LECTURE EVENT: The Challenge of Muslim-Christian Dialogue

"The Lay Committee on Contemporary Spiritual-and-Public Concerns at St. Paul Parish in Cambridge will host a presentation by Dorothy C. Buck, Ph.D., Friday, December 8, at 7:30 p.m. in DiGiovanni Hall. Dr. Buck, who leads the Boston area Badaliya prayer group for reconciliation in the Holy Land among all religious faith traditions, is the author of Dialogues With Saints and Mystics: In the Spirit of Louis Massignon. Copies of her book will be available at the lecture, which will take place on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Our Lady is honored in the Muslim tradition, giving a common reference point to our two Abrahamic faiths. All are welcome to attend this most timely presentation.\n

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Please visit the Saint Paul Church website for directions and further information.

Location: 29 Mount Auburn StreetCambridge, MA 02138 United States

MFA Exhibit

Marbling and Music: Performing Sufism at a Turkish Tekke

Within the world of Islam there are many different attitudes toward the arts. For sufis, those Muslims who follow a mystical path, creating art is itself a form of religious practice. The visual and musical traditions taught and performed at the Özbekler Tekke, a religious complex for sufi orders near Istanbul, embody this idea. Seven generations of masters in ebrû, the art of paper marbling, have been trained at the Özbekler Tekke, founded by the Uzbek religious leader Sheikh Sadik Efendi in the early nineteenth century. From him a continuous teacher-student lineage has passed the tradition.Music is another sufi art taught and performed at the Özbekler Tekke. Every Friday a group that often includes Turkey's best musicians meets at the Tekke to sing ilahis, sufi devotional songs. Most often the ilahis are accompanied by the rhythm of tambourines (bender) and kettle drums (kumdum), while the melodic line is echoed and improvised upon by a ney, an end-blown reed flute. The ney has been closely associated with sufism ever since the thirteenth-century mystic poet Rumi used it as a metaphor for humanity.

See www.mfa.org for more information