YA AZEEM: "The Supreme"

I'm blessed to be spending a couple of days with my good friend and teacher, Sheikh Ghassan Manasra, this week, in his Florida home.  He's visited us a couple of times in New Hampshire this past year and has inspired us each time with grace, honesty and love.  His courage and tenderness remind me of the person I most hope to be, and the faith I intend to embody in life and work.  Over our two days together, I've had the great privilege of joining him for three of his online classes: one on the Sufi masters, one on the Names of Allah, and another on Qur'an study.

In tonight's study on the Names of Allah, we explored the meanings of "Ya Azeem," an Arabic phrase that approximates "O Most High! O All-great!"  It's derived from the Arabic word Azeem (ʿAẓīm عظيم), which means "Great", "Magnificent", "Supreme" or "Protector."  What a gift it is to be here, in Sarasota with my friend, and to study with him and his community online!

October 2023, by Marcey Buchakjian

The Sheikh notes that the names of God are approached patiently, almost indirectly, in order to access their depths, their hidden meanings and power.  To seize a name and brandish it as a kind of intellectual or theological weapon ("Jesus," for example; or even, "Father" or "Ya Azeem") is to risk doing harm with something too powerful, too great and unfathomable.  Instead, he counsels us to be patient, to repeat these names over and over again, to sing them, dance in their company, study and wonder and express bewilderment and un-knowing.  It's in this kind of spiritual practice, he says, that the meanings of "Ya Azeem" (or other names) come to be experienced, to be touched, tasted and offered back to the world in gratitude.  And in this way, the Supreme is not a harsh and judgmental presence in our lives, not a divine bully, but a soft and subtle one, an ever-present grace.  To be loved and trusted.  As friend.

One of our companions on tonight's journey mentions that her repetition of "Ya Azeem" relies very much on the "m...m...m..." at the end of the word.  "It softens my experience of the word," she says, "and extends my reflection."  And then she mentions that this sometimes leads her to "Om..." and then to "M...m...Mary!"  And again, all over again, I'm struck by the beauty and grace of studiying like this among Sufis, Jews, Muslims, Christians all.  The richness of these traditions in conversation.  The life we share in common.  The hope we cradle in our hearts and hands.

I'm reminded that "Mary/Miriam" (from Hebrew/Aramaic) bears something of the meaning of "bitterness."  And if that's true, our companion suggests that patience and kindness in the presence of bitterness (ours, others') yields the truly gracious and even supreme presence of God.  Wow.

To know and trust God, Allah, Adonai, Jesus--this is to sit with my own disappointments, to sit prayerfully with the world's despair, and to meditate on God's mercy in the midst of all of these things.  Not to turn from reality, not to hide from my own faults, but to sit generously and compassionately with all of it, finding not a harsh and despotic God, but one eager to forgive, eager to embrace, eager to help me make the corrections necessary to bless and share and reconcile.

This God is Supreme.  And our Protector.

1/14/25, Sarasota, FL

See more about Sheikh Ghassan and the Abrahamic Reunion here.

GOD OF PEACE: "Yarabba Salami - Duo ZIA"

سلاما اترك لكم

يا رب السلام (Yarabba ssalami) - Traditional Palestinian Song

HOMILY: "Blowin' in the Wind"

A Meditation on John 1
Sunday, January 5, 2025

The Second Sunday in Christmastide

1.

I fell asleep early New Year’s Eve—not that I intended to. But I’d pulled up a Bob Dylan playlist on Spotify, lay down on the bed with my headphones on, and just drifted off. My daughter and I had just been to see the new Dylan bio pic and we’d been talking that night about the stunning relevance of so many Dylan tunes, so many Dylan lyrics to the world we’re living in these days. So I fell asleep listening to “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changing” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” Songs Bob Dylan wrote sixty years ago!

I remember pulling off the headphones when the playlist rolled over a second time: “How many years can a mountain exist / before it is washed to the sea? / And how many years can some people exist / before they’re allowed to be free? / Yes, and, how many times can a man turn his head / pretending he just doesn’t see?” And I slept a little bit, fitfully I guess, as 2024 turned toward 2025.

And I awakened early New Year’s Day, as so many of you did, to devastating news out of New Orleans, and online details of a troubled Army vet who drove his car through a crowd and killed 15 on Bourbon Street overnight. And I have to tell you this morning. News like that, violence like that: it just sucks the energy, the hope right out of me before the day (heck, before the year) has even begun. Might have been Lewiston, Maine. Might have been Orlando, Florida. Might have been Las Vegas or Newtown or Pittsburgh. On New Year’s Eve, it was New Orleans. How in the world can we continue to kill one another like this? How in the world can we stoke such contempt, such violence in our human hearts? Can God truly exist, truly and creatively exist, in the midst of such madness?

I guess the topic, then, is doubt. The topic this morning is doubt. Is it possible to believe in God, and nevertheless doubt the power, the relevance, the certainties we may have taken for granted in the early days of our faith journeys? I want so much to believe in a God of mercy and kindness, a God who desires human companionship and gratitude, a God who partners with us to build communities of justice and respect. But I wake up New Year’s Day, I scan horrific pictures from another American catastrophe, and I have to wonder if love truly can (as Paul says in his letters) believe all things, bear all things, endure all things. Do all things really work together for the good for those who trust God? I have to wonder if despair overwhelms mercy and kindness more often than not. And where is God in all this? And such doubt weighs like a heavy stone in my heart.

Maybe you know something about all this. Maybe you doubt too.

2.

Simone Weil

If you do, if you too find doubt an occasional companion on the spiritual path, or even a persistent, nattering nuisance, I commend to you the words of the great 20th century mystic Simone Weil—who said, “He who has not God in himself cannot feel God’s absence.” Let that sink in a bit. “She who has not God in herself cannot feel God’s absence.” In a sense, faith is itself a doorway in our hearts to doubt. One who is moved by God’s radical blessing and unbendable love is sometimes simultaneously shattered by sadness and injustice. To sing God’s praise—as we do in our gatherings every Sunday—is not to deny our weariness or even our skepticism. It is however to make ample space for grief and longing, for uncertainty, in the very shelter of our deepest faith. “He who has not God in himself cannot feel God’s absence.”

And so, and so, it may well be that faith and doubt are inevitably partnered in our human hearts. Feels that way in mine. It may well be that doubt, insecurity, even bewilderment make faith possible, make faith vibrant and holy and real. Our tradition, in fact, insists on it. And I think you know this too. By virtue of your own experience.

In the most challenging moments around a loved one’s death—you sense a promise that doesn’t eradicate all doubt, but reconciles it with hope, with love. In a conversation with a friend who questions everything you believe and why you believe it—you find a mutual respect, a persevering respect, that gladdens your heart just the same. And in a campaign for peace, seeking reconciliation among adversaries—you hear a hymn that doesn’t render doubt meaningless, but ennobles the effort with courage. “We Shall Overcome!” Faith and doubt. Doubt and faith. Partnered in our hearts.

You see, those who live only in regions of certainty and clarity are often the very ones who lack empathy and forbearance. Beware their ironclad convictions. To be certain of all truths is to be callous more often than not to the pain or uncertainty of others. Inaccessible to mystery and grace. But doubt--doubt makes faith, faith. In the Old Testament, Abram leaves all things familiar to go to an unseen land, to follow an unnamed deity, to create with Sarai a family to bless all families. Doubting as they go. Doubting as they go. But believing just the same.

And Jesus, of course, in his own hours of agony, crying out from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you betrayed me?!” Doubting the love, the presence, the promise to which he’s given his life. I mean, there’s no other way to hear this cry. Jesus embodies—in his own life, in his own struggle—the bewildering, befuddling, bedeviling doubts that keep the rest of us stirring at night. “My God, my God, why have you betrayed me?!”

And all the while—in his restlessness, in his doubting—addressing the One he loves. Calling out for the One he loves. Right there at the heart of all that violence. Right there where despair is most compelling. Believing in the only love, the only power that could ever bear him across the threshold. And unite him to the dreams and aspirations of his friends. In a sense, his longing for God, his aching for God’s absence—stirs in Jesus a still more intimate sense of God’s tenderness and grace.

3.

There is no way to make sense of those fifteen deaths in New Orleans Tuesday night. There is no way to justify those deaths (or the deaths of dozens in Lewiston last year, or the deaths of tens of thousands in Gaza over the past year and a half): there is no way to justify cruelty or genocide as part of God’s bigger plan, or necessary losses for a higher purpose. We must not turn away from such suffering; and Christ himself requires not just sympathy but costly discipleship. Which necessarily means beating our swords into plowshares. A church that rationalizes brutality as a human necessity has lost is soul.

But it is possible that doubt itself drives us to risk something more lasting than retribution, something more compelling than hate, something more promising than despair. Or, as the wonderful preacher Frederick Buechner once said: “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep it awake and moving.” Isn’t that something? “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep it awake and moving.” To be awake to the opportunities before us is to doubt even as we believe. To be alert to our own precious calling is to question everything we take to be sacred and holy and true. By faith, then, by a gift of spirit against all odds, by a sense of divine presence at the very heart of our pain—we can and we will join generations of saints who have lived to praise the God of Love, who have given their lives to heal broken hearts, who have found grace and beauty in a fragile and sometimes maddening world. “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep it awake and moving.” Tell your friends!

QUESTIONS: "How Many Years Can a Mountain Exist...?"

NEW YEAR'S PRAYER: "2025"

"2025" / A Prayer

Unmaker of our settledness,

Unmasker of our fixed faces,

Undoer of our lazy loyalties:

Open now our unseeing fingers,

And unclench our fist-tight eyes.

The unknown night awaits--

We would welcome her dancing hands.

Whom we cannot see, only seek;

Whom we cannot claim,

Only need and love and bless:

Bear us through such dark and beautiful skies,

Upon the thermals of a new year, a new age,

So that tomorrow's promise--tonight's gift--

Empties our spirits of last year's grievances,

Unnecessary now in a world of feasts and songs,

In a world of healing and hoping.  Selah.

And if, by the sun's illumining,

Swords still swing from the hands and hearts of men,

Teach us a language of liberation

That invites in the frightened and furious warrior

A relinquishing, and a turning,

And a tilling of the only sweet soil

That can feed us all.

Amen, O One.  Ashe.

12/31/24

DGJ

Santa Cruz

PROFILE IN COURAGE: "Jimmy Carter and Immigration"

CHRISTMASTIDE: "Hildegard of Bingen: De Spiritu Sancto"

CHRISTMASTIDE: "In The Dark Night" (Orthodox Chant)