Preparing to Give a Talk on Egypt's Deserts

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Even though I live in sub-tropical South Florida, the Egyptian desert is never far, for me... 🐫

In less than a week, I will be delivering a talk to Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality recounting my spiritual awakening, around twenty years ago, in the deserts of Egypt.

Here's a poem that I will be reading as part of my presentation, and below that a video intro to my background that I hope you will enjoy:

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Desert Revisited

under a whirling skirt of sky
streaming light and stars
groping for that tremendous hem
gingerly over quicksand

as though steadied
beneath some tongue and dissolving
not the absence of sound
but the presence of silence

or, as if transfixed
by a gaze, stern-serene
surveying a dream
foreign-familiar

incorruptible starting point
inviolable horizon
where eye and mind are free
to meditate perfection

there, begin to uncover
buried in dust and disinterest
the immutable letter
(first of the Arabic alphabet) Alif

—Yahia Lababidi

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Video: https://fb.watch/alrlYO0lX1/