Place for magic | Friends of Silence

Bayo Akomolafe

...A world where everything is moored to logic, to power, to syntax and plot and scheme and expectation and meaning, leaves no place for magic, for the inextricability and beauty of a glimpsed sunset.

~ Bayo Akomolafe in THESE WILDS BEYOND OUR FENCES: LETTERS TO MY DAUGHTER ON HUMANITY'S SEARCH FOR HOME

THESE WILDS BEYOND OUR FENCES: LETTERS TO MY DAUGHTER ON HUMANITY'S SEARCH FOR HOME

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At the mystical heart of each of the Abrahamic faiths lie teachings about the transformational power of fire and the identification of the Holy One with light. In Judaism, the Shekinah—the indwelling feminine presence of God—took the form of a pillar of fire at night to lead the Israelites through the desert. In the Christian tradition, God revealed Himself (sometimes as Herself) to the 12th century visionary, Hildegard of Bingen, as The Living Light. In the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, Christ says that he is "the light that is above them all." In Sufi teaching the highest spiritual state is fana, the annihilation of the separate self in the fire of Divine Love, so that lover and Beloved become One Love.... May we let ourselves down into the arms of fire and allow it to melt the armor of our hearts. The excruciating fire of our loneliness and our fear of intimacy. The sweet fire of our longing for union with the Beloved. The purifying fire of radical unknowingness, which all the great mystics assure us is the beginning of knowing God.

~ Mirabai Starr from the essay "Lighting the Darkness" on THE INTERFAITH OBSERVER (digital publication)