SPEAKER_03 0:01

When someone we love dies, or we lose something we treasure, we find it's hard to find the right words to express what we're feeling or what we're facing. We freeze, we constrict, and we're trying to reach for meaningful words, and sometimes we come up empty. But what if the problem isn't that you don't know what to say? It's that no one ever gave you the right kind of language for grief.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yeah, right tools, right?

SPEAKER_03 0:34

The right tools.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Yeah. Well, we were so happy this time to sit down with my my friend Moody Speeti, who I met in Salt Lake City a while back, got to eat at his restaurant. Um wonderful, wonderful man, and uh just been really enjoying following his work on Substack, which will be in our links. Um He's a Lebanese American poet. He's a contemplative educator, he's a man who grew up with a debilitating stutter, and he explored how language and poetry could become tools for healing at the end of life and in life itself, and especially in the depths of loss. We are so blessed to hear several of his poems as beautiful, meaningful poems during this podcast. So you very much should stay and listen. Don't miss it.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

That's right. Oh, he's so amazing. Please do listen, listen, listen.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Welcome everybody and greetings. My name is the Reverend Wakil David Matthews. I'm glad to be with you again. Really excited today to speak with my friend Moody Speti. Moody is a Lebanese-American poet, author, and a contemplative educator. He was born in Texas and raised in Lebanon, and he moved to the United States at the age of 18 as an evacuee following the 2006-July War. So thank you so much for being willing to join us today. We're looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

This is indeed the truth. Thank you for having me. Well, and I am the Reverend Mother Anna Luisa Armandares, and we're going to talk about Moody and how he ended up in Utah. And he founded and operated the Laziz Kitchen, a Lebanese restaurant celebrated by the New York Times as the future of queer dining. And I'm going to ask what that means at some point. Moody was also named a plaintiff in Kitchen versus Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah in the 10th circuit state in 2014. A lifelong stutterer, he is passionate about writing and poetry as practices in fluency and self-expression. His memoir, Habib means beloved, out of the University of Utah Press. And he has a poetry collection, Ahamidula Anyway. Which is that's that's alhamdulillah. What is it? Aham. Anyway, so it's alhamdulillah anyway. Uh by Fernwood Press. And these are set to be published, or this is set to be published in the fall of 2026. Yeah. So welcome.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah. I love that. I and I actually got to when we met you, actually the first time we met you was at your restaurant, which you had just recently sold, I think. Um but we still but you were, you know, you still had enough push that you pull or whatever that you were able to take us and treat us. And oh my God, such good food. So really appreciate that. And sounds like an incredible work that you've done. And looking forward to hearing some poetry today. Thank you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

So, Moody, we were just going to start right off, but what inspired you to begin the work that you do?

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Oh man. Yeah. That's a big question. I'll uh first just disclose to your listeners as they heard in my bio that I'm a person who stutters. So you might hear pauses or tongue clicks. Um and if you can watch this, you'll see tremors on my lips too. And I like to invite folks to use my stutter as a mindfulness cue to breathe. And so you can send your support towards me. And uh that that perhaps actually speaks to uh the heart of what uh led me onto this path. Uh growing up with a debilitating uh uh stutter meant that I could not speak, but spent time and observation and it uh helped me realize from a young age the importance of compassion um to suffer with, to be with other people's suffering. And uh over the years this has worn down to what I find is uh elemental for us uh giving words or expression to our experience and poetry is uh is the heart of this.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

I love the title. Habibi means beloved.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

So yeah, do you think that's a good idea? Yeah, it's uh go ahead. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

It's a term we use in Lebanon with um everybody, uh friends, family, foes, the birds, the dogs on the streets. Um Habibi we call out, and the Sufi poets like Rumi and Hafiz refer to God as Habibi or as the beloved. And how how sweet that there is a language in where we refer to each other as beloved at every chance we can.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Love that.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

What a wonderful way to get way to acknowledge the divinity that we're all a part of. So so part, so important. We talk about that a lot. And uh well, I'd love to hear more about that, or possibly a poem if you'd like to share a poem.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Um yeah, absolutely. And in fact, I'll I'll share a poem by the same title.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Okay, perfect.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Habibi means beloved. And this is a distillation from the preface of my book that I turned into a poem. Habibi means beloved. It rolls off our tongues, endearing the spaces between us. A name so ubiquitous it could mean anyone. So it means everyone. Habibi. We daily greet each other, claiming the sanctity of every life upon our lips. Waking up next to a lover under balconied green French doors to the smell of menuche wafting in from the corner a bakery. Sabajo Good morning, Habibi over the phone with your brother discussing the latest exchange rate, holding your mother's Mediterranean kissed hands at the dinner table asking for salt. Habibi. It catches the ear with familiar embrace. Beloved who? Me? Yes. Yes, you. To the taxi driver dropping off in his red plated nineteen uh nineties Mercedes Benz, we bid Shukran thank you, Habibi. To the butcher over the phone taking our order, and the delivery man scooting over on a moped, no less than ten minutes uh later, we raise a hand to our heart. Habibi to the young girl in pajama joggers seated next to her mother behind the register at the corner of the market, handing back loose change, shukran, habib day, funerals and graduations, acceptance of letters and job offers, departures and arrivals, even to a stranger crossed on a dark road or a mistaken enemy in a precarious moment, habibi we call out, hand raised in the air. How tenderly we name our place among each other, affirming our passing existence, one writhing heart of a planet in an otherwise empty universe. Habibi. We cry out across stranged distances. Beloved, we are saying. Thank you, Habibi. Thank you, Habibi.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Wow. Wow, that's beautiful. That just that really uh struck me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

Yeah. It's, you know, I Moodya, you don't know this about me, but I I sometimes become very irritated because people are such language supremists. Like, you know, the only way to communicate is the mouth. And you know, like that, like people don't read much. It's like everything has to be spoken. Our prayers to the divine just has to be spoken. And listening to that makes me realize that there are words that are continuous prayers, right? So like what we study the wazifas, right? It's like you can breathe those words and they mean something, not just the thing. So, you know, the semio semiotics of habi is just yeah. So wonderful. And I love semiotics. So thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Well, one one cool cool thing I love about the word habibi, and I write this towards the end of the book, is it comes from the word hub, which means love. Uh and a conjugation of the word hub gives you hub, which means seed. So perhaps more truthfully, love is a seed we plant between each other. And so habibi is a way to water the seed.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Wow. Yeah, yeah. I love talking to poets, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:09

Well, uh yes, I love talking to poets. And I also love talking to somebody who knows how language is created and the essence behind words. I mean, I I pretend I'm a semiotician at heart because I just really love the manufacturing of words that we do to create meaning to convey something, right? But there it is, like the love seeds, a BB.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

I love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Well, that's uh coming back to stuttering that taught me from a young age the power of words. Because I couldn't speak, I or I had a hard time speaking, I witnessed clearly how whenever I came to utter something, the environment changed. And I paid attention to how the adults spoke of each other or about quote unquote enemies, and how that created the conditions we're in. So I I cultivated from a young age a reverence for the power of words and speech. Yes. And this goes back to the biblical dictum in the beginning was the word, and the word was God. Or even the Buddhist write speech. Our words are creationary tools.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

I I so love that because I have two children that I raised in a household where they weren't allowed to use the word hate unless they really meant it. They had they had to actually explain to me why hate was the appropriate word of the moment. And even love wasn't going to be like, you don't love hot dogs. Like, tell me more about what it is that you that you're feeling. And so, and and I remember maybe this is a good story for you because there was a moment when our car got this window smashed in and they stole things, or somebody, you know, and I was in shock, and my children standing beside me on a cold, snowy day, looking at the car and being like, oh my gosh, I have to call the police, I have to file reports, I have to do all this thing, and I'm in shock. And my son looks up and he says, Can I use the word hate now? And I said, sure, use the word hate. And so he said, I hate the person who did this. And it landed so hard on me. Like I was like calling the police and doing things, but I felt the weight of that, the power of that word where he came from. And it like I did all the paperwork, all the adulting part of it. And then I was like, let's go for a walk. And, you know, down to the street, have both kids in hand in hand. And I said to them, I don't think that hate is the right word for this person. I said, because I think that we don't know who it was. And, you know, we just kind of were like curious, who might it be? Imagine who is like it's somebody who's hungry, is it somebody who's, you know, using drugs and they need another something, like they're, you know, having a hard time, you know, trafficked people who have to make money for their person. Like, I was like, I just don't want to hate them. I just really still feel like we can hate the action, but we don't hate the person. And you know, I think that's the only time my kids used hate. Like we they really like were like, yeah, you're you're right, mom. Like, so I love how intentional language can be. And not many people do that.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah, it it's important to utter um beautiful things and helpful things and beneficial things. There's a saying in Plebanan that a vessel spills what it contains. So what we have inside, what we speak, is a reflection of what we are carrying.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah. So true.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

Oh, a vessel what now?

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Was that what it spills what it contains.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Okay. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

We talk a lot about the different ways of grieving on this podcast, you know. And and that every person grieves in a different way, every person lives in a different way. Everybody, as you said, we spill what we contain. And um, and that's true at the end of life, it's true during life, it's true in the beginning of life. So wow, that's really that's wonderful, wonderful. I think we've also talked about and talk speaking of words and um the power and the responsibility that that that that we have to um using to considering what what we're saying, how we're saying it. Um is that we you know we practice some of our practices, our spiritual practices. We often talk about, you know, the this is the word that this, this, these are the words that our teacher gave us, and we have to use the exact same words. And and um, and it's always one of my, you know, kind of my pet peeves, if you will, because I like I'd rather think about why they said that, what the essence of their prayer or their scripture or their words were, and um and say it in my own way. Um repeat what, you know, or not necessarily it's not uh sometimes there's a value and there's like a an essence to the words or to the the prayers, um, to the wazefa, that kind of thing. But it's really paying attention to that, what is the essence for me personally, what's what's happening in my heart when I'm saying those prayers or when I'm saying those words uh and making that a part. That's like another piece of the consciousness of words and and language and the way we relate to each other.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah, we can become informed by the words and yet um allow them to blossom in their own expression. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

And allow others to blossom in their own expression. That's the other piece that you know it's always been orthodoxy is just not good no matter where it's coming from.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

No. No, and we can look at the natural world and see that it loves diversity. It thrives in diversity.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Yes. Yeah. And differences, right? I mean, I again, Hasra Inyakan, everybody to their own evolution, right? We have diversity of sparrows and like the languages that sparrows speak on different parts of this continent, they're all diverse. You know? It's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Wonderful. Where are we? I love it. This is great.

SPEAKER_03 17:40

But but Moody, so tell me, what what are you doing? What are what is your work?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Yeah, what is the work now and where's where's it headed? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

So I have these two books coming out in September. Um The Memoir and the poetry collection, Alhamdulillah Anyway, which is uh in response to the genocide in Gaza and now the war and genocidal attempts in Lebanon. Uh so it it addresses language, land, and war and the connection between all three. And then I uh work as a contemplative educator, and I use this as an all-encompassing term for one-on-one um guidance or therapeutically informed coaching. I am trained as a therapist, um, but I work in a larger container of contemplative and spiritual guidance. And I facilitate and and lead workshops on writing and poetry as a a practice in awakening the heart. This is sort of the thread I f follow is every heart has a key that will awaken it in some way to the realization that we are each other. And uh for me, writing and poetry uh and contemplative practice uh are the ways that have helped open up my heart, and I hope it can help open up more hearts as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Yeah. We'll definitely have links in the podcast notes for your folks to connect to that and take advantage of it. Because yeah, I I have been um a follower of yours on Substack for several years now, and I just I love every word. Basically, I just keep I don't know how often I've just you know put my big heart on there, and then thank you. Thank you for uh and and even and and shared them because just really, really beautiful work. So do you have another poem you want to share with us right now?

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah, I I was thinking about this poem um and talking about language. So uh shortly after 2023, as we started to read the news about what's going on in Gaza, I couldn't help but notice that all the headlines uh were using war language. And I thought we get to war by using the language of war, or we understand these words in that context. So I took war terms and I uh explored what else they could mean. And so this poem is titled A New Mythology, because words are uh creationary uh myths, as we've said. A new mythology. I want to live in a world that trains poets instead of soldiers that invents words for experiences too complex to define. The kind that fracture your bones and bloom and a thousand petaled symphony to cup the ache in your chest. A world that drills us on how to march toward each other bearing wildflowers, standing silent at the break of dawn. We want a world in where explosion is understood as a metaphor for awe, pouncing at the edge of exhale, and war a state of self-denial and occupation, meaning that thing which grips your attention and ever widening circles of prayer. I want to live in a world where the vocabulary of ownership is a relic we visit in museums, and a stranger is someone we feed, and dirt the reason for devotion. A world that targets food deserts where the rainfall. Of seeds which routes rivers to parched villages, then brigades an army of palms to harvest light ripening on lush vines that invade your dreams with instructions on how to implode ripe black berries between the skin of your teeth, how to armor yourself with bare thin leaves. Want a world that offers a new mythology for being one and where the only deity worth worshipping is the ground you stand on. And to become a hero, you must not leave on a journey, but surrender yourself a witness to the pulse within.

unknown 22:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Thanks.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

Wow. Oh my God. That last phrase.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Yeah, surrender yourself. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Yeah. Because I'm the Joseph Campbell kind of gal, and I always want to go on a journey. But I do need to surrender.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Well, there's that saying that the longest journey is the one you take from your head to your heart.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Truth.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Yeah, beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 23:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

I can't wait.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

I can't I I know. I can't wait to go to your reading. I need an invite.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Thanks. Yeah, it's worth every moment, every every prayer that you share with us. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

I also want to invite listeners who may, I mean, we do a lot of poetry on this podcast. We, you and I are aficionados for sure. And I wonder if there's people who really believe that they don't understand what it is to experience in the world of poetry. And there's so many different poems, right? Like there's like the Andre Gibson, you know, um spoken word. Spoken word, right? Like it is very different from yours from, you know, Neruda or uh Carlos, was it, was it uh who is that? Oh god, Carlos or something Carlos. William Carlos. Um, but I want to invite the the listeners who are here for grief and dying to think about language as bridges to connect with people. So you may not enjoy poetry, you may not understand it, but when you're talking to somebody who is beholden to grief, what are the simplest words you can get to like touch them in their grief? How can you, you know, call them back to their bodies in this grief? And poetry does this. This is this is an awareness of how language is used to get outside of our like our linear thinking about what it means to be human. This is an expansion of concepts. So listeners, play.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Well, to your point, sparrows have different ways of uh communicating to each other. There are various diverse ways a poem can show up. Uh from the lay poem to the institutionalized academic poem. That's right. I I'm thinking of Mary Oliver when she said she'd rather have a poem speak to someone's heart than fly over their head. Yes. And I'm I'm very much of that thought. I want the poem to be in service of somebody else and approachable and that it moves you in some way. Right. And and for those who think they're not a poetry person or don't understand poetry, coming back to language, it helps to know that poetry comes from poesis, which is the Greek to make or to create. So poetry is creating something, and what are we creating? Something beautiful from the life we have. And it uh may not tell you definitively what is there, but it points to it. It it helps you give language to your experience.

SPEAKER_03 26:27

Right. It's a signifier.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Yeah. And so poetry is a perspective. It doesn't have to be lines on a page, but an orientation towards your life.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

I love that.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

And it's too, and also, I mean, if there is, you know, people sometimes really enjoy the eulogy at a at a at a service because words are put together to encompass this occasion. Right. And and so some people like to read Bible verses. My father's one of those folks. And so I think that that lilting language sometimes also feels somatically comfortable to people. You may sometimes I have actually been uh in spaces where the poets are reading and the words really make no sense to me. I'm kind of like, I don't understand this, but the the way the cadence is what actually was like makes me like feel, oh, this I understand this part of it.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Yeah, you get into that criminal space between poetry and music where you can hear a piece. You may not know what they're intending, but you feel something. That's right. And scripture is poetry. Uh the the prophets were poets. Yeah. The bards of the past and the menstrels of the past spoke in a poetic language to help us make sense of where we are. And to remember, right? Yes. And if we are to read scripture through a poetic lens and not as literal, it actually may become very inclusive for all of us.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

It does, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've done a lot of work and study, and it's really helped me a lot to reclaim the Christianity that wounded me, you know, that originally is that in the Aramaic to read to read the words of Christ in the language he probably spoke, which is much more poetic, as is, I think, Arabic and and ancient Hebrew. That that whole that the words are um not the Greek and the Roman that we got, and the the worst, even worse yet, the you know, King James. Um it just get got more and more divided and more and more defined to this is what this means. And in the end, when you go back to those ancient ways of speaking, it's a much more poetic and much more open um way of uh experiencing the words. And a hundred vashmaya in in the beginning of the what's called the Lord's Prayer is very little to do with our Father, it's it's it's to do with opening to the to the oneness, you know, to whatever that ungendered oneness. Um so I love that it just speaks to your point that and especially if we can listen and hear and pay attention to those words in the original language, so that's often that mantric kind of feeling of the essence of the words can come through if you pay attention, if you listen to the words in that language that they were spoken. That's been that's been my experience in any case. So I thank you for that.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

Do you have um any stories of your own um grief in your own law, loss, grief or loss in your life that you'd want to share or poetry?

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Yeah. Uh well I I I have, of course, experienced grief as as we all have. It would be um impossible to be human and not experience loss in some way. So I've I have lost people and I've felt the grief of losing my home due to divorce as a kid and then to war. Uh and and yet I very much value uh uh these experiences of loss. Impermanence is a great teacher, as the Buddha taught. And uh it helps us reach towards a place of uh what what I call existential gratitude. I can only be grateful for the things which exist today because I know they will not exist forever.

SPEAKER_03 30:29

The loss, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Yeah. Yeah, so true. Yeah. Yeah. And that comes back to it's all divine, right? Remembrance, yes, zikur.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Yeah. And and to remember where we are today right now as a moment that will not be repeated, nor was it ever guaranteed. And so that invites awe as well.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love that. Very true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

Okay. So what are your challenges around the work that you are creating for yourself?

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Challenges. On a personal level, I'm very much um someone who enjoys to be alone and and enjoys my quiet time and long walks. And I find it a challenge at times, uh, to be quite honest, uh, to be in social spaces. Because it feels as if it takes me away from myself. And uh for for any person on the path as a contemplative or a mystic or a poet, uh there comes a time when you'd realize uh there is not much else you can say. Right? Once you touch into uh the nature of impermanence and the understanding of no separate self, uh it all kind of comes together and makes sense. Uh so I feel challenged at times when I work with clients or when I'm facilitating workshops. Uh and um trying to address things which to me seem very elemental and common sense and uh hoping for the the persons involved to really embody that and become free within their own selves. So I I do um have a hard time coming to terms with this path and this work and understanding what my role is in it. And this is to say that for anybody on the path, doubt uh is a constant companion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

I and I will add to that too. I would ask I would say frustration. And that's why, again, I cling to Hazra inyakan, because when I get really frustrated, that you hope that you know, the client or the the person who is asking if they'll, you know, if you can transmit the ease with which they can get to that next level. But there's there's still, you know, there's still a lot of like, I don't understand or I'm I'm not comfortable with that. And so then I get like, why am I even doing this? Like, what's the point? And you know, and then I have to realize like I have been called to to be a minister. I have been called for pastoral care, not of a church or a people or a religion, but to all the world, right? I am here to just be the conduit for the divine, to show up in the face of anything that people are going through. So I feel frustration sometimes because I'm like, you too could be the conduit, like easy peasy. Join me.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

It sounds so simple. And and in in frustration, there's an impatience too, which I feel in myself, I'm impatient for this person to realize them themselves. But then I have to question where will we arrive if they do realize themselves? What is what is so urgent about right now? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:15

Well, you know what? I I am gonna say it's not about urgency. It's about uh I sometimes work with clients who tell me, I want to feel like you seem to feel. I want to be there. And and I'm like, I have gone through a lifelong of traumatic experiences and losses and griefs. I have been through so many times when I'd rather not have been alone and I have been alone, but the one who's been with me is the beloved, and I have viscerally felt the beloved. I have been on my face, I have, you know, not wanted to be alive. I have there's been so many things. And I said, but I go for walks and I breathe in the divine, and I I don't cry outwardly, but I I cling so desperately to the one I know who loves me. And I was like, when you're ready to just let that happen to you, that's how you get here. You don't get here by just checking a box, right? And so so the urgency for me is like, oh, just start start saying yes to this, just you know, and I always I always tell people with a comedy, because I I've had just quite a number of people say, like, I want to be able to really believe like you believe. And I'm like, your world will break in half when you really believe that you're ready for that. And just get ready for it. And so and then they're like, no way, I don't want it. I need you to be my companion.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

Yeah, yeah, be careful what you ask for.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Anyhow, I'll just say so. My frustration is is just in some ways, but it's silly too.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny when someone says, I want to feel the way that you feel, and there's already a gap between how I'm feeling and how I want to feel. And the the doorway to that is to feel what I'm already feeling. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

You're there. You're on the threshold.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yes. It's through direct experience that that we get to experience the whole spectrum of what it means to be human.

SPEAKER_03 36:18

And also to to abide in that love, that divine love, when it comes through, you're like, oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Yes. Yeah. There's a reason why in monasteries, at some point you just stop reading books, right? And then you sit on the cushion or you go for a long slow walk to really inhabit your own experience.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

Well, I remember a few years ago, um, Waquil gave me like three pages of wazifas and prayers and mantras for you know, for me to sit Kilvat. And I went and I sat in my little cabin and it was a blizzard outside, and I was just like, this is it. I'm here. Let me put my little pieces of paper out in front of me and I'm gonna just start doing the thing. And I started and I couldn't, and it was really hard, and I just felt like, what is going on? And I heard the divine's voice saying, I'm right here. Like, you don't have to do all these gyrations to actually sit with me. Like, yeah, just just be with me. And so suddenly and I remember I told Joaquil when I got home, I was like, I couldn't do it. Like there's this words. I I speak a different language with the divine, my beloved. I don't need to be doing English words that aren't just naturally rolling out of me, right? So yeah, at some point you just you just stop.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Yeah, and just be. Yeah, yes. In Kilbat, which is the uh silent meditation in the Sufi practice, is um I every time when I do that is my teacher almost always gives me, like I did for homework? Yeah, well, not homework, but just you know, suggestions, you know, try this, try this. But as I always tell you, and I always tell all my Sufi folks, and my teacher told me, you know, don't if it doesn't resonate, don't do it.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

And I end up almost every single time just being in the forest.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Um, and just being on the ground. And, you know, there might be some zikr going on, but it's just really because it's reconnecting to the breast, breathing the earth, letting the earth breathe me. Uh, and I find I find that much more important than making sure I've done all the things that he told me I should do. I know. He doesn't do it that way, though. He doesn't tell you. He just says, here's some ideas, time out. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the way it works. It works better that way, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Well, and there's something couched in in in here that I say to my clients often. Well, there's three things I discuss with new clients that we have to agree on. Uh in in order to work together. First is you and everyone you love will die. That's just a fact, right? Grief will come, but we need to come to terms and to accept this. Second, uh no, there is no point that will come when you will be free of trouble. It's just not realistic. Right. The first truth. Life is suffering. Yes. No, it doesn't mean we have to suffer, but it doesn't mean we can avoid trouble. Trouble and challenge will come up. And then the third thing is we will not arrive at a point of finding a fixed authentic self. To be fixed is antithetical to be human. And so the self is always changing, and it's changing in response to experience. And authenticity is a moment to moment of awareness of how we're showing up.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

So true, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

So if we can let go of the grasping for a fixed self or an authentic self, and of a future time of no trouble, and of the want for things to live on forever, everything will fall into place. That's right. And so when it comes to these prescribed practices and psychological interventions and 10 steps to reach enlightenment and six oils to clear your chakras and the promise of awakening. Perhaps it's really just coming back to the ground that to be human means to struggle and to even love our struggle and to continually discover ourselves in the process. We don't arrive or achieve anything.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. The uh the the patient, I I was always a very impatient spiritual person. You know, it's like, oh come on, I just want to be enlightened. What the heck? What are we waiting for here, you know? And my uh my dad, who is a gospels saying in a gospel choir, and they had a song that I loved. In fact, I made a dance of universal peace from it, which is um from Isaiah. It says, They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they will rise up with wings as eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not faint. Teach me Lord to wait. And um that the last is part of the gospel song, Teach me Lord to wait. And so I I love that just sense of yeah, that we know just and what you said, um Woody is this the sense of letting go of trying to get anywhere, letting go of trying to get to the final enlightenment, the authentic, yes. It's just not gonna happen and living in the moment, find it like your poem, you know, find yourself in the place where you are. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:51

Yeah. No, it's what happens when when we reach inclinement, what then? Right. Yeah, right. What do we do after that, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:00

Maybe, or who knows?

SPEAKER_03 42:02

Yeah, we'll go back, we'll we'll go back to source, is what I just thinking of a conversation I had last night with a friend, which is a little kind of, you know, you'll see where I'm gonna thread this through. But um, I was we're talking about people who are married and those marriages who really work. And I and I mentioned that I'd read an article recently about a man who was asked, How did you make it for 50 years of marriage? Right? As though it's like, you know, prescription. It's like, if I do what you did, I too will get there. And he's like, Well, I didn't marry just one woman. I married like seven, eight, or nine different women who who grew and changed and evolved. And as they changed, I got to know a new person, right? And so he was very much aware that the authentic individual in his spouse was going to be constantly transforming. And he met this new person as like with delight and curiosity. And so, you know, looking for an authentic self is like I I I thought about that, you know, I was like, I have changed so many times in my lifetime. So, you know, I am, you know, living my most authentic moment self.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Yeah, yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 43:13

Here I am, Lord.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Do as you will. Yes, do as you will. So um we're doing great. I just wondered if you have a poem you'd like us to end with. Or if there's anything you wish we'd had asked you about, too. That's the other option. If you'd like to do anything else you'd like to share.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Conversation can can go in a hundred different things.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

I think it's like part two, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Well, when and when we meet, I think we should just allow for a lot of spaciousness because I too feel like you would be fun to talk to for a long time. Thank you. Unless you're tired of you know being in in in community, and then you could be like no complexion.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

That's yeah, the cycle of going out and coming in. And yeah. Yes. Um what we didn't discuss. Uh I mean we t touched on very big general topics, uh, so there isn't anything that comes to mind. I I would encourage and hope your listeners might pre-order my books or attend a future workshop. I have one coming up in in July titled In Praise of Impermanence. And so we'll get to discuss impermanence and uh the beauty and the gift of it. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 44:36

And is this in Europa or is it through you?

SPEAKER_00 44:39

That's through me. It's uh good to to our poetry workshop uh where we'll explore poems about a specific theme. And uh the series is titled in praise of, so we praise something new every time. Okay. And it's not always easy things to praise, and permanence isn't an easy thing to praise. But I'll have that up on the on my um Substack and website soon as well. Okay, perfect. Um and I'll end with a poem. Uh the title poem from my collection. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah anyway. Yeah. And uh this is just a moment. So there's two versions of this there's Hallelujah Anyway, and Alhamdulillah Anyway. And I like to say Alhamdulillah is the sorrowful sister to Hallelujah. Uh and the epigraph is inspired by a song from Leonard Cohen. Um and even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah Leonard Cohen. So this is Hallelujah and Alhamdulillah, anyway. I have seen the finality of my life from where I stand. Too late now to be convinced otherwise. A lifted tongue already broad to its note of joy, the sombre landscape behind it, fields groan in the wreckage. Here awaits the kingdom behind the question. And what now? After your heartbreak, after your litany of disappointment. I cannot speak for you, whoever you imagine yourself to be, nor for your accomplishments, your grievances, your lonely odes. The world is violent, yes, and gentle, and full of mystery. Ahead is a path built not of promise or at all, but of the millions sprouting where the thousands are slain. The world is remade again and again, fresh each day. As for me, I'll arrive in love and taken again by the beauty of what saved me. Poetry, awe sunrise, alone as I am, alone as this worn body has walked, I'll stand with lips parted, the tongue yielded in praise, whispering nothing but the recited prayer. Hallelujah. Alhamdulillah, anyway. Alhamdulillah.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Well despite it all, gratitude to be alive. Yeah, exactly. Despite it all, Alhamdulillah, anyway. Beautiful, beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 48:25

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Yeah, yeah, thank you. And I'm so glad we can see each other in three dimensions soon.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Yeah, yes, that'll be really, really nice. Yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_01 48:40

Well, thanks again, everybody. Please like and subscribe and check out Moody's Substack and his classes and his books. And really, you can't go wrong in there. It's beautiful, beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 48:52

Cannot go wrong. It's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

So celebrate each moment and alhamdulillah.

SPEAKER_03 48:58

Alhamdulillah.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Habibi. Bye-bye, Habibis. Bye-bye, baby. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you to Charles Heastan, the composer of the original music you are listening to now.

SPEAKER_03 49:20

And of course, thanks to you, our audience, and all of our amazing guests, please come back next week for another great episode. Share this with your friends, family, and community. We hope you will subscribe and follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack. Each guest's additional information will be found in the podcast notes. And of course, if you have a good end of life story to share, please reach out. We are always eager to hear from you.