THE JOURNEY IS THE DESTINATION
I never decided to study metaphysics. It has been a daily part of my life for as long as I can remember, I never chose to pursue it. But my father, born in Charleston at the end of Summer and the Great Depression in 1940, who went on to earn a Masters in Divinity and a Doctorate in Theology studying under W.A. Criswell, pastor at First Baptist Dallas spoke Hebrew and Greek at the dinner table, and despite my objections made sure I spent two years studying Latin at a private Catholic school for boys. In fact, such a gifted interpreter of scripture was my father that at one time or another during my childhood, he presided over a statewide convention of Southern Baptists numbering in the hundreds of thousands. People wanted to hear what he had to say. Always. But I grew fond of paying close attention to the way he said it.
As a boy, I liked to think I’d caught on to the game my father made of language and storytelling as tools for learning. A gifted teacher, his wit and humor cut straight through political and social red tape. The jokes he told were quite often offensive or crude. And to complicate matters further, I recall him saying hundreds of times; “If you say there are no absolutes you’ve made an absolute statement,” and another favorite, “In matters of taste, there’s no need quarreling.” He dealt in ideas and modes of thought which were by no means commonplace. And It surprised our community, I mean it really did, when he sent me to a Catholic school. It was a big deal. I was asked each weekend for at least a few years by parents and kids alike why he’d send me to a Catholic school. All I knew was I felt lost and alone. I was bullied by bigger kids and ignored by my entire class because they’d never met me. Those were guys who lived across the river who’d grown up together and had pretty well defined circles. I didn’t fit in.
Sometime in my late twenties, with my father in his study, I was rummaging through the stacks of his library and came upon an old copy of The Qur’an. When I asked how it had come to be in his collection, he explained it had belonged to my Uncle Bill, indicating the familiar handmade ‘Ex Libris’ tag in the front which bore his exquisite calligraphy. Standing there, with it open in my hands for the first time, I remembered seeing it in Bill’s library as a boy. I even remembered the way it smelled.
Bill Mabry was an author and poet. The kind of teacher who didn’t have to speak much, he was, in fact, exquisitely soft-spoken. An artist, his calligraphy was widely known and highly valued in our community, as was his stained glass. Our home was filled with Bill’s work. I remember knowing scores of times as a child that Bill was off on a journey somewhere to live and work with people he’d never met. I now know he was out looking for inspiration and insight well beyond the boundaries of any sort of canonical religious texts. Bill journeyed into the heart of traditions I’d always thought were out of bounds. This intrigued me. Dad let me know he was sure Bill would want me to have his Qur’an.
One Thing Leads to Another
I consider the following story to be a treasure of the highest value in every sense. How I came to it owes much to men like my father and his closest friends. A find so significant it altered the course of my life in ways only the future can reveal, here is an ancient story which traces its origins through the whole of human religious thought. Its narrator, Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi, who spoke his work aloud to his scribe, Husam al-Din Chalabi c. 1250 in Konya, Turkey, uses the framework of Islam to anchor its threads as he weaves. But from what I know of Rumi, I can hear him teasing Husam, almost like he’s inside the story, with the idea that their sacred faith tradition, all but dictated to them by geography and the times in which they lived, is nothing but a post on which to hang a garment or a wet towel. After all, Rumi comes from the crossroads of Buddhism and Christianity as much as from Islam. His Afghan heritage is rife with Buddhist teachings, and anyone who reads his Mathnawi is well aware he was a follower of Christ. Today I fancy my father, a Southern Baptist Minister of some thirty years, hiding copies of the Qur’an and other extant apocryphal texts in his library as such treasures for me to find, and always at a time when I was ready and able to receive them.
The Gazelle
A hunter captures a gazelle
and puts it in the stable
with the cows and donkeys.
The gazelle runs about wild with fear and confusion.
Every night the man pours out chopped-up straw
for the barn animals.
They love it, but the gazelle can’t eat it
She shies away nervously to pace
from side to side in the big stall,
trying to get away from the smokey dust
of the straw and the animals milling to eat it.
Whoever has been left for a time
with those who are different
will know how forsaken
this gazelle feels.
Solomon loved the company of the hoopoe.
“Unless she has a valid excuse to be absent,
I will punish her for not being here
with the worst punishment there is.”
And what might that be?
What the gazelle is going through:
to be confined somewhere
apart from your own kind.
The soul is that way in the body,
a royal falcon put in with crows.
It sits here and endures what it must,
like a great saint, like an Abu Bakr,
in the city of Sabzawar.
Once the great King Muhammed Khwarizm
beseiged Sabzawar. They gave up easily.
“Whatever you require as tribute we will give.”
”Bring me a holy person,
someone who lives united with God,
or I will harvest your inhabitants like corn.”
They brought sacks of gold.
They knew no one in Sabzawar lived in that state.
“Do you think I am still a child
that I should be fascinated with coins?”
For three days and nights
they called through the town
looking for an Abu Bakr.
Finally, they saw a traveler
lying in a ruined corner of a wall,
sick and exhausted.
Immediately, they recognized a True Person.
“Get up! The king wants to see you.
You can save our lives!”
“I'm not supposed to be here.
If I could walk, I would already have arrived
in the city where my friends are.”
They lifted him above their heads on a board
like corpses are carried on
and bore him to the king.
Sabzawar is this world,
where a True Person wastes away,
apparently worthless,
yet all the king wants from Sabzawar
is such a one.
Nothing else will do.
Muhammad says:
“God does not look at outward forms,
but at the love within your love.”
The Qalb, the inner heart,
that space in which seven hundred universes
are just a lost speck,
we're looking for that in the small,
seedy town of Sabzawar!
And sometimes we find it.
One who has that love is a six-sided mirror
through which God can look at us, here.
The gifts come through such a one.
His palm opens without conditions.
That union cannot be said.
I leave this subject with you.
Wealthy people bring money.
God says:
“Bring devotion to one
whose loving mixes with mine.”
That love is what God wants.
That love is a mother and a father to us
and is the origin of every creature.
Adapted from Persian by Coleman Barks