I don’t know what
lead me to this path. Dumb luck? God loved me first and then I loved Him? It’s hard to write an essay on this—where does
this path begin? When I took the promise? When my good friend, Jody,
invited me to the seminar on Money in the Holy Way by Rahim
Bronner? When Sidi al-Jamal married me to the
heart and soul of my beloved? When that
first light dawned and I felt something move inside me? Has it been lifetimes or just this time? Was it the years in Catholic school, First
Holy Communion, a mother whose devotion to the Blessed Virgin linked us for the
first time to holy beads? Was it thirty
years of meditation, three marriages, the death of my daughter? If you are wanting a sound bite for a good PR
presentation, I don’t know if you will find it here.
And what is this
path? Is it the Shadhiliyya Sufi path or is it the path of the ages? The only true and beautiful path. The path of knowledge and love of God. Is it the path of Divine intervention in our
creation, in our humanness? Is it the
teachings of all the Masters, great saints, the enlightened? I have tried several times to begin this
essay, to answer your question and all I am left with are questions of my
own. Who is asking? Who is answering? My heart aches with the longing to know.
What brought me
to this path—my heart’s longing for its Self.
My soul’s aching desire to know You.
I have had hints, glimpses, moments, even days, of complete
annihilation, complete weeping surrender to You, the goal, the source, the path
of all my longing. And then
nothing. Lost again in the shadow lands,
unable to distinguish truth from non-truth; fantasy from reality. What brought me here is what has brought me
anywhere, everywhere. This longing, this
aching to know You, to be You, to become You.
Perhaps pain and
suffering drove me to You. Perhaps the
sweet, subconscious memory of those times You were near and maybe I knew it as
You, maybe I didn’t—but You were there surrounding me with the most ineffable
love and light. My earliest recollection
in the beautiful silent church as a young girl, sitting alone in the cathedral
like arch of the sanctuary. Light,
filtered and golden above the altar, a sense of holy wonder and nearness. Or was it in the nights by the big bed in my parents’
bedroom, where we as children would kneel and recite the Rosary as mother led
us through the mysteries of Jesus.
Where, upon the morning of my mother’s death, praying the rosary by her
bedside, I was taken back to those early rosaries and saw for the first time Mother
Mary’s presence in our circle and her imprint on my soul—a child of God. Or was it the day in Chicago O’Hara
International Airport, on my way home to Oregon to my daughter’s funeral, who died in the
night while I sat in deep, silent meditation in the fields of Iowa .
Maybe then, while I wrote the eulogy for my daughter who was 10 when she
died; maybe then when You showed me that my soul and all the souls of all the
busy, rushing travelers were linked, linked together in Your passionate
embrace.
I don’t know when
I came to this path. You pick one. I am at a loss to choose.
