Hello and welcome to another episode of One Heart, One Mind.

I'm your host Thomas Mocke.

Thanks so much for listening.

I want to start today by saying that whoever you are, wherever you are,

and wherever you fall on the Jesus spectrum, you might be super settled in to a church community,

to a faith tradition, and just be cruising. And this podcast, this time to enter

into contemplative prayer is just a bonus. It's dessert. It's a supplement, whatever we call it.

I'm speaking to you and I'm grateful to you for listening. And for some of you, and I spoke to one

of you, I had the privilege of speaking to one of you just yesterday in person who, you know,

shared with me a bit of the complexity of their relationship with Jesus. And for anybody listening

right now who doesn't know where Jesus fits in their

life and what they're even doing listening to a podcast about Christ and about contemplation in the

Christian tradition, I want to just say from my heart to yours that it is okay to let Jesus be whoever Jesus is to you. In my faith,

in my personal faith, Christ is literally bigger than we can imagine. So whatever your relationship

happens to be today and however it continues to

change, I hope you can have faith to continue to let that relationship change and let it be personal.

Let it be just yours with him. Okay, that's the invitation. Now I'm ready to get into this content. The topic

today is not for lightweights. The topic today is die before you die. This language is attributed

to Muhammad in the Islamic tradition,

and it plays a key role in Islamic or Sufi mysticism,

this theme, this practice, this intention to die before you die.

But we can trace it back as Islam follows chronologically after Christianity.

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