Thy Kingdom Come!
Mysticism and Islam
I have been reading the chapter on Sufism in Aslan's book, and it is rather striking that there exists a mystical strain within Islam, which seems in many ways so out of sync with the rest of the religion. It is interesting to compare the role of mysticism in Islam and Christianity. It seems that mysticism in Islam has flourished, but always in tension with the basic beliefs and authority structures of the religion. Christian mysticism takes various forms, but the ones which endure and are most fruitful are exemplified in mystics such as St. Catherine, St. Teresa, or St. John of the Cross, all of whom, despite their mystical experiences, had a high regard for the public and external character of revelation and the Church's teaching authority.
This does not mean that there are not forms of false mysticism, even in Christian circles, which lead people away from the truths of revelation; I believe it was an Anglican who quipped that mysticism "begins in mist, centers in 'I', and ends in schism." However, Christian mysticism at its best is in harmony with the tradition of the Church, while it at least seems as though Sufism has never been completely at home with Muslim orthodoxy. Perhaps this has in part to do with the differing approaches to God that flow from Trinitarian and Incarnational faith, on one hand, and a radically monotheistic, iconoclastic faith on the other.
Thy Kingdom Come!
First, a matter of business. I don't know if anyone else has yet scheduled the date of their presentation to the class. I would like to take 20-30 minutes on April 23 to present my material.
The second chapter of Beirut Blues makes reference to a hostage situation in which the narrator's correspondent has a friend involved. The narrator says that she has thought about the hostages, but that ultimately everyone forgets about such things and reverts to thinking about their own problems. "What can I do about the forgetting, the acceptance bred of repetition and habit, the thinking which leaps barriers and leads us inevitably back to ourselves?" (p.32)
The narrator then takes the situation of the hostages as an illustration of what her own life is like. "In short, I'm a hostage just like your friend, lover, fiance. What does it mean to be kidnapped? Being separated forcibly from your environment, family, friends, home, bed. So in some strange way I can persuade myself I'm worse off than them." (p. 34) The narrator feels she has been abducted, because while she is in her own city, she doesn't recognize it. She feels isolated, in a "bubble" in the midst of a once-familiar place, only occasionally running into other "bubbles" who turn out to be her old friends.
The description of the desolate city is somewhat reminiscent of the the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which I both heard and sang several times last week in the context of Tenebrae services. These biblical laments express a similar feeling of desperation and desolation in the midst of a devastated city, made even more poignant by the recollection of its past glory. "How lonely she is now, the once crowded city! Widowed is she who was mistress over nations. The princess among the provinces has been made a toiling slave...Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God."
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