Seeking The Lower Place: A Dialogue Between Fethullah Gulen’s Understanding Of Sufism And Franciscan Spirituality

Seeking The Lower Place: A Dialogue Between Fethullah Gulen’s Understanding Of Sufism And Franciscan Spirituality

Rain falls onto a mountain, striking soil and stone, and immediately begins to run downhill. The mountain stands strong and majestic, seemingly impervious to the rain. Through the years, through the centuries, through the millennia, rain falls on the mountain, striking soil and stone, and always runs downhill. And the mountain stands strong and majestic. Water, it seems, always “seeks the lower place,” while the mountain refuses to yield to the raindrops that fall upon it. Yet, throughout the years, centuries and millennia, water is slowly but certainly eroding the mountain, carrying both soil and stone with it, creating a fertile valley below.

This image of water seeking the lower place, and by that very “humility” conquering the majestic mountain, is a metaphor used in many religious Traditions to illustrate the spiritual ideal. Enlightenment, union with God, discovering the True Self are not attained through the collection of facts, intellectual acuity, or force of will: the path is, in the words of St. John of the Cross, that of nada, self-negation. In the Christian Tradition, this is grounded in Jesus’ own teachings to take up one’s Cross and follow him, to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile. “Those who seek to save themselves,” says Jesus, “will lose themselves, but those who lose themselves for my sake will find themselves.” St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians calls this kenosis, self-emptying.

There are many spiritual paths within the Christian Tradition, but the goal of each one is self-surrender, union of one’s own will with that of God. One of these paths is that of St. Francis of Assisi, who sought to follow what he called “the poor Christ” in every aspect of his life.

In a similar manner, Islam, whose very name means “submission,” seeks to subjugate one’s will to the Will of God. The Five Pillars are each designed to lead the Muslim more and more deeply into submission to God: from the confession that there is no God but God (and what idol tempts us more than the idol of our own egos?) to participating in the Hajj (where peasant and king approach the Ka’ba equally), the ideal of Islam is not merely external practice, but internal transformation. This internal process is explored by the many Sufi lineages within Islam. Fetullah Gülen is a contemporary Islamic thinker whose teachings are influenced by Sufi teachings.

Others have explored the particular forms of Sufism that have influenced Gülen, so there is no need to repeat these here. Rather, this paper will explore a small portion of Fetullah Gülen’s understanding of Sufism, particularly his emphasis on repentance, spiritual poverty, and self-emptying. Then, we will look at similar themes that arise in the writings of, stories about, and spiritual paths influenced by St. Francis of Assisi.

Before I begin with the analysis, I want to make one preliminary observation, and that is the relationship between Sufism and general Islamic practice on the one hand, and the Franciscan and general Christian practice on the other. It is popular today to see mystical paths as somehow on the

peripheries of the mainstreams of religious Traditions, if not completely divorced from those Traditions. Neither Fetullah Gülen nor Francis of Assisi would see this as the case. Francis insisted that his followers always follow the teachings and practices of the Church, and did not see himself creating something apart from those practices. In like manner, Gülen insists that true Sufi practice is rooted in Islamic Shari’a. One might say that Sufism and the Franciscan path are ways to fulfill the teachings and practices of their respective Traditions, but they are not seen as isolated from those teachings and practices. The “spirit” is not in contrast to external observation; rather, like the human spirit, it animates the body of practices.

Gülen enumerates many elements of the Sufi path, including self-criticism, privacy and solitude, sadness and sorrow, joyful zeal, asceticism, patience, dhikr and openness and contraction. For the sake of brevity, this paper will focus on three of those elements: self-criticism, sadness and sorrow, and asceticism.

The first element of Gülen’s treatment of Sufism that this paper will examine is Muhasaba, self-criticism. Literally, Muhasaba means reckoning, settling accounts and self-interrogation.¹ Similar to what the Christian Tradition calls an examination of conscience, or, better, an examination of consciousness, the believer looks at his or her actions, thanks God for the good they have done, and asks forgiveness for their sins, with the hope of growing in what Gülen calls “one’s personal loyalty to God.”² Such practice, Gülen says, is essential to true spiritual growth, for one’s relationship with God depends on awareness of what “takes place in his or her inner world.”³

The practice of Muhasaba is like a lamp in the heart, enabling the believer to distinguish between good and evil, virtue and sin. Not only does it remind the believer that sin will be punished, but it also opens him or her to the peace and tranquility of God. Continual practice of self-criticism leads one towards spiritual perfection: “Evening reviews of words and actions said or done during the day are the rule, as are morning resolutions to avoid sins.”⁴ It is to those who so practice that the “doors of heaven will be thrown open.”⁵

The second element of Sufi practice for our discussion is the combination of sadness and sorrow, Huzn. This sadness goes beyond sorrow for one’s personal faults. It is, rather, the sadness that accompanies a lover of God in the midst of indifference to the Divine. Until the truth proclaimed by the Prophet seeps into every corner of the world, until the “sighs of Muslims and other oppressed peoples cease,”⁶ indeed, until the Divine Will is manifest throughout the world, there will be tears of sorrow. Here, again, Gülen finds a resonance with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, articularly Isaiah, who says, “For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed, as on the day of Midian. For every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for flames.”⁷

This sadness, Gülen says, is necessary for the spiritual life, for it protects the heart from rust and decay, and forces the believer to concentrate on the inner life.⁸ The focus is not only one’s personal sins, but is also grounded in the perception of the human condition: it causes the believer to turn constantly to God for aid in every activity, and has a communal, as well as personal, dimension. Gülen cites Sufyan ibn Uyayna: “God sometimes has mercy on a whole nation because of the weeping of a sad, broken-hearted one.”⁹ Huzn purifies the soul and maintains that purity.

Interpreting one of the sayings of the Prophet, Gülen says that this sadness is manifest in the lives of believers according to their particular level of spiritual growth: for the ordinary believer, there is sorrow for not performing their duties of worship as perfectly as they should; for the distinguished,” there is sorrow for being drawn toward that which is not God (one might call this shirk of the heart); and the purified ones who are continuously aware of God, and who mix with others in order to guide them, “tremble with fear that they may upset the balance” between their constant awareness of God and the company of other people.¹⁰

The third and final element of Gülen’s understanding of Sufism that we shall explore is zuhd, asceticism. Gülen notes that though the literal meaning of zuhd is the renunciation of worldly pleasures and carnal desires, for the Sufis, this is indifference to worldly appetites, living an austere life, and “despising the world’s carnal and material aspects.”¹¹ There are two steps in asceticism: the first is renunciation of that which is forbidden and to do only that which is allowed. The second step, according to Gülen, is to become circumspect and careful even in that which is allowed: one must not become attached even to good things.

This may, he notes, include observation of Shari’a even during times of difficulty, considering the happiness of others even while enjoying comfort oneself, or thankfulness for God’s bounties. He notes that many Sufi teachers regard asceticism as an action of the inner person, an indifference to gain or loss, praise or criticism, rather than simply being content with simple food and clothes.¹²

Understood in such a way, asceticism is not contrary to wealth or power, so long as the wealthy or powerful person can resist being possessed by his or her possessions. In this, Gülen cites the Prophet as the prime example, noting that true prophets claim as their only reward that which is due from God. Gülen ends his reflection on asceticism by quoting the Fourth Imam, Ali: “Man exhibits his ambitions but time obliterates them; Man’s soul multiplies them but death puts an end to them.”¹³ As Jesus notes, material wealth is subject to rust, decay and theft. Lay up treasures, he says, that thief cannot steal nor can moth destroy, for “Where your treasure is, there your heart is, also.” (Matthew 6:21)

Now, we will turn our attention to parallel themes in the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi.

Francis was no theologian or author of a spiritual system; Francis was, above all, a lover of God, and he invited others to share in that love. It fell to later Franciscan theologians to distill a method from the stories of Francis’ life and from his writings. Because of this, and for the sake of brevity, this paper will focus on some of the stories about Francis.

We do not have time to explore the story of Francis in depth, but will instead focus on the themes drawn from Fetullah Gülen’s book: self-criticism, sadness and sorrow, and asceticism. Any treatment of Francis must begin with one very simple statement: Francis desired, above all things, to imitate Jesus as fully as possible, particularly imitating what he saw as the poverty of Jesus. For Francis, poverty was first (though not foremost) material poverty: Christ lived, Francis believed, a life of poverty: born in a stable and placed in a feeding trough, and when his parents made the sacrifice required by the Law of Moses for a firstborn son, they offered the alternative allowed for the poor, substituting a turtle dove for the usual lamb. Francis saw Jesus’ choice of material poverty

continuing through his life (“The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”), all the way to the Crucifixion, where Jesus was stripped naked and hung on a Cross.

The friars were not only to own nothing personally, they were not to own anything collectively. However, also for Francis, the voluntary renunciation of material goods was ultimately to lead to spiritual poverty: knowing that one was nothing before God. When one of the friars asked Francis if he could own a breviary (the official book of prayers), Francis replied that if he owned a book, he would need a shelf on which to put it, and a house for the shelf, and so forth: if want of a nail led to the loss of the kingdom in the old poem, for Francis, owning a nail would lead to an estate, with an entire stable full of horses. While material poverty was not an end in itself, Francis saw very clearly the difficulty of being detached from one’s goods, position and power. For Francis, the renunciation of self might be summed up in one word: minority, or littleness. His friars were known as the Order of Friars Minor, the Little Brothers.

For this reason, Francis was keen on self-examination, urging his friars to be equally as vigilant. He believed that the shadow of power and prestige could sneak in very easily without this vigilance. Once, when Francis was undergoing a rather severe temptation of lust, he ran into the snow and made seven figures: the large one, he said, was his wife, and four smaller ones, his children: two sons and two daughters. The last two were his servant and maid, who served him. He told himself to hurry and clothe them, for he was responsible for their well-being. “But if caring for them in so many ways troubles you, be solicitous for serving God alone.” The devil, the account says, fled, and St. Francis returned to his cell praising God. When he discovered that another friar had seen the incident, he told him not to speak of it until after Francis was dead.¹⁴ What he didn’t need was for stories about heroic sanctity to lead to even greater temptations. He was known to admonish people, “Do not canonize me, yet—I can still father children.”

There are multitudes of instances that indicate that Francis would weep for his sins, which irritated his already-diseased eyes. One should not read this, though, as if Francis were not also filled with great joy. Francis was known to pick up two sticks, and play “air fiddle.” However, given that so many today think of Francis solely in terms of a birdbath in the garden, it is important to understand the place the Cross played in the road to the Resurrection: the only way to joy was through sorrow.

One account that stands out regarding Francis’ conviction that sorrow was a necessary ingredient for any spiritual growth is the story of the blessing for Brother Leo. Brother Leo had been one of Francis’ companions from the beginning. One day, Brother Leo asked Francis for a blessing. Francis wrote out the following:

May the Lord Bless you and keep you;

May He show His face to you and be merciful to you;

May He turn His countenance to you and give you peace.

May the Lord bless you, Brother Leo.¹⁵

The first part of the blessing is taken from Numbers 4: 24-26, one of Francis’ favorite passages. The specific blessing to Brother Leo, though, is interesting. The full text is written in Latin, with a Tau Cross drawn in the middle, splitting the text (and what could be a skull at its foot). If read with the Tau simply seen as a Cross, the meaning is as noted above. However, if read with the Tau as the letter “T,” the text reads something like “Well shall you weep.” For Francis, there was no dichotomy between Cross and Resurrection, between joy and sorrow. One might say they mutually-indwelt each other: within joy was sorrow, within sorrow, joy. The only way to blessing was the path of tears.¹⁶

The final theme from the life of Francis that this paper will discuss is asceticism. Asceticism, as noted above, has to do with self-denial. As Gülen noted, the purpose of asceticism is to reach indifference to comfort and pain, so that, in the words of a Sufi saying, one becomes as passive in the hands of God as a corpse is in the hands of those who wash it. All of Francis’ emphasis on poverty, self-criticism, and sorrow was for the purpose of leading one into union of wills with God. Asceticism was not an end in itself; the purpose was to die to one’s ego. At times, this might even mean abandoning external ascetical practices: even on fast days, Francis said, the friars should eat what is put before them. Fasting was an opportunity not for spiritual athleticism, but for humility. I am reminded of a story told by a Trappist monk, Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO. Every year, for Lent, he would tell the abbot that he was going to tackle the full Trappist fast, despite the fact that no one was expected to do this, and could easily request and be granted a dispensation. Every year, he would get ill, and request the dispensation to undertake a less aggressive regimen. One year, he was serving as Master of Novices, training aspiring monks. He wanted to be a good example, so, once, again, he declared he would undertake the complete fast. The abbot, though, told him he was not going to undertake the strict fast. In fact, he was to eat and drink between meals and put on twenty pounds. Keating was horrified: what would the novices think? And that, he realized, was his problem: he was tackling the fast with rigor to boost his ego, not to die to self. ¹⁷ Francis would have understood.

Francis is pictured as being demanding on himself, challenging to his friars, and merciful to those who could not live up to his own self-imposed standards. There is a story of a time the friars were fasting. During the night, one of them began to cry out that he was dying of hunger. Francis immediately awoke all of the brothers and declared that they were going to break their fast: no one should be ashamed because of weakness of the flesh. As they ate and laughed and told stories, he told them not to imitate him, but to follow Christ, each in his own way.¹⁸

Finally, there is an account of Francis and Leo trudging through the snow toward one of the places friars were living. He asked Brother Leo if he knew what perfect joy might be. Brother Leo took the bait. Francis said, even if every friar in the world were an example of holiness, inspiring others to do the same, this would not be the source of perfect joy. A while longer, he said that even if a friar had the gift of healing, could drive out demons, and raise the dead, this would not be the cause of perfect joy. They walked on a bit. Francis said that even if a friar knew all languages, was a scholar of every secular and religious science, even if the friar had the gift of prophecy and could read peoples’ minds and hearts, this would not be the occasion of perfect joy. Again, after continuing to trudge through the snow, Francis said that even if a friar could speak with the voice of an angel, knew the secrets of the stars and healing herbs, knew the qualities of every creature, animate and inanimate, perfect joy would not be found in this. Nor, he said, would there be perfect joy if a friar could preach so well that everyone were converted. No, none of these were instances of perfect joy.

After this had gone on for quite a while, Brother Leo could take no more: “Father, I beg you in God’s name to tell me where perfect joy is.” And Francis said if, when they came to the friary, soaked by rain and frozen in the cold, caked with mud and faint with hunger, the gatekeeper refused to believe they were brothers, and accused them of being thieves, intending to steal what the friars were going to give to the poor, if he forced them to remain outside, and if, Francis said, they continued to knock on the door, and the gatekeeper were to drive them away with blows and insults, and if they could accept this willingly, knowing that the porter had only seen them for what they truly are, great sinners, and if they can glory in these tribulations, then, that is perfect joy. When one can joyfully receive undeserved suffering at the hands of another, then that is the cause for perfect joy. ¹⁹

Thus, we can see the importance that radical self-emptying, seeking the lower place, plays in both Sufism as expounded by Fetullah Gülen and Christian spirituality taught by St. Francis of Assisi: to lose oneself so completely in the Beloved, so that it seems as if nothing of oneself remains: Sufis call this fana, annihilation in God (whether literal or metaphorical): one cannot tell where oneself ends and God begins. Two years before his death, St. Francis had a transforming experience where he received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ in his hands, feet and side. It was later said of him that he loved Christ so perfectly that he was stamped with the likeness of the Beloved. It would be interesting to explore in more depth the parallels between fana and kenosis: self-emptying.

There are many other parallels between Fetullah Gülen’s understanding of Sufism and the Christian spiritual path of St. Francis of Assisi, parallels that include the fluctuations of joy and sorrow in the lives of believers. There are parallels in practices, such as zikhr and singing the Divine Praises. There are parallels for times of prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage. All of these would be fodder for further study. It is my hope that this short paper has begun to scratch the surface of what can be a very fruitful dialogue between two great mystical traditions. I will end by citing the famous Prayer of St. Francis, ironically, not written by Francis at all.²⁰ Though Francis never heard the prayer, it captures very nicely his attitude on peace and self-giving, on love of God and neighbor, and dying to self. I believe it also resonates with the Sufi thought of Fetullah Gülen:

(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986),100.

with whom I took a class on Medieval Franciscan spirituality at Fordham University in 1982.

Armstrong, Regis, OFM Cap and Ignatius Brady, OFM, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986.

Gülen, Fetullah. Sufism: Emerald Hills of the Heart, v.1. Clifton, NJ: The Light, Inc. Second edition, 2004.

Habig, Marion (ed.) St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies : English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973.

Keating, Thomas. Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation. New York: Continuum, 1994.