O Lord! You are the guide of those who are passing through the Valley of Bewilderment. If I am a heretic, enlarge my heresy.
Mansur Al-HallajRead
God, Most High, is the very one who Himself affirms His unity by the tongue of whatever of His creatures He wishes. If He Himself affirms His unity by my tongue, it is He and His affair. Otherwise, brother, I have nothing to do with affirming God's Unity.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the divine nature of affirming God's unity, suggesting that any expression of faith comes from God Himself.
Mansur Al-Hallaj expresses the idea that the affirmation of God's unity is not a personal endeavor but rather a divine act. He implies that if God chose to articulate His unity through an individual, then it is fundamentally God's voice speaking, removing any personal agency from the individual. This highlights the relationship between the divine and human expression in spiritual matters.
In practice
In a religious sermon to highlight the role of divine inspiration in our affirmations.
O Lord! You are the guide of those who are passing through the Valley of Bewilderment. If I am a heretic, enlarge my heresy.
The beloved does not drink a single drop of water without seeing His Face in the cup. Allah is He Who flows between the pericardium and the heart, just as the tears flow from the eyelids.
I have seen my Lord with the eye of my heart, and I said: 'Who are You?' He said: 'You.'
There is nothing wrapped in my turban but God.
The passionate are like men standing on their heads, they see all things the wrong way.
There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled ---- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer . . . to look with new eyes on matters great and small.
No form of liberty is worth a darn [sic] which doesn't give us the right to do wrong now and then.
If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.
Africa has become the big game of the nation hunters. Today, Africa looms as the greatest commercial, industrial and political prize in the world.
Without doubt, the Lord grants all favors which are asked of Him in Mass, provided they be fitting for us.
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