Dearest Readers,
Rumi follows me around. Do you know Rumi? He was a 13th C Sufi mystic and a great poet of Love. The amazing thing about mystics is they do that. They follow us around.
I don’t remember the first time I heard of Rumi but I remember at some point realizing that his words were being revealed to me in very particular circumstances most often when I needed to hear them the most.
One time I was wrestling with whether I ought to leave the Yukon or stay here. A friend with whom I was speaking about this struggle decided a poem was in order. She pulled out her book of Rumi, picked one at random and began, “There is no need to go outside…”
Hold on a sec. Outside is what Yukoners refer to as the rest of the world. I got my answer and I stayed.
A man I know gave me a gift recently. It is a book of images and words created by his sister, now deceased. He didn’t give it to me to keep. He gave it to me to enjoy for a time and then return it back to him. It’s a powerful piece of this woman’s life, full of her passion and creativity.
Last night I saw this man and told him I would be returning the book to him before I go away next month. We spoke about the work for a while and the different ways it had inspired us and I suddenly remembered I’d wanted to ask him if he knew the name of the author whose quote his sister had used on the book’s cover.
He put his hand to his heart, indicating the power of the quote and what it means to him but he admitted he didn’t know the source. I said I would Google it when I got home, which is what I did. Yup. You guessed it. Rumi calling.
Here it is:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
And here is the rest of the poem:
“When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.”
A Mystic sees the world differently than the average person. Ever aware of the Big Picture, the Mystic seeks Union with the Divine in order to become a liaison between the human world and the Realm of the Spirit. A Mystic transcends time. Rumi was here in the 1200s but his work is still being done now.
Thanks, Rumi. I sure appreciate the help!
Inspiring Message of the Day:
I died from minerality and became vegetable;
And From vegetativeness I died and became animal.
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearance through death?
Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;
After that, soaring higher than angels –
What you cannot imagine,
I shall be that.
~ Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273)
