Makin' room for Rumi

During my Turkish lesson with my teacher, Yusuf, we started talking about the poet Rumi, the founder of Sufism, the mystical part of Islam. This conversation inspired me to find a wonderful website of his poetry... www.khamush.com. These are some poems from that website.

He writes much about love. When we take into account the idea that 'God is Love', we find his poems to be love letters to and about God. I find inspiration in his poems and a call to remember the only thing worthy of pursuing in this life...love...pure, unadulterated love...love of life, love of nature, love of my fellow sisters and brothers, love of nature, love of the sky, love of the ants, love of swamps, love of the story of it all, of all the stories that exist out there...all of our stories, the stories that each of us writes every second we are alive, with every breath we take.

When I forget that Love...to seek that Love, to live that Love, to be that Love, I fall into an unfathomable pit of suffering...tossed about by the storms of self-pity, anger, depression, a sence of injustice, sadness, hopelessness, self-consciousness, fear, worry, doubt. We all need Love. Perhaps some of us are just more sensitive to the absence of it...it's like water to our souls...we perish in its absence. Living without it becomes unthinkable. Rumi is one of those sensitive souls...reading his poetry may not quench my thirst, but it does remind me of the only Source that will soothe my dehydrated spirit...
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Oh Beloved,take me.
Liberate my soul.
Fill me with your love and release me from the two worlds.
If I set my heart on anything but you,
let fire burn me from inside.

Oh Beloved,take away what I want.
Take away what I do.
Take away what I need.
Take away everything that takes me from you.

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LOVE IS THE MASTER

Love is the One who masters all things;
I am mastered totally by Love.
By my passion of love for Love I have ground sweet as sugar.
O furious Wind, I am only a straw before you;
How could I know where I will be blown next?
Whoever claims to have made a pact with Destiny
Reveals himself a liar and a fool;
What is any of us but a straw in a storm?
How could anyone make a pact with a hurricane?
God is working everywhere his massive Resurrection;
How can we pretend to act on our own?
In the hand of Love I am like a cat in a sack;
Sometimes Love hoists me into the air,
Sometimes Love flings me into the air,
Love swings me round and round His head;
I have no peace, in this world or any other.
The lovers of God have fallen in a furious river;
They have surrendered themselves to Love's commands.
Like mill wheels they turn, day and night, day and night,
Constantly turning and turning, and crying out.

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Be Lost in the Call

Lord, said David,
since you do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?

Reality replied: O prisoner of time,
I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
and I wished this treasure to be known,
so I created a mirror:
its shining face, the heart;
its darkened back, the world;
The back would please you if you've never seen the face.

Has anyone ever produced a mirror out of mud and straw?
Yet clean away the mud and straw, and a mirror might be revealed.
Until the juice ferments a while in the cask,it isn't wine.
If you wish your heart to be bright, you must do a little work.

My King addressed the soul of my flesh:
You return just as you left.
Where are the traces of my gifts?

We know that alchemy transforms copper into gold.
This Sun doesn't want a crown or robe from God's grace.
He is a hat to a hundred bald men,
a covering for ten who were naked.

Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!
How could a zephyr ride an ass?
Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.
Reason, tread the path of selflessness into eternity.

Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call.

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Come, come, whoever you are.

Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

It doesn't matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, even if you have broken your vow

a thousand times

Come, yet again, come, come.