Landscapes For Learning

20 min Hold the presses!   Pierre knows what he’s talking about? Wait! What?   Well, let’s qualify that.  Pierre knows what he wants to talk about.  We’re not saying Pierre actually knows what he is talking about. Let’s be clear about that!  Pierre wants to talk about a book:  Radical Love, by Omid Safi.   The book was given to Pierre by his good friend Manish. Hat tip to  Manish with a riff on his special friendship.  The book, Radical Love, is a compilation of poems from Sufi mystics.  You may have heard a few of the authors' names:  Rumi, Hafiz, etc.  Omid Safi introduces their poems in a new light stemming from an approach to Islam which involves a single-minded focus on God, to the exclusion of all else. Hence the title:  Radical Love. At the center of Islam, according to these mystics is God; and God is love. By stripping away human, material, and differentiated things and ideas, one can see God according to these mystics. The introduction by author Omid Safi provides the religious context of the poetry