Rumi on Valentines Day

Rumi is the true poet of love, bringing the spiritual language of the ancients and the passionate desires of erotic poetry into one being.

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,

or what "God’s fragrance" means,

lean your head toward him or her.

Keep your face there close.

Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image

about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,

slowly loosen knot by knot the strings

of your robe.

Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,

don’t try to explain the miracle.

Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

***

Intellectuals plan their repose;

lovers are ashamed to rest.

The lover is always alone.

even surrounded by people;

like water and oil, he remains apart.

We must remember that Islam is not primarily violence and power and law.  For millions of people, Islam is love and Rumi is their spokesperson.

This is a simple truth—whatever you love, you are.

***

When the rose is gone and the garden faded

you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.

The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.

The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.

If love withholds its strengthening care,

the lover is left like a bird without care,

the lover is left like a bird without wings.

How will I be awake and aware

if the light of the Beloved is absent?

Love wills that this Word be brought forth.

***

Love is the bridge between you and everything

Rumi is both Muhammad and Jesus, both strict monotheism and an ethic of compassion.

O Love, You who have been called by a thousand names,

You who know how to pour the wine

into the chalice of the body,

You who give culture to a thousand cultures,

You who are faceless but have a thousand faces

Rumi is what fundamentalism—whether of Islam or those opposed to Islam—cannot understand.  The narrow-minded cannot understand the poet.  But without poetry, the law-giver, the scientist cannot seek truth.

Those who don't feel this Love

pulling them like a river,

those who don't drink dawn

like a cup of spring water

or take in sunset like supper,

those who don't want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,

that old trickery and hypocrisy.

I you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

***

In this earth
In this soil
In this pure field
Let’s not plant any seed
Other than seeds
Of compassion and love.

***

A lifetime without Love is of no account

Dom Helder Camara

Bishop of Rio de Janiro, he believed that the power of the church should be used for the poor, and worked toward this end in Vatican II.  He led the Pact of the Catacombs, a group of priests devoted to the poor.  He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but the government of Brazil stood in his way.

His greatest work, however, were his poems in which he expressed his deeper life before God.  He wrote seven thousand poems in his life, and the far majority of them have not been published.  Here is a handful.

Become an expert
in the art
of discovering the good
in every person.
No one
is entirely bad.
Become an expert
in the art
of finding the truthful core
in views of every kind.
The human mind
abhors total error.

There are those

whose being 

is possession.

There are those

whose essence

is giving.

If you disagree with me,
if you have something to give me,
if you are sincere
and seek the truth
as best you may,
honestly, with modest care,
your thought is growth
to mine, correction,
you deepen my vision.

Hope without risk

is not hope

which is believing

in risky loving,

trusting others

in the dark

the blind leap

letting God take over.

When on judgement day
the angels call the artists in
they will be so proud
of their share
in God the Father's power
of creation,
that the Son
will find it hard
to judge them strictly
because poets especially
remind him of his Father.

Lord,

isn't your creation wasteful?

Fruits never equal

the seedlings abundance.

Springs scatter water.

The sun gives out

enormous light.

May your bounty teach me

greatness of heart.

May your magnificence 

stop me being mean. 

Seeing you a prodigal

and open-handed giver,

let me unstintingly,

like a king's son,

like God's own.

Hear, O Lord

my special prayer

for my people,

the voiceless ones.

There are thousands 

and thousands

of human creatures

in the poor countries

and in the slums

of the rich countries

with no right

to raise their voices

no possibility 

of claiming

of protesting

however just

are the rights

they have to uphold.

-All poems taken from the volume Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings, most are from the original volume The Desert is Fertile.