Fresh Rain
A Quarterly e-Journal of the Open Path / Sufi Way
To view the archive of all past issues of Fresh Rain, click here.
Spring 2025
Dear Friends,
Enjoy the beautiful essays and poems on Friendship. Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan valued it, wrote about it.
For Summer, let’s reflect on the theme of Freedom. Let’s focus on inner freedom. Are you seeking? Puzzled by the idea of it? Tired of seeking? Done? Found what you searched for? Try to limit prose to around 500 words, poems to one page, and send them along to the email address below no later than June 10th, 2025. If you are writing, please drop me a note so I have an idea of the flow of material pouring in.
Relish Spring! Our forest of daffodils is done, the iris are slowly opening. I saw the first California poppy in bloom.
In This Issue
Walking the Pathless Path
Ihsan Chris Covey
True friendship, a coming home
Umtul Valeton-Kiekens
Friendship
Anna Zweede
Who Would You Be
Carol Blackwood
Friendship
Felice Rhiannon
My Friend Thomas
Klaus-Peter
Friendship
Lynn Raphael Reed
Friend
Felice Rhiannon
Friends
Roos Kohn
The Friend
Lynn Raphael Reed
And This
Amrita Skye Blaine
Upcoming Programs
Walking the Pathless Path
by Ihsan Chris Covey
Winter has come to an end, but the recent snow still reaches over my gaiters and knees at times, heavy with the spring melt. In the wild forest where I walk there are no trails, except for those the animals make. I stop, absorbing the stillness and silence. No sounds but my breath and an occasional bird in the distance. Lines from Wagoner’s poem, Lost, come to mind:
Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
So I let it find me. In many places, the tangled crosshatch of deadfall makes passage near impossible—at least for a human mind seeking familiar ways of moving. How often do we only look for paths we recognize, even while the guiding signs we ignore appear everywhere around us? Here, the forest turns you where it will, and it’s a bit of vanity even to say “I choose my path.” Even while trying to take a different way today, I’ve found myself crisscrossing my own tracks from yesterday.
Pir Elias has reminded us many times of the importance of developing a friendliness towards this world—an openness that develops over time as we learn to trust what is already here.
Out here alone, it’s perhaps not the most obvious place to contemplate Friendship, but in this place I feel most myself—just here and alive, connected, free of content or descriptors. Sufis have often emphasized Friendship, especially with the great Friend, as a key for touching the essence of what we are. Inayat Khan pointed to three things we need to experience real human friendship: understanding without words; a disinterested attitude that is not transactional or based on benefit, and overlooking perceived or real shortcomings.
But what about Friendship in the more-than-human realms? What about the entire world that is already given, that waits until we stand still to find us? In this forest, I am not here as a self-existing entity—my ability to move through this land depends on many kinds of trusted “friends” that share themselves with me selflessly. My boots and gaiters keep my feet dry and secure in each step. My gloves keep my hands warm. My trekking poles restore to my senses the tactile intelligence of the four-legged. My hat and sunglasses shield me from the sun’s glare. Beyond my equipment, the deer and elk tracks show me which ways are passable, even if I have to duck to their height at times to avoid overhanging branches. And the contours of the land itself show me how to move, where to step, when to zig and when to zag.
Friendship in this broader sense takes me beyond my usual self-imposed limitations into a kind of welcoming spaciousness. It invites a different level of gratitude, tenderness, and respect for everything around me. On the pathless path—whether in this forest or elsewhere in life—knowing our friends and the signs by which we can know them, is essential to our ability to make our way through. It would do us well to note their constant presence, guiding and supporting our own, and give them a bow as often as we remember them.
In my contemplation I’ve drifted away from the faint tracks I was following through a deep bank of snow. I’ve lost sight of the path for the moment, but not of my way, because in this forest I have more friends than I can count to guide me home.
“If a person has learned the manner of friendship he need not learn anything more; he knows everything. He has learned the greatest religion, for it is in this same way the one will make a way to God.”
Volume VIII
True friendship, a coming home
by Umtul Valeton-Kiekens
Once upon a time, a young woman wanted to know what life was all about. She was born just after the Second World War and grew up in a time of post-war reconstruction and increasing materialism. She happily took part in all that, got married and had two lovely children, lived in an old farmhouse which was being slowly renovated. At some point in time there was this yearning deep inside her... and it insisted on coming back. She did not understand this feeling, she had indeed everything a young woman would want to have, yet this yearning did not go away!
As time went by she and her sister took a short holiday to Ibiza, Spain. She merely went along with her sister, who wanted to have some company. Ibiza was still a very quiet and beautiful island, which had inspired many an artist. They arrived at a small town and she felt it to have a very special atmosphere. During this week she met many artists who lived there and it felt like a homecoming to her. The conversations were not just on daily topics and they spoke about a kind of spirituality, which was surprisingly new to her. Ahhh, she thought, this all sounds very interesting! Is this were my yearning was about?
About half a year later she, her husband, and their children moved to Ibiza. She had remembered that sense of homecoming, the relaxed atmosphere and the satisfying conversations she had experienced. After a while she came acquainted with many more people. One day she visited Frederick Van Pallandt. They talked about spirituality and she inquired where he got his knowledge. He answered that he was a Sufi, and derived from a Dutch Sufi family.
She started reading about Sufism but also other spiritual books with different backgrounds. After a while she felt a heartbeat reading books of Hazrat Inayat Khan. She felt love coming from between the lines and knew deep in her heart that this was going to be her destiny.
After a few years she moved back to the Netherlands because she wanted to take part in Sufism, not just talk about it. At that point in time she had no idea what that would imply. There was a lively scene going on in the Netherlands. She came into contact with the youngsters from that time and their Murshid: Fazal Inayat-Khan, who had been assigned as Pir of the Sufi Movement International a few years earlier. She attended various programmes and workshops in Katwijk, where this wonderful Sufi Temple had been opened, not too long ago. Every time she walked into that serene building she felt that heartbeat. It felt like a home coming to her! How wonderful!
She had entered a whole new world, which was, of course, strange at times but a homecoming nevertheless.
A year went by after that summer in Katwijk. She gave birth to her third child. One day she read an announcement that some of the people she met in Katwijk were to give a workshop in a spiritual centre in Amsterdam, where she lived at that time. So she went to that workshop and met up again with these wonderful people she had met a year ago. The welcoming embrace she experienced on arriving at the workshop went right through her. To her amazement this bond between them had grown, despite the fact they had not seen each other for a year or so. The homecoming to that Sufi group had deepened and she realized that this was true friendship, which went deeper then family relations often do.
The yearning was gone; she knew she had come home to her true family.
Friendship
by Anna Zweede
The first image I got was a majestic sailing vessel, navigating the ocean in fair weather or foul, through light and dark. But when I considered the Dutch word, “vriendschap,” I realized the word’s etymology wasn’t nautical.
Indeed, I learned, the suffix has the same early origin as “scrape” or “shape.” Hands-on creation. I liked that too, very much actually. Not just a state or condition we find ourselves in, but a relation that we build. Something worked on, worked with, even.
And the “friend,” then?
Old English freond, from a Proto-Germanic root, *frij, expressing both love and peace.
How beautiful that from the start, the strands of love and peace were intertwined in defining this connection between people. Were those ancestors referring to a peaceful sort of love? To the sense of security one has in the company of a friend, or a group of friends? Or indicating, perhaps, that a friend was a unique blend of two life-sustaining elements?
There’s love in the Latin languages too: Amitié, in French for example, from amare via amicus.
My curiosity piqued, I looked a bit further. In various languages, the concepts of camaraderie, mutual understanding, sincerity and partnership were referenced. My favorite was the Basque word, adiskide, which might well connect with being attentive, understanding.
My search offered a glimpse into great thinkers. Aristotle spoke of three types of friendships: those which provided mutual benefit, those based on sharing enjoyment or pleasure, and those he considered virtuous. The third had the most value and nurtured moral growth as well as self-realization. Confucius spoke of friendship as benevolence (“re”) and propriety (“li”), emphasizing mutual respect and loyalty. Buddha taught that friendship was encompassed in selfless love and compassion for all beings.
And more recently? It’s still a hot topic. The United Nations passed a resolution in 2011 proclaiming July 30 International Friendship Day, and behavioral scientists and psychologists provide us with studies and statistics on the vital importance of friends. Interestingly, isolation is on the rise in this digital era whereas there are trillions of iterations of friendship across social media platforms.
Although I enjoyed the research and it all made sense to me, the essence of friendship remains mysterious and elusive. It is certainly all of what’s outlined above and more, but it’s also impossible to put into words. It’s simple, like a mug of good tea or a hug. It’s wildly precious, like being unconditionally accepted. It ranges from flaming passion to gentle peacefulness. And I see it, still, as the strong, proud tall ship that offers both shelter and voyage, safety and challenge.
Who Would You Be?
by Carol Blackwood
Who would you be without friendships? I am not asking this as a rhetorical question. I mean it: who would you be? I’m also including here the friendships that come with marriage and family. Can you imagine who you would be without friendships?
I know for myself that during solo retreats, friendships with the sky, mountains, birds, and deer, along with various other forms of life, fill me up. With those other-than-human friendships, along with knowing that human friends are only a phone call away, I have felt little if any loneliness or need for human interaction. But my solo retreats have lasted only two weeks at most, not a long time to test what life would be like without human friendships. Who would I be without friendship?
Many of you reading this may be a friend of mine. You have asked me how I am doing when things have been hard. That has helped me to feel cared for, and it has let me know that I’m not alone, that I have support in this wild world. You have shared yourself with me and expanded my views on life. You have helped me with computer problems, answered my questions when I didn’t know what to do, and opened my mind and heart with your stories and ideas. Who would I be without friendship? I would probably be someone who forgets that she’s cared for, and that would create loneliness; I may get stuck in my own small worldview and not be able to have the juicy growth that comes with hearing the thoughts and ideas of people I care about and respect; and I would have no humans to love and to be loved by, which would be the greatest loss of all.
I can’t really know who I would be without friendships. It’s too much of a stretch to consider. Yes, through the Open Path trainings, it has become apparent who I am, ultimately, and there is so much freedom, love and beauty in that. There is also much beauty in this humanness that allows me to love friends and to be loved by them.
The fact that I can’t even imagine who I would be without friendships is cause for giant buckets of gratitude. That we can all share friendship in the Sufi Way and beyond nourishes and expands me, and I hope it does you, too. If you haven’t found friendship in the Sufi Way, I invite you to reach out to someone. This community is full of many amazing friends. There is no good reason to find out who we would be without friendships.
Friendship
by Felice Rhiannon
My closest friend is dying.
I am watching the life force fade away, leaving behind a ghost-like shell. This is someone I don’t recognise, though she has the same voice, the same clothing, the same name. She has the same cantankerousness, the same impatience with imperfection, the same focus.
What is not the same is that she is dying.
Yes, we are all dying. We have been since the day we were born. Yet, death is not usually so close, so intimate, so alive as when someone you love is in its profound process.
We have known each other for half a century. We have reached the fourth quarter of life in each other’s company. We have witnessed periods of growth and joy, instants of enlightenment, phases of deep struggle, interludes of calm in the seething storm of a life committed to awakening and love.
We have known each other in times of relationship and times of loneliness, in chapters of creative work and blank pages, in hours of dancing on the disco floor and in stretches of time on the meditation cushion or the yoga mat. We have known each other in winters of hibernation and in summers of full bloom.
And she is dying, her bright flower, fading as I sit by her side, her eloquent words absent from her lips, her breath laboured and tortured at times. She has always been self-sufficient and now, on her death bed she is still. There is no holding of hands, no exchange of dear words. Only requests for a fresh cup of tea or a banana, which will hardly be eaten.
My best friend is dying. My heart is heavy, leaden, slow to beat. It is a stone in my chest, forcing my breath to match hers, laboured and tortured. We met on her 25th birthday; her seventy-fourth rapidly approaching. She has already chosen a gift which her circle of love will buy, a last token of our devotion, in the hopes it will bring her some joy and light up her eyes, if only for an instant, before the light goes forever.
What will it be like to live without this friend? I simply cannot imagine, and yet, I will be living it the rest of my life. There will be traces of her that survive to occupy my space. They will live on my altar to honour what cannot be replaced, to revere a sacred life, to bless and sanctify what can only be held in the word “friend.”
My Friend Thomas
by Klaus-Peter
Yesterday my wife Barbara and I visited our friend and neighbor Thomas, now eighty-two years old. We hadn’t seen each other for almost a month; we didn’t want to infect anyone.
We have been friends since our kids went to kindergarten some forty years ago and live next door. He suffers from a rapidly increasing dementia.
When we came there we saw that his condition has deteriorated dramatically. He was hanging rather than sitting in his wheelchair, outwardly motionless, looking sideways at the floor, showing no recognizable reaction to our approach, his watery, shimmering blue eyes wide open, absently staring into the distance. I grasp his chunky right hand with both of my hands, and unlike before, there is no reaction, apart from a slight vibration, which perhaps indicates that he is not as calm inside as his outward appearance would suggest.
Continuing to hold his hands, I wonder what else he might feel. Does he recognize my friendly affection? And I recognize in my question the desire for an encouraging reaction that would give me permission to act in this way. It doesn’t come. I continue to hold his hand and let go of the idea that such a reaction is necessary. Unconditionally! Sad.
This quiet, motionless Thomas triggers quite astonishing behavior in Connie, his wife. She is more loving and caring than ever before. No longer afraid of unpredictable, often aggressive reactions from the past, she can give him her love, stroke him, feed him, hold his face. We, Barbara and I, are both touched. Here something is reconciled that was not possible for many years in their relationship. Love can flow from her to him and yes, vice versa. She holds his face in both hands, he closes his eyes almost with pleasure, accepts what he has not been able to accept for so long.
What do these two experiences have in common? They are so different—for me the realization that love and friendship do not need conditions, for Connie that only a new condition makes love flow?
Is there even a need for an answer? It is my mind that wants to explain and classify. And it is my heart that allows itself to be touched and is touched. What more do I want?
Friendship
Friendship
unfolds like a sheaf of memories
tucked inside your sleeve,
leaves falling
as poems
whispering
in the
wind.
Friendship
reminds you of your better self,
the one that holds the ache
and thrum
of your heart
tenderly and with
consummate
care.
Friendship
wishes for you both wilderness
and passion,
dust and heat
sweet like
damsons
on the lips.
Friendship
stitches and repairs
a fulsome tapestry
of brilliant connectivity,
with sylvan threads and
felted
despair.
How wonderful. How impossibly human.
How good it is to be
in this way
so alive.
From the collection Agape: Poems of Love and Awakening, by Lynn Raphael Reed
Friend
Friend,
I offer you my thanks,
A bow of gratitude.
My forehead to the Earth
In appreciation
Of each breath;
In tribute
To each moment;
In homage
To each cell of my physical being;
In love
With each heartbeat;
In celebration of each day.
—Felice Rhiannon
Friends
Who chooses not to be a friend
May be closest to my heart
Telling me honest truth
Through ruthless words
Untold suffering
How can I call not this friend a friend
When a mirror he holds up to me
Reflects my felt misery
Why is he why is he why is he?
I know the One is between and in us
So how can I not see a friend
Rejoice rejoice rejoice
And then the friend who means me love
Whose understanding looks straight through me
Who reaches out when my cry wasn’t called
Who tells me my story untold
Who walks with me this path unfold
I just look and see I am the friend I seek.
The friend I am in heart and mind
Lifting my soul to the One so kind
To never leave my side in stride
To show me in and out are the same side.
—Roos Kohn
The Friend
The Friend is in everything:
in you and in me;
in fixation
and in flow;
in the mystical
and the mundane.
The Friend is even in the hardest of places:
in the blasted joint
and dissident cell;
in the broken promise
and rattling gun;
in the injured woman
and weeping child.
Even when friendship fails the Friend remains.
We can no more lose the Friend
than lose
the radiant
and roiling
skies.
From the collection Agape: Poems of Love and Awakening, by Lynn Raphael Reed
And This
— Amrita Skye Blaine
my friend
pitching the newspaper
onto the floor
I stare out the window
thinking,
we’re a failed species
then, the postwoman
brings mail to my door
and with a kind smile,
hands me a letter
with hand-drawn flowers
addressed in familiar
cursive—fifty-year friend
pressing it to my heart
I thank our mail person
wish her a fine day
sit on the stoop
in the kiss of a sun ray
and read her
steadying words
how she feels me
in her heart, reminds me
to avoid the news
notice small joys instead
how the Daphne’s
ready to bloom,
remember to watch
for billowing clouds
with a child’s eye
she knows me,
my friend
but, is it enough
to keep me
out of the trough
today?
friendship
the past smacks a friend
with unwanted memory
talk me down, she says
and I do, as she does
for me
when I get
that call, clear
the need is great,
leaving my desk
I take the phone
where I have vista,
can see birds feeding—
their calm sustains mine
she has my full
focus as we parse
the provocation, find
a pathway through
to have a friend
of fifty years—more
valuable than rhodium
