Tonight, in Sarasota, I attended zikr with my dear friend and colleague Sheikh Ghassan Manasra. For years now, our friendship has fueled my spiritual journey, my thirst for divine love, my commitment to interfaith collaboration. Such a gift is he!
In the spirit and tradition of Sufism, a mystical stream from the great river Islam, we chanted and prayed tonight, swayed and sang. And what a gift it is to pray, to surrender to the gifts of the One Holy Light, to yield all anxieties to grace, to breathe in concert with a small community of fellow believers and seekers.
In his teaching tonight, the Sheikh called us to consider the invitation, in the Qur'an, to experience "dying before death." And I'm moved by the resonance in this phrase, and in his own teaching, to the gospel call to "take up the cross" with Jesus. This is, after all, our Lenten season--when that very call orients Christian prayer and discernment, in anticipation of Easter's resurrection. In the Sheikh's teaching, I was reminded of that earliest hymn in the movement of disciples:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross (Philippians 2).
"Let the same mind be in you--" that is, the mind of one who empties self of self-importance and pride. "Let the same mind be in you--" that is, the mind of one who embraces humility-in-humanity, the mind of one who does not grasp at honor and power, but develops power in compassion and solidarity with others. "Let the same mind be in you--" that is, the mind of one who takes up even the cross--bearing even the empire's cruelty, the world's senselessness--in order to manifest peace and love, in order to pursue justice and righteousness, the well-being of the other.
And this, says my friend, is the essence of zikr, the heart of the path, the meaning of "dying before death." It calls us to a shared prayer, to a shared vision, to humility and self-less-ness. The emptying of self-importance, so that love can shine and take root in our lives, homes, communities and dreams. I was struck, again tonight, by the very simple--and so profound--content of zikr: the Name of God and the human breath. The Name that brings life, tenderness, mercy to the human breath. That Name chanted, received, offered, given away, over and over and over and over again. Until the breath is something like the Name of God itself. Over and over and over again.
2.
The practice itself is something like a corrective, cleansing the soul of religiosity and self-righteousness. The Name of God is not to be grasped, not to be owned, not to be managed like an investment or possession. And it's most certainly not to be used as a weapon of war, as a tool of oppression or colonization. No--in zikr, in prayer--the Name of God is received as a gift, received through generations of peacemakers and witnesses, invoked, and given away. Over and over and over again. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts," says Yahweh through the Prophet Isaiah, "nor are my ways your ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts." This is the beginning of humility, the beginning of tenderness, the beginning of love, the beginning of faith. To sit in the presence of the Holy One, to empty myself of judgment and righteousness, to welcome God's grace as gift, to allow that grace to pass through my life. On its way to bless others and water the earth.
Every time I visit with Ghassan and Laila, for example, I am stunned by how much light penetrates my heart, by how much grace fills my soul--if I let go of any need to know everything, if I release any claims on absolute truth or religious knowledge. If I "forget" my particular "faith" -- at least, the formality of it, the architecture of it -- my heart opens to the nourishment of grace, to the gospel of Christ, to the opportunities for compassion and service and thanksgiving. In this place, among these friends, whose Muslim faith is so deeply felt and so generously practiced, I discover something like the ground of my being, and something very much like the call to discipleship. Follow me. Take up your cross. Love love, and only love.
3.
This is how another Muslim scholar, Ahmed Hulusi of Turkey, describes the Sufi path, this "dying before death":
1. When existence is shaken with an intense quake and begins to lose its meaning in your sight… When you realize the essence and origin of existence is the Names of Allah and the seeming external world is shattered in your view… Al-Zalzala (99th Chapter) 137
2. When the meanings of the Names of Allah comprising the essence of existence become apparent and the secrets therein begin to reveal themselves…
3. When man sees what he thought existed disappear like a mirage and realize that in the sight of Allah everything is an illusion, he will say in great shock and panic, “What is happening to these things? Why is everything disappearing and only that which pertains to Allah is eternal…”
4. Existence will begin to explain everything to the person whose insight will now be active and open… They will inform him of which unit manifests which name of Allah… And man will understand that everything he thought was other than Allah was actually the manifestation of His Names!
5. All of this will occur with the revelation of the Rabb, the judgments of the dimension of Rububiyyah will become disclosed though existence, and man will become aware of this!
6. These people who have died before death will now see clearly what and why they have done things in the past, and become aware of the secrets pertaining to them.
7. Whoever does an iota’s weight of good shall see its results
8. Whoever does an iota’s weight of bad shall also see it.
The Lenten journey, indeed!
4.
It seems my Sufi friends are saying something quite similar: that the substance of faith is our willingness to be unsettled, to be vulnerable with God and one another, to be emptied of self-importance and the temptation to defend ourselves at all costs. In my own spiritual community--in my United Church--this may well be the path: not only to Golgotha and Easter, but to delight, joy and God's "welcome table." That table--the "eucharist" wherein we are found, blessed, annointed, commissioned--is a geography of vulnerability and grace, an encounter of friend and friend, neighbor and neighbor, an invitation to sacrifice and love. Will I be broken, like the bread before us, like the Teacher among us? Will I be poured out (and not protected, preserved) like the cup we pass? Like the Name of God in tonight's zkir. So much like the Name of God in tonight's zikr!
