Rumi

if you don’t have – Rumi

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if you don’t have
enough madness in you
go and rehabilitate yourself

if you’ve lost a hundred times
the chess game of this life
be prepared to lose one more

if you’re the wounded string
of a harp on this stage
play once more then resonate no more

if you’re that exhausted bird
fighting a falcon for too long
make a comeback and be strong

you’ve carved a wooden horse
riding and calling it real
fooling yourself in life

though only a wooden horse
ride it again my friend
and gallop to the next post

you’ve never really listened
to what God has always
tried to tell you

yet you keep hoping
after your mock prayers
salvation will arrive

A king sent you…

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A King sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific task. You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks, but if you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have performed nothing at all. So man has come into the world for a particular task and that is his purpose. If he doesn’t perform it, he will have done nothing.

Rumi

Your Grief for What You’ve Lost – Rumi

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Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror up to where you’re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated

as birdwings.

Bismillah – Rumi

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It’s a habit of yours to walk slowly.
You hold a grudge for years.
With such heaviness, how can you expect to be modest?
With such attachments, do you expect to arrive anywhere?

Be wide as the air to learn a secret.
Right now you’re equal portions clay
and water, thick mud.

Abraham learned how the sun and moon and the stars all set.
He said, No longer will I try to assign partners for God.

You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave
till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.
You’re trying to live your life in open scaffolding.
Say Bismillah, In the name of God,
as a priest does when offering an animal.

Bismillah your old self
to find your real name.

My Worst Habit – Rumi

/ Bill Schulz / 1 Comment
My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I am with.
If you’re not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle up and knot.
How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits?  Send me back to you.
When water gets caught in the habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can’t hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.
Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter if that friend is moving away from you
or coming back towards you.
Don’t let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night, before death
closes your mouth.
– Rumi

take an axe to the prison wall

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Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running from silence.
The speechless full moon comes out now.

~ Rumi

the little door – Rumi

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brown concrete door

Photo by Ankush Rathi on Pexels.com

Moses put a low gate in the Jerusalem wall,
so that even unconsciously
everyone would have to put down his pack
and lower his head, bowing at least that much,
as though to say,
I pray that I can put down what I carry.

The function given kings and all authorities
is so that people who won’t bow down
and surrender to the presence
will have one place where they are humble.

The gate was called Babi-Saghir,
the little door.

Consider the world-power you acknowledge
as a small gate you must go through
to pay homage to a dunghill,
and instead of doing that, recognize the holy ones,
who are sweet as sugarcane.

Don’t grovel in front of political leaders.
Not your highness, say your lowness
to those empty weed-stems. Honor the sun we see by.

Don’t play a cat-and-mouse game.
Join the lion and swift deer in their hunt for soul.

Let pot-lickers follow the big basin-licker.
I could continue and make some rulers and administrators
very angry. They know who I’m talking about.