“THE RELIGION OF KAHLIL GIBRAN”

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, January 22, 2006

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

I first heard of Kahlil Gibran through a story my father told about when he was a young man. He was facing a major life-changing decision, and he, my father, retreated for several days into the woods, and he took with him two books: the Bible and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Many years later, I read a casual reference about President Jimmy Carter saying that he always kept by his bedside two books: the Bible and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. During the first Gulf War, when Barbara Walters interviewed General Norman Schwarzkopf, he had laying prominently by his bedside the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

Few if any modern writings have the kind of scriptural aura about them as the writings of Kahlil Gibran. Was he a Christian or was he a Muslim? Yes, he was both, and more. He was one of the few people whose religious expression seemed to lie somewhere far above the petty differences of sect. Was he an American or was he a Lebanese Arab? Yes, he was both, and more. His identity recognized no borders separating human cultures or traditions. Was his religion humanistic, centered in the real world, putting human concerns first, or was his religion mystical, appealing to a supra-rational reality that transcends the world? The answer is yes, both, and more.

I cannot think of any inspirational writer who has spoken so meaningfully to such a broad range of human civilization, whose writings seem to transcend all cultures and all theologies, as has Kahlil Gibran. He is admired by a vast audience in the Christian world as well as the Muslim world. His religious voice speaks to the skeptic and the free-thinking humanist as well as the spiritualist and mystic.

Dr. Suheil Bushrui, Professor and Director of the Kahlil Gibran Research and Studies Project at the University of Maryland described his impact of his writing with in this way:

“The Prophet, this century’s best-selling book after the Bible in America, is full of practical wisdom and simple moral and spiritual values. Its secret is Gibran’s remarkable ability to convey profound truths in simple yet incomparably elegant language; hence his vast international readership, many of whom have shunned other works of a spiritual nature. Never does he attempt to bamboozle his readers or sweep them off their feet with rhetoric. Gibran’s approach enables him to appeal to people of all ages, races, colors and creeds.”

What is there in Gibran’s religion, then, that allowed him in an almost unique way to express so well the human religious nature within so many diverse human cultures? I want to look today at this remarkable writer and the ideas that inspired him. To set the groundwork, let me begin by outlining the biographical sketch of his interesting life.

He was born January 6, 1883 in the village of Bsharri, in Northern Lebanon. He had two younger sisters and an older half-brother. Though Gibran would never speak ill of his father, the historical record shows him to have been difficult and irresponsible. Kahlil loved to draw, but his father not only discouraged his art, he forbade it, and punished him severely if he was caught drawing pictures. Young Kahlil did not attend school, though he was informally tutored by a local priest.

Kahlil’s father worked as an assistant at his uncle’s pharmacy, but he was a hard drinker and gambler, and when young Kahlil was eight years old, his father was thrown in jail for tax evasion and fraud. All family possessions were confiscated, and Kahlil’s family was bankrupt and homeless, staying temporarily with a relative.

But Kahlil’s mother was a strong-willed woman and decided to emigrate with her children, but without their father, to America. When the father eventually was released from jail, he had no interest in joining his family there.

Kahlil and his family settled in Boston, which had a large community of Arab immigrants, including a few relatives. He was 12 years old. Kahlil’s brother eventually opened a hardware store, and his mother and sisters worked as seamstresses to make ends meet. But through a charitable gift, Kahlil was able to attended school, where he was to learn, even master, English.

Throughout his life, Gibran attracted supportive mentors and patrons. At this young age he pursued his love of art, and some influential art leaders in Boston recognized his talent. An important mentor was Fred Holland Day, a pioneer photographer and influential in the Boston arts community. Gibran passionately pursued his love of drawing and painting.

As a 17 year old, Kahlil was developing a reputation in Boston within the art community, but his family felt it would do him good to reacquaint him with his own cultural roots. They sent him back to Lebanon to study at college there. He immersed himself again in Arab culture and language, and treasured it the rest of his life.

But he also yearned to return to his family in America, especially when he learned that they were not well. He returned, but over the next year, his brother and one sister would die of tuberculosis, and his mother would die of cancer.

Gibran went though a period of mourning and grief, but it was just after those losses that he met Mary Haskell at a Boston art gallery that was showing his art.

Mary Haskell would become perhaps the most influential person in his life from then on. She was the headmistress of a girls’ school. He was 20 years old. She was 30. She encouraged this young artist, and became his benefactor, patron, and collaborator, and later editor of his writings in English. Their friendship spanned the gamut of feelings, and at one point Gibran actually proposed marriage to her, but she declined because of the differences in their age. Gibran would have many romances during his life, though he never married, but Mary Haskell always remained his most intimate relationship.

In 1909, Gibran spent two years in Paris studying art, and upon returning, he settled in New York City, where he would remain the rest of his life. In America, he was always deeply involved in the Arab-American community and founded an organization that promoted Arab literature and Arab writers around the world. He also wrote regularly for Arabic newspapers and publications abroad.

Gibran’s life crossed paths with a virtual “who’s who” of the early twentieth century: artist Auguste Rodin, psychologist Carl Jung, Baha’i founder Abdu’l-Baha, Western artist Charles Russell, poet W.B. Yeats, and many more.

In America, Gibran was making a name for himself as an accomplished artist. Since in those early years he only wrote in Arabic, in the Arab world he was becoming well known as a writer. In 1913, at the urging of Mary Haskell, Gibran began writing books in English. Perhaps one of the most astounding facets of the legacy of Kahlil Gibran is that English was, for him, a second language, and his writing displayed a mastery of the language that few native speakers could aspire to achieve. But one theme of Gibran’s life, as well as his religious philosophy, was the blending of cultures and human differences. His friend Mikhail Naimy, another Lebanese poet, spoke of his decision to write in English, saying this:

“Gibran, urged by the incessant calls for enfoldment of the twin sisters lovingly nursed by his soul – Poetry and Art – was far from being content with the small and slow conquests he was making in the world. To the American public he offered his art without his poetry. To the Arab public, his poetry without his art. The English-speaking world could not read his Arabic poetry; the Arab-speaking world could not understand his Western art. The twins must be made to work as one team. For that he must write in English.”

And the books began, and gradually took on a popularity of astounding proportions. First was The Madman, in 1913, followed by Jesus, The Son of Man, and then A Tear and a Smile. Most of his books were primarily poetry, written in a narrative style.

Gibran remained in New York the rest of his life. He moved in circles of the avant-garde artists and writers. But he died in heartbreaking circumstances in 1931 at the young age 48. The doctors detected liver cancer, but his deteriorating condition was complicated by the fact that in recent years, Gibran had succumbed to the same problem that afflicted his father – using alcohol to numb the pain of disease, though making that disease worse.

The New York newspaper headlined “The Prophet is Dead,” and he was honored in both America and Lebanon. At his request, his body was returned to his beloved hometown Middle Eastern village, and buried in a cave where a museum to his memory was eventually created. He wrote his own epitaph, which is written in Arabic, and reads:

“I am alive like you. And now I stand beside you. Close your eyes and look around; you will see me in front of you.”

Gibran’s greatest English work, of course, was The Prophet, published in 1923. This book has become not just a classic for all time, but its text has been considered almost as scripture by many around the world. In fact, next to the Bible, it was the second best-selling book of the twentieth century in America.

Much of The Prophet was originally written in 1899 [at age 15] in the Arabic language. Parts of it were distributed to customers at a Boston inn. Over the next decades he would return to it and revise it. Eventually, he rewrote it in English when he felt it was ready for publication. When it was published, the first edition was not highly reviewed and sales were low. It was only through world of mouth that the praise for the book spread. The rest, as they say, is history, and this book has achieved a status unequalled by any modern inspirational text.

As many of you know, The Prophet is the story of Almustafa, the name that Gibran associated throughout his life with a spirit guide that directed his art and writing. The narrative is simply of the wise man bestowing wisdom – often paradoxical – on the citizens of a village.

I do want to look now more specifically at Gibran’s religious ideas, and I might as well begin with this notion of paradox. Much of Gibran’s wisdom is expressed in paradox, which is beautifully illustrated by the famous excerpts from The Prophet. Without a doubt, the two most familiar passages, “On Marriage” and “On Children,” find wisdom in the power in paradox. The essay on marriage, for example, that is read today at countless wedding ceremonies, say this:

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love. . . . Stand together, yet not too near together; for the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. Let there be spaces in your togetherness; let the winds of the heavens dance between you.”

His essay “On Children,” which we use here at child dedications, and which hangs on the walls of countless nursery rooms in the homes of America, contains an even stronger sense of paradox:

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.”

In a way, Gibran’s religion begins in paradox, a spirit which is shared with many religions of the far East, like Buddhism or Taoism. If we find life’s meaning confusing, we have found the beginning of wisdom. But beyond paradox, he also sought harmony – a harmony of the human world with the natural world, a harmony of the natural world with the spiritual world. His quest for harmony led him to a deep commitment of reconciliation between the two religions of his own experience: Christianity and Islam. His native land had long suffered from bitter fighting between religious sects, and such a spectacle was an anathema to Gibran’s religious spirit. His religion presented no hint of sectarianism, and his writings contained deep respect for all religions. For example, he wrote:

“I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.”

The Lebanese village in which Gibran was born was predominately of an Eastern Christian sect known as the Maronites. The Arabic community throughout the Middle East, and the community of Arab immigrants that he associated with in America were, of course, predominately Muslim. At an early age, Gibran disassociated himself from any sectarian religion. He considered himself to transcend the separations of creeds and doctrines. As he once wrote about sectarian religious doctrine:

“Many a doctrine is like a window pane.

We see through it, but it divides us from truth.”

Gibran’s religion was a far cry from what we think of as “theology.” Theology usually refers to a systematic understanding of the nature of God and the ways of God. His religion was, in some way I think, “anti-theology.” Gibran’s writings speak of God only rarely, and when they do it is not a God of this religion or that, but rather a God whose soul transcends human religion.

In his essay “On Religion” he says it this way: “If you would know God be not therefore the solver of riddles.” I love that line. So many traditions turn the question of God into some kind of problem to be solved or mystery to be explained. Here is the rest of how he said it:

“If you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.

Rather look about you and you shall see him playing with your children.

And look into space, and you shall see Him walking in the cloud,

outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.”

His view of the divine was consistent with the tradition of American transcendentalism. When he spoke of God his description was indistinguishable from what he had to say about nature. Or about the best in human nature. He spoke of God with the same reverence with which he spoke of human worth and dignity, as if there were, in fact, no difference between the two.

“All things in this creation exist within you, and all things in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and the closest things, and there is no distance between you and the farthest things, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are within you as equal things.”

It is interesting to compare that text with the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote this:

“There is no screen or ceiling between us and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins. . . . Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal one.”

The theme of human dignity and of the divine power within human beings was constant in Gibran’s writings. Here, for example, is something he wrote, not in a book, but in a letter to Mary Haskell:

“In us, in our secret depth, lies the knowing element which sees and hears that which we do not see nor hear. All our perceptions, all the things we have done, all that we are today, dwelt once in that knowing . . . .treasure chamber in the soul. We are more than we think. We are more than we know.”

There was a mystical side to Gibran’s religion, one that he didn’t write about very much, but one that definitely influenced his writing. In his prime writing life, Kahlil Gibran told his closest associates that much of his writing happens in a trance state that we might call “self-hypnosis.” He did not create the words, he said, but the words came to him while in that trance state.

He thought of it as “channeling” from a guide beyond this world. He reported that the entire book he wrote about Jesus, called Jesus, Son of Man: His Words His Deeds as Told and Recorded by Those Who Knew Him, was created through trance channeling. Indeed the book is written as if the words came from those who were acquaintances of Jesus during his life, and Gibran believed the words he wrote actually came to him from them, while under self-hypnosis.

One of his major biographers, Henry Leo Buldoc, commented on the process this way:

“I believe that many human experiences are in truth channeling, but are commonly called by other names. Channeling can occur when actions or communications come that are not actually originating from the individual. An artist who paints and finds that the picture seems to have painted itself, the dancer who dances on ‘automatic,’ a teacher who presents material that is unplanned or unexpected, a healer who takes actions not previously learned – these examples and others suggest a form of channeling.”

There is little doubt that Gibran believed in reincarnation, though he never did use that word. He wrote, rather, of the “continuity of life.” Like most of his beliefs, it was not something he came to because of argument and persuasion, but simply as an expression of the way he experienced life.

He believed, like most of those who believe in this concept – from Native Americans to Tibetan Buddhists – that after death our soul returns to learn more lessons about life, and finally get it right. He never seemed to write in order to persuade others of his beliefs. Rarely do you read in his work a direct expression of these more mystical beliefs. It is as if the beliefs themselves were not significant compared with the quality of life that arises from those beliefs. So any reference to something like reincarnation would be indirect, not explicit.

At the end of The Prophet he wrote:

“If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together, and you shall sing to me a deeper song. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return.”

Most of all, perhaps, Gibran’s religion was affirming of the best within humanity. His affirmations about the good in all people are woven throughout his writings. For example, from the essay “On Teaching” in The Prophet:

“No man can reveal to you aught but that which lies half asleep in the dawning of your own knowledge.”

Or here in another section, he speaks of how we are to be respected if we try our best to reach a goal, even when we don’t succeed:

“Of the good in you I speak, but not the evil. You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps. You are not evil when you go limping. Even those who limp do not go backward. In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness; and that longing is in all of you.”

A theme of Gibran’s life, and therefore a theme that appears in the religion he expresses in his writing, it seems to me, is the experience of exile. He was exiled from his native land, and longed to reconcile the two cultures he loved. His religion, likewise, seems to me a feeling of exile and reconciliation. We know within ourselves the good and beauty of life, but we find ourselves too often estranged from that experience. Religion is our attempt at reconciliation between who we are and who we know we ought to be. It is a message that can be writ large among not just individuals, but among nations and civilizations.

Professor Bushrui summarized Gibran’s influence this way.

“Kahlil Gibran was truly a citizen of the world; a man from the East who brought a much-needed element of spirituality to the West; and eventually a man of the West as well, benefiting from an environment in which freedom, democracy, and equality of opportunity opened doors for him. His work remains a shining example, on an individual level, of the inspired results that can be forthcoming when cultures merge in a spirit of unity and goodwill. That is surely the watchword for the global society now developing apace as we [enter] the third millennium.”

READING

Selected Gibran Quotes

from various sources

Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know myself, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, it characteristics.

The pitiful among men is he who turns dreams into silver and gold.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. Today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

The just is close to peoples’ hearts, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strangely, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.

You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give yourself that you truly give.

When you have solved all the mysteries of life you long for death, for it is but another mystery of life.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

When we turn to one another for counsel, we reduce the number of our enemies.

An eye for an eye, and the whole world will be blind.