We Have Not Come to Take Prisoners
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by Tilden Edwards
We have not come to take prisonersI think Jesus would love these luminous heart-flashes of Daniel Ladinsky inspired by the 14th century Sufi mystic Hafiz. They connect with another of his poems:
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, joy, and Light! *
Why just show you God's menu?Both poems point me to my gnawing, Spirit-drenched desire for a life that more fully embodies the divine attributes of courage, freedom, joy, and light: fruits of divine love.
Hell, we are all starving-Let's Eat! *
Jesus, being the graced mystic he was, realized the good news of how intimate God's loving life in us is. He deeply realized the unique image of God in the heart of his being that Genesis declares all of us share. He showed all of those qualities that Hafiz proclaims belong to our true calling. We are invited to their graced possibility in us as we open ourselves to the radiant Love at the heart of reality, and as we are empowered to let go the deceptively securing prisons of our lives that separate us from realizing our true nature in God.
So much could be said about these rich attributes. As the second poem tells us, though, they are not meant just to be talked about. Our relationship to God is lived from the heart and commented upon by the mind. The mind's menu alone can be a helpful map of the heart's territory. But it is no substitute for "eating" the real Presence. The divine invitation is to let our hardened defenses be replaced with a childlike vulnerability so that we may be fed with heavenly food, trusting the goodness of whatever mysterious transformation may come from such a first-hand meal.
From my own experience, I feel that one meal is never enough. Each graced meal, each inspired awareness of God's opening presence, expands my capacity for courage, freedom, joy and light. I am ecstatic in such times, in the sense of transcending my normal fear, habituated responses, and dullness. I find myself more fully available and responsive to what's called for-singing the Spirit's song as it is spun in my heart. But ecstasy by its nature passes, and I return to a smaller self, although one that is haunted by what had been expanded.
This is where I find daily spiritual practice to be vital. My practice is my way of claiming, in an ongoing way, that what I have tasted in a moment's giftedness is more than a mirage, more than an empty passing experience. I am opening myself to the larger transforming Love that I believe has come near to my consciousness with burning power. In so doing, I am opening to my larger Self in God, at the heart of which is that Love. I am not trying to recapture a particular past experience. Rather, I want to be available to the divine Wellspring of that experience in whatever way it is flowing in and around me now, whether in visible ways that move me or in hidden ways that require my simple trust.
My spiritual practice invites the window of my soul to open, letting out the love that is in me to the Love that is beyond me. That is enough. More than that is gift. And yet I know how much I want the gifts that Hafiz identifies to enlarge my heart and allow me to be a more responsive vessel of those qualities in the world I touch. Our world at every level is so profoundly in need of realizing its true nature in God, with all the fruits of this realization for the way we live together as an inclusive family.
As I write this, near national election time in America, I'm particularly aware of the manipulative political and religious forces that cater to the shadow side of our cultural values and fears. These forces finally do not trust the closeness and largeness of divine Love and our calling to let go whatever there is in and among us that does not give itself to the creative way of that Love. The sterile fruits of these narrow forces will not grow the shalom they promise. The god of these forces is too small, too tribal, too limited by the projections into it of our fear, willfulness and delusion.
This country and the world desperately need more religious and political leaders who are true seekers of the ways Spirit can continually expand their horizons and open the doors to shalom, and who are willing to walk through those doors, regardless of the price. Such leadership is needed in every sphere of human living, including the ones in which you and I live every day. Let's pray that each of us will be such a leader in the ways we are called, and that we will recognize the other leaders we need to support for the world's well-being. And let's pray that all of us will be helped in such leadership by frequent empowerment of our divine courage, freedom, joy and light.
* Both poems are from Daniel Ladinsky, trans. The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master. Penguin/Arcana, 1999.
© 2008 The Shalem Institute.