Tag Archives: unease

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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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Nova Scotia Shooting Spree

Our crazy world has become even crazier.Trying to make sense of lives lost to a virus suddenly seems easier than trying to make sense of lives lost to a gunman – someone pretending to be a police officer for G** sake.

Unease bulges in my throat. I no longer recognize my world. I long for solitude but I don’t want to be alone. Stepping into running shoes I walk out the door, the energy to run gone with the twist of the doorknob.

I walk without a destination, to calm my nerves. I try not to think about families destroyed because they trusted a uniformed person.

I try not to think about too many people, too close together on the pathway. I veer to the overgrown winter grass. When people, dogs, bikes, kids head toward me, I freeze. I wish they would spread out.

When I get home, I bake cookies. Flour, butter, oatmeal, sugar,everything carefully measured, following an ordinary recipe.

But each time I hear a news broadcast between songs on the radio, I am reminded we live in a time that is anything but ordinary.

Peeking in the oven hoping to see the cookies spread out, knowing I have done nothing wrong, I still find myself whispering, I’m sorry.

(photo credit: Engin Akyurt)