Sufi & Dances of Universal Peace Events in May

Sunday, May 12 – Zikr on Whidbey Island at the Whidbey Unity Church. 6:15 pm potluck dinner; 7:30 – 9 pm Zikr practice. Facilitated by Hassan with other leaders and musicians. Some of us carpool from the Mukilteo Speedway, leaving at about 4:45 pm. Call or text me for more information or if you’d like to meet us to carpool. Wakil – 206-272-0580

Wednesday, May 8 and every Wednesday – Dances of Universal Peace at Keystone Congregational Church. 7:30 – 9 pm. All are welcome. Simple dances and sacred word are taught so no experience necessary. Fragrance-free please due to allergies. Small donations accepted buy no one turned away.

Friday – Monday, May 24-27 – Inland NW Sufi Camp at N’ Sid Sen on Lake Coeur de Alene, Idaho. See earlier blog postings for details and registration.

Movie FREE TRIP TO EGYPT coming to a theater near you on June 12, 2019!

By Tarek Mounib and Kindness Films.

From Sister Quan Yin:

Dear friends all over the country- my friend, Tarek Mounib, of Zurich, had an inspiration to invite people who are afraid/opposed/don’t understand Islam, or the people and places of the Middle East, to a FREE TRIP TO EGYPT.

There they would meet the families, eat the food, walk in the neighborhoods and otherwise just get to spend time with people who have been portrayed and vilified as “the other”.

And Tarek, a young man born in Canada, raised in Egypt, educated in both, would film what happened.

He’s done it! Kindness Films will show Tarek’s film Free Trip to Egypt in 500 theaters across the country on June 12, 2019. (The film will play longer in New York and LA.)

Typical showtime 7:00 pm. Check for a theater near you on the sites below and buy tickets online for you and your friends!

This is citizen diplomacy and peacemaking of the highest order, and I support it. Through this movie, we can see the change in people’s hearts and minds.

Please, please forward to as many people as you can think of in your local, regional and wider communities.

Below are active links to find a theater near you and more information and ways to buy tickets and a preview.  This has been a “call” for Tarek; he has made it happen, so there is a “response” to the Call.

Here are the links that you have to cut and paste (or click on active links):

Here is a map of all the theaters:  https://www.freetriptoegypt.com/watch

And people can book their tickets directly at the theater here: https://www.fathomevents.com/events/free-trip-to-egypt

Trailer is here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OitVw2gE6aQ&t=7s

Chanting with Gina Sala

From Sister Gina:

Ya Salaam-

Blessings to you and a quick note of invitation to you on this glorious day
after the new moon! My heart is wide and Shanti Shala is ringing with great
vibrations and blooms! Join me Monday May 6 7:30pm for a spring celebratory
chant class. (Mantra, Raga, Chant, Community). I’ll also have class May 13.
Please RSVP to info@ginasala.com if you are interested in coming–no
experience necessary, all are welcome. Let me know if you are interested in
harmonium class. Let’s let our hearts bloom like the blossoms of spring
with our roots deep and strong!

Last chance to join for Awakening Voice Sound School first year! Please
write to info@ginasala.com. I love that science is now catching up with the
benefits of singing and connecting in the heart- more on that soon!

“Divine sound is the cause of all manifestation. The knower of the mystery
of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe.”
― Hazrat Inayat Khan

Love, full easy breath and deep roots to you!

Gina

www.ginasala.com
Peace to all. Love to all.

Dances of Universal Peace Weds

This Wednesday at 7:30 pm, the Dances will be at Keystone Congregational a always.

This from our dear sister Elizabeth:

Beloveds,
This coming Wednesday, May 8, during our Dance evening a “Healing Dance” will be offered. During this Dance names will be offered of those who have requested prayers for healing. 

If you have names of people who have requested prayers, please send them to healing@seattledup.org<mailto:healing@seattledup.org>.

Please note if you would like the name(s) to be spoken or offered silently. Also, please remember to get permission from anyone you wish to have placed on the list.

Special note: Beginning next month, the healing dance will move to the first Wednesday of the month instead of the second. Notices will go out a few days before, as usual. 

Blessings,
The DUP Healing Circle

“Every child has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does anything weird,
But the God who knows only four words.
And keeps repeating them, saying:
‘Come dance with me, come dance.’”
— Hafiz (translation by Daniel Ladinsky)

Sufi Saturday- Today!

When the Heart acts, it touches everything in the Universe.”

     Sufi Murshid SAMUEL LEWIS

May 4, 2019     Puget Sound, WA    SUFI RUHANIAT INT’L

SUFI SATURDAY & ZIKR

Living Heart • THE WAY of the DERVISH

2:30-6 pm Sufi Teachings & Practices with Breath, Sound, & Walk

Dances of Universal Peace      Dervish Healing Service

6 pm Potluck       7 pm Zikr & Turning

LAKE CITY, WA     (206) 850-2111    halway@comcast.net

Poetry from D.H. Lawrence

I was blessed this last week to spend time with my lovely friends and cohort for my Spiritual Direction certificate program and the Interfaith Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley. At the beginning of one of our sessions, our instructor Scott read this compelling and beautiful poem that I wanted to share with all of you.

May you know these miraculous things: That you are YOU!

That your soul is a deep, dark, quiet forest.
That your known
self will never be more than a little clearing in that forest.

That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest
into the clearing of your known self, and then go back.

That you must have the courage to let them come and go.

May you never let those who strive for too much order
have the power to stifle the life deep inside your forest,

and may you continue to try always to recognize and submit
to the goodness, the gods, in yourself and in other men and women. 

(Adapted from D.H. Lawrence “Studies in Classic American Literature”)

Divinity Where Least Expected

As I’ve been walking the streets of Berkeley this week I’ve opened my heart to what might be possible. What might it look like if I recognized the divinity in each flower, in each stone, in each human whose eyes met mine? Holding that, this happened.

My brother lay in a doorway, 
Barefoot, curled against
the cold concrete.

In wonder, recognizing God 
I couldn’t
not see.

The Divine guided me:
Target store with a comforter for sale
Comforter that belonged
to my brother

And when I laid it gently over
his prone divinity
My other brother
looked at me
in wonder

And shook my hand
and blessed me.
I am truly blessed.

Wendell Berry. Yes!

 No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away. 

~ Wendell Berry ~  

(Collected Poems)

Easter Blessing by David Whyte

May this day bring you light and guidance on your path. Enjoy this from David Whyte:

EASTER BLESSING

The blessing of the morning light to you,
may it find you even in your invisible
appearances, may you be seen to have risen
from some other place you know and have known
in the darkness and that that carries all you need.

May you see what is hidden in you
as a place of hospitality and shadowed shelter,
may that hidden darkness be your gift to give,
may you hold that shadow to the light
and the silence of that shelter to the word of the light,
may you join all of your previous disappearances
with this new appearance, this new morning,
this being seen again, new and newly alive.

© David Whyte
From EASTER BLESSING
In Memoriam John O’Donohue
In
THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD
Poetry by David Whyte
APRIL 2018 © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

Waking here in the Yorkshire Dales in a quiet village, on a warm spring morning, amongst the birdsong and the cockerels crowing, the rooks beginning to wake and call to one another and build their nests, I am having my own private Easter Service just by listening through the open window. Easter morning to me, has always seemed to gather every other morning of the year in its arms, to sacralize that everyday but crucial threshold we cross in waking into the world again. If we are not caught in our own bubble of enforced ordinariness, abstract insulation and closed protection, this is an astonishing world always waiting for us to join our own voice in the taken for granted, but extraordinary privilege of speaking, living and breathing. DW

Innocence is not a fixed commodity to be replaced by experience, innocence is our ability to allow ourselves to be seen and heard anew by a continually reawakened world, by birdsong, by a familiar loved one’s face, even by our own searching eyes looking back at us from the mirror, again and again, in new ways. To be surprised, transfigured, and astonished. Innocence is our ability to be found by the world. DW

Awake in Grenada
Photo © David Whyte
Carrera Del Darro
Grenada, Spain April 2nd 2019