Beauty lies at the heart of the tea ceremony. Each object used must be beautiful. Special cups are made for this ceremony. Even to look on these cups is to be brought into a wider, calmer realm of the self.
The tea master Okakura KaKuzo has said that beauty evokes harmony and the mystery of mutual charity... . All that we call beautiful is a kind of vessel, like love, that holds what we know.
Yahya deeply trusted in God's forgiveness. The preacher from Rayystands amazed and overwhelmed before the mystery of divine love: is it not the greatest miracle of grace that God, the ever rich who needs nothing, should love? How then, should we, who are so much in need of Love, not love God? He sums up his whole feeling in one short prayer: "Forgive me, for I belong to Thee."
~ by MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM by Annemarie Schimmel
