At trip's end

The palpable experience of love stays with me. Despite delays in airline flight, being totally unprepared for a Christmas holiday and dealing with a cough, sore throat and stuffed up ears, a sense of peace permeates my being.

Perhaps, it’s an understanding that there is always the opportunity to complexify any situation. Perhaps, I am taking comfort in what Professor Dr. Ibrahim Farajaje calls living in “flexadoxy." Whatever it is, I am hopeful that it stays with me long enough so that I long for it if a busyness returns to my life.

Or not.

Perhaps, I can live the life of the Sufi dervish for some time to come.

From what I gather, dervish life is one of service to the other. The dervish lives with a sense of expanding love and being a perpetual student. It is one that expects that the spirits of Shams and Rumi will continue to add mystery and fun to any situation. Meaning is found in the simple and the tendency to problemitize any situation is actively avoided.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that everything is easy and one is wise to remember that it was the murder of Shams that created a void so deep in Rumi that poetry of the Beloved emerged in its place.

But what does any of this have to do with ministerial formation and what did I learn about my own ministerial path?

I learned that I am a student of the heart. I learned that I, like many, have been walking this path for some time. I learned that intention is powerful and neutrality utmost in creating a situation with the most potential for negotiation.

I learned that people all over the world want nothing else but to live in peace and that an effective leader needs to be well aware of their own snares and binds. I learned that other people want to step up to the plate and have the opportunity to lead in our absence or in our giving them room.

I learned that opportunities are ours for the making and we either act on them or not.

I will either pursue the relationship with the master felter that I met in Konya, whose artistic partner lives within two hours of my home or I won't.

I will either pursue more information about a music healing hospital somewhere in Turkey or I won't.

I will heed the instructions from strangers to find my heart voice, to sing with assurance and to not let a day pass of not doing something that needs to be done or not.

And if it turns out that every choice is the not, I learned that I will be invited into my potential over and over again. "Even if you have broken your vow a thousand times, come, yet again, come."

All of this, including this feeling of floating, seems sharpenly directed toward building a just, peaceful and sustainable world where living from the heart is the lifeblood of the dervish or the minister, depending on what perspective one keeps.