The Priest and the Dervish

The other day I mentioned the Venerable Solanus Casey, a man on his way to sainthood; I know of him because he’d spent many years in Detroit. At that time, looking back over his history, I was reminded of the fact that Casey had been ordained a “simplex” priest, meaning that he could celebrate mass but was prohibited from hearing confessions or giving homilies. Why? His superiors in the Capuchin order thought that he lacked the intellectual capacity. Perhaps. But his saintly powers, not least to heal the sick, those soon began to manifest…

This reminded me of a Sufi story called “The Man Who Walked on Water,” found in Idries Shah’s volume titled Tales of the Dervishes. The story, on page 84, goes like this in summary:

A dervish who belonged to a conventional sort of community was walking along a river and meditating on moralistic and scholastic problems; such problems formed the core teaching of his group. As he walked he was suddenly startled to hear an outcry coming from the island in the water. Someone was intoning the dervish call, YA HU but doing it all wrong; the man over there was saying U YA HU. Our dervish decided that the ignoramus on the island needed instruction. He hired a rowboat and got over there. He found a man dressed in a dervish robe, stopped by him, and carefully instructed the unfortunate.

Our man then left the island again, satisfied; he’d done a good deed. Rowing back he reflected on this sacred formula. It was said that anyone who could repeat it properly could even learn to walk on water, something our man had always hoped to do—but had always failed to achieve. Now he listened, but no sounds came. He had reached the middle of the water when he heard a halting start coming from over there, the ignorant dervish starting out with U YA again. Our man shook his head. Perverse humanity, persistent in error. Then he suddenly beheld a strange sight. The dervish from over there was walking on water, coming out toward the boat. Our man stopped rowing in astonishment. The dervish arrived. “Sorry to trouble you,” he said, standing on the river. “My memory is weak. I’ve already forgotten how to say it right. Could you help me again…?”