“Ask a Sufi about the heart and you might wish you hadn’t, for we will no doubt go on and on; for us, the heart is everything. It is here that we seek refuge, because it is here that love resides. It is in the heart that the spark of Divine love, once awakened, grows into a flame — and ultimately into a fire of longing. The heart beckons us, holds us, and if we are lucky, sets us free. As the ninth-century Sufi saint and martyr Mansour al-Hallaj famously said, ‘When the Truth has taken hold of a heart, She empties it of all but Herself!’”