Joined at the Heart

“Sufism and Christianity are joined at the heart—perhaps literally, and certainly spiritually and symbolically. They are kindred pathways of transfiguration through love. Both traditions picture the spiritual journey with the same core metaphor: as a cosmic love song that begins in exile and ends in divine intimacy. From the soul-wrenching cry of Rumi’s reed flute to the profound theological metaphors of Teresa of Avila’s interior mansions and Julian of Norwich’s hazelnut; from The Conference of the Birds to The Cloud of Unknowing, both traditions acknowledge the anguish of separation while radiating the assurance of ecstatic reunion when that which had been misperceived as two is recognized as sublimely One.

As my own teacher, Father Thomas Keating, puts it: “The notion that God is absent is the fundamental illusion of the human condition.” Prayer is the pathway toward exposing that illusion and is itself a direct gateway into what another of my esteemed Sufi mentors, Kabir Helminski, calls “the great electro-magnetic field of love.” In the teachings of the Christian East on Prayer of the Heart and in the foundational Sufi practice of dhikr, the ecstatic devotion arising out of the fully-embodied recitation of the names of God, we find a common pathway of prayer that overcomes egoic selfishness and drama and ultimately catapults us into the blue of the flame of pure self-oblation, where miraculously we are not destroyed but rather birthed into true personhood.

With the understated simplicity of a true spiritual master, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee seamlessly weaves these complementary traditions into a single tapestry of singular power and beauty. Pay particular attention to the things he has to say about breath; if you find them as astonishing as I did, you will sense yet again what gifts Sufism may have to offer to a Christianity struggling to reawaken to its ancient understandings of the crucial role of embodiment in prayer. A renewed appreciation for embodiment, particularly as carried in the breath, the missing link that releases us from those endless tedious discussions about whether prayer (understood as verbal petition) “works” and instead plunges us into the dynamic ground of that “great electro-magnetic field,” where our absence has been noticed and is sorely missed…
They have been feasting by those same Sufi streams, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee offers a nearly identical image in one of his earliest books, The Bond with The Beloved (1993):

“As we silently work upon ourselves, the energy of our devotion becomes a point of light within the world. At the present time a map is being unfolded made of the lights of the lovers of God. The purpose of this map is to change the inner energy structure of the planet. In previous ages this energy structure was held by sacred places, stone circles, temples, and cathedrals. In the next stage of our collective evolution it is the hearts of individuals who will hold the cosmic note of the planet. This note can be recognized as a song of joy being born within the hearts of seekers. It is a quality of joy that is being infused into the world. It is the heartbeat of the world and needs to be heard in our cities and towns.”

With this most recent book, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee offers yet another profound contribution to the “collective evolution of our hearts,” and it is with joy, indeed, that I receive it.

~ The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Eagle Island, Maine, September 2011