The mystery of permanence

 We're here, strangers on this isle, exiles, if that's what you want to say, to dress it up. There's nothing much to hold on to now, maybe there never was. Some re-runs, fading photos, music and old haunts.There is only love at the end of the day. But it finds its objects, and the ordinary things around us can be sharp reflections, if we're attentive.

What is this dream of the Garden, of  green shade and rest, tranquility and peace? When we know each person by the light that falls on their faces, their soft words? Our hands, the self-revealing gestures of the soul. Even if all that is a myth, then it is a beautiful, eternal one. There is no journey to speak of without the magnetic pull of beauty, truth, love, friendship....

The Qur'anic verse (from memory): "We tasted a fruit like this before"

And why shouldn't that be the case? If something attracts us now is it because it once existed..and if it once existed, then it will again. Memory is what binds us. The remembrance of things past..this is one of the most frequent questions asked of us: "Do you not remember..."

The world is a bridge, a ladder. You doubt whether Islam has ever been about denying desires-only purifying them (incidentally, you were told by an expert that in the Russian iconic tradition it is also about subduing (not necessarily "killing") the snake). There's always been something Greek about Islam: balance, equilibrium, proportionality. The city and the desert...

Time is not redeemable. I've never believed that and hope I never will.

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The first comment after this video:

'Beautiful. It's the school holidays again late 60's- early 70's. Everything is fine, life is great. I'll go out and play when this is done. Be back at night time. Christ please take me back'

I'm reminded of Exupery and the freed slave (Bark): 

'He was free but in an infinite way, so that he felt weightless above the earth. He lacked that weight of human relationships that inhibits free movements, those tears and farewells, those reproaches and those joys, everything that a man strokes or tears apart every time he forms a gesture, those thousand chains that bind him to others and make him heavy.'

There is a kind of Gnostic/Puritan/fundamentalist tendency to think of the world as somehow a distraction, something to be denied, in case we fix our gaze on it too intently. Well, of course, 'worldliness' and a crass materialism is always a possibility. But, as Denise writes: the world is not with us enough!' There is a different kind of sufism, one that gratefully acknowledges and gives thanks for the good things in this world (as the traditional muslim prayer recognizes).

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This great tree outside my house glows darkly in the late flaring of summer light. Here we are, caught in this eternal chain, of light and shade, between past and future, the song of joy and sorrow (as another Mir said) always with us. Here we are, holding out for some kind of permanence, as life flashes by and distances are eclipsed. I sometimes think all we will be known for, ultimately, is the quality of our attachments. 

The Allama: Yes! to life, to dear life.

By chance, or whatever you want to call it, you stumble across this in today's Guardian:

'What I wanted was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every pothole, delusion..held still and held together-radiant, everlasting."

Every last thing. I like that immensely.

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I'm nearly out of time here. Probably always have been...