y family is really close. I have an older brother, Afsal, with whom I live, and our parents live across the Bay about thirty minutes away. Yesterday we all got together for Father's Day at their house. When we hang out together we do really domestic things: read the paper, take the dog for a walk, eat dinner. It feels good.
After dinner we watched a bit of this documentary called Sunseed, which Afsal had procured recently at Suluk (he's also in the program, in the class that started a year after mine). It was made in I believe the early seventies, and contains interviews and clips with a number of spiritual leaders at the time, from gurus in India to our own Pir Vilayat. We got to see some of the people we know well now at the time when they were our age, full of idealism and...well...grooviness.
My parents scoff a bit now at their fanaticism and naivete, and I can see that, but at the same time it's heartwarming to see a group of twentysomethings throw themselves wholeheartedly into their beliefs with no cynicism or disillusionment, just pure good intent. I'm not sure that could ever happen again, nor am I sure I would want that, but it's something. Perhaps it was their very idealism that caused them pain later on when inevitably the challenges of maintaining a spiritual organization conflicted with their spiritual ideal. And perhaps my generation has learned this lesson too well, guarding our faith and optimism carefully, afraid of disappointment.
Over dinner we had been talking about what it was like for my parents to give birth and raise children in the midst of a bustling Sufi commune. My mother shrugged and said, "We sincerely believed that as long as we were spiritual, everything would be okay."
My father added, "And it was."