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Kahlil Gibran 

– Soul Friend - Mo Anam Cara

Kahlil Gibran is the third-best-selling poet in history after William Shakespeare and Lao Tzu.   He really was a renaissance man.  His way of expressing his friendship with his soul came through as a poet,  painter, sculptor, writer, philosopher, theologian and visual Artist.

Kahlil Gibran was one of my mothers favorite poets.  I was graced to read a part of a passage from The Prophet at my mothers funeral.  It read..........  

Love has no other desire than to fulfill itself,
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody into the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

It was she that introduced me to this wonderful soul poet when she handed me a copy of a book called The Prophet.  She said, "Tony, I think you will appreciate this."  I must have been around 21 years of age.  I still have that book on my bookshelf.  There is probably not a month goes by when I do not read a passage from it.

The Prophet introduces us to a wisdom teacher called  Almustafa.   He is like all friends of the soul.  They have a longing in their heart to return from the exile of the land called separateness.  They long for the return to their true homeplace.  They long for the return to their knowing of the true Self.

Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved is a lover and a love talker (geancannach). Although he longs to return to his homeland that he loves so well he has learned to love the people of Orphalese.  These are people just like you and I.  They have questions about what it is to live a life in form.  They are the people of Orpheus.  They like each of us is orphaned from the true sense of who we are a waves on the ocean of a Love that is timeless.

The book, The Prophet became especially popular during the 1960s when it was first presented to me by my mother. Since it was first published in 1923, The Prophet has never been out of print and remains world-renowned to this day. Having been translated into more than twenty languages, it was one of the best-selling books of the twentieth century in the United States.

While The Prophet is Kahlil Gibran's most well known work I think that if you read the extract from Jesus, the Son of Man, Mary Magdalen - On Meeting Jesus for the First Time -  which I have featured opposite the quality of the writing is extra-ordinary.  

When I read the extract opposite it breaks my heart open at the beauty of the encounter that only a mystic could ever put into words.  The encounter between Magdalen and Jesus is so full of tenderness and compassion that it will make even this grown man cry, and why not. 

The writings of Kahlil Gibran have touched the hearts of many.  Here is some of what Wikapedia have found out about those who have been influenced by the work of this great poet,  painter, sculptor, writer, philosopher, theologian and visual artist.

"One of his most notable lines of poetry in the English-speaking world is from 'Sand and Foam' (1926), which reads : 'Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you'. This was taken by John Lennon and placed, though in a slightly altered form, into the song Julia from The Beatles' 1968 album The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album)."

At the beginning of this book the Irish mystic George Russell (AE) wrote:

"I do not think the East has spoken with so beautiful a voice since the Gitanjali of Rabindranath Tagore as in The Prophet of Kahlil Gibran, who is artist as well as poet.  I have not seen for years a book more beautiful in its thought, and when reading it I understand better than ever before what Socrates meant in the Banquet when he spoke of the beauty of thought which exercises  a deeper enchantment than the beauty of form..... I could quote from every page, and from every page I could find some beautiful and liberating thought."

© Tony Cuckson 2008

Another Soul Friend

"click on graphic."

John O'Donohue is a man of the soul.  His scholarly meditation on the continuing relevance of Ireland's spiritual heritage has become a publishing phenomenon....  This poetic meditation has become a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic......  A lyrical epic prayer

The Times

Review of Anam cara - Wisdom from the Celtic world