When I visited Turkey and stayed for a couple of weeks in Istanbul I was blessed with several heightened spiritual experiences.
It was there in the Blue Mosque that I witnessed hundreds of Muslims at prayer in that extraordinary beautiful structure of gleaming tiles and shining glass and marble.
It was there that I suddenly received a clear message that there is a GOD and that He is One and the same God for Christians and Muslims.
It was there that I felt the power of the Faith in that place and that was one of the gifts of Grace on my long journey back to belief.
Turkey has a long history of mysticism.
The very mystical Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, and Basil of Caesarea) of fourth-century eastern Turkey eventually developed some highly sophisticated thinking on what the Christian church soon called the Trinity.
It took three centuries of reflection on the Gospels to have the courage to say it and offer the best metaphor they could find. The Greek word they daringly used was perichoresis or circle dance.
It took three centuries of reflection on the Gospels to have the courage to say it and offer the best metaphor they could find. The Greek word they daringly used was perichoresis or circle dance.
Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three—a circle dance of love.
ISLAM celebrates this fact of the dance as a form of worship with the whirling dervishes. I was privileged to watch their hypnotic motion on two unforgettable occasions in Istanbul.
God is Absolute Friendship. God is not just a dancer; God is the dance itself. This pattern mirrors the perpetual orbit of electron, proton, and neutron that creates every atom, which is the substratum of the entire physical universe. Everything is indeed like “the image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26-27).
Yeats in his poem "AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN"
Asks his profound question---
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
ISLAM celebrates this fact of the dance as a form of worship with the whirling dervishes. I was privileged to watch their hypnotic motion on two unforgettable occasions in Istanbul.
God is Absolute Friendship. God is not just a dancer; God is the dance itself. This pattern mirrors the perpetual orbit of electron, proton, and neutron that creates every atom, which is the substratum of the entire physical universe. Everything is indeed like “the image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26-27).
Yeats in his poem "AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN"
Asks his profound question---
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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