Khaliullah Khalili

In every state, the Heart is my support:

In this kingdom of existence,

it is my sovereign.

When I tire of the treachery of

Reason -

God knows I am grateful to my

heart.

Jesus and Mohammed

 

I have to say, I really like reading sayings of the Prophet Mohammed. I pulled these from Idries Shah’s Caravan of Dreams.  Though I am not Muslim as my Christian beliefs exclude me from such a claim,  I am not going to deprive myself of the wisdom of his words.

He said one thing that was prophetic:

I am like a man who has lighted a fire, and all the creeping things have rushed to burn themselves in it.

Hmm.. creeping things.. those who follow the baser part of their nature. One can’t help but think of terrorists who kill innocents thinking they are going to heaven. They are going toward something bright alright, but wait ’till they get there.

Another saying:

Anyone reviling a brother for a sin will not himself die before commiting it.

I have reviled people for vile acts they have committed, yet I am quite sure I will not commit those acts. But maybe the sin Mohammed speaks of goes deeper… sins of the heart, as Jesus spoke of: 

 Anyone who lusts in his heart commits adultery.  

Mohammed:

Good thoughts are a part of worship.

What to do… if you are going to commit  sin before your death,

Mohammed said:

 Die before your death.

How?  In Christianity, St Paul says the flesh must die.

While we are of the flesh, if we are too kill it, what are we to do.

Mohemmed again:

Treat this world as I do, like a wayfarer; like a horseman who stops in the shade of a tree for awhile, and then moves on.

 Our hopes and expectations for anything permament in this world, those are the sins of the flesh. What led the people we revile to sin anyways…hope and expectation.  What hopes did we have for the person who we  now hate because they dashed those hopes. Do we give up hope then? Hope and expectation is not a luxury available to the wayfarer.

What then do we do if not hope.  Faith in God:

Mohammed:

Trust in God…but tie your camel first.

But lest you become obsessed and uptight about  that camel,

 remember:

Whoever has no kindness has no faith.  

Mohammed again:

My poverty is my pride.  What he lacks is his pride – his open hands – his freedom.

Jesus:

Blessed are the poor…

Mohammed:

On a journey, the Lord of a people is their servant.

Jesus:

The least among you will be the greatest…

For anyone who has been a parent, or had them

I think this is a remarkable post from one of my favorite bloggers  – the Anchoress. She is conservative and Roman Catholic and even though many associate those two groupings with intolerance and judgement, her words are full of mercy and promise. Beginning with a quote from Pope Benedict that more than a little surprised me with its simple eloquence,  it spoke to my heart as a man who is father to two children who have to live with my divorce from their mother, and also as a man who has become a father to more children through adoption. Her words touched both my grief and heartfelt gratitude for the many blessings I have received in this life, and the urgent need for mercy in this world. Mercy is not pity ….. it is loving and valuing . Mercy serves. Mercy glorifies.

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/12/16/benedict-and-obama-and-i-and-you/

A beautiful but maybe too heroic prayer

I found this post in a post here – http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/11/16/you-have-to-break-my-heart-always/comment-page-1/#comment-273344

It is the prayer of an Roman Catholic priest during his ordination. It definitely is recognizably RC with its emphasis on suffering as the path to grace.  It is touching and challenging.

I had no doubt about what to ask. I was sick, and it was killing me, but I specifically didn’t ask to get better. I said, “Lord you know that I will forget to follow you and depend on you . You know that I will not turn to you anymore as your child if I feel I can make it on my own. So you have to break my heart always, you have to keep me poor and humble, you have to keep me incapable of anything without you. You have to make it clear to me that I can do nothing without your grace, and that will never be clear to me if I think things are going well. You have to break my heart.”

I gave this response in the comment section:

 

I read this line, and I thought something was missing:

     “You have to make it clear to me that I can do nothing without your grace, and that will never be clear to me if I think things are going well.”

I would add – “or not” – to the end. If you want to become more aware of how you depend utterly on God, you can’t decide how he is going to help you with that. You can ask for a sign you can recognize, and this priest certainly expresses his preference based on what he knows about himself – so far.
But maybe that is the real heartbreak, you are going to have depend on God without easily recognizable and convincing prompts, as opposed to heartbreak by “things not going well”.

But I could be wrong – or not.

The Anchoress heads her blog with this quote:

“Ideas create idols, only wonder leads to knowing. “

St. Gregory of Nyssa

….ideas about suffering (or not)  included.

The story of Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac, then not…comes to mind.  God seems to promise to just confound us if we become to certain(or not)  and  lose our capacity to wonder.

More on patience and kids

I have had a few quotes on patience recently, and my last post about my kids and chores speaks to that issue also.  I think that I have assumed that patience means you stay calm while you wait for something to work out. But how do you really do that? I think you have to be decisive in order to stay calm. Decisiveness is a sign of confidence, not that things will work out, but that you are making the best and safest decision you can in the moment. If you have to make 20 decisions in a minute to really respond to something adequately, than you better do so. The feeling of impatience may be a sign that you have to make another decision, or it may be a sign that you are not following through on the decision you already made. Somewhere in this mix you have to have a mission and purpose for what you are doing. You have to decide on that and stick with it.

I tried to do that in my last post about the kids’ chores – articulate a purpose.  When I was having to hound them, I clearly was not fulfilling that mission and purpose. As a result, I became impatient. But then again, I hadn’t yet clarified my mission and purpose.

 

You must strive to be patient both with what you want and what what you do not want: for each of them will try you. Exercise both kinds of patience and deserve the human name.

Bayazid

The depth of patience

Patience is being patient with your patience.

- Idries Shah

Patience is the opposite of aggression. I think you have to work at it though, talk yourself into patience and as well as through it and expect it to be like a squirmy toddler that needs lots of repetition and kindness .

Stayin’ Alive

Words have to die if humans are to live.

 ….always seek balance between rejection and faith.

 There may be many layers of meaning to this quote, which I picked up from Idries Shah, but I think it has application to the dangers of being too literal, on the left – with political correctness, and on the right, with religious fundamentalism. And if you think about how these two extremes interacted at Fort Hood last week, maybe it doesn’t seem like just a bunch of philosophical mumbo jumbo.

Worthiness

This is a prayer written by the Persian Sufi – Saadi.

Do to me what is worthy of Thee.

Not that which is worthy of me.

 

 

How to kick some ass ;)

 

         Three things enable me to overcome my opponent. I am happy when he is right, and I sad when he is wrong, and I try not to behave foolishly toward him.

 

Hatim

On saving humanity from the world

There are four things.

Accept the ignorance of others and spare them yours;    spare for them from your substance, and do not expect any of theirs.

 

Hatim