Rumi & Dialog
Thursday, September 22nd, 2005

6.30 -8.00PM

This year's first event was on Rumi and understanding the importance of the dialog from Rumi's perspective. The program started with a documentary screening about Rumi's life and his way of approaching God. Afterwards, Dr. Whitney Bodman gave a speech about Rumi and the dialog.

Some key points from Whitney Bodman's Speech on Rumi&Dialog are as follows;

Rumi kept his spirituality outside himself. In order to come to God he had to have a reference point, and the sheikh in Sufism serves as the reference point through which you come close to God. Rumi always had a companion around him. First he met Shamseddin Tabrizi to whom he had a tremendous love. Rumi learned the “sama”, the dance of the whirling dervishes, from Shams. The important point here is that Rumi never regarded himself as the sheikh, although his father left this position to him after his death. Here Bodman pointed out to the fact that ‘we go astray when we begin to regard ourselves as the religious post around which the whole world revolves'. That could be an explanation of why Rumi has always had a huge number of enthusiastic followers from different religious and non-religious groups. We do dialog when we come to each other's presence and wisdom. We know that this wisdom is what we lack but we know also that it is out there. Bodman says “I study different religions because it raises questions in me that I bring back to my religion, and in turn this process renders me a better and wiser Christian.”

The Breath of Jesus and the word as the articulated breath

The breath of Jesus becomes a healing breath in the Islamic tradition, a breath with which a sick becomes better, a dead becomes alive. In Islamic, Christian, and Jewish traditions, God creates the world with a spoken word: In the Qur'an: “Qun!” means “Be!” In the Bible “Let there be light” are the words recited by God at the very beginning of creation. From this aspect, the word could lead to the creation of true friendship among us and thus to the opening of doors for dialogue between people from different backgrounds. We cannot learn except through acknowledging and embracing differences. The purpose of worship is bringing us together and practice breathing, through preaching in Christianity and hutba in Islam, and at the end our frustrations and ignorance are healed.

Silence

Rumi signed some of his poems as Shamseddin Tabrizi and sometimes signed his poems in a different way: by the Persian word which means “Silence.” According to Bodman, silence symbolizes the center around which the whirling dervishes rotate. Bodman concluded his speech with the following words “In the clash of civilization, much of where religion, good religion, fails when we fail to acknowledge that we are not in the center, that in the center is the silence, that which God is yet to unfold to us. But we are not there yet.”

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