Category: SUFI Journal
Featured Artist: Hengki Koentjoro
HENGKI KOENTJORO was born in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia, in 1963. He is a graduate of the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California where he majored in film. He now lives in Jakarta where he specializes in fine art photography both underwater and on land. www.koentjoro.com
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Rahmandotcom
In this issue of Sufi, Dani Kopoulos presents an original slant on Love, Passion and Divinity through the ultimate internet dating experience. Dani Kopoulos is a writer and teacher living in New York City. She received her MA in Creative Writing from the New School University in New York and her BA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
(Photo © IStockPhoto.com/NorthLightImages)
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Archives Issue #80
FROM THE EDITORS
THE GENDER ISSUE: ART | POETRY | CULTUREWATCH | BOOK REVIEWS | & more…
From Issue #80 on we have shifted the focus of SUFI to how it could best contribute to raising the spiritual consciousness among people of diverse backgrounds, beliefs and experience, and to introduce more diverse interpretations of the Sufi path and other spiritual disciplines in both a contemporary and historical context. Thus, in this issue our featured articles and narratives present expressions of women’s experience and perspective of the mystical in modern life – an Asian Sufi living in World War Two Europe, an American woman experiencing the mystical dimension on the streets if Istanbul, a Sufi scholar examining gender bias through a foundational Sufi Text, and an interview with a rabbi who overcame religious and gender prejudices to reach her goals.
DISCOURSE, ARTICLES, NARRATIVES AND INTERVIEWS
THE EXPERIENCE OF NOTHINGNESS Discourse by Alireza Nurbakhsh
DAUGHTER OF SUFISM The Passion of Noor Inayat Khan by Yousef Daoud
WRESTLING WITH GOD A Conversation with Rabbi Tirzah Firestone Interview by Llewellyn Smith and Kelly Thomson
FROM HISTORY TO HER STORY Women in Sufi Discourses by Safoura Nourbakhsh
UNDER THE MINARET Narrative by Jan Shoemaker
CULTUREWATCH
Low Budget Mysticism / Spiritual tourism in India by Sholeh Johnston
Revealing the Truth/A Rapper on Rumi by Sholeh Johnston
Community, Nur Foundation Working for the Needs of the Poor-Spain
BOOK REVIEWS by Robert Landau Ames and Eliza Tasbihi
A Soaring Minaret by Laury Silvers
Sacred Spaces, A Journey with the Sufis of the Indus by Semina Quraesh, Ali S. Asani, Carl W. Ernst and Kamil Khan Mumtaz
POETRY
Whoever Becomes Nothing Becomes God by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh
Friend of God by Jeni Couzyn
The Way Under the Way by Mark Nepo
I Was a Fable by Peter Valentyne
FEATURED POET
JENI COUZYN, Poet
FEATURED ARTIST
MINA MOMENI, Photographer ( www.minamomeni.com)
(Front Cover Photo Mina Momeni)
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Featured Poet: Mark Nepo
Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over thirty-five years. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he has published thirteen books and recorded eight audio projects. Recent work includes his next book of spiritual inquiry, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen (Simon & Schuster, with audio book, Fall 2012). www.marknepo.com
THE WAY
UNDER THE WAY
For all that has been written,
for all that has been read, we
are led to this instant where one
of us will speak and one of us will
listen, as if no one has ever placed
an oar into that water.
It doesn’t matter how we come
to this. We may jump to it or be
worn to it. Because of great pain.
Or a sudden raw feeling that this
is all very real. It may happen in a
parking lot when we break the eggs
in the rain. Or watching each other
in our grief.
But here we will come. With very
little left in the way.
When we meet like this, I may not
have the words, so let me say it now:
Nothing compares to the sensation
of being alive in the company of
another. It is God breathing on
the embers of our soul.
(Photo by Jim Kosinski.)
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Under the Minaret
Under the Minaret is a compelling essay about an American woman experiencing the mystical dimension on the streets of Istanbul.
“…my mind wandered again to the woman in the road and I felt the tug of eternity. Was it possible my mother had traveled along? I felt the recognition of it open in me. Under the minarets, below the dome of Hagia Sophia, outside the synagogues tucked behind fortified gates, I’d found but failed to see her in a a stranger’s gaze.” (Photo by Timothy O’Brien.)
(Photo ©Timopthy O’Brien)
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Wrestling with God
A CONVERSATION WITH RABBI TIRZAH FIRESTONE
Interview by Llewellyn Smith and Kelly Thomson
Author, psychotherapist and lecturer, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone is the founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh of Boulder, Colorado. Today her energies are devoted to the re-integration of ancient mystical wisdom into contemporary Jewish life. Her book, The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women’s Wisdom (Harper 2003), gives us stories and teachings of forgotten female sages and mystics from the Jewish traditions. Rabbi Firestone’s interview reveals an intimate account of the honest-to-life God -wrestling throughout her spiritual journey.
(Photo courtesy of Rabbi Tirzah Firestone.)
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Daughter of Sufism
THE PASSION OF NOOR INAYAT KHAN
by Yousef Daoud
Hazrat Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, from an esteemed family lineage in India, has in recent decades merged as one of the most illuminated practitioners of the Sufi path of chivalry (javanmardi in Persian or futuwwa in Arabic). Recognized decades after her death as a Sufi saint, she has been afforded an honor rarely given to Sufis who have not served as a master of a Sufi order. Daughter of Sufism is a biographical account of Noor Inayat Khan’s early life, British Secret Intelligence service and her imprisonment and death in Germany during World War II. (Photo courtesy of International Sufi Order.)
(Photo of Noor Inayat Khan courtesy of Sufi Order International)
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