Gray Henry

Twenty years before I interviewed Gray Henry, I was introduced to her as a publisher by a leader of the Louisville Interfaith Paths for Peace. I can still vividly remember standing around the island of her kitchen with 20 or so of my black and white portraits displayed. She loved the work and encouraged me to keep going. 

Twenty years later I found myself preparing for the Portraits in Faith “Seeing the Other” exhibition at the Muhamad Ali Center museum in Louisville and asking my partners at the museum if I could make Gray one of 10 featured local portraits and interviews.   How fortunate I am today that I can call Gray Henry both an inspiration and a friend, someone who is still encouraging me on this multi-faith journey.

Gray Henry’s full name is Virginia Gray Henry-Blakemore and she is a seventh generation Kentuckian.  Her journey from Kentucky to the Middle East, to becoming an Islamic scholar and publisher is so fantastical that it is hard to imagine all of this life lived in one person, especially someone still going strong. She majored in world religions at Sarah Lawrence College in the 1960s and was transformed in her 20s by reading the autobiography of Imam al-Ghazali, an 11th century Islamic theologian. She and her former husband received scholarships to study at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and they set out by boat from New York to Morocco then travelled by land across North Africa. They were travelling in Libya when she gave birth to her daughter. During their 10 years in Cairo, Gray gave birth to a son while she focused on studying Sufism (Islamic mysticism). In the 1970s she moved to Cambridge where she co-founded the Islamic Text Society to publish scholarly articles about Islam in English. In the 1980s and again in the early 1990s, Gray had to return to Louisville to care for her ailing parents. It was upon her return to Kentucky that she founded the publishing house she runs to this day, Fons Vitae which means “Fountain of Life.” Gray’s commitment to interfaith work is exemplary. In 2006, she organized a meeting between the Dalai Lama and Islamic scholars. She is a co-founder of the Thomas Merton Society, a group that encourages the study of intersections between contemplative Christianity and other religions, especially Islam.

So, when I finally got to make a portrait of Gray, I knew I wanted it to be in her basement full of the Fons Vitae bookshelves storing her inventory; each one of those titles had been lovingly tended to by her. And I knew that the interview would be quite special. What fascinated me in retrospect was that in our warm-up to the interview, Gray challenged herself by wondering to what degree she was still “othering” people in her life. This amazing woman, this amazing human who has travelled the world and worked first hand for interfaith understanding and peace was wondering if she had gone far enough in her own journey! Of course, that is the mark of a true contemplative, constantly challenging the self to let go of ego, story, the personality, and see and feel the love from the Divine Presence. I feel this love when I am with Gray Henry. Her generosity towards me and Portraits in Faith has been overwhelming. She is truly a Beloved of the universe and makes everyone she comes in contact with feel beloved. I hope to have even a fraction of the impact on the world that Gray Henry has made; she is a role model for contemplative spirituality in her person and in her actions.

Thank you to the Universe for seeing fit that my path crossed with Gray Henry in this lifetime.