May 3, 2026.

Dear Friends,

We will gather together remotely for our Badaliya and Peace Islands Institute faith sharing on Sunday, May 3, 2026 from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm. Please join us on Zoom, or in spirit, as we encourage Inter-faith relations and pray together that the hearts and minds of those perpetrators of violence be transformed from revenge-seekers into peace-seekers. Let us pray that the root causes of the many humanitarian crises in our world leading to so much trauma and human suffering be addressed. The Lebanese Bishop Nassif has made an appeal for our prayers for his brother priests and the Christian community in the southern part of Lebanon who are attempting to stay in their homes despite the war. He states that he is "humbled by the courage of the people and their clergy." The Christians of Lebanon share in the diminishing numbers of Christians in the Holy Land due to war and violence facing the "living stones", witnesses to 2000 years of Christian presence in Bethlehem and throughout the Holy Lands. As negotiations continue to fail and cease-fire agreements are violated in Lebanon and Iran and innocent adults and children continue to suffer in Gaza, the Ukraine and elsewhere, may the world listen to Pope Leo's call to an end to war and violence. At the same time, let us continue to support one another as a diverse faith sharing community faced with unprecedented challenges that threaten our many immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and the legal, educational and health systems in the United States. May we turn our prayers into action to the best of our abilities and address the most pressing issue of our time; the human induced climate change that has increased natural disasters all over the world and is destroying too many lives, along with the earth we are privileged to share with them.

Today Christian believers are midway through the 50 day season of Easter. For those who have newly been baptized into the Body of Christ or received into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil, and all of us who join with them, this is a time of intense reflection on the meaning of these sacred rituals, called Mystagogia. This is a good time to remind members of the Badaliya prayer movement of the deeper meaning of mystical substitution, that the Arabic word Badaliya represents. Many have called Louis Massignon both an erudite scholar and a mystic and it is out of the intensity of his experience of the Divine in prayer that his vision of Badaliya arose. The sacraments experienced by the newly baptized into the church, the Body of Christ, during the Easter Vigil find their source in the scriptures as does the Badaliya. Growing into the Life of Christ, Massignon's experience of the sacrament of Communion, the daily nourishment of a morsel of bread become the Body of Christ and sip of wine become Christ's own life's blood also nourished his vision of Badaliya. For if nothing else, Badaliya is the offering of one's own life for the well-being of others in solidarity with the offering of Christ for the life of humanity manifest in the ritual of the Eucharist, or Communion.

The Badaliya is an expression of the power of Divine Love to transform our human failings into offerings of love. Through 50 years of immersion in researching the life, legacy and spiritual teachings of the 10th century Sufi love mystic, al-Hallâj and the well-known Carmelite mystics, such as Juan de la Cruz and Thérèse of Lisieux he entered into the vast Communion of Saints that inspired his own spiritual journey and the Badaliya. He prayed at the shrines of both Christian and Muslim saints and mystics all over the world. It became a vocational calling to offer his own life, prayers and actions for the well-being of the Muslim community. From his own dramatic conversion experience back to his Roman Catholic roots in the midst of his immersion in the Arab world and Islam in 1908 to the end of his life in 1962, Massignon's meticulous scholarship and gifts for linguistics and languages only enhanced his spiritual growth as a mystic. Massignon called entering into the life challenges and suffering of other human beings, feeling their pain as if our own, "crossing over to the other". It is empathy writ large and finds its source in the stories of the experience of many Saints in the Middle Ages many of whom received the wounds of Christ crucified visible on their own bodies like Saint Francis of Assisi, another inspiring mentor for Massignon.

Badaliya, Mystical Substitution becomes a creative act of love by carrying within oneself both the suffering and crosses born by others but also seeing the potential of the other to be transformed into new life. It is solid belief in the eternal and living Communion of Saints, both on earth and in heaven, that recognizes, deep within the recesses of each human person, a spark of Divine Love that is eternally alive and inviolable. Al-Hallâj called this le point vierge, the Virgin Heart.

In these letters we have often described the Arabic term, Abdal, the plural of Badal from which Massignon coined the term Badaliya. The abdal in Sufism are the substitutes, those who like al-Hallâj are so immersed in the unconditional love of God for all of humanity that they willingly sacrifice their own lives out of compassion for others, if so called. It is out of Massignon's immersion in the scriptures and the life and legacy of the Sufi Saint that he envisioned the Badaliya prayer movement. He wrote that "al-Hallâj is the first Muslim mystic who desired to die out of sheer love." As is so often the case, the vision and message of unity and love of visionaries who are felt to be a threat to those in political power only grows and spreads when they are unjustly put to death as was al-Hallâj. For Massignon, becoming a member of the Badaliya is a calling, a vocation. The follwing passages from the scriptures highlight one source that can inspire such a vocation.

The letter attributed to Saint Paul to the community at Colossae is assumed to be written from prison. In Colossians 1:24 he wrote: "Even now I find my joy in the suffering I endure for you. In my own flesh I fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the church. (The Body of Christ)".

In the Gospel according to John 15:13, Jesus is quoted as saying: "There is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends". The passage continues with Jesus calling his disciples "friends". Both Islam and Christian tradition call their mystics and saints "Friends of God" and it is to this nourishing friendship that we are all called as members of Badaliya and Peace Islands faith sharing gatherings. May our monthly gatherings continue to inspire greater caring for the well-being of one another and growing friendships.

Peace to you and a blessed Easter season,
Dorothy

See www.dcbuck.com for all past letters to the Badaliya and Peace Islands