Azzi: Speech is born out of longing

Rābiʿa al Basri, an 8th century Sufi poet and mystic and Islam's first female saint - described in the 13th century by Ibn ‘Arabi as “... being the most famous interpreter of love” - believed that "In love, nothing exists between heart and heart."

I believe that.

Rābiʿa al Basri, born in Basra [Iraq] and buried in Jerusalem's Mount of Olives, believed that "Speech is born out of longing."

I believe that, too.

Last Monday - after brewing cardamom-flavored coffee and trying my hand at Wordle and Spelling Bee - I read, in one of the newsletters with which I begin my day, that contemplation is “a long loving look at the real.”

Love. Speech. Longing. Contemplation. How much more can one desire?

I remember a time when, years ago, I realized that truth, beauty, and passion - when encountered and revealed - should not only be fully embraced but needed to be shared. At that moment, gifted with that light, I knew it came with strings attached.

I had faith in things larger than myself - and I wanted to share.

"... Faith is the willingness to give ourselves over, at times," physicist Alan Lightman writes, "to things we do not fully understand. Faith is the belief in things larger than ourselves ..."

Writing a weekly column has been my attempt to pay some of that gift forward, to offer “a long loving look at the real” from my perspective as photographer, writer, father, Jiddo, and invite readers to think about not just the visible world but about what is hidden and unseen - and how that matters.

To understand that love is the way we learn of mysteries from within the unseen.

For years I've believed that learning from words within words - each a different color - is an act of love.

Writing a weekly column is akin to writing and posting love letters without waiting for the beloved to respond. It's not just about passion, inspiration, ideas, and speech; it's about birthing language that may resonate not just with lovers and the choir, but will challenge haters, bigots, and deniers of the truth.

Truth is not neutral, facts don't have alternate facts, some people are not more equal than others.

I've learned that longing for truth is a constant struggle and that while I've come to accept that the one thing one cannot control is a reader's or lover's response, the other thing I've learned is that I'm not alone in this struggle.

That I've never been alone.

Within an often shambolic life that's been both exhilarating and exhausting - a life of cautions, distractions, premonitions, longings, loves, and rejections -  of parables, metaphors, allegories - I have come to understand why James Baldwin was driven to write in American Notes: “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

We must all insist on the right to criticize her perpetually, to resist the persistence of white privilege, repudiate patriarchy and misogyny, challenge educational inequalities and resist book-burners, call out as insurrectionists, traitors, liars, and thieves those who would steal from fellow Americans to protect or seize power and profits.

Today, I understand why Toni Morrison  "believe[d] in the power of knowledge and the ferocity of beauty ...” In her 1993 Nobel Award acceptance speech, she called upon an old woman, blessed with blindness, to:

“... Make up a story... We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald... We know you can never do it properly ... Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try ... tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul ... "

Tell us, please, what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light.

I will not be silent neither from fear of rejection nor do I celebrate America for any reward -  to paraphrase Rābiʿa - but speak simply for love of America, for the love of an imperfect nation struggling to survive against those who deny its legitimacy.

Listen: I long to tell you more stories.

“He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents," Salman Rushdie wrote, "each one a different color, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity ...”

Such is the beauty we seek.

Listen.

Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Azzi: Speech is born out of longing