We are launching a new section of the Zephyr to share news about recent passings into and out of this earthly realm. If you have any news to share, specifically about births and deaths, please send it to astana@inayatiyya.org with the subject heading “For the Zephyr”. Photos are welcome. To initiate a remembrance page for a murid who has passed contact sufiremembrance@sonic.net.
To visit the remembrance site where you will find remembrance pages for more than 150 Inayatiyya murids, please go to sufiremembrance.net.
Saphira Linden – Birthdate: August 9,1943 URS: December 1, 2024
Saphira was dedicated to creativity, healing and spiritual service in her work in the theater, as a therapist and as a beloved guide to those on the Sufi path. For many years she was an integral part of the Sufi center in Boston. She collaborated with Pir Vilayat in crafting the Cosmic Celebration, a theater piece that celebrated the unity of all religions that was performed in many places including Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chamonix and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, as part of the World Spiritual Summit Conference at the UN.
In 1967, Saphira and Julie Portman founded Theater Workshop Boston as an experimental theater. This later became the Omega Theater. Along with Penny Lewis, she founded the Transpersonal Drama Therapy certificate program which used theater to train people to assist those with mental health issues and life challenges to help shift the person’s identity from a limited, traumatized, abused sense of self to their essential self. Saphira taught drama therapy at Lesley University. She was awarded the North American Drama Therapy Association Teaching Excellence Award in 2012. Saphira edited a compilation of articles by artists and therapists called The Heart and Soul of Psychotherapy: A Transpersonal Approach Through Theater Arts, which documented various applications of the practice of psychodrama. sufiremembrance.net/…ional/saphira-linden
Mirabai Chrin – September 11, 1948 – October 21, 2024
Mirabai, born Marie Louise Chrin, was a long-time mureed of Pir Vilayat, and a devotee of Murshid SAM as well as Murshid Inayat Khan. She lived many years off and on at the Abode of the Message in New Lebanon, and for varying lengths of times at Lama Foundation, Unadilla, a farm in North Carolina, a Christian monastery in Vermont, a retreat center near Gloucester, Massachusetts, as well as private spaces. She answered the call to stay with Rabia Longworth toward the end of her life in Kentucky. She spent her last years in elderly housing in Lee, Massachusetts.
Mirabai felt most at home living in community. She fully embraced her Virgo personality and her position as an Eight on the enneagram–truly a force to be reckoned with!
Mirabai was known for a number of gifts: her superb culinary skills, her beautiful singing voice, and her delicate art in creating signs and posters, Abode T-shirts, many lovely cards, and embroideries. She greatly enjoyed cooking and cooked for many retreats: at the Abode, in the Alps camps, and all over the country. Sharing her skills with others and with friends near and far brought her the most joy.
As a cheraga she led many beautiful and moving services, sharing her devotion and knowledge of spiritual figures and scriptures and experiences. Her services were enhanced by her beautiful singing voice and her vast repertoire of songs.
Mirabai touched many lives and will be long remembered by those who knew her.
Farid Alan Schintzius
Farid Alan Schintzius has passed from this realm into the next. He died shortly after midnight on Dec 5, in the home of his daughter Noelle where he had been living for the last year. He seems to have been practicing Zikr with his prayer beads, and a mighty wind blew through, shaking the doors of the house at the time of his departure. Alan dedicated his life to leaving this world better than he found it by relentlessly pursuing love, beauty, and justice. He is survived by his 7 children, countless loved ones, dreamers, schemers, fellow
travelers, and co-conspirators. https://richmondfreepress.com/news/2024/dec/12/farid-alan-schintzius-activist-dies-at-76/
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