Love in Falling

A gray, drizzly sort of day, soft falling of yellow-brown leaves; perfect—perhaps—for drifting together tumbleweed thoughts, mellowed reflections, wonderments that’ve been just hanging on, waiting to be gathered together, especially these: 

      the persistent call “die-before-you-die; 

        also, the hard discernment between false self and true self;

          and reflections on dreams that wander, searching the way home. 

   Life’s journey has sifted through the hourglass of truth: being mesmerized and then unmasking teachers, preachers, prophets… Richard Rohr’s meditation this week focused on “the prophetic task of integrating our individual and collective memories.”

 

 “It takes a prophet of sorts, one who sees clearly, one who has traveled the highway before, one who remembers everything, to guide us beyond our blocked, selective, and partial remembering…

   Memory is very often the key to understanding. Memory integrates, reconciles, and puts the individual members into perspective as a part of the whole. For us to recognize what God is doing and therefore who God is, we must pray like Paul “that your love may more and more abound, both in understanding and wealth of experience” (Philippians 1:9).

   Our remembrance that God has remembered us will be the highway into the future, the straight path of the Lord promised by John the Baptizer [see Luke 3:3–6]. Where there is no memory, there will be no pain, but neither will there be hope. Memory is the basis of both the pain and the rejoicing. We need to re-member both of them; it seems that we cannot have one without the other. Do not be too quick to “heal all of those memories,” unless that means also feeling them deeply and taking them all into our salvation history. God seems to be calling us to suffer the whole of reality, to remember the good along with the bad. Perhaps that is the course of the journey toward new sight and new hope. Memory creates a readiness for salvation, an emptiness to receive love, and a fullness to enjoy it."

   Recall Rilke’s poignant image of circles around the ancient tower. Deep breath for not knowing which spiral will be the last. 

“I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.”   

   Finding a spiritual guide seems essential—but also to let go, falling like these autumn leaves through bewilderment…suffering…unknowing… This is so eloquently expressed by Saint Teresa of Avila in “Interior Castle.”

I have sometimes been terribly oppressed by this turmoil of thoughts and it is only just over four years ago that I came to understand by experience that thought (or, to put it more clearly, imagination) is not the same thing as understanding. I asked a learned man about this and he said I was right, which gave me no small satisfaction. For, as the understanding is one of the faculties of the soul, I found it very hard to see why it was sometimes so timid; whereas thoughts, as a rule, fly so fast that only God can restrain them; which He does by uniting us in such a way that we seem in some sense to be loosed from this body. It exasperated me to see the faculties of the soul, as I thought, occupied with God and recollected in Him, and the thought, on the other hand, confused and excited. 

O Lord, do Thou remember how much we have to suffer on this road through lack of knowledge! The worst of it is that, as we do not realize we need to know more when we think about Thee, we cannot ask those who know; indeed we have not even any idea what there is for us to ask them. So we suffer terrible trials because we do not understand ourselves; and we worry over what is not bad at all, but good, and think it very wrong. Hence proceed the afflictions of many people who practise prayer, and their complaints of interior trials—especially if they are unlearned people—so that they become melancholy, and their health declines, and they even abandon prayer altogether, because they fail to realize that there is an interior world close at hand. Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures and from this suffering winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come from the fact that we do not understand ourselves.  [Saint Teresa of Avila. Interior Castle (Dover Thrift Editions) (pp. 49-50). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition]

   Sometimes after benefiting from external guides, the journey moves into exploring the authority of deep personal experience, particularly times of suffering; but/and then this too has to be let go.

“The experience of God’s love must make room for God alone.

   For that experience is not God and erects a screen between the soul and God’s naked Presence. The last traces of the ‘witness,’ the ‘spectator,’ the self-referential human ‘I’ are now dying, being annihilated and utterly transformed, in order for the splendour of the resurrected and transfigured Christ and the glory of His Light and Divine Love to be revealed.” [p. 257, McLean's Towards Mystical Union]

   As just illustrated, this week’s guidance has come from reading Julienne McLean’s Towards Mystical Union, “a modern commentary on the mystical text ‘The Interior Castle’ by St Teresa of Avila” and in reading directly from St. Teresa’s “Interior Castle”... and from the glory of autumn.

   Some experiences best age in memory…reflected upon. Tempered.  Re membered

In Memoriam. Daniel Alan VanderWerf Stanaland

Daniel, Seattle ferry, February 2020

In Memoriam. Daniel Alan VanderWerf Stanaland. July 1, 1982 - January 29, 2023

     Daniel made his transition from his home in Seattle after complications related to a variety of health issues. Arrangements for burial have been made with The Meadow Natural Burial Ground, Ferndale, WA.

Photo from Meadows website

     Many wonderful memories remain especially related to Daniel’s lifelong explorations in cyberspace and his adventurous engagements with computers. Following graduation from James Madison University in 2005 with a degree in computer science, Daniel was employed as a computer engineer with positions in Rockville, MD, Winchester, VA, and Seattle, WA. On a recent resume, he self-described as: “Generalist IT Engineer adept in a wide variety of subfields, including test engineering, networking, technical writing, troubleshooting, and programming. Career expertise includes tiger team specialization, large-scale system integration, and IV&V.”  

     In addition to his professional career, Daniel generously offered family and friends cutting-edge advice related to computer issues. He usually provided immediate solutions to teeth-gnashing problems for the less tech-savvy; and in the rare occasions that needed further trouble-shooting, he became a jedi on a mission. He’s going to be sorely missed.

Daniel and Mom in Seattle, February 2020

Midwinter Knows

It might be just the time to trod over the sodden leaf bed, attending to the fallen giants—to this stillness when so much seems asleep as if lifeless, still to sense the eternal presence that holds together, knowing only by heart the year-round spring blush, the summer lost-in-love, and always autumn’s passion, winter-truth.

Like the deep secret to human wholeness, holiness, plumbs center-wise, passing space/time to pre-eternity, remembering that profession of Trust. The poet's Tavern, drunken on unimaginable majesty, calls even for the subject looking foolish, risking too much, like these wood-kings apparently bared of their royal robes.

Yet protected in the deepest roots, a spark, never-to-be extinguished, the heart of Love flows from the Source, always returning.

Inarticulate Luminous

     Often, if not always, the Path to the Divine appears, at best, only as the body’s weight suspends over the abyss and then, when almost falling, the invisible manifests again, supporting the now-present. A luminous step glimmers, almost immediately disappearing, necessitating moving on. Ibn ‘Arabi, so confusing yet comforting: “Thus it is established that motion belongs to love, for there is no motion in being that is not that of love” (p. 262, Ibn Al-‘Arabi: The Ringstones of Wisdom, Trans. Caner K. Dagli). Courage to continue on, even faced with fear of falling, then may be summoned, founded in the promise of “following the footsteps” of the prophet or priest, Lord of both worlds, even when such tracks shimmer in wonder more than in familiar forms that are touchable with this world’s eyes or fingers.

     The person who moves this way, more likely than not, gets seen as “mad” (Majnun) or love-sick. Indeed, the best hint of being on-track frequently comes in the texture of longing and/or of bewilderment; for the Divine surpasses the human. Direction comes in the tones of love; the way includes going via the imaginal world and seems best expressed in the play of poetry. This almost maddening dynamic is wonderfully explored in Michael Sells’ The Translator of Desires, his translation and commentary on Ibn ‘Arabi’s poetry. The endless pursuit of the beloved offers expression for how

“… the divine persona manifests itself in the polished mirror of the heart. Because God or ‘the Real’ is infinite, beyond space and time, its manifestation in space and time lasts only for a moment. In every new moment the manifestation changes. Whoever attempts to hold onto the image locks himself into the dead husk of that manifestation and precludes himself from receiving new manifestations of the divine. The goal is to let go of the previous image in order to be receptive to the divine appearance the next moment within the polished mirror of the heart.” (p. xxvii)

5:11 AM

5:53 AM

  

     Like the traveller on the desert sands, endurance includes seeing the oasis dissolve as mirage; still trusting instead the camel’s scent of water. Body leads the mind. Knowing through the polished heart surpasses hard reason. So it is the beloved mediates the inarticulable between: on one side the experience of human love, on the other Divine. The known and the unknowable. 

(A screensaver appeared while drafting this material.)

     Ibn ‘Arabi elaborates on Moses as a guide finding the way. “The station of Moses… could only be possessed by one who had separated realized knowledge from imagination and illusion” (p. 271, Ringstones). In the Preface, Dagli comments on separation but not severance of knowledge from imagination: 

“Indeed, one of the themes of the Fusus is the limitation of the conceptual intelligence in imposing its vision upon the imagination. The former seeks out transcendence and aims to reduce multiplicity to a far-reaching conceptual oneness, whereas the latter perceives and understands the world as a concrete multiplicity of forms and images; it is a vehicle for perceiving the immanence and presence of God. To acknowledge one to the exclusion of the other is to sever man from part of himself.” (p. xi)

      Holding the tension of the unity alongside this multiplicity allows the “one way” to paradoxically coexist with the integrity of unique authentic pathways for each created being. Crucial to this mystery is the capacity to penetrate through to the essence which is the source and life of each moment of creation. 

     The Ringstone of Moses elaborates on this with discussion of Moses’ birth mother as providing the breast milk even after he had been placed in Pharaoh’s household. 

“Then God forbade him to be suckled by any wet nurse, so that he could receive the breast of his mother…It is the same for the Laws’ knowledge. Recall that God has said, For each of you we have appointed a law and a way (Q 5:48), that is, a path. As for ‘way,’ this means that it ‘came from’ that path. These words indicate the principle from whence it came. It is the source of nourishment… the affair is a new creation without repetition. (pp. 258-9, Ringstones).

     Engaging with Ibn ‘Arabi often makes my head swim, but reassurance also comes from his text: 

“Now, guidance is that man should be guided to bewilderment, and know that the affair is bewilderment and that bewilderment is unrest and motion, and that motion is life, without stillness and so without death, and is existence without non-existence.”  In note 14 to this passage, Dagli adds 

“… There is no end to the self-disclosure of God, and no matter how far one journeys through the light the never-ending expressions of the Real will always have the power to maintain the sojourner in his state of lucid drunkenness.” (pp. 256-7, Ringstones)

Mysticism and Nature's Manifestations

Perhaps the impetus to return to Annemarie Schimmel’s Mystical Dimensions of Islam came via someone posting a best-books on mysticism. Thanks to that person who gave the assist because Schimmel's book is heavy, imposing with its 500 pages and extensive footnotes. Her scholarship enriches every page, and this demands/invites careful reading—but well worth the investment. The depth of expertise provides guidance through the writings and the lives of so many seekers of truth. Facing this impressive work, it would be easy to take a passive stance; but instead Schimmel calls for active engagement to quest into the divine:

“In interpreting Islamic mystical texts, one must not forget that many sayings to which we give a deep theological or philosophical meaning may have been intended to be suggestive wordplay; some of the definitions found in the classical texts may have been uttered by the Sufi masters as a sort of ko’an, a paradox meant to shock the hearer, to kindle discussion, to perplex the logical faculties, and thus to engender a nonlogical understanding of the real meaning of the word concerned, or of the mystical ‘state’ or ‘stage’ in question. The resolution of apparent contradictions in some of these sayings might be found, then, in an act of illumination.” (pp. 12-13; cf Sells’ Mystical Languages of Unsaying)

Among the definitions of Sufism, Schimmel includes a gem from Rumi: “‘What is Sufism?’ He said: ‘To find joy in the heart when grief comes’ (Mathnawi 3:3261).” [p. 17; Nicholson translates “sorrow” in place of “grief” and references Q 57:23.] 

One of the precious gifts of reading this book involves a deepened impression of the interconnection between approaching the Divine and participating in the praise of creation. For example, writing about Dhu’n-Nun (d. 859) and early Sufi mystics, Schimmel translates: 

“O God, I never hearken to the voices of the beasts or the rustle of the trees, the splashing of the waters or the song of the birds, the whistling of the wind or the rumble of the thunder, but I sense in them a testimony of Thy Unity, and a proof of Thy incomparability, that Thou art the All-Prevailing, the All-Knowing, the All-True”  (p. 46)

These meditations resonate with the tonalities vibrating from walking amid gardens and woodlands, open to photographic compositions, to close-up revelation of intricate design, to graceful flitting in of butterflies or falling leaves, and to the comforting remembrance

Screensaver appearing alongside the draft as this was written.

as treasured savings float onto the screen.

Screensaver appearing alongside the draft as this was written.

This participation in nature's manifestation, too, may be offered and realized as praise, as prayer, as presence.

How many times was I tempted by Schimmel’s accounts of the mystics when she referenced their texts to take up one of those books from a shelf? A stack of them soon built up alongside my desk [see photo at top].  Now having completed Mystical Dimensions, should the next reading be another of Schimmel’s or Franklin Lewis’ much-praised Rumi or one of Lewisohn…?

Although I hope to engage each of those texts, it’s another she discussed that’s now bringing light: Sir Muhammad Iqbal's Javid-Nama (translated by Arberry). For example, 

“… when yearning makes assault upon a world

it transforms momentary beings into immortals,” [p. 94, lines 2221-2222]

“Wherever you see a world of color and scent

out of whose soil springs the plant of desire

is either already illumined by the light of the Chosen One

or is still seeking for the Chosen One.”   [p. 98, lines 2331-2334]

The Long and the Short of It All: God Is—

Everywhere. 

Diffused in radiance from here to the far beyond. 

In the so-short-lived blooms and no less in the scattered petals.

In the middle of the night before last, calling off sleep, flooding with invisible light and in too many soundless songs playing.

And that's all right. 

     Some questions have been asked many times and prayers sent up. To the Almighty: why the suffering? the injustice? And how can the promised Beloved be known more intimately? 

     Might the answer come in dreams and then spinning free-association fragments of lines read, keeping me awake? It seems best to give gratitude, not grumpiness. Sleep can be deferred, somewhat like the way mystics sacrificed, a hint like ascetics went without. These visitations just might be what the searcher of spirit, of heart and soul longs for.

 

From my personal library of a few hundred books related to mysticism, I've been reading recently in a few: especially Rkia Cornell’s provocative Rabi’a: From Narrative to Myth, Coleman Barks’ Hummingbird Sleep, and Helminski/Blaylock’s Rumi and His Friends.

Looking back over a dozen or so previous blog entries: A mystic, simply put, is someone tenuously claiming personal experience of the Divine. 

 As noted in another previous blog, one of my favorite texts engaging the great mystery surrounding this is Michael Sells’ Mystical Languages of Unsaying. 

As Sells' title indicates, the numinous presence eludes definition yet gives off just enough scent and/or taste to guide the next half-step, the leaning into. 

     The most poignant touch of this right now, for me, rises from continued remembrance of my soul brother so recently passing over, now whispering from the other shore in secret code that he promised in our long night before his going. Just a few years ago, like yesterday, he was playing this song:

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_xDWaR407ytRkXdTr6Edu4hvTTvs2NYg/view?usp=sharing

Putting my photos with John Amin’s playing and reflecting in the midnight hours led to these reflections:

Around three a.m. semi-waking from a dream

about a subtle way of teaching, intent on

the other. Trust. All about the mystic.

Through Van Morrison’s hymn, my brother 

John Amin evokes the calling, like the foghorn warns

or summons to the shore. Both of them.

The mystical living/dying. Midnight hours

in meditations say "Stay in the fire. Don't run

from transformation. Trust the One. Burn

through fear, set free desire to know too much.

Find Coleman’s fireflies and under stones, the guard

rails to innocence, to God, inside and out.

Going home Mystic firefly highway love song

Because while trying to hold impossibles we're

slipping away too. After all detaching is

the gypsy soul, butterfly wings lift fireflies.

So don't hold too tight. Love and let go–

But trust the faint spirits flickering at midnight

Guardian angels if faith tells true Visitors

Cross and carry bridge Unite. Believe in

Midnight sight

The mystic highway…

The subtle teaching. It's Sufi walking. Gift

Of the inner Divine

In Memoriam: Amin John David Whalen

In Memoriam: Amin John David Whalen. July 19, 1955 - July 31, 2022.

Don't look to me--or anyone else--for making sense of death or suffering. Despite reading a dozen or so books on Job, this ongoing revelation steeps with mystery, a holy wholly-personal transmission, respectful of each individual's indwelling Divine secret, carried by the Holy Spirit in sacred conversation, capable of building the space and time to transcend mortality.

     These reflections of mine emerged somewhere in the past week, following all-night vigils, administering pain-reduction medications and softly restraining my soul brother Amin John David Whalen from trying to get free from the hospital-style bed, as his longing heightened for the further shore. In these closing days of his time in this world, as the everyday grasp of reality was slipping through our clasped hands, we meditated on bewilderment, that frustrating theme so often poignant on the path, perhaps one of the best markers of the Way. 

     In the final week of his sojourn here, I was keenly reminded of his sharp intellect, his delightful sense of humor, and his bridging into the mystical dimension. One night, I was reading aloud from Rumi, sometimes comparing Coleman Barks’ version in The Glance with the more literal translations of Nevit Ergin from Divan-i Kebir, Meter 3. One poem that we treasured goes: 

“O friend, even the word ‘friend’

Doesn’t fit between us.

If I try to say, O Beloved,

I am unable to say ‘O Beloved.’

Even ‘Ah,’ goes back to the place

From which it comes.

I closed the road to my mouth,

I can’t wail…” 

(p. 174 in Ergin; cf p. 9 in Barks)

One of the other poems we read included the term “ambergris” and I mumbled trying to recall its meaning. Amin managed to whisper “sperm whale,” somehow pulling up the knowledge that ambergris is produced in the digestive system of sperm whales. While I'd been wondering if he was attending at all to the words, he was typically (and to borrow a phrase noted by another of his life-long friends) "ahead of the curve." Amin was dedicated to creating ways to make the world more meaningful.

Another special and world-bridging moment in these final days came in the middle of a night. In one of our final attempts to use words, I managed to figure out that his frustrating attempt to articulate with his partially paralyzed tongue wanted to convey the word “code." He seemed especially pleased when I guessed Morse code, perhaps finally clueing in to his fingers tapping on my arm. 

     But why bring that up? I'm still open to further revelation, yet my working notion is that he wanted to convey that communication no longer need be limited to our normal ways of connecting. Perhaps our experiences over the 35 years of friendship, many of them engaging the liminal edge, often coming through our mutual love of the mythic, the mystic, poetic, the spiritual was opening to more. . . I'm reassured of continuing connection with my partner as coming to mind is Jesus comforting his friends shortly before leaving this physical plane: "and behold I am with you always."

     Amin and I were often recommending readings to each other. As his medical prognosis turned more critical, I’d picked up Ghazali’s writing on The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife and gave a copy to Amin. While neither of us completed the book, we connected on passages such as: “As for the gnostic, he remembers death constantly, because for him it is the tryst with his Beloved…” (p. 8 ). Amin also pointed us to a text found at the back of The Study Qur’an by Hamza Yusuf on “Death, Dying, and the Afterlife in the Qur’an.” It includes this:

“In the Quran, the Arabs’ denial of the resurrection of the dead is addressed and refuted in several simple yet engaging metaphors. It declares repeatedly that all things in this world have been made in pairs, of which the duality of life and death is a central one, highlighted in sundry verses. Coupled with life and death is the other essential pairing of this world (dunyā) with the Afterlife (ākhirah), a pairing whose sign, the Quran declares, should be discerned alongside Heaven and earth, both of which are commonly repeated motifs in the scripture. Given that all things in this world are created in paired opposites, it would follow that this world also has its opposite, which is the next world. Furthermore, as this world is temporal, its opposite is logically speaking eternal.”   

[Hamza Yusuf, “Death, Dying, and the Afterlife in the Qur’an,” In The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, Nasr, Seyyed Hossein; Dagli, Caner K.; Dakake, Maria Massi; Lumbard, Joseph E.B.; Rustom, Mohammed. (p. 1820). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.]

     So much of spiritual guidance flows from the gift of Remembrance. I remember sweet moments (along with some not so sweet) in company with Mr. Whalen and our mates on the back porch, near the ocean, near Abiqui . . wherever we were. . . but especially when near natural beauty like the earth that Amin so passionately defended and proactively collaborated in order to forge more eco-friendly consciousness and action.  Remembering one special time takes us back to 2016 to Chincoteague with music composed and performed by Mr. Whalen.

     Another collection of wonderful memories are from a trip in 2018 to their New Mexico place near Abiqui. 

Not long before their move to Ireland, John sent me a video he made called Dreaming Donegal. I'll continue trying to provide access for you to listen and view it. Meanwhile, continue remembrance. . .