The Human Heart

I've been reading On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, a combination memoir and collection of interviews by Jonathan Cott. One of the interviews is with Robert Frager (Sheikh Ragip), an American Sufi spiritual teacher. (Sufism is the mystical tradition of Islam.) He quotes one of his own Sufi teachers as saying:
"It would be a sin to destroy the great holy sites on the planet, bit it's a worse sin to harm any human heart. Because, after all, the Kaaba in Mecca and Solomon's temple in Jerusalem were built by human beings to honor God, but the human heart was built by God to house God."

I read that passage within a day or two of when Sunni Muslims bombed the Golden Mosque, a great holy site to Shi'ite Muslims. I am sure the loss was devastating to many Shi'ites. But how much more devastating the destruction of even one human being, many of whom have been killed as a result.

In Meeting this morning the first message was on the bombing of the Golden Mosque, the tragedy of the destruction. Others referred to it, including a Friend musing empathetically on what the Quaker equivalent would be--perhaps the erasing of the writings of Quaker leaders George Fox or John Woolman. I was considering whether I had a message regarding the Sufi teacher's quote above when another Friend spoke her message: "The most sacred site is the human heart." We had both received the same message, and it is one to remember.

Incidentally, the music playing as I typed this was the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which includes Schiller's wonderful "Ode to Joy" about forgiveness, justice and joy among all peoples. "

May we grow to live more and more believing in our unity, and in the holiness of each human heart