Tag Archives: Rumi

WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED!

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“You must die before you die.”
                                    Rumi

It’s a race against time –
Like a river filling up,
Drowning you, and then leaving you behind.

We begin life swimming upstream –
Towards birth, towards an unfolding life, and, then, towards death –
Which comes like a wave –
Or an unfinished song.

There is physical life
And spiritual life –
But they don’t start at the same time
Or travel in the same direction.

The physical life starts out strong but over time winds down
Spiritual life may also get old quickly –
However, “dying” to discover the next life
Sometimes can be useful –
Getting born a second time before dying the first time –
Entering a spiritual world –
Eyes wide open –
Prepared for a birth into love and joy.

Life is such a surprise –
So unexpected –

Who would have guessed!

ALWAYS FRESH

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“I go back to where everything is nothing.”
                                                      Rumi

Along with Rumi, I want nothing – except freedom
And perhaps a friend to point the way to God for me
In place of all the religious “professionals” lining the way to nowhere
And flatterers complimenting us on things we already know.

I want nothing
And the freedom that goes along with it –
I also want a God who still desires being God
Along with a quotidian material world whirring into and out of existence.

I want a freedom that’s fully paid for –
And a love that arrives “out of the blue.”

Speaking of “blue,” I want a lot more of that –
Skies, oceans, robins’ eggs, and Van Gogh blues –
Along with the spectacular “yellows” I’d never seen before visiting Musée d’Orsay.

Nothing is absolutely the beginning of everything –
Nothing is a midnight diner – cars streaming by –
Nothing is music discerned through an almost-waking dream.

Nothing is a God who doesn’t need to be acknowledged as “God” –
Since God’s perpetually fresh!

“A TRUE HUMAN BEING IS NOT HUMAN!”

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From “A Surprise of Roses” by Rumi

Rumi is talking here about the “true self” –
While “humans” are egos with no idea who they really are –
So, the day a human can remove “herself” from herself –
Is like throwing a key away that no longer fits the lock
Like being surprised by a kiss that touches only air
Or a play marriage that children solemnly enact.

After one stops claiming their human ego –
What’s left is God – and nothing but God.
Perhaps it may take you a long while to accept this –
Perhaps you’ll hear friends and neighbors muttering, “How dare you!”
And yet, there’s no going back – given what little’s left behind.

It’s true that, at this point, one has no alternative
But to continue going forward and claim God for oneself!
Especially, given that God is free, you might well decide – why not you too?
Why not escape your narrow ego commitments and become free yourself?

God freely fills the night sky with bright and pulsing stars –
Also, God’s always free to laugh – any time and any place –
And, God as a child, one day, became Jesus
Willing to die “ugly” on a cross.

Since no one has ever been able to kill God however –
Whenever they have tried, the result has only been infinitely more God!

 

 

THE NEXT ROOM

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In the West, poetry has pretty much been “dying on the vine”
Because there’s simply no “juice” left –
Especially since there’s no longer any believable God to write for.

In ancient Islam, mysticism and poetry frequently were allied –
And in medieval Sufism, with Hafiz and Rumi,
You might even say that, for a time, they became the same thing.

Christianity, knocking through a couple millennia of violent materialism
And repressible crimes,
Has, unfortunately, over time, devolved into contemporary Evangelical/Republican paternalism.

Sufi poets, however, spent their time and spiritual energy searching for the “heart of humanity”
And found it in “Love” –
Which enabled them to dance and sing ecstatically.

Westerners might one day experience this too –

But from way over, in the next room.