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 came with many knots in my heart,
like the magician's rope.

You undid them all at once.
I see now the splendor of the student
and that of the teacher's art.

Love and this body sit inside your presence,
one demolished, the other drunk.

We smile. We weep, tree limbs
turning sere, then light green.”
― Rumi, Bridge to the Soul: Journeys Into the Music and Silence of the Heart

“Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.”
― Paul Hawken

“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