Watering the Seeds of Prayer – Thich Nhat Hanh

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

In prayer you touch
the wholesome seeds
in your consciousness
and water them.

These are seeds of compassion,
love, understanding,
forgiveness and joy.

If while praying
you can recognize
these seeds in you
and help them grow,
your prayer is already
a deep practice.

Prayer is a practice
to help us touch love
and bring it into our lives.

– Thich Nhat Hanh 

Ya Haqq!

Thanksgiving Prayer

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

O Lord, we humbly thank Thee for the bounty of our table, when so many in the world go hungry. And we thank Thee for our family and friends, when so many in the world walk alone.

O God, grant that we who are blessed with good things from Your open hand, may never close our hands and hearts to the hungry, the homeless, and the poor.

Amen! Ameen!

Happy Thanksgiving to all :)

Ya Haqq!

Love Songs to God: 30 Poems of Love and Longing

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Just in time for Holiday gift giving, I have published Love Songs to God: 30 Poems of Love and Longing – a slim volume of poems, and lovely photography by fellow traveler Jim Kosinski to accompany each one . 

These love songs are, of course, Sufi poems, and a few odds and ends formed out of that same Source of all joy. They follow no formal rhyme or metre, except when they do, and have only the path of love as a common theme.

It is available as both a slim Paperback from Amazon for $13.99, and an Ebook from Google Play or Smashwords for $3.99.  

Order the Paperback HERE.

Order the Google Play Ebook HERE.

Order the Smashwords Ebook HERE.

Ya Haqq!

Rumi’s Thanksgiving Poem

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

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.

– Jalaluddin Rumi

Ya Haqq!

“Love ought to change you.”

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“Love ought to change you. If love remains only lip-service you do not really love. If love does not change you from the inside, from your heart and soul, and if it does not fundamentally change your behavior, your words, and even in your non-verbal communication, than you have not even started to love; you would be just a talker.”
— Shaykh Dr. Muhammad bin Yahya al-Husayni al-Ninowy

Ya Haqq!

“Those who don’t feel this love pulling them like a river…”

Those who don’t feel this Love
Pulling them like a river,
Those who don’t drink dawn
Like a cup of spring water,
Or take in sunset like supper,
Those who don’t want to change,
Let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
That old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way,
Sleep on.

I’ve given up on my brain.
I’ve torn the cloth to shreds
And thrown it away.
If you’re not completely naked,
Wrap your beautiful robe of words
Around you,
And sleep…

– Rumi

Wisdom of Hazrat Inayat Khan – Creating Your Own Knowledge

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

The teacher, however great,
can never give his knowledge to the pupil;
the pupil must create his own knowledge.

Truth by its very nature cannot be uttered,
cannot be given.
One cannot give
that which cannot be put into speech.

So the teacher gives a method
for finding the truth, for unfolding it,
for unlocking that which seems to be in one’s heart.

It is clearly impossible for anyone
to impart his knowledge to another person;
he can only show him
how to unfold his own knowledge to himself.

Everybody possesses a kingdom,
but he has to find it.

– Inayat Khan

Ya Haqq!