[Magdalen] Happy birthday Joseph Cirou – November 3

[Joseph Cirou]

When I was playing at a Lutheran Church in Kennesaw over 15 years ago,
there was a man who had moved form Albania. He said they were Moslem in
Albania but came to America so long ago that there was no mosque nearby; so
they became Christian (analogous to Armenians joining the Episcopal Church
even longer before). He was happy as a Christian because he said he had
come from the Sufi tradition which had been described to him as "The Moslem
Christians" the comparison of Rumi with Hopkins brought that back to my
memory. However, I played the wedding of an Albanian Orthodox gentleman
earlier this year and one of my good gay friends is also Albanian Orthodox
and writes quite a bit about the gay strain in Albanian liturgy and poetry.
He was one of the folks who researched some of the same sex rites of the
late patristic and medieval times that had survived in Albania.

Joe

On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 3:41 PM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Lovely, Lynn. I'm a big Rumi fan.  This notion is not unlike that in
> "Hound of Heaven."
>
> > On Nov 3, 2014, at 1:30 PM, "Lynn Ronkainen" <ichthys89 at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> >
> > James O
> >>> "What you seek is seeking you." - Rumi
> >
> >> Sounds creepy.
> >
> >
> > Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi
> mystic. Rumi's importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic
> borders. Iranians, Turks, Cappadocian Greeks, Afghans, Tajiks, and other
> Central Asian Muslims as well as the Muslims of South Asia have greatly
> appreciated his spiritual legacy in the past seven centuries. His poems
> have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and
> transposed into various formats (Wiki)
> >
> > My 'take' when I read it and put it into my sig lines was that seeking
> is part of the spiritual journey paired with a reassurance... as we seek so
> are we sought.
> >
> > Lynn
> >
> > website: www.ichthysdesigns.com
> >
> > When I stand before God at the end of my life I would hope that I have
> not a single bit of talent left and could say, "I used everything You gave
> me." attributed to Erma Bombeck
> >
> > Thomas Merton writes, “People may spend their whole lives climbing the
> ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is
> leaning against the wrong wall.”
> >
> > "What you seek is seeking you." - Rumi
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------
> > From: "James Oppenheimer-Crawford" <oppenheimerjw at gmail.com>
> > Sent: Monday, November 03, 2014 10:49 AM
> > To: "Magdalen at herberthouse.org" <magdalen at herberthouse.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Magdalen]Happy birthday Joseph Cirou – November 3
> >
> >>
> >> On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Lynn Ronkainen <ichthys89 at comcast.net>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> "What you seek is seeking you." - Rumi
> >>
> >>
> >> Sounds creepy.
> >>
> >> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> >> *“If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things
> better
> >> for people coming behind you, and you don’t do it, you're wasting your
> time
> >> on this Earth.”  -- *Roberto Clemente
> >
>