Essays

The last letter of a man who stayed. I do not have long. My hand will not hold the pen the way it once did, and my breath is coming shorter now, but I have to set this down before I go, for whoever finds it, in a drawer or a box or the pocket […]

Seven answers to one question, and why what a thing is depends on the depth of the one who beholds it. Ask a hundred people what light is, and you will hear a hundred different answers, and every one of them will be true, and not one of them will be complete. I have come

What I kept of you, when I could not keep you. You did not leave much behind. You never were a person who held tightly to things. Whatever you owned and did not use, you gave away while you still lived, pressing it into the hands of anyone who needed it more than you did,

Everything I came to say to you, before I could finally leave. I came the day after you died. I came before the earth over you had even settled, while it was still dark and turned and raw, and I stood there in the cold with a hundred things in my mouth that I had

A reflection on the orphan who is not made by death, the ache of being unseen, and the hands that shape a soul. Inspired by a line often traced to the scholar al-Shafi’i. Ask most people who an orphan is, and they will tell you the same thing. An orphan is a child whose mother

On the lower self that pulls you toward the easy road, and the watcher within who can set you free. Have you ever noticed your own mind working against you? You know the right thing to do. It is clear as day. And yet a voice inside you begins pulling the other way, whispering stay

A reflection for the one who does right and still suffers, while the careless seem to prosper. Inspired by a passage of scripture, a reading from the Quran. There is a question that has troubled good people for as long as people have prayed. You try to live right. You are honest, you are kind,

A Sufi reflection on the urge to rescue people, the ego hidden inside it, and the soul that was never yours to save. The urge to save someone is one of the most flattering feelings a soul can carry. You see another person struggling, and something in you rises up to fix them, to rescue

A question about living fully, the soul we can lose along the way, and the poison that waits in the same cup. What do you think about a person who wants to taste everything life has to offer? The whole of it. Every last drop. Every door, and whatever waits behind it. You have met

A meditation on shame, control, and the freedom of living unashamed. Before I take you any deeper into this, let me tell you what I mean by a guardian of shame. If you do not understand who they are, nothing else I say will land the way it should. So, who is a guardian of