STAFF PICK

Published in 2015, Vraje Abramian masterly weaves together extracts from biographies, stories, poetry and statements of both Sufi and non-Sufi sages. In this time of external as well as internal stress, these words reach across millennia to lend a hand in helping us frame, in a calming and soothing way, all that is going on outside and inside of us. This wonderful tapestry of words offers a call to the path of the heart and a feast for both heart and soul. I make sure that I read a page or two every day to help invigorate a more grounded perspective of the happenings in my life and in the world. Vraje has translated more than 500 poems in this volume. I hope you enjoy it if this is your first reading and continue to enjoy it every day thereafter. 

Staff pick by Dasya Zuccarello, Publisher and General Manager

Drawing from the most authentic texts available in the original Persian/Farsi language, Vraje Abramian offers this extensive collection of stories, teachings and poetry from major saints, mystics and sages in the history and evolution of Sufism.

Sufi Masters throughout the ages have always reminded seekers that the final answers lie in Silence, where the ego-mind is absent. Still, they have also been great poets and storytellers, whose words were capable of life-altering effects. Winds of Grace is a fresh and extensive collection that will both instruct and encourage individuals on the path of love and transformation. Readers and seekers today need such roadmaps of sanity and wisdom, pointing the way through life’s detours. Reading the works of saints and sages serves as a GPS for today’s wayfarer.

Winds of Grace includes selections from today’s most well-recognized and highly acknowledged masters, like Rumi, Hafiz and Jesus. More uniquely, however, it introduces us to teachings and anecdotes of the obscure hermit, the “mad” but unknown dervish, the crazy naked ascetic. Many of these voices offered a shock to his or her contemporaries, jarring them from the complacency which makes automatons of humans. Others, contained a paradoxical twist on the religious life or practice of their times, but soaked with an age-old wisdom that is still vital to practitioners today.

Read between the lines here! The translator instructs us. Abramian advises readers that the language adopted by Sufi teachers was designed to break the habits that normally deaden our sensitivities. He has therefore selected pieces that remind us to wake up, to take stock, to continue carefully observing. And, by careful sequencing of topics, his book gently guides readers toward the essence-truths or core-teachings of these wise ones.

Translator and editor Vraje Abramian is uniquely qualified to make this offering to religious studies today. As an Iranian by birth, a lifelong practitioner of spiritual disciplines, and an accomplished teacher of English, his collection and translations are characterized by academic authority, poetic word-craft and spiritual insight.