6
The veil that clouds our eyes shall be lifted
by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced
by the fingers that kneaded it.
And you shall see.
And you shall hear.
—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet1
St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery in Manhattan’s East Village is the oldest site of continuous religious practice in New York. Starting in the early 1900s under the dynamic leadership of its minister, Reverend William Norman Guthrie, a close friend of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, this historic church become known for focusing on faith and the arts, hosting numerous artists, writers, poets, actors, and dancers. Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Carl Sandburg, modernist poet William Carlos Williams, dancers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, and the great Harry Houdini himself all performed at this imaginative church. St. Mark’s also became a beacon for those creatively pushing the boundaries of traditional Christian beliefs and exploring Eastern spirituality.
Sitting on a park bench on a scorching summer afternoon in front of this ecclesiastical icon of creativity and unorthodoxy, I couldn’t think of a more fitting place for Kahlil’s best-selling book, The Prophet, to have been launched in 1923. No wonder Kahlil spoke so appreciatively of this church, whose minister he admired. There he gave readings of his work and held an exhibition of his drawings. Reverend Guthrie first heard Kahlil read his work at a Poetry Society event in 1919 and invited him to display a collection of his drawings at the church. Flipping through a first edition copy of The Prophet that I was carrying with me, generously given to me by my sister, I noticed it was printed in 1940, albeit in the original publication format. I sat there savoring the thought that this book in my hands was remarkably its thirty-eighth print run in just seventeen years.
Mystical, spiritual, philosophical, twenty-eight poetic reflections and barely twenty thousand words in length, The Prophet, known as the “little black book,” was an unlikely bestseller whose influence rapidly spread from the streets of New York City to the world beyond. Within a month, all thirteen hundred copies of the first print run had been sold.2 St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery hosted the first public reading of The Prophet, and it was standing room only to hear it read by Butler Davenport, a well-known actor of the time. Kahlil attended this first public reading and commented afterward:
To my regret he read the whole book . . . but his spirit was ever so good. . . . I had wanted it first read in a church.3
Kahlil’s soon-to-be friend Barbara Young happened to be present at that first public reading and wrote of the experience:
[I]t was not by chance that when The Prophet was read for the first time in public, at St. Mark’s In-the-Bouwrie in New York City on an autumn afternoon in 1923, I sat in the crowded church and listened to the reading by Butler Davenport, that distinguished gentleman of the theatre. I knew only that I had heard startling and essential truth spoken with a power and a beauty that I had never heard or read anywhere up to that moment. It was inevitable that I should have a copy of the book for my own, and that I should share it immediately with others, many others.4
The publication of The Prophet burst onto the scene as the world was still reeling from the First World War, some working tirelessly to rebuild as the economic and cultural boon of the Roaring Twenties emerged and others still trying to make sense of all the bloodshed. That year, the world at large witnessed the establishment of the Soviet Union, Lenin’s call for Stalin’s removal, the Turkish War of Independence ending the Ottoman Empire, Hitler inciting hatred in Berlin, Mussolini’s invasion of Corfu, mass arrests of Mafia members in America, and active warnings against the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. On a lighter note, Howard Carter, funded by Lord Carnarvon in England, discovered Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s grave, Time magazine debuted, transcontinental airmail service began, inflatable tires appeared on the market, traffic signals and the electric razor were invented, the Walt Disney Company was founded, and Houdini freed himself from a straitjacket while suspended upside-down forty feet above the ground in New York City.
Twenty years in the making, The Prophet was a project Kahlil revisited again and again, waiting patiently for its form and then its content to take shape into something worthy of sharing. The year before it was published, Mary Haskell recorded in her journal time spent with Kahlil on the line-spacing of what they were then going to call the “Counsels.” Interestingly, Mary used this working title in referring to it even after it was published. Each of the “Counsels” expressed words of wisdom, and Kahlil summed up the book’s theme in a letter to Mary that same month:
The whole Prophet is saying just one thing:
“you are far far greater than you know—and All is well.”5
The Chicago Evening Post wrote of The Prophet:
The rhythm of Gibran’s words are retained in our ears like the majestic book “Ecclesiastes.” Kahlil Gibran is not afraid to be an idealist in an era abounding with cynicism. The twenty-eight chapters of this little bible are recommended reading to those who are more than ever ready to see the truth.6
Kahlil’s friend Mischa, also a Lebanese immigrant to America, reflected on The Prophet:
For Gibran knew how to make of it a perfect plant with roots buried deep in the soil of human life thus assuring it of constant sustenance. So long as men experience birth and death; so long as they eat and drink, love and hate, marry and beget children, laugh and weep; so long as men are men, just so long will they seek the meanings of birth and death, of love and hate and all the other relations that bind them to each other and to the nature about them, and who will find comfort in Gibran’s interpretation of those relations.7
Later, during the distress of the Second World War, readership of The Prophet only increased, and by 1944 it was a bestseller, second only to the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by John Hersey, A Bell for Adano. At a Fifth Avenue bookshop in New York, an elderly woman explained The Prophet’s popularity: “I want this book. . . . Only . . . it isn’t a book. It’s bread and wine for tired people like me.”8 By 1957 it had been translated into twenty languages and a million copies had been sold; by 1970 it was selling, on average, about 7,000 copies a week, more than four million copies overall in America alone.9
Kahlil continued to reside in New York City at his “hermitage” studio apartment, and by the time The Prophet was published, it was evident that his spiritual journey was no longer just one man’s search for meaning. Arising from his internalized bridging of the Eastern and Western influences of his life, a faith had emerged that transcended all cultures and religions. The roots of what he expresses in The Prophet were present in his earliest works, yet over time his voice became much more optimistic and self-confident.
While studying in Paris years earlier, Kahlil was introduced to an older man named Ameen Rihani, also a writer and of Maronite Christian background, and they became close friends. They both were born in Lebanon and were now living in the West, seeking to integrate their lives across cultures and express themselves through art and writing. Rihani had started out as an artist and was a great admirer of the poet William Blake. He eventually wrote what is considered to be the first novel written in English by an Arab-American, The Book of Khalid. It is largely autobiographical, and Kahlil designed an Arabesque illustration for its publication. Philosophical in nature, the hero of the story is a prophetic inspirational figure that perhaps served as an element of inspiration to Kahlil in his own writing of The Prophet.
Although Kahlil wrote The Prophet in English, its style reflects the majestic influence of his years spent writing in his mother tongue, Arabic. It carries the tone of a pensive Sufi mystic, a wise sage who has journeyed on ahead and now has wisdom to share. He did not confine himself to the writing styles of the day, in either Arabic or English, but, as with his art, let the words arise from within, unfettered and free. The Prophet is not solely philosophy, spiritual wisdom, or literature but an expression of Kahlil’s own unique self, belonging not to East or West but to both. In harmony with the threads of mysticism in his work and life, he stands true to his own ideal. Kahlil wrote of the need for personal authenticity in an essay called “The Future of the Arabic Language.”
Let your national zeal spur you to depict the mysteries of pain and the miracles of joy that characterize life in the East, for it is better for you and for the Arabic language to adopt the simplest events in your surroundings and clothe them with the fabric of your imagination than to translate the most beautiful and the most respected of what the Westerners have written.10
Kahlil’s words, spoken through his prophet, offer readers a timeless journey into the deeper dimensions of life, able to reach the soul of rural shepherd or intellectual academic alike. Stylistically, Nietzsche’s book Thus Spoke Zarathustra was a work that Kahlil acknowledged as influential in his own journey and may have inspired him to respond, so to speak, by writing The Prophet. Where Nietzsche spread a threatening cloud of doom and gloom through his “discovery” that God is dead, a contrasting message is communicated in The Prophet. The similarities between the two books are striking, although their philosophical conclusions differ greatly. Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s prophet, spends ten years in solitude in the Alps and then comes down the mountain to share his gleaned wisdom with the people below. Kahlil’s prophet, Almustafa, on the other hand, waits twelve years for a ship to return and take him back to his home island. He comes down from his hill just before his ship leaves and addresses the people of Orphalese. Both speak to similar themes: freedom, crime, friendship, children, marriage, and death. Yet Kahlil continually points readers to God, striving toward one’s greater self and the aspiration of inclusivity, the embrace of all.
The Prophet was intended to be the first book in a trilogy Kahlil had planned. At the time of his death, he was working on the second book, The Garden of the Prophet, which was completed posthumously by his friend and assistant Barbara Young. Although the book does echo much of Kahlil’s voice, it is hard to be sure exactly how much of it was really his own creation.
When The Prophet was published, Kahlil was facing serious financial hardship, which Mary helped rectify, and he did not take much time to promote or savor the success of the book’s reception, other than to speak at a banquet being hosted in his honor in Detroit.
I traveled to Detroit to see the Arab American Museum, a cultural museum highlighting those who are of Arab descent in the United States. Located in Dearborn, Michigan, where a high percentage of the population is Arab, both Christian and Muslim, there are large churches of historic Middle Eastern Christian tradition in the area and quite striking mosques. I was struck by the beauty of the Arabesque architecture in the museum, with a traditional Arab courtyard of inlaid limestone, a mosaic tile floor, and an expansive calligraphic dome. However, after spending a few hours there, what most surprised me was how prominent Kahlil was in the museum and how important he is to Arab Americans. In addition to his profile on the wall of renowned Arab Americans, there is a model of the sculpture of Kahlil that is in the Gibran Memorial Garden in Washington, DC. And a special display case points to his influence on President John F. Kennedy’s famous line in his inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you.” The resource library and bookstore are filled with Kahlil’s books.
Fortuitously, a temporary exhibition at the museum by the late renowned Lebanese artist Sari Ibrahim Khoury beautifully mirrored what Kahlil was attempting to do in The Prophet. The museum emphasized how Khoury described his art as resulting from his “struggle between fragmentation and unity.” And Khoury’s work encompasses Arabic writing, Islamic design, and Byzantine Christian influences such as icons. Khoury, like Kahlil, sought to creatively highlight the necessity of a spirituality that embraces all and can be embraced by all.
Through the mouthpiece of Almustafa, whose name in Arabic means “the chosen one, the well-loved by God,” Kahlil created a medium through The Prophet to invite others on a mystical journey through his spiritual poetic musings. Some of his messages are clear and some are nuanced, crafted with intention, expressing his developed spirituality. It is an invitation to greater depth in life, infused with a sense of wonder. Poetically woven throughout is a message of harmony and of hope, leading readers along what became his own spiritual path, beyond an interest in religion toward spiritual wholeness with God at the heart of life.
The narrative of The Prophet opens with words that set the tone for what is to unfold:
Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth.11
Upon seeing the ship he has been longing for,
the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.12
As he walks toward the ship, a group of admirers gather, along with the female seer Almitra, who intuitively realizes the significance of his departure and says:
Prophet of God, in quest of the uttermost . . . disclose us to ourselves, and tell us all that has been shown you of that which is between birth and death.13
First she asks him to speak of Love. He answers,
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you . . .
he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast . . . that you may know the secrets of your heart.14
He encourages them not to make the seeking of peace and pleasure their goal, as it would inhibit growth.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. When you love, you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.” And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course . . . let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. . . . To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.15
The prose moves forward with musings on a variety of subjects—marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking.
A ploughman asks him to speak of Work:
And all work is empty save when there is love; And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. . . . Work is love made visible.16
Of Joy and Sorrow he comforts:
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.17
Of Reason and Passion he says:
Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows—then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.” And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky—then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion.” And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.18
Of Pain he says:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. . . . [T]rust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.19
About God he says:
And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.20
On Death he writes:
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one. . . . And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.21
Kahlil’s thoughts on death are complemented by a powerful drawing of a soul in human form, depicted in varying stages of arising as if stretching up toward heaven and at last awakening. What struck me when I first saw Kahlil’s painting for his section on “death” was that I would not have labeled it as such. Its images instead reminded me of Michelangelo’s celebrated fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling titled The Creation of Adam. Kahlil’s artistic interpretation is full of movement. It is active and engaging, not a life disappearing into the unknown ether of the afterlife but rather a life finding a long-sought-after wholeness and being gathered into the folds of eternity.
I recall visiting Rome once during Holy Week. It was not my first visit to the Vatican, but this time, having the opportunity to introduce my family to these great works of art made it all the more memorable. After winding our way through vast marble halls of countless masterpieces, we finally entered the magnificent Sistine Chapel in which The Creation awaited. A sea of other pilgrims filled the room, and a uniformed docent called in a strained loud whisper, “silence,” “silenzio,” over and over. Perceiving the atmosphere as raucous, he made it extremely clear that we were to enter this awe-inspiring chapel with a sense of reverence. The respect was definitely present, but it was being communicated with unabashed words of wonder in a chorus of different languages, necks strained upward in admiration. Just as so many over the last five hundred years have felt a divine spark of inspiration in Michelangelo’s masterpiece, I felt it as I reflected on Kahlil’s work on “death.”
At the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), I had the privilege of attending the premiere of the animated adaptation of The Prophet, a feature film inspired and produced by actor Salma Hayek and written and directed by Roger Allers, best known for The Lion King. The film was a visual extravaganza, with animated “chapters” from award-winning animation directors from around the world and beautiful music featuring world-class musicians, singers, and composers, such as Yo-Yo Ma and Gabriel Yared. It was a deeply moving experience. In fact, it was the only time, with the exception of the film Gandhi, that I have observed such reverent silence in a cinema when the film ended. No one in the diverse audience from all over the world moved or said a thing.
Later, at the after-party, I had the opportunity of talking with Salma about her inspiration in producing the film, which had been quite a challenge. With her contagious exuberance, she enthusiastically shared with us why she was so passionate about making the film.
My grandfather, whom I adored, was Lebanese, and he had The Prophet on his bedside table. We were very close and he died when I was six. He was the first person that was close to me that died. I really wished he had stayed with me, you know, to teach me about life. When I was about eighteen years old I found the book again. I recognized the cover from the book on his bedside table. I read it and when I read this book I felt it was my grandfather coming to me, to teach me about life, and about who he was. So through this book I found my grandfather again. It really felt like he was talking to me through the words of Kahlil Gibran. So this book represents a very personal experience for me. Then I found out that there are millions of people around the world who have shared the same kind of connection to this book . . . in which the words of Kahlil have so strongly impacted them positively and spiritually. So I thought that it would be important that future generations don’t ever forget about him.
And especially at this time, I thought it was crucial that we pay further tribute to this man who was an Arab who wrote a book of spiritual philosophy that unites all religions and all countries and all creeds, from many different generations . . . because it talks about the simple things of life . . . that bring us all together. When you read this book, something really strange happens . . . you read something and you go, “I recognize that.” And not because your brain goes back to a file that says I heard it before here or there, but because your soul recognizes it as the truth. This is why it speaks to people from all religions. This is where the dream began to turn The Prophet into a movie. And I wanted to make the film into an experience that people who see it have . . . all human beings from three to 103 years of age. And we thought that animation was the right vehicle to do it, to make the book come to life, because art is limitless. We could take the poetry and turn it into beautiful artworks. The film takes you on many journeys, but each time the destination is the same . . . the journey is inside of you, which is what Kahlil was all about.
Salma very clearly expressed the profound magnetism of The Prophet and its transformational influence on people’s lives. It is a work that truly mutes religious distinctions. Finding a way to powerfully communicate a nonsectarian version of spirituality was something that weighed heavily on Kahlil. He felt a sense of sacred responsibility in writing The Prophet, almost as if it was to be a holy book. Even the process of writing it was a type of spiritual rebirth for him. He felt that all the events of his life seemed to lead to the writing of this book.
It is the biggest challenge in my life. My entire being is in The Prophet. Everything I have ever done before . . . was only a prelude to this.22
In anticipation of a planned visit by Mary in the spring of 1918, Kahlil wrote of his plans for The Prophet.
One large thought is filling my mind and my heart; and I want so much to give it form before you and I meet.23
During their visit, Mary records in her journal a discussion concerning the emerging manuscript. She had asked Kahlil if he would address a separate section about God in the book and he responded:
Of Him I have been speaking in everything. I am not trying to write poetry. I am trying to express thoughts. I want the rhythm and the words right so that they shan’t be noticed but shall just sink in like water into cloth.24
One of Kahlil’s biographers, Alexandre Najjar, writes of Kahlil and The Prophet:
With poetry, Gibran delivers a spiritual message inviting the reader to the fulfillment of the self and a deeper thirst for life. . . . Gibran was able to condense wisdom of all religions in a work with a universal message. It belongs to no school. . . . For him, the only doctrine that was worth defending was the doctrine of life itself. One day he said to [his assistant] Barbara Young, “I am a life-ist.” Bard of life—as “life is hope itself”—the author of The Prophet chanted life till the very end.25
In early 1922 Mary developed a relationship with Jacob Florence Minis, a wealthy Georgian landowner and widower of her older cousin. Significantly older than Mary, he had grown lonely after his wife’s death and asked her to come live with him as his companion and hostess. It would mean giving up her teaching life, and the decision caused her considerable angst. After much debate she agreed to the arrangement and moved to live in Savannah, ultimately marrying him.
Kahlil sent a copy of The Prophet to Mary in Georgia upon its publication. She wrote to him in response:
The Prophet came today, and it did more than realize my hopes. For it seemed in its compacted form to open further new doors of desire and imagination in me, and to create about itself the universe in nimbus, so that I read it as at the center of all things. The format is excellent and lets the ideas and the verse flow quite unhampered. The pictures make my heart jump when I see them. They are beautifully done. . . . And the text is more beautiful, nearer, more revealing, more marvelous in conveying Reality . . . than ever. . . . The English, the style, the wording, the music—is exquisite, Kahlil—just sheerly beautiful. . . . This book will be held as one of the treasures of English literature. And in our darkness we will open it to find ourselves again and the heaven and earth within ourselves. Generations will not exhaust it, but instead, generation after generation will find in the book what they would fain be—and it will be better loved as men grow riper and riper. It is the most loving book ever written.26
I visited the charming coastal Georgian city of Savannah when the magnolia trees were in full bloom. Staying at the historic Marshall House, I enjoyed taking in the many manicured squares, stately manors, antebellum architecture, and cobblestoned streets lined with oak trees covered in Spanish moss. It was not difficult to imagine Mary moving to this charming city after her many years in New York. I had written ahead to arrange a meeting with Tania Sammons, a curator at the Telfair Museum of Art, where much of Kahlil’s art is preserved. Due to Mary’s close association with Savannah and the Telfair Museum, she chose to bequeath her treasured collection of Kahlil’s work—102 drawings, watercolors, paintings, and pastels—into their care. While she also donated her correspondence with Kahlil to the University of North Carolina and a few drawings and paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Newark Museum, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the majority of her collection was given to the Telfair.
Tania, a specialist on Gibran, hosted me generously and accompanied me to the back archives to show me Kahlil’s art in their collection. The majority were drawings, but there were a few paintings as well. The drawings were not framed but carefully preserved in individual folders. As I looked through each work, taking notes, Tania shared how she was in the process of writing a biography on Mary Haskell and told me how to find her former home afterward. After a scenic walk of twenty blocks, I spent some time in front of Mary’s former house; full of Southern allure, a modest albeit stately home, it is a normal residence now and sits on the corner of beautiful Forsyth Park. I then walked over and sat down on the park bench made famous in the movie Forrest Gump, imagining Mary writing Kahlil from Savannah, reading and editing his work, and reflecting on the artwork he sent her.
While in Savannah I spoke by telephone to one of Kahlil’s biographers, Suheil Bushrui, a professor at the University of Maryland, about the unique influence and spirituality of Kahlil. Dr. Bushrui took great care to highlight to me that Kahlil did not accept the schism between the divine and material aspects of civilization. He emphasized that Kahlil had been influenced by Ibn al Arabi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic, who saw only the oneness of humanity.
In The Prophet, Gibran is simplifying Islam and Christianity . . . to the essence of what they are about. His Almustapha, in The Prophet, was bringing Jesus and Mohammed together.27
Through the voice of his literary mystical prophet, Almustafa, Kahlil seems to have found a way in which to merge admired aspects of the Sufi Muslim tradition with the Christian mystical heritage of his own Maronite Christian background. Influenced by the mysticism in Islam, it is worth noting the beautiful verse in the Qur’an that speaks so visually of this nearness.
We created man. We knew the promptings of his soul, and are closer to him than his jugular vein. (50:16)
Barbara Young said of Kahlil:
Gibran found himself outside the religious faith to which he had been born. And he found no other organized and formulated “religion” that he could embrace.28
Of Kahlil’s belief in God, one of his biographers, Alexandre Najjar, writes:
What kind of God did Gibran believe in? His view of God was not mainstream. Gibran’s mysticism is a convergence of several different influences: Christianity, Islam, Sufism, theosophy and Jungian psychology. . . . He was a native of Lebanon, which, contrary to appearances, represented religious syncretism, a message of coexistence. . . . He rejected fanaticism and religious segregation of any kind and culled his own convictions from a synthesis of different religious messages without their dogmatism. He . . . could not reasonably confine himself to any one of the three great monotheistic religions.29
Najjar also comments specifically on Kahlil’s book The Prophet:
Gibran brings everything back to God. . . . Gibran calls for aspiration to a “Giant Self” by opening our hearts to love and invites us to a mystical flight towards the perfect world. . . . The Prophet is a book that abounds in hope and optimism.30
There is a sense in which God is so intimately a part of our every breath, and at the same time so large as to fill the Universe. Kahlil felt that to search for God solely in a mosque, a church, or a temple is to limit one’s search for wholeness. Almost a decade earlier in Kahlil’s collection of parables and poems, A Tear and a Smile, he conveyed his belief in unity across religious divides:
You are my brother and I love you.
I love you when you prostrate yourself in your mosque, and kneel in your church, and pray in your synagogue.
You and I are sons of one faith—the Spirit.31
In Kahlil’s essay “Open Letter from a Christian Poet to Muslims,” just before the onset of the First World War, he referred to himself as a Christian who placed “Jesus in one half of his heart and Mohammed in the other.”32 When I visited the Gibran Museum in Lebanon, I saw on display several books on Muhammad that Kahlil owned. One in particular was a popular book written by David Samuel Margoliouth, an Orientalist, Oxford professor of Arabic, and priest in the Church of England, during Kahlil’s lifetime. Next to it was a copy of Kahlil’s Bible.
When Kahlil was befriended by Ameen Rihani in Paris as a young man, Rihani was already writing of the unity of all religions, which no doubt impacted Kahlil during a formative stage of his life. In his poem “A Chant of Mystics,” Rihani wrote:
Nor Crescent nor Cross we adore;
Nor Buddha nor Christ we implore;
Nor Muslim nor Jew we abhor;
We are free . . .
We are not of the East or the West;
No boundaries exist in our breast:
We are free.33
Kahlil expressed this same universal spiritual embrace in his work titled “Your Thought and Mine,” often seen as his “creed,” which includes these words,
You have your thought and I have mine.
Your thought advocates Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.
In my thought there is only one universal religion, whose varied paths are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being.
You have your thought and I have mine.34
On their return voyage to America after Kahlil’s two years in Paris, he and Rihani stopped in London to explore the art of the city. Kahlil especially resonated with the art of William Turner at the Tate Gallery, now known as the Tate Britain, and of course of the mystic poet-painter William Blake. Their friend Yusif Huwayyik, whom Kahlil had known since high school days in Beirut, was touring with them as well. Yusif’s uncle was a Maronite patriarch and his grandfather had been a priest in Bsharri. While there, the three compatriots, all from Maronite Christian backgrounds, came up with an ambitious plan to inspire reconciliation between faiths in the Arab world on a grand artistic scale. Pivotal to their plans was the construction of an opera house in Beirut showcasing two domes, one resembling a church basilica and the other featuring mosque minarets, symbolizing the reconciliation of Christianity and Islam. Although the plans never materialized, the desire was there.35
Following his writing of The Prophet, Kahlil put together a book of aphorisms in English called Sand and Foam, and his own decorative designs enhanced its pages. As if emerging from a vast ocean of sand and foam, they offer insightful grains of wisdom, both illuminating and inspiring, that echoed the universal spirituality of The Prophet. He wrote:
Should you really open your eyes and see, you would behold your image in all images. And should you open your ears and listen, you would hear your own voice in all voices.36
Many a doctrine is like a window pane.
We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.37
On one of my visits to the Gibran Museum in Bsharri I was able to sit down and talk with the now late curator, Wahib Kayrouz. He told me that to understand Kahlil it was necessary to consider the words he had spoken of himself:
My life is a life interior.38
Such a simple statement, but so illuminating as to the essence of who Kahlil was and the depth of the Eastern and Western spiritual reservoirs from which he drew. One of Kahlil’s most iconic drawings on display at the Gibran Museum is the Face of Almustafa, the Prophet. As in earlier books, Kahlil illustrated The Prophet with his own ethereal drawings throughout. He had created this depiction of Almustafa to be the frontispiece for The Prophet, and it is the first thing one sees when opening a first-edition copy. According to Kayrouz, it took him six years to perfect it, experimenting with both pencil and charcoal.39 His three drawings of what he saw as a sacred face are on display in Bsharri. Familiar with Coptic icons from my years in Egypt, the face of the Prophet reminds me of the work of an icon writer. It is infused with a sense of infinite luminous revelation, a sort of eternal light shining through a veil of transparency, lingering between worlds.
Mary recorded Kahlil’s comments on this drawing in her journal:
I told you, did I not, how I saw the face of the Prophet? I was reading one night in bed late and I stopped, weary, and closed my eyes for a moment. When I closed my eyes, I saw quite plainly that Face. I saw it for one or two minutes, perfectly clearly, and then it disappeared. The Prophet was my attempt to reproduce the Jesus face. And how I have worked on The Prophet!40
Kahlil succeeded at crafting a poetic invitation to journey toward the depths of one’s self. Uniquely embodying the East and West, his own spiritual search led him to move beyond the borders of creeds and cultures and into another dimension of spirituality. Insightfully exploring the motivations and aspirations of the human mind and heart, it is a work of boundless inspiration.
During a visit to Bsharri I met a woman who, while walking through the Gibran Museum, was tightly clutching her first edition, first print run copy of The Prophet, signed by Kahlil himself. It was clearly a treasured possession. She explained to me that due to the way his spirituality had transformed her life, she was now in search of a first edition copy of the book he had written after The Prophet, as it further helped her understand his spiritual depth. That next book was Jesus the Son of Man.