Category Archives: poetry

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A Mouse and A Frog

This week has been very interesting. Coleman Barks introduces Sohbet. “Sohbet has no English equivalent. It means something like mystical conversation on mystical subjects.” Barks continues his introduction to this chapter by discussing an experience many of us may have felt, the sensation of hearing ourselves speaking from habit. Then there are other times where we might say or write something that seems incredibly wise and wonder where the thought or idea came from.

Barks own words are best to portray how he feels this applies to Rumi: “Sometims that presence, amazingly, speaks to Rumi through the poetry; voices slide back and forth within the same short poem! Often the poem serves as a slippery doorsill place between the two…voices coming from a between-place. This expanding and contracting of identity is one of the exciting aspects of Rumi’s art. Everything is in conversation.”

Today’s poem paints a beautiful picture of an open, carefree, joyous relationship between a mouse and a frog. They understand each other and immediately know what the other is thinking;

“Bitterness doesn’t have a chance

with these two.”

After Rumi paints this lovely picture, he changes the metaphor to drive home his point:

“Do camel bells say, Let’s meet back here Thursday night?

Ridiculous. They jingle

together continuously,

talking while the camel walks.”

To be sure we get the point, Rumi asks:

“Do you pay regular visits to yourself?”

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Brother, stand the pain

This week Rumi shared about a man asking to have a tattoo of lion on his shoulder but once the tattooing began, the man couldn’t stand the pain. The story reveals the man complains throughout the ordeal. First he requests the lion have no tail, then no head and finally no belly. The tattoo artist becomes exasperated because the tattoo doesn’t resemble anything. Rumi advises:

Turn away from your cave of sleeping.

What is it to know soemthing of God?

Burn inside that presence. Burn up.

The next poetic story was titled, The Center of the Fire. Two friends argue throughout the story about having too much wine, who can draw and strike their blade first, who can come up with the best argument against the other. Rumi’s conclusion:

We must drown, away from heroism,

and descriptions of heroism.

The mystery does not get clearer by

repeating the question,

nor is it bought with going to amazing

places.

I finished the week with reading about Muhammad and The Huge Eater. The title is pretty straightforward as to what the story is about. Muhammad invites a man into his home who is a glutton. Many in Muhammad’s house were furious with the amount of food the man consumed. A maid locks the man in his room once he has fallen asleep. When the man wakes during the night needing to go to the bathroom he cannot leave the room. As soon as his door is opened in the morning, he flees the house. He returns later for an amulet he has forgotten and when the man sees Muhammad, “the hands of God” washing his soiled bed clothes he is devastated, then a great love enters him. The man feels unworthy and prostrates himself before Muhammad. Muhammad holds him and opens the man’s inner knowing.

When the body empties and stays empty,

God fills it with musk and mother-of-pearl.

That way a man gives his dung and gets purity.

Stay with friends who support you.

Talk with them about sacred texts,

and how you’re doing, and how they’re doing,

and keep your practices together.

Rumi is very direct with letting his listeners know exactly what he is trying to say with this story. We will succeed on our journey if we are not alone. We need community.

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Controlling the Desire-Body: HowDid You Kill Your Rooster, Husam?

Coleman Barks tells us in the introduction to this chapter that “Sufis call the wantings nafs. From the urgent way lovers want each other to the sannyasin’s search for truth, all meaning is from the mover. Every pull draws us to the ocean.” Rumi says it’s important to live the wantings as they come and not get stuck somewher stagnant. Always there is room for reflection to determine exactly what Rumi is trying to tell us!

On Monday I began reading the piece titled: Controlling Urgency, What a Woman’s Laughter Can Do, And the Nature of True Virility. This reading covers seven pages in the book so I decided to read a page each day this week. As I read I kept reminding myself of who Rumi’s audience was at the time of his teaching. His truths apply today as much as they applied then, but how he chose to share a thought or idea was linked to the time and culture in which he lived. This story involves a Caliph, the Captain of his army and a beautiful woman. It’s a love story with twists and turns that Rumi uses to teach his listeners. He teaches about the body’s desire and how all consuming it can be. He teaches about lust. He teaches about telling the truth. He teaches about how listening to the faint whispering of the Divine can lead to breaking cycles. Rumi concludes his story with the Caliph, “ending the cycle of sowing lust and reaping secrecy and vengefulness.” I believe he is telling us that we always have the opportunity to look within at our motives and see if they align with the Divine.

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Musings

This week with Rumi has been unsettling. On Monday I read what seemed to be a parable about a man and a woman arguing that left me feeling a little bit sad. I recognized parts of me in the woman and parts of me in the man. I think Rumi is sharing the wisdom of compromise. He takes three pages to share this story. What is he really trying to tell us? He concludes his writing with these words:

“A night full of talking that hurts,

my worst held-back secrets. Everything

has to do with loving and not loving.

This night will pass.

Then we have work to do”.

Tuesday’s Poem was titled, An Empty Garlic; Wednesday’s was The Diver’s Clothes Lying Empty. The poetry seemed to be more random than what I have been reading so far. Yet, through it all there is the thread that we have all we need within us.

Today’s is titled, Dissolver of Sugar. It felt like a request for gentleness in a poem of yearning.

“You keep me away with your arm,

but the keeping away is pulling me in”.

and

“I need more grace

than I thought”.

I can relate to the final two lines!

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Super Bowl Sunday

I didn’t watch the game. Not even the half time show. But I did hear about the glass stage that rose into the air. And the two quarterbacks who gave viewers value for their money.

Today I begin a new chapter with Rumi; a chapter on separation – subtitled: Don’t Come Nearer

I can relate! Sometimes it’s easy to feel that life is intent on separating me from those I love. I don’t like to say good-bye. As I get older I am aware of the fragility of life. I completely agree with the statement in today’s reading: “We know separation so well because we’ve tasted the union.” Let’s celebrate those we love to be near, those we love to share time with. Let’s enjoy the time we have together. Let’s not “spill sad energy everywhere” as Rumi does in today’s poem.

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Not A Day On Any Calendar

Sometimes it feels like Rumi is playing with us, maybe to see if we’re paying attention. The poem I read today feels very playful. He says,

“We’re drinking wine, but not through lips.

We’re sleeping it off, but not in bed.”

“Thoughts take form with words,

but this daylight is beyond and before

thinking and imagining.”

Then he finishes the poem with these lines:

“The rest of the poem is too blurry

for them to read.”

Are we so caught up in the busy-ness of our lives that we cannot see the poetry of the world around us? The beautiful mystery that we call heaven is already here around us but we have complicated our vision and forgotten how to see? Today’s poem doesn’t feel like a reprimand or encouragement – it feels like Rumi is teasing a bit, saying to us, look, see how absurd we can sometimes be.

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Quietness

Rumi’s intense directive to make change in one’s life continues. This poem feels like it carries an assurance, a confidence, that we have everything we need to make this change, within us. All we have to do is slow down, quiet our lives and allow the change to show itself.

Your old life was a frantic running

from silence.

The speechless full moon

comes out now. ~ Rumi

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Starting the year with Rumi

On December 30, 2022 I decided to read a Rumi poem each day. 365 days with Rumi. I have been wanting to do this project for some time; waiting for the “right” book, the right journal – maybe a lightning bolt for guidance. I realize I have everything I need. I just have to take the plunge and commit. No more dipping my toe and pulling back. I’m going in. I am excited to be surrounded by Rumi, to bathe in the waters of his teachings. I’m not sure what to expect. I look forward to the journy, the paddling about, maybe gasping for breath as I go under but knowing I will surface again. Maybe I will be able to look at life from a new direction, breathe more deeply.

Yesterday I was clever, so I

wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise, so I am

changing myself. ~ Rumi

Each day I have been faithfully reading a Rumi poem and writing in my journal. Today I have taken another leap of faith and come back to my ScribbleDarts to share my thoughts with who ever may care to read them.

January 13, 2023

The Fragile Vial (from The Essential Rumi translations by Coleman Barks)

Each poem of Rumi’s that I read is filled with an intense longing – for answers? – about life? love? Shams? He doesn’t tell us directly. We have to feel some of the unease that he does. Maybe then we will receive some of the answers he did. Reading Rumi’s poems leaves me feeling sometimes more than a little uncomfortable. Almost like I’m a voyeur witnessing an intensel personal experience. I’m not quite sure where to look or sit. Do I interact? Do I call bullshit? Or do I seek reverence? Seek answers, too? Or do I turn the page to a new poem? Rumi is feeling a little bit intangible to me.

Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.

Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,

where something might be planted,

a seed, possibly from the Absolute. ~ Rumi

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God of ACCEPTANCE 

The landscape painter at the artist colony in the country
noted for its messianic light, its sparse, hard-to-capture
beauty, complains she's come all this way to paint al fresco but
the mosquitoes have driven her inside, no matter the netting
on her hat, her cuffed sleeves and pants, a heavy does of Deet.
They bite through everything. And when she tries to snap a
picture, a breathy handkerchief of mosquitoes flutters over
the lens.  What can I do? she moans, trapped in a dull and
narrow room, thinking of booking a ticket back to her studio
in Vancouver.  Paint the mosquitoes, god replies.

Lorna Crozier
from God Of Shadows
2018 McClelland & Stewart

(image credit: Trichy Insights)