Ep. 35 – Deepening Faith Through Inter-Spirituality with Mike Petrow and Drew Jackson

Mar 5, 2025

Omid Safi, a scholar and teacher in the Sufi tradition of radical love, speaks about love as divine action and the heart as a sacred place. He explores interspiritual bridges across traditions, the Francis–Sultan encounter as a model of compassion, the balance of contemplation and action, and how language, art, and humility can heal divisions.

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INSIGHT

Human Heart As The Highest Shrine

Seeing the human heart as God's highest shrine transforms ethics and daily life.
Omid Safi says contemplative practice and ethics must feed each other to become luminous.

INSIGHT

Love Is One Essence

Early Islamic sages insisted you cannot divide love for God from love for humanity.
Omid Safi highlights love as one essence that unites divine and human love.

INSIGHT

Poetry Breaks Through Religious Barriers

Poetry, music, and story reach the heart beyond discursive argument and can shift perceptions.
Omid Safi argues language and art move people where pure logic often fails.

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Omid Safi sits down with Mike Petrow and Drew Jackson from The Center for Action and Contemplation, founded by Franciscan friar Richard Rohr, to explore how a unified approach to spirituality can deepen our faith.

This podcast was originally published on the Everything Belongs Podcast, produced by The Center for Action and Contemplation (CFAC).

The Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) is an educational nonprofit introducing seekers to the contemplative Christian path of transformation. Franciscan Richard Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in 1987 because he saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation—the two are inseparable. As Father Richard likes to say, the most important word in our Center’s name is neither Action nor Contemplation, but the word and. This podcast episode explores elements of a chapter in Richard Rohr’s book: “Entering the World of Another: Francis and the Sultan of Egypt.”

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

Hosts of the Everything Belongs podcast, Mike and Drew, enjoy a conversation with Omid Safi about:

Love as a representation of God in action
The heart of the Islamic tradition
Seeing the soul of the divine in all humans
Coming from love and returning to love
Considering how we want to spend our lives
The genocide and pain happening in our world
Remembering the core roots of religion as kindness and love
Traversing across many different traditions and seeing the beauty in it all
The importance of language and art in our experience of life and religion
Saint Francis and the Sultan as a model for compassion
Combining the mandates of contemplation and action

“What if we come to see the human heart as the highest shrine of God? How would it change the way we live together? How would it change the way we treat one another? How would it change the way we walk on the earth? The more our ethics and contemplative life feed into each other, the more luminous all of it becomes.” – Omid Safi

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