Fasting

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you’re full of food and drink, Satan sits
where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue
in place of the Kaaba. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give it
to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you’ve lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents,
Jesus’ table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

-- Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī) (1207-1273), Persian Sufi mystic and poet

Scripture Reference: Isaiah 58:1-12, 5th Sunday After Epiphany A

Looking for Your Face

From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it

Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for

Today I have found you
and those who laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did

I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty
and wish to see you
with a hundred eyes

My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold

I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God
to call it divine

Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow

My soul is screaming in ecstasy
Every fiber of my being
is in love with you

Your effulgence
has lit a fire in my heart
and you have made radiant
for me
the earth and sky

My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer

-- Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī) (1207-1273), Persian Sufi mystic and poet

Scripture reference:  Psalm 27:1,4-9

3 Epiphany A

Giving Thanks for Abundance

Giving thanks for abundance

is sweeter than the abundance itself:
Should one who is absorbed with the
Generous One
be distracted by the gift?
Thankfulness is the soul of beneficence;
abundance is but the husk,
for thankfulness brings you to the place where the Beloved lives.
Abundance yields heedlessness;
thankfulness, alertness:
hunt for bounty with the snare of gratitude to the King.

-- Rumi (13th century), Persian poet, Sufi mystic, and Muslim theologian

Lectionary scripture: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Proper 8B

Ruba'i (Quatrain)

As salt resolved in the ocean
I was swallowed in God’s sea,
Past faith, past unbelieving,
Past doubt, past certainty.

Suddenly in my bosom
A star shone clear and bright;
All the suns of heaven
Vanished in that star’s light.

--Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī) (1207-1273), Turkish Sufi mystic and poet


Photo: Sunrise, Tambor, Costa Rica, March 2018.

Last Night

Last night
I begged the Wise One to tell me
the secret of the world.
Gently, gently he whispered,
"Be quiet,
the secret cannot be spoken,
it is wrapped in silence."

--Jalal ad'Din Rumi (1207-1273), translated by Maryam Mafi and Azita Malima Kolin, from Whispers of the Beloved