The Mevlevi Sufi Whirling Dervishes

Amazing evening at the National Cathedral tonight: Faruk Celebi Efendi, the twenty-second great- grandson of Rumi (Who does not feel a chill along one's spine at the idea that they are meeting or seeing or hearing or all of the above the actual descendant of an actual confirmed mystic such as Rumi? Do we even think that prophets have descendants?), Rumi's poetry declaimed out loud in Farsi and in English, and the Mevlevi Sufi Whirling Dervishes' Sema Ceremony.

It was soothing in the way only Sufi music and Rumi's words can bring internal peace to someone, with such a simple sentence as "Open your chest like a window and let the spirit in". Soothing in the way the sound of the reed calms the anxieties of the day (the panic attack of the 9th hour, 3:00pm, when I realized all I still have to do before Friday, or before Saturday and even before next Tuesday, before I can breathe out, exhale, stop holding it all together)...

The whirling dervishes spread out like beautiful white flying doves, bringing with their trance, the offering of peace. They became a living image of the Spirit, their arms His wings, their bent heads the image of the Beloved's Suffering. I was mesmerized.

I will research more their traditions: there were so many convergences between Eastern Orthodoxy and Sufism, it was surreal. They bow in the way we bow, they kiss the hands of their spiritual leader in the way we do, they cross their arms before the whirling just like we do in Church before Communion and for the same reason: unity with God; their chant for the repose of the Souls sound exactly like an Eastern Orthodox panekhida and they come from this place called Konia which happened to be named Ikonia in the Byzantium Empire (as in: icon, the image of God).