Luminous Dark
Aswad Nurani, from the album Makam Shekhina, was inspired by Shaykh Dr. Ibrahim Baba Farajajé in his piece Alone with the Alone, on the luminous dark. Aswad nurani is a concept in Islamic Sufism celebrating the radiance of the deepest dark. Ibrahim Baba's work calls us to honor the sacred in what has often been feared due to systemic oppression, calls us to counter the demonizing of the dark. In Aswad Nurani we praise and cherish the darkness more brilliant than ten billion suns, the darkness through which the world is begun.
Alone with the Alone
Khalvat Dar Anjuman
August 7, 2014 ·
786
arising in the luminous darkness to pray for the dying and the dead, to accompany them, to re-member them, to sing to them, the dead of all of the wars going on everywhere, at every second, at every inhalation and exhalation: for we are all indeed from the Source and it is to that Source that we are all returning......... too many dying, Earth's body dying with all of these bodies dying ........return again....
we do not have to abase darkness in order to exalt light this is the aswad nurani/the luminous darkness more brilliant than 10, 000, 000, 000 Suns aswad nurani/luminous darkness
demonisation of darkness is at the roots of body-hatred, hatred of women and their bodies, destruction of peoples the colours of the earth, fear and hatred of the erotic, queer/transphobia, islamophobia, judeophobia, fear and hatred of paganism and earth-based traditions, fear and hatred of people with disabilities, etc.. fear of wombs, fear of tombs...
first time i consciously experienced as a child Psalm 51 with the line, "purge me with hyssop and i shall be clean; wash me and i shall be whiter than snow", my response was, "but i do not want to be whiter than snow!"
( when i experience people who are not brown-identified rambling on with every other sentence about dark to define negative emotions, spaces, etc and darkness as everything evil, diabolical and destructive, i wonder if they wonder about the impact this demonising of darkness has on brown people or any other beings who feel profoundly erased AND demonised by that. is part of privilege not having to think about the consequences of what one says, of not thinking that some people might experience this as something very suffocating?)
this is part of my mi'mitsrayim/my coming out from a narrow place.
i have reached a point where i just need to say, "no more demonising the darkness/AND Embrace the Darkness. is there room anymore for ENDARKENMENT? even if there is not, i am holding that space, the space of a chant that JoAnne JoAnne F Henry taught me in Berkeley aeons ago: "come down into the Darkness, come down into the Darkness, come down into the Darkness, let the one you want to be, be born!" i used it in a Spring Festival in which we descended into Darkness, there to discover a garden with a fountain filled with gardenias, jasmine and oranges and candles. Aswad Nurani/luminous Darkness, a place of death and birth.
as we develop counter-oppressive translations of sacred texts and rituals, let us not keep language or gestures that demonise darkness even though the rest of our translations are far more careful about gender inclusivity, etc.. it is like the language that we use that implies that disabilities mean lack of agency. "i got blindsided; i'm paralaysed with fear; they are just deaf to our cries, etc; etc."
i want to write this book, insha'allah
this is a very primal part of the liberation from narrow places.
to paraphrase the holy words of Wayson Jones and the late Essex Hemphill, "now we think as we communicate"....