About this site
Here is a picture of the Garden promised to the pious: rivers of water forever pure, rivers of milk forever fresh, rivers of wine, a delight for those who drink, rivers of honey clarified and pure, [all] flow in it; there they will find fruit of every kind; and they will find forgiveness from their Lord. (Quran 47:15)
Honey from Paradise is an independent blogsite launched in April 2024 by Sa'id Abdul Latif (formerly Fr. Hilarion Heagy). Inshallah, this website will provide a launching-pad for a book that I intend to write with the same title regarding my own spiritual 'journey', along with ruminations about pilgrimage, conversion, and faith.
About Me
I am a former Catholic and Russian Orthodox priest-monk who has recently embraced Islam after a twenty-three year-long journey. I was raised nominally Protestant, yet I took my faith very seriously as a young boy. Faith, to me, was a constant striving—a searching—to seek the hidden God. That One. The ground of all Truth and Goodness.
My radical search towards this 'Truth' led me to enter a monastery in my twenties. It was here that I sought to be 'forgotten by the world' as I worked out my salvation. But as Providence would have it, my search for 'blessed rest' and obscurity would lead me to become more engaged with 'the world' than ever before, all the while seeking 'the Truth' ever deeper.
This struggle would eventually lead me to Islam—a tradition that I had respected and admired from afar since my years in college. My embrace of Islam was not so much a rejection of the Christianity which spiritually nourished me and which I had loved for some many years. Rather, it was a recontextualization of the faith which I had known. In many ways, it was a deepening of the faith which I had always had.
This blogsite it just a brief testament to my own spiritual conversion over the course of my life, as well as to my thoughts on faith, tradition, society, pilgrimage, and so on.
It is my prayer that what I have written here may be of some benefit for you on your own journey. May God grant to you an equal measure of grace in accordance with the joy which I have felt writing and sharing these words with you.
Thank you for your kind support, and please keep me in your prayers and duas.
If you like this content, please consider a small donation via PayPal or Venmo. I am currently studying Islam and the Arabic language full-time, and any donation — however small! — will greatly help me to continue my studies, my work, and my sustenance. My trust is in Allah.
Please feel free to contact me at saidheagy@gmail.com.
Thank you, and may God reward you!
