Thanks Giving 2009

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Thanksgiving is almost here in the US, and with Eid al-Adha the next day it will soon be a time of giving thanks, of gratitude to the Creator. Before every meal, Sufis say “Bismillah!” This is their way of saying Grace, of being grateful. Yet every human being who follows a spiritual path has their own way of being gracious, whose origin is Grace; the giving of thanks to God.

Thanksgiving is sweeter than bounty itself.

One who cherishes gratitude does not cling to the gift!

Thanksgiving is the true meat of God’s bounty;

The bounty is its shell,

For thanksgiving carries you to the hearth of the Beloved.

Abundance alone brings heedlessness,

Thanksgiving gives birth to alertness.

The bounty of thanksgiving will satisfy and elevate you,

And you will bestow a hundred bounties in return.

Eat your fill of God’s delicacies,

And you will be freed from hunger and begging.

- Rumi

“With mealtime prayer we offer thanksgiving to the Source of all sustenance. Prayer is a means by which the reins of hunger and the senses are taken by the spirit and intellect. The offering of a mealtime blessing elevates eating from a mechanical activity to conscious participation in the chain of being. It is an acknowledgment of the fact that in eating any organism, we are sharing in the sacrifice it has made to sustain us.”

Gratitude is an eagle, blessings a fine plump partridge
only gratitude wins the reward of blessing.
Give thanks to Him alone who buys
your words in the bazaar of Paradise.

- Nasir-i Khusraw

Excerpt from Serving the Guest – A Sufi Cookbook

Ya Haqq!

 

 

Merton Poetry of the Sacred Prize 2009

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

 

The 2009 Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred is accepting poems through December 31^st.  Information and submission guidelines are on the Merton Institute website HERE.

  

I know many of you are wonderful spiritual poets, so go to the site and enter. The judge this year will be acclaimed poet Wendell Berry.

 

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that you have belonged to.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

–Wendell Berry, (from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997)

Ya Haqq!