Soulfood Friday

We all came down with stomach flu this past week. One, by one, despite  a friend's so called full proof  immunity building carrot juice smoothies, and my own thick as tar, homemade elderberry syrup, we succumbed.
Today, is the first day we have all been well. I spent the morning, carefully stripping beds, airing rooms, taking down glasses and mugs and clearing away the debris of books, papers and pieces of lego that have banked up in drifts around the bedrooms over past days.
When I went to the kitchen it seemed like a ghost town, chilly and uninhabited.
Rolling up my sleeves I turned the heater on for the first time this year.
I ran a hot bath, filling it with fragrant salts and a peel of aloe soap. Then I sunk down into it's soothing depth, steeping like a brew, and let the week evaporate from my skin with the steam.

Today is meant to be national poetry day. If you've noticed my sidebar, it is quite clear, I dearly love poetry. I wanted to share a poem as any excuse is a good one, and something I had read earlier this week from the travel writer Piers Moore Ede in  his book "All Kinds of Magic" {A Quest for Meaning in a Materiel World} seemed especially pertinent.




Soul drunk, body ruined, these two
Sit helpless in a wrecked wagon
Neither knows how to fix it

And my heart, I'd say it was more
Like a donkey sunk in the mudhole
Struggling and miring deeper

But listen to me: for one moment
Quit being sad. Hear blessings
Dropping their blossoms
Around you. God


In the chapter "Amongst the Sufis"  the writer describes his quest to find the elusive Sufi sects of Rumi's hometown of Konya, Turkey.
The Sufi orders have all been driven underground, their practises criminalised since the redevelopment of Ataturk's hard-line, right wing, government.

By stealth, luck and maybe even the hand of God he finally sets up a meeting with an old, reclusive Sufi teacher (pir) in a backstreet courtyard, (haveli). Over the next couple of paragraphs, he movingly describes how simply being in the presence of this man clarified his mind and gave him a profound sense of peace.

The Sufi's believe this sense of presence and clarity can be transmitted through words, music, dance, art and of course the bodies of those who hold it within themselves such as this gentle, aged, teacher.
An orthodox saying comes close to conveying the same message of transmission: 

"The one who has found the peace of God within himself can heal a thousand around him without knowing."
 
There is much in this world that creates static, white noise within us. Life can be a little like turning the dial through 10 radio stations. To tune our selves into a peaceful, focused frequency takes a discipline, habit and stillness that can be hard to obtain.

Places ( or people) of sanctuary, where there is no ego, pride, trade or judgement are rare and holy but we may recognize them by their quietude.
And although they may be elusive they are as necessary to a human soul as the pause between lines is necessary to a poem.

Every Friday I'll be pausing to notice something from the week that has nourished my soul. 
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A special, sacred-everyday moment captured on camera, or perhaps a snippet from a book, a recipe still warm from the kitchen or something whimsical that simply made me smile.
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Here are a few simple things that have fed my soul this week. 

What has inspired/fed/nourished your soul this week friends? 
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 Feel free to link up to your own soulful spaces either at the bottom of this post or in the comments.

 
   

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