“Haleh Liza Gafori’s ecstatic and piercing translation has lifted a veil, bringing Rumi closer into the quick of our present. Each poem is a divine invitation. Free your mind. Drown in love.” – V (formerly Eve Ensler) Haleh Liza Gafori is a translator, vocalist, poet, and educator born in New York City of Iranian descent. Her latest work, is a translation of Rumi poems entitled Gold. I first heard one of her translations of Rumi sitting around a campfire on a Sunday morning in Patagonia, Arizona. I was bit by the passion and this conversation does not disappoint. Haleh and …
Author: Swanson
Belden Lane on the Unbroken Desert of God
“[Belden] Lane invites us to see the world around us as nothing less than God around us.” — James Martin, S.J. Belden Lane is Professor Emeritus of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University, author of numerous books including The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality and Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice. Belden Lane is a true elder, and in our conversation he exhibits that when we talk about wild places, the rough play and laughter of God, grief after losing a son, what we can learn from trees, and much more. Visit Belden Lane at his …
Your Naked Freedom
Good poetry is inherently spiritual. It is a clown car of interpretation. Once a door of perception is opened, endless and surprising “Ahas” tumble out. When you have a spiritual teacher who embodies a poem, their words become thunder and contemplation soaks you. The teacher who is having the greatest impact on me right now does this. And this teacher is uneducated and illiterate. This teacher is my 4-years old son. Two days ago my wife Laura had a meeting with his teacher. Laura learned that that morning our son had been spouting mildly inappropriate song lyrics to his classmates, …