Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

My latest article in Arabic might be by far the darest according to one of my close friends, who cautioned me about publishing it. And I was as my usual self in such situations finding a good platform to pretend a heroic action that in reality is empty.

I genuinely never wanted to be a critic of the Palestinian authority, and I never want to be in a place where I would defend Israel. At the end of the day I am a woman who got out of two relations (not the only ones of course) (but two that lasted for quite a time) one from a schizophrenic (psychopath) and another from a troubled bulimic (who thinks he is a narcissist, and seems to understand it as a compliment). Well … yes, there is something about me and the attraction of psychotic desperate cases around me. Does this make me…

By Sharon St Joan

All over the world there are megalithic monuments with alignments to the Winter Solstice. At the moment of the Winter Solstice a beam of light from the sun strikes the deepest recesses of an underground sacred temple, as at Newgrange in Ireland or Maeshowe in Orkney, Scotland.

In the New World, at Chaco Canyon in new Mexico, the Sun Dagger at Fajada Butte marks both the Summer and Winter solstices, as well as other important celestial alignments.

The significance of the Winter Solstice is that this point in time every year marks the darkest time of the year; the death point if you wish, and at the same time, the return of the light.  It is the time, when the sun, having reached the moment when the days are the shortest, returns, and the days begin to grow longer.

The light returns, and with it comes…

I have always been attracted to Sufism for its openness, its loving, accepting nature but also partly because of the most celebrated Poet and Philosopher, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī. I have quoted him in my blogs and devoured his book  “Maṭnawīye Ma’nawī“.  I wish in my search, I could say that I have walked away sated, instead it’s like a thirst that refuses to be quenched. He talks about the madness and calmness of longing for one’s beloved, of doing what is right even when it’s not so clear that the path you are on is in fact ‘right’. I am mesmerized by his faith in the Lord, in the fact that our relationship with the Lord is a direct one, that if we search, we’ll find God wherever we will look. His longing, his devotion, his love comes through in his writing in such a way…