Starship Earth
14/05/2012 Leave a comment
Simone Weil: The Personal and Impersonal God and the Sanctity of the Atheist
30/12/2011 Leave a comment
“As the Hindus say, God is at the same time personal and impersonal. He is impersonal in the sense that his infinitely mysterious manner of being a Person is infinitely different from the human manner. It is only possible to grasp this mystery by employing at the same time, like two pincers, these two contrary notions, incompatible here on earth, compatible only in God (the same applies to may other pairs of contraries, as the Pythagoreans had realised).
One is able to think of God at the same time, not successively, as being three in one (a thing which few Catholics manage to be able to do) only by thinking of Him at the same time as personal and impersonal. Otherwise one represents Him to oneself sometimes as a single divine Person, at other times as three Gods Many Christians confuse such an oscillation with true faith.
Saints of a very lofty spirituality, like St John of the Cross, has seized simultaneously and with an equal force both the personal and the impersonal aspects of God. Less developed souls concentrate their attention and their faith above all or exclusively upon one or the other of these two aspects. Thus little St Theresa of Lisieux only represented to herself a personal God.
As in the West the word God, taken in its usual meaning, signifies a Person, men whose attention, faith and love are almost exclusively concentrated on the impersonal aspect of God can actually believes themselves and declare themselves to be atheists, even though supernatural love inhabits their souls. Such men are surely saved.
They can be recognised by their attitude with regard to the things of this world. All those who possess in its pure state the love of their neighbour and the acceptance of the order of the world, including affliction – all those, even should they live and die to all appearances atheists, are surely saved.
Those who possess perfectly these two virtues, even should they live and die atheists, are saints.
When one comes across such men, it is futile to want to convert them. They are wholly converted, thought not visibly so; they have been begotten anew by water and the spirit, even if they have never been baptised; they have eaten of the bread of life, even if they have never communicated.”
- from Letter to a Priest by Simone Weil (ISBN 0415267676)
Like this:
The Circle in Native American Spirituality
04/05/2011 Leave a comment
Music “Dawning of the Seventh Fire” by Bill Neal Elk Whistle, video creation by Tim Wozny.
“You have noticed that everything an Indian does in a circle,
and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles,
and everything and everything tries to be round.
In the old days all our power came to us from the sacred hoop
of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people
flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop,
and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace
and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain and the north
with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This
knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion.
Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle.
The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball
and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls.
Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.
The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon
does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great
circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were.
The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is
in everything where power moves. Our teepees were round like the
nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop,
a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.”
Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Lakota (1863-1950).
Every moment love’s a new surge of spring
07/03/2011 Leave a comment
By Bulleh Shah
Every moment love’s a new surge of spring
The lesson of love-rapture when first I read
The mosque my heart began to dread
Into the Thakur’s abode I fled
Where a thousand conches sing
Every moment love’s a new surge of spring
When the ways of love-rapture I gained
Differences of me and you were not sustained
The shell and pith were washed clean, unstained
Wherever I look the Friend is befriending
Every moment love’s a new surge of spring
Heer-Raanjha came into fusion
Erring Heer search in the moors had begun
In her shawl frolicks beloved Raanjhan
I have no sense now, nor that awareness thing
Every moment love’s a new surge of spring
Reading, re-reading the Qur’an, Vedas, scholars are tired
Marks on foreheads by myriad rubdowns are sired
God’s not in Mecca nor in holy shrines mired
Once light enters the heart it’ll forever ring
Every moment love’s a new surge of spring
Burn down the prayer-mat, crack the ablutions vessel!
Forsake the rosary, the priest’s scepter, his cudgel!
Hear the Love-raptured declare from the heart and yell
“Give up sanctioned fare, take to carrion eating!”
Every moment love’s a new surge of spring
A lifetime wasted in the mosque
The pith a profane, brimming cask
Never Unity focus of the praying-flask
Now why the raving, ranting?
Every moment love’s a new surge of spring
Love-rapture made me forget prostrations before You
Now why the shrewish wrangles construe?
Long silent Bullha to silence says adieu
He’s in raptures! loving and loving
Every moment love’s a new surge of spring
Extract from, “Bulleh Shah Within Reach” by Muzaffar A Ghaffaar, part of the Masterworks of Punjaabi Sufi Poetry series.
The Bundle of Sticks
28/02/2011 Leave a comment
By Aesop
AN OLD man on the point of death summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He asked his servants to bring in a bundle of sticks, and said to his eldest son: “Break it.” The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the bundle. The other sons also tried and tried again, but none of them were successful. “Untie the sticks,” said the father, “and each of you take a stick.” When they had done so, he called out to them: “Now, break,” and each stick was easily broken. “You see my meaning,” said their father…
STRENGTH IS IN UNITY
The Two Goals of Justice and Mercy
22/01/2011 Leave a comment
Shaykh Abu Muntasir speaking about justice and mercy at the recent JIMAS Conference
