Khadijah

“Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.

Reason says, Nonsense.
I have walked and measured the walls here.
There are no places like that.

Love says, There are.

Reason sets up a market
and begins doing business.
Love has more hidden work.

Hallaj steps away from the pulpit
and climbs the stairs of the gallows.

Lovers feel a truth inside themselves
that rational people keep denying.

It is reasonable to say, Surrender
is just an idea that keeps people from leading their lives.

Love responds, No. This thinking
is what is dangerous.

Using language obscures
what Shams came to give.

Every day the sun rises
out of low word-clouds
into burning silence.”
― Rumi, Bridge to the Soul: Journeys Into the Music and Silence of the Heart

“I said: what about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.

I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.

I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?

I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door of your
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

“A Given

The drum we hear inside us now
we may not hear tomorrow.

We have such fear of what comes next. Death.
These loves are like pieces of cotton.
Throw them in the fire.

Death will be a meeting like that flaring up,
a presence you have always wanted to be with.

This body and this universe
keep us from being free.

Those of you decorating your cells
so beautifully, do you think
they won't be torn down?

The eventual demolishing of prisons
is a given. Fire-change, disaster-change,
you can trust that those will come around to you.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi