[-empyre-] just a litte addition

[Judy Cockeram]

Hi all

As a lurker on a discussion list about love it feels a little strange
stepping forward into this light but too many little bells are ringing
as I read the thoughts and make too many connections into my own
experiences. Please consider this dust to be simply wiped away.

Having just finished 'Muhammad : a prophet for our time' by Karen
Armstrong I am struck by the notion of love and surrender together -as
Islam means surrender and that the last time I was in a philosophical
discussion about love was with a group of 17-20 year old students of
architecture in the north west of Pakistan, on a Winter's frosty night
around a campfire. They of course understood the physical nature of
desire and restraint but they also enlightened me by their poetic and
uncomplicated joy in a happy anticipation. Ah the positive and less
cynical approach - I miss it daily.

As a non phustu speaker I listened to the poems as a musical addition to
a dark night; others then translated but in that rendering the poet
observed the ideals now were explained into a chair with its back leg
removed. 
So it is from the part of the world where the media wish us to believe
terrorism is spawned I take a metaphor for love - that toppling seat we
try to sit on, attempting to balance: only when we relax and are still
does the chair return, ...able, ...again, in the relationship to the
sitter perform the act it was meant for. 

So perhaps Salam is the way to end- indeed I wish you peace as we
consider the complicated colour that love is to our world of deity and
17 year old. There is much to unpack. 





Judy Cockeram

Senior tutor 
The School of Architecture and Planning  
University of Auckland 

New Zealand