Ar-Rahman, Tucker's Barn

I began my two-week December vacation last night by riding across the the Beverly Bridge, fiddle strapped securely in a panier, to play at the Atomic Cafe Irish session. There were six of us altogether--four fiddles, a flute, and a guitar--most of whom were familiar faces. We played many old favorites and, as always, I left with a list of tunes to learn before the next session. On the chilly ride home from Beverly, I decided to learn one new tune each day of this vacation. Sixteen tunes.

This morning, I awoke with fiddle music in my heart, but forced myself to hold off as my friend, who is temporarily living on the floor of my study, was still asleep. So I turned to my kitchen bookshelf, where books unrelated to the seventh grade curriculum tend to sit and gather dust until summertime. I picked up a pristine copy of The Sufi Book of Life: 99 Pathways of the Heart for the Modern Dervish by Neil Douglas-Klotz. I had learned about this book at a Sufi retreat last month and purchased it, imagining that I may one day have time to read it.

A dervish, the introduction reminded me, is "one who sits in the doorway or on the threshold or something, ready to move on and transform him- or herself." The 99 pathways are Arabic words that are names of the the Beloved, or God. They are powerful words that embody a living spiritual experience of the Divine and can awaken us to the pathways to God that already exist in our hearts. Over the past years, I have worked in meditation with a small handful of the these names, but am largely ignorant of the others, and have never taken up a consistent practice of working with them.

So. Why not one pathway and one fiddle tune for each day of vacation? The final week of Advent and subsequent Holy Nights are a magical time--a time when the earth around us is at its darkest and we are all invited to let Divine light shine within. Perhaps the joyful practices of welcoming each day with a new fiddle tune and a new name for God, will ..... well I'm not quite sure what it will do, but I do want to try it.

So.......

Pathway 1: Ar-Rahman: The Sun of Love. This is the kind of love that shines from within us and comes from a deeper source; it is always there, waiting to be discovered. Sometimes we have to give up a part of ourselves or ideas we hold in order to seek it. Douglas-Klotz illuminates this pathway by sharing the following poem by Mahmud Shabistari:

"The stakes are high for real prayer.

You must gamble your self

and be willing to lose.

When you have done this,

and your self shakes off

what you believed your self to be,

then no prayer remains,

Only a sparkle of the eyes.

Knower and known are one."

Here is to cultivating this divine sun that lives within. Ar-Rahman. Bismallah Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim. My first step in doing so was to learn "Tucker's Barn," a cheery old time tune in G.