I have wrapped my laughter like a birthday gift and left it beside your bed

Sometimes it feels so good to drink water

that the first sip ignites your thirst

and you cannot help but take in the whole glass.

You didn't even know you were thirsty. 

When did God call for austerities?

I don't remember the Divine 

asking us to keep from dancing,

from singing, from reveling in 

the joy and celebration of knowing 

that life may be serious,

but God is laughing.

Who wants to go to a party

where everyone feels bad about themselves,

and there is no music, no drinking, 

no dancing, or eating, 

no playing, no joking,

and no one is laughing? 

God wants to have friends who show up to the party armed for celebration, 

especially in God's presence. 

Once we get a taste of this joy,

we cannot help but drink up all of it.

We didn't even know we were thirsty. 

The Benediction of Hafiz

Hafiz says:

    

 I 

Have 

Learned 

So much from God 

 That I can no longer 

Call 

Myself

     A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,

     A Buddhist, a Jew. 

(Translation Daniel Ladinsky)

I say:

    Listen to the great teachers! They are the flutes, and God is the air.

    God speaks through their music-- their truths dance in eternity.

    Their poems nourish my soul,

    offer to me a benediction.  

    I bow in reverence as words like blessings

    fall upon my naked head.  

Only Listen

We fill constantly God's ears with words,
but don't give him a chance to speak.

Be still.

We need God more than God needs us--
be still, and listen to the blessings
all around you.

Do not shout at some distant being--
God is all around you-- you must only recognize it.
Breathe him in.

Your ramblings mean nothing to the divine--
he can read your heart.
Why is it that you ramble?
For God?
For others?

Or for you?

As Elijah knows,
God is not in the fire,
or the earthquake,

but in the whisper.

Sew up your lips--
only listen.

God is a Tree, the Wine, and I am a Fire

Today I am drunk with the love of God-
my cup was filled to the brim.

I embraced the divine, in actual,
and there I spent the sunset.

How can words describe this?
It was the ecstasy of silence-
ineffable.

God's branches fit perfectly around me,
and I felt love.

I need not build a ladder, like Jacob, to the heavens-
I found it growing from the ground.

Its leaves dropped around me like
quiet petals of grace
nourishing my soul like rain to the ground.
I drink up the flood.

When I taste the wine of God,
it fills me in music,
intoxicating warmth of heaven,

light of life.

How is it that one small candle flame
can fill a room?

How is it that my small heart
can fit God's great love?

I lift my hands to heaven-
flames shoot forth from fingers ten.
I'm becoming fire again.

A Thirsty Fish

I don't get tired of you. Don't grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!

All this thirst equipment
must surely be tired of me,
the waterjar, the water carrier.

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for!

Show me the way to the ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.

All this fantasy
and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night out of the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.

Joseph fell like the moon into my well.
The harvest I expected was washed away.
But no matter.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity,
or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,
but I'm not going with them.

This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.

A great silence overcomes me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.

-Jelaluddin Rumi

Sacred Space

So often I come to you quietly
and say nothing.
We sit silently in the aura of infinity
and dissolution,
somewhere in between truth and despair
(or perhaps they are two sides of the same leaf,
fallen gently from the tree of Being).
So rather, in some part of one vast ocean,
where everything is mixed together--

I'd like to think that the truth is something good,
that won't leave me wanting.
For when I sit with you,
I am deprived of nothing.

This space is sacred.

I rest with you in a cloud, a whirlwind--
the eye of the storm, where the messiness of reality
and peace
are one.

I Know No Thing

I am like the air--
     I have not a home,
           nor time,
                nor place.

Nor feet,
    nor legs        or
        hands.

I am a  _b_ r_ i_ d_ g_ e_
     But
           not one that is fixed--
so, I suppose,
                      rather
more
            like an insect taking food

       from one plant
            to         the       other.

I land on a                  flower
  for        a  moment,

shriveledwings come
            Winter.

                       Spinning
through       the devotion wheel,
    I
   am
 dervish,

           I am none.

I am the link,
   I contain ALL.

                      I hold together a family,
while very    far     away,
             (having sought separation),

though        now      yearning     for       closeness.

The tether,
     the     unwilling    link.

I am the voice of all,
     and the voice of none.

            I speak for the silenced,   of    whom
            I              KNOW            NOTHING.

I KNOW NOTHING

I

     k     n    o   w

n  o  
             t h i n g.

We Live in Evidence

Of all the cosmos,
the solar systems splashed across our night canvas,
the burden of living rests solely beneath
our atmosphere,
behind the eyes observing this sky.
How can we not face the day in seriousness?

The Creator chose one tiny planet
in the unending universe
to water, sow, and harvest in love.
One single species to share Her qualities.

In wonder, we think,
I'm so small I can barely be seen-- 
how can this great love be inside of me?

And then to look even at the duckling
hatching from her egg on my living room table,
somehow knit within that small, smooth sphere.
She unfurls from her oval curl, chirping half-asleep,
drying out on a paper plate.
I was sitting in a temple!
I was watching God.

All of the love in the universe can fit on my coffee table,
on the pond, behind my eyes.
             ...In one planet.

Look at your eyes--
they're small in size,
but they see enormous things. 

Your Heart is a Library, Locked

Your books are hidden from me;
you keep volumes out of sight.
Yet I stay scanning your shelves,
waiting in your wings
in case one should open
and I may glimpse one word,
or two.
For I suspect the contents are
as beautiful as the cover.

Everything is Illuminated

Everything there is to know
I already know.
The process of life is just the remembering.
Empiricism merely reveals,
through each experience,
truth already set forth.

With eternity written on the heart,
the mind struggles to conceive it.

I wait for death.
For at the moment of dissolution,
all will be clear,
all will be recalled.

My Mother Got Married Without Telling Me, and Then I Had a Dream

I was riding on the back
of a beast of burden,
heavy-laden with tempered woes,
slipping on the downward path
toward Uncertainty,
toward being left alone.

The once-ringing voice that
I possessed falls now
on a half-deaf ear.
It distorts the crying echo
I've been shrieking into darkness.

At one point unknown my feelings
became invalid to you, causing me to
question,
...were you ever my mother?

I am forced to keep the rage tethered to the harbor,
and not drift toward the coast where I would find you farther
away.
So I keep them at bay.

But this does not assuage the burden or the woes,
and I am yet riding on the mule,
slow-stepping down teetering steps,
rain-washed and wet with clarifying rain.
But clarity, of course, is pain.

February, 1878 by mewithoutYou

February, 1878 by mewithoutYou

The Silence and the Singing

Today I went to the mountain

alone and not alone.

I thought, "Surely the sabbath

is to show us the beauty of the Kingdom,

the sweet repose in dwelling with the divine,

all else silent,

all is calm."

I had hung my hammock between two trees near the trail

and was reading some Wendell Berry: The Sabbath Poems.

He quotes at the start of the collection:

"The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet;

they break forth into singing" (Isaiah 14:7).

And the sun shone on my face

and all was quiet,

save for the insects

imitating sounds of rain on the leaves.

I could sense the singing.

Only in this silence,

beneath tress that have seen centuries,

could I feel true sabbath.

When our bodies are still, our souls cry out

in joy.

Great is Thy Faithfulness

I lie down in my bed

I cover myself with the cross.

Great is thy faithfulness.

My soul rises as the day

rises to meet the sun.

I light the vigil candle

morning by morning new mercies I see.

In the midday guide me

with your right hand.

Let the light shine

and the praises flow

from my lips like

life-giving waters.

I sit to eat at your bountiful table.

All I have needed thy hand hath provided.

In the evening I search

my heart and am silent.

I seek within

trust to offer, grace to give.

I will find these new in the morning light,

but now am peaceful in the night.

Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

The Spirit is Willing Enough

For a moment on Sunday,

I saw myself as myself.

No pretense, no watchful eyes of others.

I had always wondered what "essence" was...

how can my true heart be so vastly different

from my actions and my external mind?

I am not my personality.

For a moment I did not recognize it-

you'd think I wouldn't be surprised

(it is me, after all),

but I sympathized with it.

Open heart, open mind...

vulnerable.

I know why there is an outer shell-

it's to protect this inward thing,

delicate but full of truth.

A Timbered Choir

I have again come home

through miles of sky

from hours of abstract talk

in the way of modern times

when humans live in their minds

and the world, forgotten, dies

into explanations. Weary

with absence, I return to earth.

-Wendell Berry

What Have I to Fear?

What have I to fear but separation from you, God?

The greatest pain I have ever known was when I did not take your hand when you told me to. You wanted to lead me across rough waters to the side of joy, but I wanted to be left alone; I wanted to do it on my own. And the joy I could achieve was fleeting, and now is gone. It has left a mark of pain, a brand, a thorn in my side... But I wanted to wander. I insisted that you quiet your voice for just a minute to let me make the heavy mistake I could so clearly foresee. And in this I severed myself from you, God. No greater pain is there than this.

Yet you were there all along, quieter but nonetheless calling. I knew you'd be waiting when I returned, humble and eating my words (and you were).

There is pain in the pruning of branches. Why did I let these branches grow? Though where you lead me I do not know, I know that it will be in glory and in love. Steady joy of my youth, I come running back to you.

Though it may seem all has gone wrong under the sun, you are yet near. You make my steps as sure as the deer; you make my feet to stand on the mountains.

How can I explain this to anyone? We cannot even describe "love" because we cannot describe you. You are love, and are ineffable. False love I know, for sure. It is frantic, it is fleeting. But you, my God, are tempered, tried, and older than the dust of my bones. So what can go wrong? As I live, you are there. Even if I die, you are there. From end to end of the earth and the stars. Even in my heart's resistance, you are there. Nothing on earth or in heaven or hell can separate me from your love.

I rejoice in my rejoicing,

I take your hand once more.

Lead me on to glory

lead me to that peaceful shore.

Around What Now Do I Revolve

Dissolution--

the planets out of orbit.

They don't know

what now is the center of their revolution.

My moons' circles have changed-

adjust to the cosmic disturbance.

They pull the tides in different ways-

The ebb is lower, and the waves:

A surf softer than I'd seen,

not to crash, but

dissolve silent now,

fewer and farther between.

What sun must I now seek?

Whose light will warm my face and shores?

How will I know when it is day or night--

when will I sleep?

The stars have moved from their familiar sky,

asking if I recall their place

before you threw them out of line,

altered their celestial pace.