Khalil Gibran

In any country, one can find quotations of Khalil Gibran's writings, whether in books or aphoristic frames. The fruits of Gibran's pen are like luminous pearls in the soul. Gibran authored dozens of books of prose and poetry in Arabic and English, some of which have been translated into Indonesian. The most famous is The Prophet. There are also books about Gibran, such as Menapak Jejak Khalil Gibran by Fuad Hasan. A Gibran poem entitled "Your Child is Not Actually Yours" has been quoted by many writers as an illustration of child rearing.

Who is Gibran? He is a Lebanese Arab writer who was born in 1883 in a quiet village on the slopes of the Jabal Al-Arz mountain range. His father was a farmer who liked to get drunk and beat everyone. His mother, the daughter of a priest, loved to sing and read. Gibran barely attended school, but he enjoyed learning Arabic, French and English from his mother. At the age of 11, Gibran along with his mother and two younger siblings, Mariana and Sultana, followed his older brother Boutros (=Peter) to America. Boutros became the breadwinner. As he was only a few years old, Boutros' salary was inadequate for the family. As a result, they lived in a cramped apartment in a Chinese slum in Boston.

But fortunately, in Boston Gibran was able to attend school. His teachers were immediately impressed by Gibran's intelligence. His works of literature and painting mesmerised people. Two years later, Gibran longed to return to Lebanon. There he entered the Madrasah Al-Hikmah seminary to study ancient Arabic literature. The seminary prioritised spiritual growth. Twice a day students and teachers contemplated in front of the cross of Christ. This experience coloured Gibran's religious attitudes in his later literary and painterly works.

At the age of 18 Gibran moved to Paris to study painting. But a year later he had to return to Boston because his sister Sultana became ill with tuberculosis and died. Gibran was devastated. Then another disaster followed. Not even a year after that, Boutros, his brother who was the breadwinner of the family, also passed away. As if the suffering wasn't enough, four months later his mother passed away.

Gibran was left with his sister Mariana. Mariana earned a living by taking in stitches and Gibran bound books for the printers. Gibran also painted and sold his paintings. But at one exhibition, the exhibition hall and all of Gibran's paintings were destroyed by fire.

These are just a few of the many sufferings of Khalil Gibran. Throughout his life he experienced calamities that came one after another. But he testified that it was precisely the wounds of suffering that made him wise. Joys and sorrows alternate like seasons and each season contains its own amazement. He wrote:

…as the kernel of a fruit must be broken, for the kernel to burst open

as the outpouring of the sun's light, so for you it is inevitable

Know suffering and feel pain.

If you could only know suffering and feel pain.

If only your heart were sensitive to the thrill of wonder, then the pain of pain would be no less marvellous than joy;

and you would be no less marvellous.

and you will willingly accept the changing of the seasons in your heart

Since the age of 9, Gibran has lived life as both a crown and a cross. Gibran loved to run up and down the mountainside and look at the top of the mountain as God's crown. One day he fell off a cliff. His shoulder bone was broken. For months he lay with his shoulder and both arms tied to a cross-shaped board so that his shoulder would grow back. He felt like Christ on the cross. Every day he meditated on Christ's words:

“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”(Luke 9:23). While looking out the window and overlooking the mountain peaks Gibran mused that to follow Christ is to wear the crown of majesty while bearing the cross of suffering.

The pain of suffering felt by Gibran is like the pain of a seashell that gets a grain of sand in it and is wounded. But from that wound can grow a beautiful pearl. Gibran wrote:

I was born with an arrow stuck in my heart,

I was born with an arrow stuck in my heart.

If pulled out it hurts, if left alone it hurts.

I live inside me like a clam.

I am like a clam.

I am like a shell trying to form pearls from my own heart…

In his 40s, various illnesses afflicted Gibran. But he continued to work. Even in his suffering he became more creative and productive. He felt he was carrying an inner burden that he wanted to share with others as a testimony of his life.

Gibran's works symbolise the essence of his life: life is both a crown and a cross. Gibran is revered by many people from all over the world, but these people do not know that the beautiful aphorisms with inspiration actually emerged from the wound of a shell in pain.

At the age of 48, Gibran died. The clam had been wounded too much. It could no longer bear the pain of the wound. It could no longer form pearls. So Gibran's body was taken from New York to Lebanon and buried in a cave in the monastery of Mar Sarkis, where as a boy he used to sit under the cedars overlooking the hills and valleys, where he used to be pensive, intimate with the earth and familiar with heaven.

Before the funeral, Gibran's body was laid to rest at St George's church in Beirut. There were people from various religious sects present: Sunni, Shi'a, Druze, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Maronite, Anglican, Catholic, Protestant and others. In that service, pearls were scrolled from a shell whose suffering has now come to an end:

When the echoes of my words are no longer ringing in your ears

and the memory of my words is no longer ringing in your ears.

and the memory of my affection fades from the depths of memory,

That's when I'll come back

to speak with a wiser heart and more resigned lips

to a pure spirit.

Yes, I will return…

to the holy spirit though death has hidden my body

Yes, I will return

and the majestic silence has enveloped me

I will still seek your understanding

and believe that it will not be in vain to meet