It is the last day of April. National Poetry Month has finally come to an end and so has my poetry series. I’ve heard from many of you about how much these posts have meant to you by giving you a moment’s pause each day to reflect on something beautiful, or new. I’m so glad I was able to do that, but the pace is a little much for me to keep up. I can’t sustain a daily practice, but I will try to throw out a poetry post once in a while.

One of the most difficult tasks of the month was deciding which poems to include and today was no exception. If I can only share one more gem from Hafiz, which should it be? Just know that whatever poem I chose, there were dozens left on the table. If you’ve enjoyed the last several days in particular, go buy The Gift as a gift to yourself.

“We Have Not Come to Take Prisoners”

We have not come here to take prisoners,

But to surrender more deeply

To freedom and joy.

 

We have not come into this exquisite world

To hold ourselves hostage from love.

 

Run, my dear,

From anything

That does not strengthen

Your precious budding wings.

 

Run like hell my dear,

From anyone likely

To put a sharp knife

Into the sacred, tender vision

Of your beautiful heart.

 

We have a duty to befriend

Those aspects of obedience

That stand outside of our house

And shout to our reason

“O please, O please,

Come out and play!”

 

For we have not come here to take prisoners

Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply

Our divine courage, freedom and

Light!

For me, this poem sums up the essence of Hafiz’s mystical vision.  We have a sacred duty and it is first and foremost to recognize the divine Presence within and to act accordingly. This is a radical revisioning of what most of us raised with religion have been taught.  We have been catechized by church and culture to button it up, keep it down, follow the rules, imprison our passion, obey our reason. Hafiz screams at us to “Run!” from those false prophets who would do violence to the nascent Spirit within us, the one that makes it possible for us to be free – free for God to God’s work within us and the world.

And yet, even as it makes me smile, something inside me grimaces and I find some inner resistance to this poem. Do you sense it too? What part of us disapproves of spiritual freedom, play and joy? I don’t think it’s any part of us. I think it’s the “sharp knife” that was stuck in us when we were small and taught the rules of the game. No matter how much we’ve grown, no matter how much larger our vision is, the point is still there, digging in, reminding us to hold something of ourselves back, to be smart and play it safe.

Ultimately, we may never get rid of the knot in our chest, but the poetry of Hafiz empowers us to ignore the discomfort. He also insists that we protect ourselves from anyone who would push that knife deeper, including our scared and shamed selves. We can obey our fear, disguised as “reason,” or we can obey our God. Too often we worship the former and call it the latter. The poetry of Hafiz and other mystics insist there is another way and it’s the way I want to go – the way of Love, joy, freedom, divine courage, connection and cohabitation.

“Come out and play” friends, the poets are calling you!

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Dissolving into God is a theme found in Sufi poetry and mysticism over and over again, but every poet takes a different approach. Here is one of my favorite’s from Hafiz.

“The Seed Cracked Open”

It used to be

That when I would wake in the morning

I could with confidence say,

“What am ‘I’ going to

Do?”

That was before the seed

Cracked open.

Now Hafiz is certain:

There are two of us housed

In this body,

Doing the shopping together in the market and

Tickling each other

While fixing the evening’s food.

Now when I awake

All the internal instruments play the same music:

“God, what love-mischief can ‘We’ do

For the world

Today?”

 

And just for good measure, here’s one more nugget of a poem. Hafiz and God have such a good time together!

“Two Giant Fat People”

God

And I have become

Like two giant fat people

Living in a

Tiny boat.

We

Keep

Bumping into each other and

L

A

U

G

H

I

N

G

.

Union with God is serious business, but once it is taken seriously, it seems like the outcome need not be serious at all. I think we have an image in our mind that when one becomes “at one” with God, then they no longer fully experience life. They are “blissed out,” unattached, or “on another plane,” but Hafiz shakes my conviction about the stereotype of the yogi on their cushion, or the saint on their knees. Hafiz didn’t go anywhere when God moved in – body and soul – he just became a truer version of himself. Maybe we don’t lose ourselves when God comes along. Maybe we find more of ourselves. If God is Love and all good, then maybe being joined by God would mean all the good and all the Love in us would be amplified.

Have you ever been so deliciously in love that you’ve walked around with a silly grin on your face for no reason at all? Have you ever been so exceedingly happy that you just want to sing out loud and dance down the street?  (Or run. I’m a dancer, but some people are runners.)  Have you ever laughed so hard you could not stop, even though you couldn’t say what in the world was so funny? Maybe sharing the boat of our bodies with God is like that. Maybe letting the seed of ourselves crack open allows all the joy to spill out.

I hope Hafiz inspires you to make a little bit of “love-mischief” with God today.

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A Sunday reminder about the abundance of God

“So Many Gifts”

There are so many gifts

Still unopened from your birthday.

There are so many hand-crafted presents

That have been sent to you by God.

The Beloved does not mind repeating,

“Everything I have is also yours.”

Please forgive Hafiz and the Friend

If we break into a sweet laughter

When your heart complains of being thirsty

When ages ago

Every cell in your soul

Captured forever

Into this golden sea.

Indeed,

A lover’s pain is like holding one’s breath

Too long

In the middle of a vital performance,

In the middle of one of Creation’s favorite Songs.

Indeed a lover’s pain is this sleeping,

This sleeping,

When God just rolled over and gave you

Such a big good morning kiss!

There are so many gifts, my dear,

Still unopened from your birthday.

O, there are so many hand-crafted presents

That have been sent into to your life

From God.

I could use this reminder almost daily: There is nothing I need this day. It’s all been given; everything is available to me.

If I am feeling underwhelmed with how some aspect of my life is going, it’s because the gift remains “unopened.”  Maybe I haven’t found the time to unwrap it yet; maybe I lack the wisdom or perspective. Maybe it’s actually a lack of desire. Sometimes, frustration, and self-pity are more powerful and comfortable than agency. So go ahead and giggle God, and I’ll try to open my eyes, not hold my breath, and turn towards your kiss, so You, Hafiz and I can all start laughing together.

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Today Hafiz teaches us about mindfulness.

“Buttering the Sky”

Slipping

On my shoes,

Boiling water,

Toasting bread,

Buttering the sky:

That should be enough contact

With God in one day

To make anyone

Crazy.

“I Want Both of Us”

I want both of us

To start talking about this great love

As if you, I, and the Sun were all married

And living in a tiny room,

 

Helping each other to cook,

Do the wash,

Weave and sew,

Care for our beautiful

Animals.

 

We all leave each morning

To labor on the earth’s field.

No one does not lift a great pack.

 

I want both of us to start singing like two

Traveling minstrels

About this extraordinary existence

We share.

 

As if

You, I, and God were all married

And living in

A tiny

Room.

 

I love these verses, but as I type them up, I wonder what you will think.

Are they too simple? Too silly to be worth noticing? 

I understand the impulse to dismiss poems like these, but just because something is simple, doesn’t mean it’s easy.  To live mindfully is perhaps the greatest challenge of all.

We think our everyday lives are somehow separate from our spiritual path, but Hafiz is inviting us to see them as one and the same. Have you ever thought of God as your roommate? Your office partner? Your sous chef and dishwasher? Why not? Wouldn’t every moment be richer in possibility, bathed in companionship, steeped in meaning? It costs us nothing to try it and we might find that we are getting a much better value for our mortgage.

A few years back, right after I finished at The Living School, I thought I might find some kind of “holy” work to do, but what arose instead was an opportunity to put in more hours at Wavelines, our surf shop.  And so I began what I jokingly referred to as “mindful bikini hanging.” Tim and I would be at the shop in the early hours before the store opened and I would be hanging delicate, expensive nylon triangles on plastic hangars. At first, my ego railed against the smallness of the task before me, but eventually, it stopped. “Mindful bikini hanging” wasn’t a joke any more; it really was a spiritual practice. One day, as I was smoothing out the wrinkles on crop top, Hafiz’s perspective prevailed. The backroom was filled with a soft glow. I looked over at Tim and I thought, “If I never do anything more than this, it is enough. I have everything I need right here.” I had learned to butter the sky and it was “enough contact/ With God in one day” to make me crazy, not every day, of course, but enough to keep me singing.

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I’m grateful to be able to open and close National Poetry Month with two of my all-time favorite poets. The first week, Mary Oliver drew us into the beauty of poetry through the beauty of nature. These last days, Hafiz will usher us out with exuberance, humor and irreverent conversation. Hafiz references nature, but Love is his drug. So without further ado, here is the first poem by Hafiz.

“The Woman I Love”

Because the Woman I love lives inside of you,

I lean as close to your body with my words as I can –

and I think of you all the time,

dear pilgrim.

Because the One I love goes with you wherever you go,

Hafiz will always be

near.

If you sat before me, wayfarer, with your aura bright from

your many charms,

my lips could resist rushing to you, but my eyes, my eyes

can no longer hide the wondrous fact of who

you really are.

The Beautiful One whom I adore

has pitched His royal tent inside of you,

so I will always lean my heart

as close to your soul

as I can.

 

Yesterday, Rabi’a testified about our dissolution into the Divine at the end of our lives, but Hafiz doesn’t want us to wait that long. In almost every poem, he begs his readers to recognize God’s presence in ourselves, and our fellow humans, right here and right now. We shouldn’t worship the Holy as something “out there,” but as something “in here.” That recognition will change our lives.

Too often Christianity has taught that too much love, grace, mercy, or forgiveness will lead us astray, into dissolution and laziness, but as a Sufi mystic, Hafiz, has a different perspective. While it’s true that might happen, “So what!” he seems to say.  It is far more dangerous to live in a world of Divine scarcity and judgment. Look where that’s gotten us! What do we have to lose?

“Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being,” Rumi wrote a hundred years later, echoing Hafiz. True human beings, true believers, don’t become arrogant and grasping, but ever more humble, recognizing the Beauty in others that they carry within themselves and their life’s mission becomes sharing that vision, as in this poem. Clearly Hafiz loves the woman, her aura and charms, but what he truly Loves is the Woman within. Call it the True Self; call it God. Call it what you want, but I call it good.

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This portrait of Nobel Prize winner, Malala Yousafzai, is by female Iranian artist, Shirin Neshat. 

Rabi’a’s poetry tackles the reality of death. She doesn’t find it frightening, but nor does she long for it as an escape route from her difficult circumstances. Death will simply and beautifully bring her to her Beloved. It may feel like an interruption of the Easter joy, but it is simply another side of it.

A prayer

Kill my ego, God,

the empty, troublemaking

version of myself.

Burn away the darkness

of my false self

and then my true Self

will shine like sunlight.

Dissolve my ego

into the Being

who is everything.

 

“Cherish Myself”

I know how it will be when I die,

my beauty will be so extraordinary that God will worship me.

He will not worship me from a distance, for our minds will have wed,

our souls will have flowed into each other.

How to say this: God and I

will forever cherish

Myself.

“Die before you die,” the Prophet Mohammed said and Rabi’a took to heart. The prayer I shared is a reflection of her desire to live by that teaching, which echoes that of Jesus: “Unless a grain of what shall die, it remains but a single grain.” It is a question humans have wrestled with for thousands of years: How do we do that?

Rabi’a’s two reflections here – the prayer and the poem – offer a contrast of methods. The first method, of “killing the ego” isn’t a truly holy one, but for thousands of years, it was thought to be the only one. Self-abuse and self-sacrifice dominated the spiritual path to holiness. What else were the fires of hell and flames of purgatory for, but to “burn away the darkness” that kept us from the everlasting Light?

But there has always been another way, revealed by the mystics and sages throughout the ages and the second poem reveals the secret. Dissolving into Love, we become one with God, so we do not need to deny, or destroy any part of ourselves. We simply have to let Love do the work of loving us – all of us – bringing the darkness into the light. The Love of the Divine does not reject any of it, not the wounds, the scars, the pain. If God really is all powerful, then we have nothing to fear.

A final reminder from Rabi’a: “So beautiful my death appeared – knowing who then I would kiss, I died a thousand times before I died… I was born [again] when all I once feared – I could love.”

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Though Rumi may be the most popular Sufi poet, he was preceded by hundreds of years by Rabi’a, a revered Islamic saint and Sufi. I didn’t want to let this final week go by without including some of her beautiful work.

 

“It Acts Like Love”

It acts like love – music,

it reaches toward the face, touches it, and tries to let you know

His promise: that all will be okay.

 

It acts like love – music, and

tells the feet, “You do not have to be so burdened.”

 

My body is covered with wounds

this world made,

but I still longed to kiss Him, even when God said,

“Could you also kiss the hand that caused

each scar,

for you will not find me until

you do.”

 

It does that – music – helps us

to forgive.

 

As a young woman, Rabi’a was forced into slavery. You can imagine what that meant for her as a woman, but her state in life never determined the state of her soul. All her poems, especially the erotic ones, proclaim her truth: “Never once did God look at me as if I were impure.” Rather, she encouraged other women on their path: “Dear sisters, all we do in this world, whatever happens, is bringing us closer to God.”

What I most appreciate about Rabi’a is that she found her voice and used it. Against overwhelming odds, this woman found her way to Love, even though her life belonged to the men who purchased her. That Love gave her a new Life, which could never be determined by her circumstances. To find such purpose and healing in music is surely a sign of spiritual freedom and depth most of us can only long for.

What is the music that moves you like Rabi’a?

What song insists that you dance? What melody calms your soul? What moves you to forgive not just humanity, but even God?

 

 

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A final poem by Rumi.

 

“Surrender”

Joseph is back.

And if you don’t feel yourself

in the freshness of Joseph,

be Jacob.

 

 

Weep, and then smile.

Do not pretend to know something

you have not experienced.

 

 

There is a necessary dying,

and the Jesus is breathing again.

 

 

Very little grows on jagged rock.

Be ground. Be crumbled,

so wildflowers will come up

where you are.

 

 

You have been stony for too many years.

Try something different. Surrender.

 

Again we hear about Joesph, a beloved figure in Rumi’s iconography and this time we are be able to place him in the Judeo-Christian tradition, along with Jacob and Jesus. It’s easy to forget that Sufism, and its parent religion, Islam, also honor the Hebrew scriptures, since they are one of the world’s three monotheistic religions. In this Easter season, Rumi’s references to Jesus are as welcome as they are surprising and with his outsider’s lens, we are able to see Jesus’ actions anew.

I read and reread the last two stanzas over and over again. We are invited to imitate, not just celebrate the universal pattern of death and resurrection.

It is so easy to remain stony, jagged ground. That is precisely what we have been taught: to defend what is ours, to protect what we have earned, to get what we “deserve,” to eliminate discomfort, to cultivate only the seeds we have planted.

But that was not Jesus’ message – not the one he taught, nor the one he exemplified with his life. He surrendered and became fertile ground. Wildflowers were his harvest, along with mustard trees, vineyards, wheat and weeds.

I want to have the courage to “be crumbled” as he was and poetry like this helps me remember that wanting. Without it, I become stony and jagged again.

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In some Christian nations, Easter Monday is a national holiday, a day to recover and recollect on the significance of the holy day that preceded it. No such day exists in the States, but that’s no reason for us not to continue our Easter reflections! Here are a few more poems by Rumi, celebrating new life and the splendor of our lived existence.

 

“This Day”

This is not a day for asking questions,

not a day on any calendar.

This day is conscious of itself.

This day is a lover, bread and gentleness.

 

“Rumi, Pay Homage”

If God said,

“Rumi, pay homage to everything

that has helped you

enter my

arms,”

there would not be one experience of my life,

not one thought, not one feeling,

not any act, I

would not

bow

to.

 

“Filled”

I am filled with You.

Mere existence is a dance of joy.

Skin, blood, and bone,

brain and soul,

You fill me completely.

There’s no room in me now

for either doubt or belief.

None of that matters anymore.

My life is only

Your life.

 

I hope you don’t mind three poems. They were so brief, though each could be meditated on over the course of a lifetime. With each return, a new insight, a deeper understanding.

None of us has reached the level of Rumi’s enlightenment, but hopefully, we have had glimpses, tastes of the sublime oneness he experienced with God. If you’re anything like me, you’d like to have more, but we cannot force it. To paraphrase one of my teachers: we cannot make moments of Divine Oneness happen, but we can adopt a stance that offers the least resistance to being overtaken by them. How? Through contemplation, poetry, prayer, surrender, kindness, compassion for self and others, authenticity, patience, curiosity, openness, etc.  The list could include anything that de-centers our mind and pride, certainty and ego from running the show.

When I look at the life of Jesus, not just in this last week, but over the course of his ministry, I see all those things in spades, and I read all of these poems as illustrations of how he might experienced his new life as the resurrected Christ on Easter Sunday, Easter Monday and beyond.

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Today, on Easter Sunday, I will begin sharing the poetry of Sufi mystics. For me, their poetry captures the essence of joy and what is means to celebrate a Risen Life, whether that of Jesus two thousand years ago, new grass in the field each spring, or the sun each morning. Life, light and Love are everywhere. Just look! Just listen! Just Love the possibilities within you!

“Joseph”

Joesph has come, the handsome one of this age,

a victory banner floating over spring flowers.

Those of you whose work it is to wake the dead, get up. This is a work day.

The lion that hunts lions charges into the meadow.

Yesterday and the day before are gone.

The beautiful coin of now slaps down in your hand.

Start the drumbeat. Everything we have said about the Friend is true. The beauty of that peacefulness makes the whole world restless.

Spread your love-robe out to catch

what shifts down from the ninth level.

Your heart closed up in a chest, open,

for the Friend is entering you.

You feet, it is time to dance.

Don’t talk about the old man.

He is young again. And don’t mention

The past. Do you understand?

The beloved is here.

I knew from the very start of the month I wanted to use this poem, but here’s a funny story about it. After Christmas this year, Finn had asked me about a book for daily meditation, or reading. I showed him several on my bookshelf, but only begrudgingly my A Year with Rumi, not because I didn’t think he’d like it, but because I was feeling territorial. I had read the book on a daily basis for years, and though I was on a “break,” I wasn’t sure I wanted to let it go. But of course, that was the text Finn chose and I gave it willingly, but when It was time to copy this poem the book was gone.

Yesterday, when we arrived at my parents’ house, where Finn lives, I snuck up to his room to look for it. I found it on his desk, with a book mark placed at today’s date, but a dozen pages or more were marked with sticky notes, some written on, some not, some corresponding to my own dog-eared and underlined pages, some completely his own. Unsurprising to me, this page had both.

I don’t know who “Joseph” was to Rumi, though he shows up often in his poems. I don’t know what to make of the “lion that hunts lions.” I do know what it means to “have the beautiful coin of now” stepped down in your hand. Be present! Right here! Right now! You will never have another moment like this one. Don’t squander it away on screens, or chores, or anxiety and critique. Drum, dance, wake the dead with the exuberance of your life!

My favorite line?

“Your heart closed up in your chest , open, for the Friend is entering you.”

Truly, this is the only path to new life – letting the Friend, the Source of Love and Light, enter and open the darkness that binds us and keeps us entombed (en-wombed?) until we are ready to be born again and help make the world new.

Peace and love today friends.