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“When one speaks ill of God, he speaks ill of himself,” I said.
A man of few words, the cook had one favorite mantra: “Cleaning is praying, praying is cleaning!” “If that were true, all the housewives in Baghdad would have become spiritual masters,” I once dared to say.
What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.
Each time I say good-bye to a place I like, I feel like I am leaving a part of me behind. I guess whether we choose to travel as much as Marco Polo did or stay in the same spot from cradle to grave, life is a sequence of births and deaths.
Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?
It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that He is. What is far more difficult is to love fellow human beings with all their imperfections and defects. Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love God’s
“God created suffering so that joy might appear through its opposite,”
“I don’t understand why wine was forbidden in this world but promised in heaven,” I said. “If it’s as bad as they claim, why would they serve it in paradise?”
Find the one who will be your mirror!
Destiny doesn’t mean that your life has been strictly predetermined. Therefore, to
leave everything to fate and to not actively contribute to the music of the universe is a sign of sheer ignorance. “The music of the universe is all-pervading and it is composed on forty different levels. “Your destiny is the level where you will play your tune. You might not change your instrument but how well to play is entirely in your hands.”
“There is no such thing as early or late in life,”
“Everything happens at the right time.”
“But nothing happens outside of God’s will.
Not even a leaf stirs outside God’s knowledge.
Whatever God does, He does beautifully.”
am the embodiment of nothingness. Here is my fana, herein my baqa.”
“A life without love is of no account. Don’t ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western. . . . Divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. “Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! “The universe turns differently when fire loves water.”
