I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch.…
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Omid Safi
Omid Safi () is an American Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, where he is the Director of Duke Islamic Studies Center, and a columnist for On Being. Dr. Safi specializes in Islamic mysticism (Sufism), contemporary Islamic thought and medieval Islamic history. He has served on the board of the Pluralism project at Harvard University and is the co-chair of the steering committee for the Study of Islam and the Islamic Mysticism Group at the American Academy of Religion. Before joining Duke University, Dr. Safi was a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. 2Life and work Omid Safi was born in Jacksonville, Florida and is of Iranian descent. He was raised in Iran and fled Tehran to the United States with his family in 1985. Safi is a leader of the progressive Muslim movement, which he defines as encompassing a number of themes: striving to realize a just and pluralistic society through a critical engagement with Islam, a relentless pursuit of social justice, an emphasis on gender equality as a foundation of human rights, and a vision of religious and ethnic pluralism. After September 11, 2001 Safi was publicly critical of the intolerance and violence among Muslims that inspired the attacks, reminding Muslims that their role lay in "calling both Muslims and Americans to the highest good of which we are capable." Safi's book Progressive Muslims (2003) contains a diverse collection of essays by and about progressive Muslim
These moments — of being present and open to the cosmos and to humanity — are precious ones. It’s like a lightning bolt that comes down and brightens up everything. The lightning bolt doesn’t last for a minute, but oh for one breath — to see life, humanity, our own selves as perfectly one, whole,…
Go, be your best self. Be your most beautiful self. Be your luminous self. Be your most generous self. Be your most radically loving self. And when you fall short of that — as we all do, as we all have — bounce back and return. And return again. There is a grace in this returning to your luminous…
Unfurl your own story. It is true that we do have to wait to see “who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” Tell your own story — do it now. There is a power in owning your own story. If you don’t tell your own story, someone else will. And if you are willing to do the hard work of polishing the…