4. FORMATTING, EDITING

FORMAT NOTES:

The words of Wali Ali are put in bold print so that those who wish may easily find them by skimming.  

Contributor’s words are in italics, even when they are thought rather than spoken.  

SHOUTED WORDS are in capital letters.

A blue diamond đź”· shows some sort of “incursion” from beyond. See below.

The word “Murshid” may refer to Murshid Wali Ali or to Murshid Samuel Lewis, depending on who is the Story Contributor.   

The noun Dance is capitalized when it refers to a Dance of Universal Peace.

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Hopefully, stories will eventually include titled hashtags or emojis that identify topics repeated many times in the Treasury.  This way you will be able to quickly search for stories on a particular topic that interests you. 

A blue diamond đź”· is the first such indicator. There are so many places in the Treasury stories with what I loosely call an “incursion” from beyond, a transpersonal event. This may be the hearing of voices (inner or from beyond), the feeling of strong intuition or a sense of guidance from beyond our knowing, seeing visions, having dreams or “sudden knowings” that are marked by an unmistakable sense of authority, and so on.  Perhaps this is especially natural within a Chishti order.  

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Story Contributors, if you remember any relevant dates for your stories, please let me know.  

Story Contributors or Readers, if you find errors or if you find anything confusing, please let me know. There may someday be a glossary of terms.   

Story Contributors or Readers, if you have friends who might want to add stories, please tell them to send them to Paula Saffire psaffire@butler.edu   

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For the record, if others take up editing:

Document Font is Times New Roman 12. Document line spacing is 1.15. Document spacing of paragraphs in a story is 0 spaces above, 6 spaces below. Document has 5 point line between end of the totality of a Contributor’s stories and the divider <><><>.

[1] A bracketed number in crimson shows place of a contributor according to date of first permitted story. 1.  A number with right hand bracket in crimson shows story number under a Contributor’s sequence.

Stories may be put in date order if enough dates are known.  Or they may be grouped for similarity or contrast.

EDITING NOTES:

Grammar and Spelling go without saying, unless there is reason to depart from norms.

Other than that, editing is by instinct or guidance. Eventually I discover the principles by what I have been doing. After including many stories in the Treasury, I realized the basic four “requirements” for contribution:

Story must be clear and sincere, must mean something to the contributor and show something about Wali Ali.

More later…