The Gilded Leaf

the unfolding life of the human plant

“Louis Bouyer, a bit like Boehme, saw Islam as in part a prophet protest against ‘the degradation of popular Christian piety into polytheism and a real, if not theoretical, idolatry.’”¹

“We must, therefore, constantly reject all that does not show signs of peace, submission, sweetness and confidence, all of which bear, as it were, the impression of the seal of God, this point is a very important one for the whole of our life.” - Jean Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

“Has the Koran existed since time began?
I do not enquire!
Was the Quran created?
I do not know!
That it is the Book of Books,
I, as a dutiful Muslim, believe.
That wine has existed since time began,
I do not doubt;
And that it was created before the angels,
May also well be true.
Be that as it may, he who imbibes
Sees God’s countenance more clearly.” - Goethe²

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Reading Conversations with Goethe by Johann Peter Eckermann, I’m impressed by how much unqualified praise that singularly brilliant man Goethe has for Islam. My own respect for Islam is like my respect for beautiful architecture I see from a great distance. I am no architect, and I do not live in the buildings I admire, but I have the appreciation of an onlooker. This remote appreciation arrived around the same time as I began reconciling myself to myself — and to my own fraught religious upbringing. In short, if I am not my worst actions and I expect others to think of me more as who I can be than who I have been, I am obligated to extend the same courtesy to other people — and even to religious institutions. Around everything good is, invariably, some of the very worst. But we do not judge a candle for the moths it attracts. Bernard calls ambition the “moth of holiness” and these pests surround everything that shines brightly, not because they love the light at all but because they seek a moth orgy.

Unless we are saints who have become divinely simple, there are, as Goethe writes, “Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, And each will wrestle for the mastery there.”³ Even the saint who has grown tired of sin necessarily has a past. Those who do not think they have a past are still living in it. If I could justify a revisioning of myself, then I am obligated to dismantle far more than fundamentalist notions of religion, especially the aspersions made against various “rival” religions by the same prejudices. Anything negative we can say about something is merely its shadow, not its living truth.

With no disrespect meant to the mystical poetry of Rumi, I find the rampant online (mis)quotations to be filled with such flagrant nonsense that I have developed a healthy skepticism for anything that employs a convenient — and uncited — Rumi quote. A materialist will interpret everything as a materialist text, which is why scriptures must always be interpreted within their own living tradition. To try to understand scripture severed from its living tradition is like uprooting a plant to try to understand it better: the plant dies separated from its soil.

In his commentary on Wine of the Mystic: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Paramahansa Yogananda explores the Rubaiyat as a mystical text — even when the English translator on whom he bases his insights openly considered the Rubaiyat to be little more than the Dionysian ramblings of an alcoholic poet. Yogananda is quick to point out that it has nothing to do with alcohol. Nonetheless, such a precise literal translation — even deeply misunderstanding the meaning of the imagery — manages to communicate a spiritual message to spiritual eyes ready to see it. This is how literalists and fundamentalists, in spite of themselves, manage to serve a role in the greater spiritual ecology. Loyalty to the fixed letter of the law maintains the form of spiritual treasures that literalists often cannot perceive at all, yet their tenacious defense of the unaltered letter conveys spiritual truths to those who have ears to hear.

In popular culture, the remarkable work of Ramy Youssef — whose greatest deception, to me, seems to center around downplaying his intelligence — gives me one of the only realistic depictions on television of human beings sincerely struggling with sin. The show Ramy (Hulu) is one of the most counter-cultural shows out there, carefully disguised with just enough vulgarity to make the challenge to pursue goodness all the more effective. In an adjacent show, Mo by Mo Ahmer, a Palestinian Muslim refugee is dating a Hispanic Catholic woman. She takes him to confession, where Mo unloads about how weird it is to glorify suffering with Jesus hanging up there on the cross. Usually, if I see religion on the screen, it’s saccharine sentimentality or the punchline of a joke. But here, Mo allows the Catholic priest to reply, saying, “There’s no honor in suffering, but there is in sacrifice.” That’s probably the most charitable take on Catholicism I’ve seen on any contemporary show. If only other Christians were so charitable to others!