A Tribute

Our Sufi community recently lost a dear matriarch from our local Seattle area, Murshida (teacher) Khadija Julia Goforth. She was a larger than life teacher and friend and I miss her so much.

Many people have written their tributes and remembrances in various email lists and forums but I was having a very hard time deciding how to put down in words what I was feeling.

Finally, I gave up, let my mind go in meditation and allowed this poem to arise:

For Beloved Murshida

I don’t get it…
How can it be…

I remember this same sense
When my mother died.

And here, now
With the sudden, shocking
absence of our dear matriarch

It rises again.

Strands of jet black sorrow
Wound together with blood-red
Yarn pulled out of the gaping
Wound left by your absence
dear teacher.

Wound together into a
Prayer shawl I crawl into
On my knees
In mourning, in confusion,

In profound perplexity…

I don’t get it…
How can it be…

As I look down
The earth is still there.
When I open my ears
The birds are still singing.

Appointments are still on my calendar
Cars are still whooshing down the street.
The sun came up again
The flowers still smell pungent and sweet.

I don’t get it…
How can it be…

I lift up the edge of the shawl
(that reminds me of every shawl you gave me)
And I can’t understand
How everything in this vibrating world

Somehow
Still exists.

How can it not have
Disappeared into that gaping black hole
Your going has left in my heart
And the heart of our community?

As I stare into that blackness
I reach out and someone
Takes my hand.
Touches my heart.

I look and all around that void
My beloveds are beginning to stand
To look into each other’s
Tear blurred gaze.

Our prayer shawls slip
From our shoulders
Filling that darkness with
The light of our prayers

Weaving together
How we will
somehow
Go on
Together.

I still don’t get it
But maybe…

I see how it can be.

~ Wakil David Matthews – 5/2021 ~