Two poems continue to tug at my heart this week: call it post Lenten blues but "Love Dogs" by Rumi and "Fire" by Judy Sorum Brown speak to my heart.One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
"So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"
The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
"Why did you stop praising?"
"Because I've never heard anything back."
"This longing
you express is the return message."
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.
Give your life
to be one of them.
Oh my God: the whining is the connection... give your life to be one of the love dogs of creation. Thank God for Coleman Barks and his commitment to make Rumi real to the 21st century. Then there is the sweet "Fire" of Judy Brown...
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water could.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that makes the fire possible.
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
So sweet and true and hard to put into practice. If you need solace in your whining, your emptiness or your fire making, take a listen/watch to dear Glen and Marketa sharing one of the sweetest prayers to ever be recorded: "Falling Slowly." Bl
essings.
essings.
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