I hold my face between my hands
no I am not crying
I hold my face between my hands
to keep my loneliness warm
two hands protecting
two hands nourishing
two hands to prevent
my soul from leaving me
in anger
prayer
A Two-Headed Thing – Rumi (…never think that you are worthless. God has paid an enormous amount for you…)
The universe swings again into orbit around us.
Am I looking for you or you for me?
The question is wrong.
As long as I keep using two pronouns,
I am this in-between, two-headed thing.
Some of the water in my stream flows quickly by.
Some stays frozen in an ice ledge along the bank.
Sun says to stone, Let me shine inside you
and change your center to ruby.
As the sun of infinite love
comes into your love,
you are given more humble work,
something common like streetsweeping;
then you are given mastery.
The sun says to the unripe grape,
There is a kitchen inside you
where you can make vinegar,
or if I help, sweet juice.
The king says to the falcon, I cover your eyes
with a hood, so that you will break
with your kind and see only my face.
The falcon replies, Yes.
The rose says to the garden,
I display these robes,
so that you will let the other flowers go
and be a one-rose garden.
Imagine a man selling his donkey
to be with Jesus.
Now imagine him selling Jesus
to get a ride on a donkey.
This does happen.
Jesus can transform a drunk into gold.
If the drunk is already golden,
he can be changed to pure diamond.
If already that, he can become the circling
planets, Jupiter, Venus, the moon.
Never think that you are worthless.
God has paid an enormous amount for you,
and the gifts keep arriving.
Dates from a withered branch,
the sweet light that came to Jesus in the cradle.
My face now makes the world’s bathhouse hot.
Don’t look at the wet wall paintings.
Look here.
There is something in us
that has nothing to do with night and day,
grapes that never saw a vineyard.
WE ARE ALL RETURNING.
says the Qur’an. Enjoy Shams,
or if you cannot do that, at least
consider what honest people tell you.
Your First Eyes
A lover has four streams inside,
of water, wine, honey, and milk.
Find those in yourself, and pay no attention
what so-and-so says about such-and such.
The rose does not care if someone calls it a thorn,
or a jasmine. Ordinary eyes categorize
human beings, that one is Zoroastrian.
This one is Muslim.
Walk instead with the other vision given you,
your first eyes. Don’t squint,
and don’t stare blankly like a vulture.
Those who love fire fall in the fire.
A fly slips from the edge into the whey.
If you are in love with the infinite,
why grieve over earth washing away in the rain?
Bow to the essence in a human being.
A desert drinks war-blood,
but if it knew this secret,
springs would rise, rose gardens.
Don’t be content with judging people good and bad.
Grow out of that. The great blessing is
that Shams has poured a strength into the ground
that lets us wait and trust the waiting.
Many will Come – Rachel Srubas
Today, may I walk in right paths, in God’s light. May peace prosper the steps of my family and friends, in city streets and buildings, and among all nations.
Today, may people stream from east and west to converge in God’s neighborhood. May nations labor to dismantle barricades. May our city be a just, peaceable center, united and vibrant. May my friends and relations strive for the good of each other, and may I remember I am neither higher nor lower than a servant.
Today, may east and west meet in my right and left hands, complementing, comprehending one another.
In my body, may north and south correspond, lifting my mind above worry, grounding my feet on the earth.
Today may I know what I am: created, not self-made, instructed to walk and work in God’s ways.
May I hammer old knives into new spoons, old enmities into love.
May I respect the least functional part of myself as surely as Jesus cherishes a paralytic slave and saves him with a word.
May the shriveled and disused part of my heart be bathed in God’s mercy today, that I might see sunlight for what it is: the gaze that beholds and heals us all.
In a banquet hall spacious enough for a whole world of nations, may I rest among neighbors and strangers, friends and relations.
May we feast among prophets on food grown in plowed mountain soil, reaped with weapons repurposed as tools.
Photo by Airam Dato-on on Pexels.com
A Cleared Site – Rumi
The presence rolling through again
clears the shelves and shuts down the shops.
Friend of the soul, enemy of the soul,
why do you want mine?
Bring tribute from the village.
But the village is gone in your flood.
That cleared site is what I want.
Live in the opening where there is no door
to hide behind. Be pure absence.
In that state everything is essential.
The rest of this must be said in silence
because of the enormous difference between light
and words that try to say light.
best way to pray
The best way to pray is: stop. Let prayer pray within you, whether you know it or not. – Thomas Merton
Today, like every other day…
Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
~ Rumi
Dark Sweetness – Rumi
The ground turns green. A drum begins.
Commentaries on the heart arrive in seven volumes.
The pen puts its head down
to give a dark sweetness to the page.
Planets go wherever they want.
Venus sways near the North Star.
The moon holds on to Leo.
The host who has no self is here.
We look in each other’s eyes.
A child is still a child
even after it’s learned the alphabet.
Solomon lifts his morning cup to the mountains.
Sit down in this pavilion,
and don’t listen to religious bickering.
Be silent as we absorb the spring.
spiritual privacy
Secrecy and solitude are values that belong to the very essence of personality.
A person is a person in so far as he has a secret and is a solitude of his own that cannot be communicated to anyone else. If I love a person, I will love that which most makes him a person: the secrecy, the hiddenness, the solitude of his own individual being, which God alone can penetrate and understand.
A love that breaks into the spiritual privacy of another in order to lay open all his secrets and besiege his solitude with importunity does not love him: it seeks to destroy what is best in him, and what is most intimately his. – Thomas Merton
quarantine dream #8
