The Spaces In Between
This blog is about all the weird, uplifting and funny stuff that occurs on the borders between inside and outside, Sufism and Islam, mystical paths of the world, cowboys and Indians . . . and much more – your comments and contributions are most welcome!
A Sip from the Fatiha
Al-Fatiha - The Opening Door, the Opening Chapter, the Door to All That Is, to All Mysteries and Subtleties (With apologies for the necessary but breathless italics, exclamation points, parentheses and multiple question marks. The whole multiverse is breathless,...
Does “It’s cultural” mean “It’s rude, but you’re stuck with it?” “
After years of teaching and training on what happens between cultures, I just had a blinding realization I'd somehow missed: When people hear the words, "It's cultural," they frequently think what's written above. "This [culture/custom/person] is crazy, rude, and just...
Internet Passwords and the Judgment Day
The name of this blog is "The Spaces in Between", and that's the name of everything I do, really. The Sufi stuff, the Intercultural Relations masters degree, even the Irish music, which draws strength from what seems like another lifetime -- it's all about border...
Love Remains: Response to Sufi Mosque Massacre in Egypt
Over three hundred Sufis dead in Egypt, killed while praying in their mosque or trying to escape. I thought a while about how to respond, besides the same old, "This is not Islam, this is not what Islam teaches." Suddenly I wrote -- and it stayed in the large Facebook...
Cowboys and Indians
"You know, when (we) played cowboys and Indians with our friends, I always wanted to be a cowboy. I was in junior high when I realized a guy could be a cowboy and an Indian at the same time." - Anne Hillerman, Rock with Wings Okay, cut from Navaho cops in New Mexico...
Bridging a Gap
In the 1970's, there was a seemingly unbridgeable canyon between the religion of Islam and western universalist Sufism: the successors of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and the Dances of Universal Peace. As an early convert to Islam from that generation of seekers, I experienced...
“La Ilaha illah’Llah” – You Can Take it Two Ways
This central statement of Islam, the primary tenet which forms half the shahada, can be taken in two ways which are opposite and can lead to diametrically opposed behaviors. I'm writing here to defend one interpretation and cast doubt upon the other. Literally, the...
Musings
Excerpts from the Operating Manual for Human Beings CONDUITS We, all of us, are designed to be conduits of Divine Energy, which is always available, and which flows through us as creativity, insight, energy, and inspiration to be poured out into the world. But the...
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