Hello, may the Blessings of the Moment unfold your Beauty so that you may See its Reflection everywhere.  I am Samira Heather Elaine Johnson and I am writing here to introduce myself more deeply to the fabulous Silver City Sufi Circle and to those of you whom I have yet to meet.  Well, my favorite color has always been purple or rainbow.  Now, some of you may say that rainbow is not a color and I say to you that indeed all of creation is symbolized to me as a rainbow and it is in this vein of thinking that I expose to you my main Hope in life.  My main Hope is that the world and All that is will Remember and Peacefully integrate the spiritual essence and strength of purple. 

I was born the seventh child of a Charismatic Catholic family and was blessed early on to be taught in more ways than one that the Holy Spirit lives inside each and every single Being (I pause now and realize that the external lessons didn’t seem to include the natural world and I am so thankful that I internally received that lesson somehow).  I remember that the foundational philosophical question I had as a young adolescent was to God and it went something like this, “ So, am I supposed to call you God, Jesus or Holy Spirit?  Aren’t you all three of them and if so does that mean you as the Three live in me?  Or, a living flame essence of you lives in me?  And how can we get everyone else to remember that You are Alive in them and that you are waiting to come out and play?”  The conversation went on for years and sometimes to this day.  I still wonder how to Be the ripple of Awakening and then I remember that I am but a part of the Ripple and the Holy Spirit keeps the ripple flowing and oozing into any space that is open to receiving it.  I do my best to live each day as a part of that Ripple, ever looking for ways to ooze and open another channel for Peace, Love and Truth to thrive.

These days, I do this from my sweet circular home base of a yurt on eleven acres in Gila, New Mexico which I share with my loving husband Stefan Fuegi and our fabulous five year old Isaac.  It is this latest creation of my life that brought me to be with the Ruhaniat Sufis.  I married Stefan through the Shadhilliya Sufi group that I had been walking with as I learned of the gifts of the faith Islam, the fabulous practice of Zikr, and the strength of the prophet Mohhamed, peace and blessings be upon him.  As there was no one of the Shadhilliya lineage out here to practice with I was blessed to find the loving welcome of Janan, Rashad, Darvesha, Shaheeda and the intriguing practice called Dances of Universal Peace.  WOW – I had heard and begun to grock that all the prophets brought different aspects of the One truth to the earth and the people as they were ready to open, but never had I been invited to experience them all in the span of an hour and a half .  And to top it off, to do so by chanting a Hindu prayer!  God bless, I didn’t even know there was a Hindu prophet – you know they don’t even believe in God.  Well, glory be, here was definitely my next lesson that got to be stirred into my Being pot and cook for a few years as I became pregnant, gave birth and fell into baby land.  Talk about surrender … live surrender, be a mom.  When my son Isaac was about three and a half I stirred my Being pot and saw the Hindu chant piece was almost ready to eat so I went to a Dances of Universal Peace meeting in Silver City and got the most deLightful hug from Darvesha and off we went to see what spices needed to be added.  Through the dances, the continued foundation building from Zikr and personal prayer time I was brought to a Tara dance at Wilderness Dance Camp 2004 that opened my channel to allow the ripple of truth and compassion of Tara to ooze through me and melt the veils of misunderstanding about Eastern religions.  As I knelt there in awe and respect I thanked Allah and Tara for opening me up in sweet surrender to the luminous LoveLight of the ONE and found that the form truly didn’t matter and that we All are in the process of Remembering and thank you Allah that the Ripple will never stop Renewing and Reminding us of the hidden treasure waiting to come out and play.  Alhumdulilah.  I still do not have an intellectual grasp on Eastern religions and yet with every dance I feel the opening of Truth, no matter what the form, growing a little bigger.

I am so thankful for becoming a part of the Southwest Sufi Community, you all have definitely become a dear part of my spiritual family.  I pray that we can open our container wider with each breath and make the Voice of the Turtle Retreat Center a nurturing Love Ripple Channel opener which helps Treasures worldwide to be found and invited to come out and play. Who knows, maybe the Universe and Beyond ... EnshAllah.