. To the contemplative, any personal desire that draws one’s attention away from unification with God is a vane desire. Taken to the extreme this would seem to be a long list of distractions. (It is a long list so you probably shouldn’t dwell on it while meditating lest you become distracted. 
hah, just kidding… maybe… i don’t know… whatever…)
But when it comes to the practice of the remembrance of God’s name, the extremity of The Love is at the root of the Heart. Mercy, grace, understanding, forbearance and service are at the reach of your arms, legs, ears, eyes, tong, thoughts and relationships.
Approaching God
To approach God with desire or motivation for personal gain or change in ones state or station, is to approach God in vanity. One must sacrifice their desires on the alter of their Heart! I want to only desire complete annihilation into the person-hood of God. So that not my will but God’s will is done. So that the battle of my will vs. Divine Will is finished and ceases. It is to submit to the humanly abasing will of the Divine. To even submit one’s own sense of ‘fairness’, justice or righteousness to the larger reality of God’s Divine Justice, Righteousness, Mercy, Grace and Love. It is to have an ‘I don’t know’ mind. It is to submit the depths of the heart to the all consuming fire of God’s love. The Love that can be a heaven of unending ecstatic Annihilation or a hell of unending all engulfing, yet never consuming fire of eternal agony. (This reminds me of “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis. Heaven being more real than this ‘real’ corporeal world, which is in turn itself more real than hell.)
some vein pursuits I am guilty of in life (contemplative or otherwise):
- not being the Beloved to my beloved
- seeking the experience of mystical graces
- seeking Divine favor for personal ease in daily life
- seeking Divine favor in personal or egotistical desires for success or advancement in the world
- seeking the ease of my spouses distress for the sake of my own comfort
- seeking the mystical power of God as desired by and for my own will
- seeking assurances in this mysterious path God has laid before me, instead of throwing my full faith into his predestined will, and accepting that there’s no plan B
- desiring some other job than the one that I find myself in
- thinking that an ‘ideal’ job would be the culmination of my fulfillment
- not practicing radical acceptance of the present moment
- not being content in states and stations of this life
- the list goes on, but these are the ways I follow my vanity, that are most visible to myself.
Lord have mercy.
Christ of mercy.
Lord have mercy.
After watching an Indian film (called, ‘Water’) about Hindu widows, my heart got to thinking and asking…
“
“What if your conscience conflicts with your faith?”
–quote from ‘Water’“I used to think that God was Truth, but now I know that Truth is God.”
–Ghandi (paraphrased)
“
If one seeks truth above all else, does one find God? Not necessarily…? Then how does one find Truth? Purely by God’s grace. Purely by God’s predestined grace!
Abraham was a righteous man. God loved and blessed him for his righteousness. How did Abraham find righteousness outside of ‘religion’? (The same goes for Buddha.) Why does everyone after him need religion to find righteousness? (what about relationship?) Is it about a guarantee or a ‘get out of jail free card’ or a ‘life insurance policy’? What does Jesus say about righteousness in the context of his cultural Judaism and outside that same context? Can we trust the ‘Christian Gospels’?
Legalism is bullshit, a mockery of the Truth and the Law. A mockery of the Heart. But what of purity? Is righteousness found in one Man? In returning to the purity of God’s creation that He called ‘Good’? In the many idols of mankind? Or in the act of TRYING?? Is it found in the depths of the longing of the Heart of Hearts? Is Righteousness found in the Heart? Can God put it there to be found if He so pleases? Does He do so in everyone? Where is righteousness to be found? How is righteousness to be found?
Questions are not a sign of doubt.
Doubt is not a lack of Faith.
Faith is not a sign of Truth.
Truth is not a lack of Questions.
…and the Dharma wheel turns…
Why do people seem to need a system to find God? Do people who search for God in a system really find Him?
Many people in the system will find God, Truth, Al-Haqq, but many may not. Many people outside the system will find God, Truth, Al-Haqq, but many may not. Are there no guarantees of God’s predestination to His Will? (this definitely isn’t a path for discipleship)
I feel like a spiritual or religious outcast. An untouchable. Caught between systems. I cling ever so tightly to the Lord of Outcasts and Untouchables, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God and Man.
I am looking at my wedding ring. It tells a story. it tells the the story of the tension between singularity and plurality. This is why i consider myself a “traditionalist”.
I remember when I received the weld spot on my wedding ring. It was while I was Ironworking for Lewis Herrera. I was tack welding a jig for some job… near the end of the day… very mundane work… no fuss, no grand piece of art. it was “just” a jig. a “tool” which was created for one specific job and would be discarded after the job was done. I was rushing along tacking my jig together (without gloves, because whats the chance that I would injure myself from a few tack welds) and suddenly… INTENSE PAIN on my left hand… on my ring finger.
OH MY GOD IT WON’T STOP! FUCK IT HURTS FUCK FUCK FUCK!
A piece of weld spatter had stuck to my 18K white gold wedding band and had supper heated it and burned a semi-circular scar into my finger. I couldn’t flick it off, I couldn’t make the pain stop until the red hot ring of fire had cooled on its own. Then I thought of plunging my hand into the quench tank, but by then it was already cooled.
The pain is gone and even the scare is mostly gone, but the spot of hard steel remains on the soft tissue of my wedding ring.
It reminds me of the sacrifice that my beloved has made for me to follow my dreams and how she has never once held it against me or used them as cannon fodder for her rage.
Thank you my sweet. I love you with all my Heart!
-john
Oh Saturn my heart is your moon,
a satellite that drifts round through the heavens.
In the clutch of your cool refuge gravity pulls me
close into the blinding damp, midst your earthen roots
weave a baskets for my cradle
your fog is a cloak of protection shielding me
as I drift through the unknown my body is
pelted and cratered from the impact of suffering,
the soul mourns for the loss of youth,
the heart cries for bombing of beauty,
the spirit groans too deep for words…
rest you say
-jfs
Once a friend of mine whom I love, said to me (i’m paraphrasing), “I pray that you don’t go down with the ship, I’m not suggesting anything, but I hope that if she decides to go down she doesn’t take you with her. All I’m saying is that you never know how thing’s will work out and you should be prepared for the possibility that your marriage may not work out.” Let me say I love this person and accept their advise from the standpoint of the their life experience. But I have to disagree… not with their stance as a realist, but with the reluctance to throw ones entire lot in with the body of Christ, though it is painful and gut-wrenching to say. I don’t mean to judge, but if the Body of Jesus cannot contain or exist in the downward spiral, death, despair, anxiety and depression, delusion, illusion of humanity… …then Jesus failed.
I believe he did not.
If I am to be christ to my wife as Christ is to His Body, then that means indeed going down with the ship if the ship is going down; Just as Christ went down with this earthship! And when all hope is lost, the new hope of the kingdom of God rises from the depths of the ocean that is the spirit and grace of God.
There are times I think I should have become a monk. That I could have learned more of God or become closer to Him or that my life would be more closely aligned with Him or that the sign of my trials… her trials… means I made a mistake and God is… or I am just reaping the the harvest of my choices. Really it’s a dream of a cop out. An addiction. Because I somehow think that then I wouldn’t have to face the hardship or suffering that I and my beloved face today. In addition there’s so much that I feel I would be the poorer for if I had not married Her. Frankly even though I have no experience in this and am a total fool saying this… But that is… that if followed with much love, dedication and sobriety of spirit, marriage to a wife is just as deeply and mystically refining, perfecting and rewarding as marriage to Christ through monasticism. It is marriage to Christ either way. One can be a David or Judas in both. One can be a saint or a satan in either.
The Truth is, when my beloved is suffering and I have to choose either shirking my love and covenant to her or swallowing my self-ness, fatigue, frustration, anger, resentment, bitterness… I cannot swallow anything really. The only way I am able to love my beloved in these moments (I am poor in myself, forgive me) is through Christ, through Christ living in me, through sacrificing my self with Christ in the moments of despair and rage and bitterness.
… and I fail miserably at this… the battle between forgiveness and bitterness, between rage and acceptance, erupts in my chest.
أيها الرب يسوع المسيح ابن الله, إرحمني أنا الخاطئ – Ayyuha-r-Rabbu Yasū` al-Masīħ, Ibnu-l-Lāh, irħamnī ana-l-khāti’ – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner
I Love You,
Your Beloved
Thank you immensely for doing so.
Arthur held the vile meticulously in his hand. The waters of the tiny world trembled in his grip. He imagined a microscopic version of himself doing a cannon-ball into this little ocean.
His mind wandered past all of the cataclysmic events of the last few days and weeks and years that had led up to this point in time, the point in time where Arthur Holt was grasping the last 4 ounces of water on earth. The chemical’s new found singularity struck him strange, for prior to this moment, water had been the most common, elemental, forgotten and taken for granted substance known to man. Even if he was completely parched, he knew that somewhere, no matter how inaccessible it might be, there was water. But now… this was not even the case.
Now Arthur really held the last drop of water in his fingers. He wondered what it would feel like to drink the last 4 ounces of water, what emotions would rush through his veins, what thoughts of despair or ecstasy would swim around his head. This single water might be saved for later when truly needed at a cataclysmic moment of desperate rescue. It was a glistening potion of hope and despair, of comfort and anxiety, a monument to creation and a crumbled ruin of a reminder to the past.
How, Arthur wondered, how could this simple compound of Hydrogen and Oxygen contain so many paradoxes, enigmas and mysteries of the life it used to uphold. It held every question to every answer of earthly life. It was life itself. It told a story, not a human story, but a story of energy, power, creation, of god breathing life into a fiery, explosive element. The human element, they had exploded on the earth and scorched it beyond recognition ironically using the element of fire that when bonded with the breath of god created this basic building block of earthly life.
The vile, so precious and so endangered reminded him of the stories he read as a child where there was always a precious vile, singular in it’s ability and availability to offer its barer hope in darkness, healing at the last gasp of life and protection in the face of horror.
…………….
This list touched me so so deeply. Not out of simple bitterness, but rather out of, “thank god someone’s finally willing to say it.” Everything registered as true to one side of my experience of this planet.
-jfs
———
The other side of being human.
http://www.metagifted.org/
—
I’m tired of trying to prove myself to people who seem determined to dislike me.
I just hope I can get through another day of this crap.
I can’t stand humanity any more. Why is everyone so cruel?!
My life is intrinsically small and meaningless.
I can’t help wanting to hurt people.
I try to channel my rage and fury into good things, but it doesn’t always work.
I can’t help but see other people as objects.
No one even makes an effort to understand me.
I wish people would just LEAVE ME ALONE!!!
I can’t get far enough from the people that want to get close to me.
I don’t want to deal with your pain!
I try to care about what you’re saying, but I don’t.
Life IS all about me.
No one likes it when I’m really honest.
If you could see what I truly am, you’d think I was insane.
You cannot fully comprehend my sadness or my pain.
You do not understand the magnitude of my rage.
The day ahead seems insurmountable.
Life mostly sucks.
Being human HURTS.
Most people are mean.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot be completely sympathetic with you.
Sympathy does not seem worthwhile.
I have enough problems of my own.
Opinions are judgments!
Even when you think you’re being kind, I want to hide from you.
Teaching me a lesson won’t work.
I don’t really care what you believe.
The reward of affection is too complicated to obtain.
Affection is always overcomplicated.
Being empathic really sucks.
I don’t always want to know what’s going to happen.
How come I have to be the aware one?
Even being around other people hurts!
I want someone to understand me, but I don’t want to be be a part of any group.
People are overcomplicated and I just want to push them away.
If you really cared about me, you’d let me be myself.
I know you don’t believe most of the things you say.
Your responsibility is not my responsibility.
Please don’t indoctrinate me.
You can’t fix me; don’t even try.
Just because we don’t agree doesn’t mean I’m broken.
It doesn’t seem like humanity is improving, no matter how hard we try.
Everyone’s reality is different; don’t force yours upon me.
I can’t stand more than a tiny bit of interaction.
I don’t really care what I’m supposed to do.
I’m not a sheep, don’t herd me.
You shouldn’t be telling anyone what to be doing if you’re not perfect.
Why do we keep trying so hard?
My own humanity feels incredibly restrictive.
The world doesn’t want to be helped.
I won’t be a part of your dog and pony show.
Why don’t you just shut the hell up?
Can’t you tell I really don’t like you?
Other people do not truly understand me.
There is no real point to mutual understanding.
There’s nothing I have to do.
Your requirements can go fish.
I have had just about enough.
What is the point of your aspirations?
You don’t seem to be actually getting anywhere.
Did you think I was talking to you?
How many indigos does it take to change the world?
The world doesn’t really need either one of us.
Why the hell did we choose to reincarnate?
It’s impossible to keep higher goals in mind all the time.
If you truly don’t believe time doesn’t exist, why do you force your schedule upon me?
Why do you play by the rules if there are none?
Why do you force arbitrary rules upon me?
I doubt you can actually practice what you preach.
It’s too bad you can’t be honest about your emotions.
I can’t stand being around a lot of people.
Preachy assholes annoy the hell out of me.
Having you tell me how human I am is not what I came here for.
I don’t like how you live your life.
The status quo sucks.
You are making my life harder.
I never feel like I have a home.
Interacting with you weakens my sense of self.
When I exert effort to make the world a better place, mostly no one cares.
I feel alone and tiny in the Universe.
We are NOT ONE.
Being around others makes me want to hide my individuality.
Even my most aspiring thoughts seem to have no effect.
I am not always happy. Why should I be?
My life feels purposeless and difficult.
Trying to be myself or speak my mind only has harmful repercussions.
There is a feeling of tension, isolation, and discord that never goes away.
Most activities people think are fun leave me empty and disillusioned.
Violence begets violence, yet unconditional love is a shroud of denial. There IS no solution in any situation.
Absolutely everything is completely out of control.
You pretend you’re tough, but inside you secretly feel lost and terrified like me.
Reality Bites.
— Patrick M. Jordan
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