As we walked in silence a passage from the Bhagavad Gita came to me: "We live in wisdom who see ourselves in all and all in us. We are forever free who have broken out of the ego cage of 'I and mine.' " The Bhagavad Gita described a voice within all of us that tells us each the same thing: what we want is not money, fame, or material possessions, but a world of peace, hearts filled with love, and an earth where the air and water are clean, the environment healthy. We want to rid ourselves of those unwanted habits and negative thoughts that prohibit us from living in peace with ourselves, the environment and our neighbor.
The return to a sense of community where people hold all things as sacred is an affirmation about the grace within human nature. We are meant to grace one another: to be sources of grace and healers of grace. So grace is an abundance, not a scarcity. Grace comes through our art: the art of living, the art of our language, the art of our relationships, the art of our forgiving.
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
