The 80-year-old — tall, with broad shoulders and a long white beard — receives all of them the same, minister or beggar. He insists on walking each visitor to the door when they leave, despite their insistence that the ustad — “master” in Persian, as he is often called — not embarrass them by paying them such an honor.

“There’s a saying of the Prophet,” Mr. Wujodi told a young poet one recent morning as he was leaving, having dropped off several collections of his recently published work. “If your friends are visiting you, try to go out seven steps to receive them. And when they are leaving, go out with them at least seven steps.”

Mondays and Wednesdays have been special in Mr. Wujodi’s routine. Twice a week for 30 years now, he has hosted a two-hour reading of the works of the Mawlana Jalaluddin Balkhi — the 13th-century Persian poet, philosopher and Sufi mystic known in the West as Rumi. The lessons typically end up being less about poetry and more about spirituality and philosophy. He calls Rumi’s body of work “a factory of human making.”

About 15 men and women, members of a group called “The Society of Lovers of Mawlana,” arrive and quietly take their seats. Mr. Wujodi looks out of the window as the room fills with the warm afternoon sun and a peaceful silence. One of the members, a middle-aged man with a narrow beard and a beautiful melodic voice, sings several verses as the rest follow along in their copies of the book. Then, in a soft but shaky voice, his head trembling, Mr. Wujodi begins explaining the verses.