Why so stressed? Tom Ridge’s Homeland Insecurity alerts certainly hadn’t helped. Premonitions of what Bush’s bombing was going to do to neighborhoods full of people in Iraq made it worse. But then there was my particular, personal situation…(2003/03/07)

His [Sufi mystic Shams’] stern but gentle manner and his preachings of love arouse strong reactions, ranging from murderous hostility on the part of Islamic zealots to almost total identification by Rumi, from respect and devotion by outcasts whom he has consoled and aided to the one kind of love he cannot allow himself, the passionate, carnal kind.