The Way of Love: The Poetry of Rumi

Each age has its teachers, and Rumi is one of them, one of history’s perfect human beings.  He is one of the greatest Islamic scholars, and is the best-selling mystical poet in the West. He united all his life with the thought of God and the practices toward humanity that this thought manifests. Thus he became one of the greatest teachers of universal love and peace. Rumi utilized the reed flute, music, lyrics, and poetry to call and collect people around his message of love. There were many people of other faiths around him, listening to him and respecting him for what he was teaching. This series will explore Rumi’s teachings and how they can speak to our own world that is in so much in need of the Love of which he wrote and experienced.

Meets March 7, 21, 28 from 12:00-1:00

Yetkin Yildirim, Ph.D., is an assistant research professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the vice president and founding member of the Institute of Interfaith Dialog. He is the coeditor of The Ottoman Mosaic (Cune 2010). His Islamic Perspectives on Spirituality in Childhood and Adolescence, appeared as a chapter in Nurturing Child and Adolescent Spirituality: Perspectives from the World’s Religious Traditions.