Grateful to be part of the new issue of Islamic Horizons, in conversation with the journalist & author, Carla Power, about listening as a moral practice, the discipline of attention, and what it means to be an interfaith advocate and witness 🙏🏼✨ #booksky #writing #Islam

In #Islam, 'God is Beautiful, and loves Beauty.' If we meditate on perfection, such as the ideal of beauty, it gradually changes our life and leads us to the Light.

The ceiling of Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran (1611) #Islam #art

Grateful to be part of the new issue of Islamic Horizons, in conversation with the journalist & author, Carla Power, about listening as a moral practice, the discipline of attention, and what it means to be an interfaith advocate and witness 🙏🏼✨ #booksky #writing #Islam

I don't trust my inner feelings/ inner feelings come and go — Leonard Cohen

He was such a good listener, silence was too loud for him, for the din within.

In the deep end, every stroke counts.

A poet should be of the / old-fashioned meaningless brand: / obscure, esoteric, symbolic, -- / the critics demand it; / so if there's a poem of mine / that you do understand / I'll gladly explain what it means / till you don't understand it. — Piet Hein

The Guardian of the Riddle montrealserai.com/article/note... #poetry #writing #spirituality

'Longing is the agony of the nearness of the distant.' #Heidegger #photography by Marc Neys, aka Swoon

"It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly." soundcloud.com/yahia-lababi...

Medellin #Colombia

‘Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.’ #poetry #NewYear

#Nature #photography

#Poetry is… www.youtube.com/@Yahia.Labab...

Fame is a strange clock, and it rarely keeps ordinary time. It does not arrive when one asks for it, or even when one deserves it. More often it comes sideways, disguised as recognition by the few who matter first, then slowly widening into something others call “visibility.”

Thank you, @salon.com for letting me vent... about how #Trump brings out the worst in us: www.salon.com/2025/12/21/m... #Islam #immigration

Magritte's #Art of Conversation

Silence is one great art of conversation. — William Hazlitt

"Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language." — Meister Eckhart

Magritte's #Art of Conversation

If you wish to be heard, speak kindly. The same holds true when we speak to ourselves.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us. #Kafka

'Your breakthrough begins where your excuses end.' — Anon

If you ever come to #Gaza by @mosababutoha.bsky.social youtube.com/shorts/eldnK... #poetry #Palestine

"When someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say ‘I pray that god will help you.’ instead for the moment, you should become an atheist, imagine that there is no god who can help, and say ‘I will help you.'” “Tales of Hasidim,” Martin Buber

“Atheism is not always and entirely a form of despair. […] If it denies the superficial idols and phantoms which men have set up and called God, it may well be an impulse to truth born out of a sense of the insufficiency of these idols.” — Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

✨ Happy to learn that my essay has been shortlisted for the 2025 Fountain Magazine Essay Contest! ✨ 🌟 Winners will be announced very soon... fountainmagazine.com 👉 Read the shortlist here: fountainmagazine.com/blog/2025-es...

18 years of marriage... where, o where, did all the time go?

To write, to bow, to pray

here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed. — Lucille Clifton, “won't you celebrate with me” from Book of Light. (Copper Canyon Press, 1993) #booksky

From a conversation with a young artist: Trust yourself and your audience to doubt either defeats self or #art [ video reading: youtube.com/shorts/XGYZu... ]

#Poetry of #Peace youtube.com/shorts/cF1_x...

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter” — Keats

"I would wrestle with the dark angel until he dislocated my hip. For he is also the light and the blue sky which he withholds from me.” —Carl Jung #psychology #spirituality #quote

#art by Elena Kraft

#MerryChristmas from #Colombia 🇨🇴 youtube.com/shorts/tYFty... #Medellín #HappyHolidays

"The colossal world I have in my head ... It would be a thousand times better to be torn apart than to keep it back or bury it within me. That is why I am here." #Kafka

Or did you suppose that you would enter the Garden without there having come to you the like of that which came to those who passed away before you? Misfortune and hardship It may be that you hate a thing though it is good for you& it may be that you love a thing though it be evil for you. #Quran

#Poetry as Prayer: … I have no revelations at all. I know nothing. I’m not to be trusted on anything. But the poem may know something, and may be trusted, actually, on what it has to express in the world, in my practice. — Paul Muldoon

‘Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: “My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.” The stranger is a theologian.’ — Diderot

Many of the remaining churches across Gaza either scaled back or cancelled Christmas activities altogether.

It is irrational to assume we are rational beings... inhabiting a rational universe.

"A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything, is silence." — Antonio Porchia 🙏

Getting in the spirit of things...

Come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed. — Lucille Clifton #poetry #nature #photography

Allah does not intend to burden you, but He intends to purify you, and to complete His blessing upon you, that you may be thankful. #Quran 5:6

a line that struck me at a church service I attended in Argentina: ❝ El Misterio necessita contemplacion y silencio ❞

Paths are also relationships — to be meaningful, they require fidelity.

If we ask life for favors, we must be prepared to return them.