The Conference of the Birds:

Spiritual Paths to Insight and Joy

A Sermon offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette, Indiana

December 5^th, 2004

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Karen Armstrong wrote in her book Islam:

Sufism was also, probably, a reaction against the growth of jurisprudence, which seemed to some Muslims to be reducing Islam to a set of purely exterior rules.  Sufis wanted to reproduce within themselves that state of mind that made it possible for Muhammad to receive the revelations of the Quran.  It was his interior islam that was the true foundation of the law, rather than the usul al’fiqh of the jurists.  Where establishment Islam was becoming less tolerant, seeing the Quran as the only valid scripture and Muhammad’s religion as the one true faith, Sufis went back to the spirit of the Quran in their appreciation of other religious traditions.  Some, for example, were especially devoted to Jesus, whom they saw as the ideal Sufi, since he preached a Gospel of Love.  Other maintained that even a pagan who prostrated himself before a stone was worshipping the Truth (al-haqq) that existed at the heart of all things. Where the ulama, religious scholars and the jurists were increasingly coming to regard revelation and finished and complete, the Sufis, like the Shiis, were constantly open to the possibility of new truths, which could be found anywhere, even in other religious traditions.  Where the Quran described a God of strict justice, Sufis, such as the great woman ascetic Rabiah (who died in 801) spoke of a God of love.

Garth Brooks – not a Sufi – but in a Sufi spirit wrote:
But you've got to be tough when consumed by desire
'Cause it's not enough just to stand outside the fire

We call them weak
Who are unable to resist
The slightest chance love might exist
And for that forsake it all

They're so hell-bent on giving ,walking a wire
Convinced it's not living if you stand outside the fire

There's this love that is burning
Deep in my soul
Constantly yearning to get out of control
Wanting to fly higher and higher
I can't abide
Standing outside the fire
Standing outside the fire
Life is not tried, it is merely survived
If you're standing outside the fire

 

Sermon

The Conference of the birds is an ancient story about a time not so very different than our own.  It was a time when the Western world was stumbling through what we came to call the Dark Ages.  The Catholic Church was rising in strength – but also torn by divisions and disagreements.  Much of Europe lived in fear – but there were pockets of tolerance and in the midst of that was a brilliant light – that was Islam.

The Conference of the Birds was one of many writings that arose from a vital ray of that light – the spiritual, mystical, and ascetic path called Sufism. Sufism developed out of Islam beginning in about the 8^th Century of the Common Era.  It was an outgrowth of two movements of Islam.

First were the Faylasafahs – the Muslim Philosophers.  Islam helped to govern much of Muslim life and provide a sense of order and mutual respect – just as Muhammad had intended it – yet, there were those who yearned to look more deeply into God.  In other areas, in creative and scientific discoveries the Muslim world was blossoming – it was only natural that Philosophy would too.  Islam did not operate with the same constraints that limited European philosophical thinking.  Islam was open to the insights of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and, especially, Judaism.  The Faylasafahs wrote and talked about these diverse ideas.  The discoveries of science only reinforced the sense of oneness – of deep monotheism – that was rising in both Judaism and Islam.  Too often we think of monotheism as the notion that our one God is the right one God and your God is wrong – but in both Judaism and, especially, Islam monotheism meant that God is a unity – God is one – all is in God and God is the Oneness of All.

Asceticism was the other movement which set the ground for Sufism.  Remember that Islam means surrender – and for Muslims – the important statement of faith is that Allah is Supreme – that God is supreme and that humans need to overcome their sense of ego to encounter that that Allah, that God, that One.  One of the starker ways that Islam puts it is that you must die before you die in order that you will be able to find your way after you die.  The ascetics gave up all to pursue constant spiritual practice and to put no barrier between themselves and that Oneness.  They wore woolen robes – tasawwuf – from which the word Sufi evolved.  There is a story from Iran from one Islamic tradition which speaks of the Ascent of the Prophet:

I was placed before the door of a house.  Gabriel was at the door.  I asked to be let in.  Gabriel said, “I am only a servant of God.  You must pray to God if you want the door to be opened,” and so I did.  God said, “I open the door only to those who are most beloved.  You and your followers are most dear,” and the door was opened.  Inside I saw a box made of white pearls.  I asked Gabriel to open the box.  He told me that only God could do so.  I asked it of God and the box was opened. God said, “That which the box contains will be held for your and your children.”  The box contained two things: spiritual poverty and a cloak. When I descended I brought the cloak with me and I put it on ‘Alī’s shoulders and after ‘Alī his children will wear it

  The Sufi’s woolen cloaks were a sign that they were spiritual children of Muhammad through insight and experience.

By the 9^th century there was growing inertia in the broad empire of Islam.  As happens in so many religions there was a powerful leadership who wanted to see revelation sealed and to simplify life by living out the Muslim laws and to interpret their strength and world power as a signal that Islam was the correct religion.  At the same time, the ascetics and philosophers were moving more deeply into the spiritual practices which they held to be the real heart of Islam, beyond the strict codes.  On the one hand Muhammad had brought political order, stability, justice to Arab people – on the other hand he had been a true Prophet, a mystic, a human who had intimately experienced the great mystery at the heart of life from which all that order, justice, etc, had come and for the Sufi’s that was the ground – not only of Islam – but of all religion at it’s best. 

Sufism was a practice – grounded in a particular idea about the cosmos – the idea of oneness – that the many are in the one and the one in the many.  And there were two sorts of Sufi’s -- sort of theoretical Sufis who liked to think about this oneness and Sufis who wanted to practice it.  Those who wanted to simply think about the oneness were called sober Sufis and the ones who wanted to practice it were often called drunken Sufis.  But don’t let the term fool you.  Sufis such as Kabir, Rabiah, Jami, Saadi, and Jellaludin Rumi, who has been credited with founding the Sufi Order of Dervishes – came out of learned disciplines – they studied science and mathematics in an atmosphere far more advanced than most of Europe, enjoying discoveries long before Christian Europe would share, understand, or countenance them.  In many ways, I think that it was their love of the intellect and of science that primed them for this celebration of the universal human ability to perceive depth, meaning, and sacredness in the world.  They used reason first to think about the nature of the world – but having thought yearned more deeply.

They were often called drunken because of the intoxication they described as part of their mystical union with the One. 

Rumi wrote many poems to this spiritual intoxication.

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.

But it isn’t really about drunkenness – it is more about that sense of wonder and miracle that brings a recognition of deep belonging and the wonder of the oneness. 

            Like any spiritual path, Sufism has a rigorous practice and to Sufis the practice is thought of as the container, the outer form.  Through that outer form the person begins to gain insight which leads the person inward until through that deep practice and self-insight, the person recognizes the unity of being and through that moves back into the world – this time in a state of joy, bliss, union. 

            A diagram shows this path like spiral that moves inward and outward again.  Like the line of the design of Greek key turns inward and outward and inward and outward – and always connected in one continuous line.  Like a dervish might whirl.

            Another metaphor for this insight is often that of fire.  It is apt in this season of lengthening days – the fire of insight flares up to illuminate the treasures hidden in the sheltering darkness.  In the Conference of the Birds, the brave birds are willing to move even in the dark knowing that in the dark is no more dangerous than the light. 

The light can have redeeming danger in Sufism.  Sufi story tells that a moth was drawn toward a flame – he could see the beauty of the fire, feel the heat, and then moved into the flame and became the fire.  I have to say that I’m fairly uncomfortable thinking of any spiritual path obliterating me or anyone else for that matter – but it’s not quite that literal. 

            Sometimes Sufis use the creation story as a metaphor for this spiritual journey – that god created humanity in order to know himself and to be known.  Thus each person who moves deeply into themselves does so to know themselves and in so doing know the world in greater fullness.

            Humans are pretty attached to what they know.  The notion of choosing poverty and focusing on spiritual practice is scary enough – most of us won’t become rootless mystics – but even more unnerving is the idea that somewhere along the way we might loose our self-ness.  Like the birds who fear to journey with the hoopoe – we like what we know -- even when we don’t like it so very much.  We want to be who we know we are and not give that security up for a journey without guarantees.  The Sufis admit that the journey isn’t for everyone.  For many people Sufism – like any mystical or ascetic path is simply too uneasy – like walking a tightrope over a cavern.  It’s too unsettling.  I think that’s why it is an esoteric branch of Islam – carefully tended by brave and non-conforming souls.  People comfortable with discomfort.  But suppose joy and freedom really are attainable?

            On the other hand, suppose the fire does consume us – suppose we loose everything we know in exchange for something momentary?  Or worse – suppose we loose our minds – surrender like those who follow a leader blindly or do not stop to think about the meaning of their actions and the impact.  Those are real dangers in religion or in politics.  I admit that my own mixed comfort with spiritual paths like this one come from the noble people who have pursued them – such as Abraham Heschel, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, Jellaludin Rumi, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pir Inayat Khan and his daughter Noor – all of these deep practitioners were on very different paths – to which they gave themselves entirely.  Each began with rigorous reason, moved toward mystical understanding, and made the world better by it.

            All too often deep insight comes through suffering.  And that’s easy to fear.  Rumi, who lived in the 13^th century, was a refugee.  He was often homeless by necessity.  He wrote that he felt sorry for anyone who did not have this experience of displacement, because through his homelessness he became at home everywhere. A Sufi poet of the 12^th century, Sanai, wrote to the one, the Beloved:

Someone who keeps aloof from suffering
is not a lover. I choose your love
above all else. As for wealth
if that comes, or goes, so be it.
Wealth and love inhabit separate worlds.

But as long as you live here inside me,
I cannot say that I am suffering. 

            The story of the Parliament of Birds raises all these questions.  It’s about the challenge of the spiritual path.  It illustrates the timeless ways that people sometimes avoid the deeper places and seek comfort in the familiar and predictable.  In some ways, the story is also a challenge to formal religion and to fundamentalist thought.  Shaikh Abil Kheir –

Piousness and the path of love
are two different roads.
Love is the fire that burns both belief
and non-belief.
Those who practice Love have neither
religion nor caste.

Sufism invites a believer to act on that belief – not simply by claiming it – or by following a set of rules – but by pursuing the heart of belief – not to create new rules – but to live at such a depth that those rules are superfluous. 

Jellaludin Rumi also wrote: There is a field out beyond right and wrong.  I’ll meet you there.

            Sufi’s weren’t, aren’t advocating an immoral world – but rather a world of simplicity and love in which justice and compassion flow: a conference of birds.

            It may be hard to imagine ourselves as that conference of birds.  Certainly hard to imagine, with our families and complicated lives, that we can uproot all to move toward that redeeming fire.  For the most part we have other work to do.  But this challenge of the hoopoe can still speak to us – to send away our fears and let love change us.

Love is the spirit of this church.

            We can find that field in many ways.  I was reminded of this the other night while talking with someone about the recent national election.  He said that at first he felt despair about the outcome but then he realized that he wanted to stand his ground and work for good – not because it was easy – but because it was right for him.  That is certainly a lesson of one of the valleys – that things change, not always for the better – but the work and the journey continue.  After all – politics go this way and that – it has happened before.  So many people since November 2^nd are sharing how much passion they have to work on issues of social justice now.  They’re taking a rude awakening and turning it into a real awakening.

            We’re unlikely to leave our homes as the Sufis or Jesus or Buddha challenge us – but we can release some material grip on things.  One of the things I love most about our art sale is the opportunity to support artists, the church, and send beauty to friends.  On the other hand a some people on my list will be sponsoring a Llama through the Heifer Project for the holidays.  It’s a way to simplify and deepen the meaning of the holidays.  The give the deeper gift of wool.

            We are our own challenge – it can be hard to witness the rough uniqueness of people – of ourselves – and feel – oneness.  This does not mean to forget the world as it is – but to first see the treasure hidden in the sheltering dark and call it forth from ourselves and from others.

            Sufi’s speak of the Beloved when they are talking about that oneness – the encounter with the divine that they practice for.  Martin Luther King, Jr, used to speak of the beloved community.  A sufi teacher of the 17^th century, Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Khair, wrote: If you are seeking closeness to the Beloved, love everyone. Whether in their presence or absence, see only their good.  If you want to Be as clear and refreshing as the breath of the morning breeze, like the sun, have nothing but warmth and light for everyone.”  If we can be a conference of the birds as a congregation we could take the challenges we face and see them as gifts to deepen our covenant and sharpen our sight, as opportunities to love one another better and more deeply. 

            May this winter season remind us of the world’s cold snap, the shadow, the challenging night and invite us to see the treasure, the answers, the creativity awaiting illumination. 

            May this place – so recently merry with the creations, the joyful efforts of so many people, may this place hearten our journey deeper.

Calling us out beyond judgment or fear.

May we be our own Conference of Beloved Birds,

The One in the Many

The Many in the One.

Bismi- allah, Bismi-allah, irhaman irhahim

All lives and moves within the One

Closing Words

O Marvel! a garden amidst the flames.
My heart has become capable of every form:
it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,
and a temple for idols and the pilgrim's Kaa'ba,
and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quran.
I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love's camels take,
that is my religion and my faith.

     ibn al-`Arabi, 12^th century Sufi