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| April 18, redbud in woods |
Sometimes dreams guide the meaning of text. In the dream, I’m observing a child who holds a book. He gives every sign of non-reading: making puzzled facial expressions, turning the book upside down, maybe even attempting to look through the cover or the edges. The academic expert in the room passionately insisted that this is NOT reading. The other person in the room, a woman of color, equally insisted, "Yes! This IS reading." After interacting with the text, the child smiles broadly, fills with affection, and goes around hugging the other children and kissing their cheeks .
One of the texts I’ve been reading is Ahmad Ghazali’s Sawanih: Inspirations from the World of Pure Spirits. The oldest Persian Sufi treatise on love. It's translated from the Persian with a commentary and notes by Nasrollah Pourjavady. The reading I’ve previously made of love seems to be trying to turn upside down and demands looking through the cover. From section 74, p. 79:
“What a marvelous mirror love is, for both the lover and the beloved—it can be seen in oneself, in the beloved, and in others. [Note: i.e. the creatures.] If love’s jealousy succeeds so that he [the lover] does not behold anything [or anyone] other (than love), then he will not be able to see the perfect beauty of the beloved perfectly except in the mirror of love. This is also true with respect to the perfect needfulness of the lover, and all (other) imperfections and perfections on either side. [i.e. all the imperfections of the lover and the perfections of the beloved.]”
Perhaps there’s a looking in through the cover of the heart that's necessary in order to see the beauty in the manifestations of the outer world.
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