Sunday, January 5, 2020

What It Means - Day 293

Where Is the Door to the Tavern

What is the door to God?

In the sound of a barking dog,

In the ring of a hammer,

In a drop of rain,

In the face of

Everyone

I see.

Hafiz

OK, I guess I'm in a bit of a Hafiz phase as we pass into the New Year.  In the Quran we are reminded that God is closer than your jugular vein. Since the time of the Enlightenment we've accepted the notion of God as the Great Clockmaker, a separate being who wound up the world and stepped away from it. Instead, isn't God simply everything and everyone? Of course, that sounds more like a a Hindu or Buddhist concept, and as Muslims we're sometimes so afraid of associating anything with God that we can also place God as a distance (even considering our admonition about God being closer than your jugular vein). Why does God have to be the OTHER? If you say that all of these things - a barking dog, a drop of rain, the face of everyone - are in submission to God, why can't they be a door to God as well?


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