Posts tagged "God"

Acts of Helplessness

Here are the miracle-signs you want: that
you cry through the night and get up at dawn, asking,
that in the absence of what you ask for your day gets dark,
your neck thin as a spindle, that what you give away
is all you own, that you sacrifice belongings,
sleep, health, your head, that you often
sit down in a fire like aloes wood, and often go out
to meet a blade like a battered helmet.

When acts of helplessness become habitual,
those are the signs.

But you run back and forth listening for unusual events,
peering into the faces of travelers.
“Why are you looking at me like a madman?”
I have lost a friend. Please forgive me.

Searching like that does not fail.
There will come a rider who holds you close.
You faint and gibber. The uninitiated say, “He’s faking.”

How could they know?
Water washes over a beached fish, the water
of those signs I just mentioned.

Excuse my wandering.
How can one be orderly with this?
It’s like counting leaves in a garden,
along with the song-notes of partridges,
and crows.

Sometimes organization
and computation become absurd.

— The Essential Rumi, Jalal Al-Din Rumi; Coleman Barks

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Static

Ah! Mama! I can’t pray anymore and I weep more and more rarely.

But my soul thinks of you, of my thoughts, and my thoughts are consumed in grief.

I don’t ask you to pray for me. You know yourself what sorrows I may have. Tell me, dear mother, from the other world, from Paradise, from the clouds, from wherever you are, does my love console you?

Can my words distill for you a little sweetness, tender and caressing?

— My Life, Marc Chagall

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Bismillah

You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave
till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.
You’re trying to live your life in open scaffolding.
Say Bismillah, In the name of God,
as the priest does with a knife when he offers an animal.

Bismillah your old self
to find your real name.

– Jalal Al-Din Rumi

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Victory

If you know the enemy and know yourself,
you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy or yourself,
you will succumb in every battle.
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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