Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist. — Rabia.
It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then prayer and/or meditation takes you to a different place. Whether you start in a church pew, a comfortable chair, or during a walk in the woods, you are transported to a special place of no names, no walls, and only you and a Godlike presence are there. They are magical moments.
Rabia explains that there is also a place we can visit where there are no walls or names. She says, “In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church that dissolve, that dissolve in God.”
“When’s the last time you visited there?” I ask myself. There have been times. On a beach walk, a stroll in the park near my home, once on a set of bleachers near the Cumberland Gap — distant memories.
Rabia’s words remind me to travel again to that place, “where ecstasy gets poured into itself.”
Webb,
Getting caught up with email, and your post about Rabia woke me up She is considered the first female Sufi saint, was born in Basra in current day Iraq in about 700 CE. The first poem of her I read had a huge impact on me, and follows:
If I adore You out of fear of Hell,
Burn me in Hell!
If I adore you out of desire for Paradise,
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore you for Yourself alone,
Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.
Love,tom
Thank you Tom. The Pew really appreciates your Sufi wisdom. W.