Reflection on our Faith House “Tour Bus” visit to a Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Zikr, November 3, 2011
by Nate Herpich
“O God, if I worship thee in fear of Hell, burn me in hell; and if I worship thee in hope of paradise, exclude me from paradise; but if I worship thee for thine own sake, withhold not thine everlasting beauty.” – Rabia Basri, Muslim saint and Sufi mystic
Outside, the wide streets of Tribeca that surround the Dergah al-Farah were cold, and bred space.
Inside, seekers gathered intimately in lighted circles surrounding Sheikha Fariha al-Jerrah. We had come to hear her speak knowledge, and to become enveloped in sohbet.
“We set out upon a path to eliminate dogma from our being,” she said. “We disappear into God.”
That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us…
Truthfully, this evening had marked my second visit to a Sufi meeting house, but in many ways my time at the Dergah al-Farah seemed like it should have been my first. In this long hall marked by stark white brick walls, green banners decorated with gold Arabic letters, and an austere, but majestic, wooden mihrab, I felt transported into a space where I could be sheltered from the world outside. Here, for several hours and for the first time in quite awhile, I believed myself able to listen deeply.
It helped that Sheikha Fariha spoke so well. “Highest knowledge comes in the form of bewilderment,” she explained. “We know that we cannot know.”
These particular words were liberating in their simplicity, and of course, they could have been just the right ones to set someone upon a journey toward higher enlightenment. But, on this evening, it was enough to know that they could inspire a clear mind. It felt good to be open to consume freely.
As the evening moved forward, and backwards, and in circles, I found myself at some kind of greater peace. We chanted while seated. Slow, then fast. In Arabic and English. We stood and we danced – left foot first, right foot back, with hands joined as we sung. We relinquished our hold upon each other and were invited to whirl. I circled slowly to maintain my balance, but others moved magnificently gaining speed: Arm followed by whirring arm. Spinning deftly upon a single foot. Spinning alone, in a shared space, where gathered, the Sheikha said, “two of us could be three, in God.”
Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Even as I began to feel newly free in this space, happy to be away from an outside that was at the same time both wide and constricting, I noticed that things started to become the same. Growing up a Lutheran, I can’t say that I remember dancing in church without the prodding of someone to make me feel that I needed to. And chanting al-fatihah in Arabic with hands upon backs encircled shouldn’t have inevitably led me to remember kneeling at hard wooden pews while reciting in monotone the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to say. But, of course, it did.
And even as I continued to feel transported away, I also felt a renewed closeness to where I had come from. Absolutely, I was intrigued by the beauty of the chanting in Arabic, by the rhythms of the drum, by the white robes spinning seemingly endlessly to time. This, I could have foreseen. But surprisingly, all of these seemed to also offer me re-entry into a world where I had already spent so much time. To the liturgy and the call and response. To carols and hymns. To candlelightings. To prayers for peace and healing and love, to sermons and coffee hours in fellowship halls where coffeecakes and cookies replaced dates and cheese and bread, and mint tea. To the pragmatic beauty of the Beatitudes, and to learning how to exist in the world, through love of God and neighbor.
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Toward the end of the evening, I made sure to take notes, and to refer back to those I had written prior to dancing. I compared the Sheikha’s answers to questions with my own scribbled phrases meant to remind my senses where I had been. I stopped as I reached a line that looked familiar: “We know the earth is a sacred space, it is a temple unto itself.”
But if this is true, I thought, why had I been so far away, and for so long?
As I left the Dergah before finishing bread, I threw on my shoes and coat, hopped down the stairs while saying goodnight to a particularly friendly dervish, and jogged past two bars, across several intersections, and back into the earth to find the A train.
Back into Manhattan, and later, into Brooklyn. To speeding trains, to concrete walls, to sidewalks that end. I no longer felt transported. I was smack dab back in the middle of so much that was so profane. And even as I heard the Sheikha’s words of the sacred within what I deemed to be the profane, I felt as if I was back to where I had started.
The simple response was to realize that I had missed the point or that I lacked discipline. At home now, I sat down at my desk, turned on my computer, and checked my work email. I was tired, and tomorrow I had to go right back to doing life.
After turning off my computer, I crawled into bed. It was much later on a work night that I normally would have planned, but because I was so tired, I think, I lay awake. I tried to see and hear the sights and sounds of the Dergah. My thoughts strayed back to the words of the Sheikha.
“There are no realities apart from the single source of the universe,” she said.
It was a very practical sentiment for a tired, soul lying in bed, one looking to be transported, but also, one feeling the weight of the demands of the next day.
So, I set my alarm to the same radio station that always played the same kind of music, and I turned over and went to sleep.
“May God support us all the day long, ’till the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then, in His mercy, may He give us a safe lodging and a holy rest, and peace at the last.” – Cardinal John Henry Newman
Nate Herpich is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY.
Quotes in italics from the Christian Bible
Photos above from nurashkijerrahi.org
