Finding God in a Blog

I didn't know how far I had drifted from god until recently when I was reading a series of blogs by Omid Safi, author and Duke University’s Director of Islamic Studies Center.

In an online column for the NPR Radio Show On Being called "Calling on God as a Friend," Mr. Safi wrote:

I wanted to share some insights on what befriending God looks like by sharing a few pearls from the lovely friend of God, Abu‘l-Hasan Kharaqani, who passed on to the eternal realm in 1033...

Kharaqani was a simple and humble man who came from a very modest background. He was not a scholar, nor did he possess perfect command of Arabic. He called on to God in his mother tongue, Persian. It was his friendship with God that sustained him. Kharaqani said:

“Sustenance of the friends of God is through friendship with God.”

He experienced much sorrow in his life, including having his children pass away, but it was the friendship with God that brought him joy. He described this joy as one that was more precious than any and all acts of ritual worship.

Many have tried to describe the spiritual path through a thousand and one metaphors. These friends of God simply said that the path is to be “at ease with God.”

For Kharaqani, this friendship was a mutual seeking. God is seeking us as we are seeking us. God yearns to befriend us as we seek God. Kharaqani talks about a dream he had one night:

One night I saw God Almighty in a dream.
I said to God:
“It’s been sixty years that I have spent
in the hope of being your friend,
of desiring you.”

God Almighty answered me:
“You’ve been seeking me for sixty years?
I’ve spent an eternity
to eternity
befriending you.”  

One of the stories from Kharaqani gives an indication of the loving, tender, even humorous friendship that he shared with God. This is possible for all of us, if we walk on the path of befriending God.

Reading (and re-reading) Mr. Safi's blog I was reminded how little time I have been spending in contemplation with god.  To be honest, I've been darn near neglectful.

A month ago I posted a blog entitled "Wholesome & Unwholesome Habits" about my newfound, unbalanced fixation with national news and politics.  It would seem this unwholesome habit has become more than just a precipitator of dis-ease; it also appears to have taken away from my time spent cultivating awareness of god.

But since for me religion and the life of the spirit is a joyful place of refuge--not a desert of shame and guilt--my main question is: how did I wander so far from home? And, how did I not see it?

Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh writes and talks about something called "Mindfulness Bells" which is the practice of stopping (whatever you are doing in the moment), breathing and anchoring yourself in the present moment.

A Mindfulness Bell could be an actual chiming of a bell that rings every hour on the hour- as it does in the monastic communities of Thich Nhat Hanh like Plum Village in France and Blue Cliff Monastery in New York.

But it can also be a metaphor.

As is described on the Plum Village website:

When we hear one of these mindfulness bells ring, we stop all of our conversations and whatever we are doing and bring our awareness to our breathing. The ringing bell has called out to us:

Listen, listen,
this wonderful sound brings me back to
my true home.

By stopping to breathe and restore our calm and our peace, we become free, our work becomes more enjoyable and the friend in front of us becomes more real...We can use the ringing of our telephone, the local church bells, the cry of a baby, or even the sound of fire engines and ambulances as our bells of mindfulness. With just three conscious breaths we can release the tensions in our body and mind and return to a cool and clear state of being.

Reading Mr. Safi's column was like a "mindfulness bell" for me because it prompted a wonderful pause to bring me back to my true home.

As a Unitarian Universalist I feel extremely fortunate that I am not limited to the narrow (but splendid) scope of UU thinkers and writers in my journey of faith and god. 

As part of what's called Our Living Tradition in Unitarian Universalism there are these three (of Six) Sources:

 

• Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
• Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
• Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.

What this means in practical terms is, for me, I can rather innocuously begin to read a blog by a Muslim scholar, and then suddenly be lifted out of a place of spiritual neglect and deprivation.

A moment that Christian writer Anne Lamott might call "Grace...Eventually."

In another recent column called "Prayer of the Heart" Mr. Safi writes:

What is this presence?

It is not so much presence of God.

God is always present.

It is we humans who are absent from our own heart.

Presence means to have the fullness of who we are with us...

We are, too often, scattered.

We speak about being scatterbrained. The truth of the matter is that the scatteredness is much more systematic. We are scattered at every level: body, soul, mind, spirit.

We do this to ourselves...

To pray with the heart, to have presence in the heart, is a remedy.

It is a healing, an un-scattering.

Presence is simply to have our heart be where our feet are.

This starts with a mindfulness, with an awareness of the breath.

When we monitor our breath, simply observe the breath enter into the heart, and emerge from the heart, our breathing slows down.

The heart rate slows down.

Here is where we become whole: our body, our breath, our spirit become One.

When we become one, The One is Here with us.

Here and Now.

In that moment, in this breath, we are healed, and whole.

And what a prayer there is in this breath.

What Presence.

God has always been present, waiting for us.

We ourselves become present, meeting God.

This is the Prayer of the Heart.

This is the Eternal Now (waqt), where Muhammad is to have said:

“I have an Eternal Now with my Loving Lord.”

This is the reason why mystics are Children of the Moment.

Exquisite.

After reading these two posts (and several of his others), I felt returned to my breath, my meditation practice, and my daily spiritual readings with a renewed devotion and remembrance (as in re-membering) of my sense of self in god as a perfect cosmic wholeness.

May you too encounter your own Mindfulness Bells today that may bring you back to your true home.