"The Sufi's home is the lover's home, which is the paradox that stands beyond all reason. I am rich because I have nothing. I am full because I am no one. It is daytime for me when the world is dark, and midnight at bright noon. And because his world is everything that is not in the world around him, he cries out only for annihilation. 'Kill me now,' Hallaj told his friends; 'I long to be with the One I love.'
"When you are in love — you know this, all of you — you are not yourself. You have no self. The world is a grid of shining correspondences. And the correspondences sing like angels. You cannot defile them with your intentions. You cannot undo that order that is suddenly revealed to you. All you can do is become part of it and move in hallowed light.
"Your friends make jokes about your absentmindedness. Your parents tell you you're deluded. All the people around ask you to come back to the person they know. But you are dead to them. The world has no meaning to you. Everything you once cherished is irrelevant, and you are far above it. The only truth you know is the truth around you. And you know, more than that, that whatever you love, you cannot fail to love. You can no more be argued out of your devotion than a compass can be told not to find the north, the tides instructed not to follow their moon.
" 'Don't come to me with reasons,' you tell your friends. Come to me with prayer bowls and songs. . . .
"In your tradition, Jesus comes to you as a reflection of God's grace on earth; in our tradition, all the world is such a reflection. The entire universe is God's messenger, and all life is our redeemer. We look on Paradise when we see a Persian carpet. We walk through Paradise when we enter the garden outside an Islamic palace. We lose ourselves in Paradise when we read the verses in our mosques and open ourselves to the dome above. To the lover, all the world is blessed."
