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The twig sways
There must be a breeze
Though it is unseen by human eyes
A face stares back from the mirror
There must be a person
Though I see her not
A word echoes through the air
There must be a voice
Though I see not its source
My heart longs for the Beloved
There must be a Beloved
Though I only feel a subtle Presence
There is knowledge
Only the heart is certain of
And only the heart can truly know
A candle lit by the mind
Snuffed out by this ecstasy—
I’m going out of myself—
Oh what I see in this beautiful Darkness!
What bliss is missed
By the keepers of religion—
The joy I know!
The love that enraptures my heart!
Why keep wringing your hands
When the Beloved waits to place the
Wedding band upon your finger?
I must hush now
Or some will think
I’ve gone out of my mind—
I have. Silence!
—Brian K. Wilcox
Shobet is used by Sufis to refer to the mystical meeting of hearts. Here, two persons or more have gone within and through communication to the bliss of communion and, then, to union. Time stops. Separation dissolves.
Christians speak of koinonia. This Greek word, meaning “sharing, participation, fellowship,” usually refers not to sharing something but participating in something together.
In shobet, or koinonia, we experience both the other and the Other. In being present, fully, to this moment, we can open to the logos, or “inner principle” of each thing (Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, 119). Through this logos, this creaturely and divine word of the Word, this logos of the Logos, we come face to face with the Sacred, with God. We can see “all things, persons and moments as signs and sacraments of God” (Ibid.). And, “Discovering the uniqueness of each thing, we discover also how each points beyond itself to him who made it” (Ibid.) We are each a word the Word words; together, we are the Logos’ logoi—each and all an expression of the creative and blissful energy of the Universal Christ.
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
To do it as for thee.
A man that looks on glasse,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,
And then the heav’n espie [or, see, look upon].
—George Herbert, The Elixir
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