The Essential Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, p.22.
Quietness
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 somebody suddenly born into colour.
Do it now.
You’re covered with 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.
3 comments:
A friend of mine who is undergoing a crisis recently told me that, in spite of her crisis, she is experiencing peace because she is “no longer trying to hold things together.” I was struck by the wisdom of her phrase. It reminds me of Jesus telling us that “anyone who wants to save his life must lose it.” My friend sent me this poem, which so strikingly invites us into the same kind of loss: the death of our struggles and preconceptions about what our lives are meant to look like.
What a beautiful reading, so inviting into the silence (for me) of meditation, and the freedom of God/ess's love. Rumi encourages us, emboldens our faith that we can step onto the other side, dying to where we've known and grown ego-filled, then awaken alive in the glory of being created anew. Hallelujah!
Sometimes you need not even try; it just happens. You simply begin to realize your old life and your old attempts to hold things together or control things are gone, dead. There's no turning back then.
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