From Honey to Fire: The End of this Website... and New Beginnings

Hello! And assalamualaikum to all!

I want to share a brief update: I will be shutting down this website, www.honeyfromparadise.com. While I will continue to maintain my Medium blog, much of my future writing will now live on Substack, where it will take shape in two distinct but related projects.

Before explaining that transition, I want to say a word about the name Honey from Paradise - and why it has mattered so much to me.

I had wrestled a bit with my blog branding. I do like the "honey from paradise" idea. The name came to me in the midst of an impromptu speech at Al-Maqasid Seminary nearly two years ago. I was asked to share some reflections on my recent ummrah and first trip to Mecca and Medina. And as I spoke, it came to me that my experience was much like reading about theology and about the Prophet ﷺ and about spiritual experiences and about Islam in general... And in reading all of these things, you intellectually know a lot about them, for sure. This is a good thing.

However...

There is a much deeper way of knowing. And this is a way of knowing that is revealed by Allah Himself. This was something that I wished to convey about my pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. For many years, I had experienced Islam from afar - from reading, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. But here, in the middle of Mecca and Medina, I felt that I truly was able to taste it for the very first time. The sweetness of the baraka and blessings from Allah.

And it is much like honey. You can read all about honey - how it's made, its chemical composition, the etymology of its name, its historical uses, its culinary purposes, etc. You can know all of these things... yet you will never truly know honey until you taste it. Until you personally experience it for yourself in a very real and personal... and even intimate... way.

And so, upon my return to Pennsylvania, I wanted to start a blog to begin to share some of my experiences in Mecca and Medina... as well as my experiences coming into Islam in general.

Over time, however, I began to perceive another side to this spiritual experience. Yes, we have these moments of intense baraka and of "grace", as we would say in the Christian context. We have these ecstatic "tastes of honey" and these moments at the spiritual mountaintops. But what happens when we come back down the mountain? What happens when we take these experiences back into "the world"? Back into the messiness of our lives?

When we have these wonderful and ecstatic experiences, they are but flashes... but moments. They give us a glimmer of something of the Divine. They are "openings"... but then we have to walk through the door. We have to take these moments, these openings, these glimmers... and knead them into the raw dough of our lives.

There is a transformation that must take place. And sometimes transformations can be difficult. They can be messy. They can be painful, even. Yet, they are necessary.

The Fire and the Rose

It was over time that I was drawn to the symbolism of "the fire and the rose". I took the imagery from one of my favorite poems - a long poem entitled "Four Quartets" by T.S. Eliot. In fact, I had posted lines from this poem on social media the day that I secretly took my shahada. The lines which most struck me are these:

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire...

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time...

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

There is something of a spiritual alchemy in T.S. Eliot's prose. There is the sweetness of the blessings and baraka of God - the rose. And then there are the trials, the tribulations, the struggles, the pain, the dark nights of the soul - the fire. Yet truly understood, all things are from Allah. In the same breath we have love and terror, fire and fire... the magnificent transcendence and awe-filled majesty of Allah... the one whom the lovers of Allah speak of in the most intimate of terms - HE who is closer to us than our own jugular vein.

It is this interplay between the brokenness and the baraka - the blessings and the bitterness - the honey and the heaviness... it is this sort of spiritual alchemy... this tension... that must happen within us to bring forth a transformation and transfiguration. "All manner of things shall be well... When the tongues of flames are in-folded into the crowned knot of fire... and the fire and the rose are one."

This was my experience in returning from the highest height of my journey to blessed Mecca and Medina, and then back into the "ordinary" world of my life.

And so, the idea of a new blog exploring this interplay... this "spiritual alchemy"... was born. This process of transformation. The bringing forth of a new person in Allah, day by day.

"And know the place for the first time..."

Eliot also speaks in themes of remembrance and re-discovery.

Even in my time in the monastery, I began to feel that our "original sin" was not so much transgression. Rather, our main "sin" was the sin of forgetting - forgetting who we are, what we are made for, where we had come from... and most of all, forgetting God and forgetting the lofty call that we are called to from Him.

This also, in a way, forms a circular pattern of return, renewal, regrowth, regeneration, etc.

I constantly stressed in talking about my own conversion that it was not a rejection of everything that I had come from - my own past, my spiritual upbringing, my priesthood, even. Rather, it was a re-calling. A re-form. And a return. Not to something foreign. But to something familiar. A returning to someplace where I had been before, but then to truly know it for the first time.

Of course, some may call it a re-version. But that's another matter.

My Two New Blogs

With all of this said, I have decided to shut down this website and to start two linked but separate writing endeavors on Substack. Here they are:

• Honey from Paradise: I love the 'honey from paradise' imagery and idea, so I have decided to retain it as a Substack blog that explores mostly the Quran and Quranic exegesis, or tafsir. Am I qualified for this task? No. But I hope to explore here the many readings and meditations from the great scholars and spiritual men and women who are. I feel that the concept of "spiritual honey" from Allah most rightly fits within matters of tafsir.
• The Fire and the Rose: Here, I will continue in a similar vein as before, yet unlike my more public-facing Medium blog, I intend to write more frequently, more personally, and more lyrically about a wider range of topics - as well as reflect in more depth on my own spiritual formation and monastic past.

My intention is not, in any sense, a self-aggrandizement or an inflation of my "self". Writing has always been a great therapy for me, personally... and being shy and deeply self-critical, I have waited until I was 40 to ever dare to squeak any writing of my own out into the public under my own name. But as I have found what a strong impact it has had on many people, I have been encouraged to continue it for as long as it may be of some use to somebody... and inshallah, we shall both draw closer to Allah in the process.

As for my current plans... I am back in Pittsburgh (my hometown), and while I am working, I am still studying online as I can. I am in the process of applying to M.S. programs in Clinical Counseling. Please make dua for me that all works out well and that I continue to follow in the will of Allah.

Thank you for your love and support, and please follow me at my new blogs, if you'd like. Not only would I be honored, your support and your readership will be greatly appreciated.

Wa billāhi al-tawfīq—may Allah grant success, sincerity, and right intention. May He draw us ever closer to Him.