Within the Oyster Shell

Introduction

I felt it necessary to write a short introduction to this book as Part I and Part II are so dissimilar in form, poetic approach and content. Many years ago, my former Sufi teacher, Murshida Ivy O. Duce, when I proudly presented her with my first book of poems, commented that they were so spiritual that no one would read them. This caused in me an upheaval which altered notonly the content of my writing but the way in which 1 viewed and experienced my entire life. Always the spiritual aspirant (being not only the daughter of a Methodist minister, but having passed my teenaged years at school in the Himalayan foothills of north India keenly observing the many Tibetan lamas, yogis and sadhus who abound there, I began to realize that love, the goal of the path and the product of all spiritual endeavor, was to be found in the most mundane of acts which I performed daily as a wife, mother, college teacher and Sufi mureed. This revelation as to the nature and character of my sadhana led to the writing of Part I, And Promises to Keep, finished in 1979. I used these poems to praise the divine as it revealed itself in humble ways and to work with the material raised in a life of selfless service.

Part II, The Unseemly Attar, concerns the spiritual upheaval I went through when I left California in 1979 to begin a period of intense self-mastery on my own which my teacher felt was necessary for this period of my unfoldment.

As the ghazal form is unfamiliar to Western readers, perhaps some background is necessary before digesting the poems in this section.