with you

.

.

O my Lord,

the stars glitter

and the eyes of men are closed.

Kings have locked their doors

and each lover is alone with his love.

.

Here, I am alone with you.

.

~ Rabi'a

from Women in Praise of the Sacred

art by Leonardo da Vinci

I was passionate

.

I was passionate,

filled with longing,

I searched

far and wide.

But the day

that the Truthful One

found me,

I was at home.

~ Lalla

translated by Jane Hirshfield

All will come again into its strength

.

All will come again into its strength:

the fields undivided, the waters undammed,

the trees towering and the walls built low.

And in the valleys, people as strong

and varied as the land.

.

And no churches where God

is imprisoned and lamented

like a trapped and wounded animal.

The houses welcoming all who knock

and a sense of boundless offering

in all relations, and in you and me.

.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,

no belittling of death,

but only longing for what belongs to us

and serving earth, least we remain unused.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 The Book of Pilgrimage, II,25

.

the kings of the world are old and feeble

The kings of the world are old and feeble.

They bring forth no heirs.

Their sons are dying before they are men,

and their pale daughters

abandon themselves to the brokers of violence.

Their crowns are exchanged for money

and melted down into machines,

and there is no health in it.

Does the ore feel trapped

in coins and gears?  In the petty life

imposed upon it

does it feel homesick for earth?

If metal could escape

from coffers and factories,

and the torn-open mountains

close around it again,

we would be whole.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Pilgrimage, II,24

.

no miracles, please

.

.

All who seek you

test you.

And those who find you 

bind you to image and gesture.

.

I would rather sense you

as the earth senses you.

In my ripening 

ripens

what you are.

.

I need from you no tricks

to prove you exist.

Time, I know,

is other than you.

.

No miracles, please.

just let your laws

become clearer

from generation to generation.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Pilgrimage, II,15

.

violence

.

I believe that 

those who have used violence 

have betrayed all true revolution, 

they have changed nothing, 

they have simply enforced with greater brutality

 the anti-spiritual and anti-human drives 

that are destructive of truth and love in man.

.

~ Thomas Merton

from A Life in Letters

.

cold light

.

.

Diamond-like clarity travels cold

the manifold currents, cracks self-concern,

reveals self-suffering, crumbles

the crooked walls of the darkness

of presumed otherness

This far-reaching indifference of wisdom

vision unfolds an always lurking compassion

only when fused in communal warmth,

only by passage in the movement of breath

Breath, the reach of hearts,

the rhythm of living and dying,

the reach solitary voices

meeting in the night.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

.

the sanity I had been taught

When the desire for the Friend became real,

all existence fell behind.

The Beloved wasn't interested in my reasoning,

I threw it away and became silent.

The sanity I had been taught became a bore,

it had to be ushered off.

Insane, silent and in bliss,

I spend my days with my head

at the feet of My Beloved. 

~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir

Shaikh Abu-Said Abil-Kheir was one of the earlier Sufi poets. He lived more than two centuries before Jelaluddin Rumi yet, like Rumi, much of his mysticism follows a similar path of annihilation in divine Love.

Abu-Said's poetry ranges from the ecstatic and celestial, to struggles with abandonment. His poetry has an immediacy and even a sort of devoutly wry petulance that can draw comparisons with the great Bengali poet, Ramprasad.

Abu Said referred to himself as “Nobody, Son of Nobody,” to convey the mystic's sense of having completely merged or disappeared into the Divine, leaving no trace of the ego behind.

He lived in Mayhana in what is modern day Turkmenistan, just north of Iran and Afghanistan in Central Asia.

with thanks to poetry chaikhana

conceit

.

.

It is conceit that kills us 

and makes us cowards instead of gods. 

.

Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal! 

we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important, fatally entangled in the cocoon coils of our conceit. 

.

Now we have to admit we can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves. 

And I am not interested to know about myself any more, 

I only entangle myself in the knowing. 

.

Now let me be myself, 

now let me be myself, and flicker forth, 

now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods. 

.

~ D.H. Lawrence

.

for a leader

 

 

 

 

May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a vocation,

Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to serve.

 

As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings,

May your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills.

 

When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance,

May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.

 

When thirst burns in times of drought,

May you be blessed to find the wells.

 

May you have the wisdom to read time clearly

And know when the seed of change will flourish.

 

In your heart may there be a sanctuary

For the stillness where clarity is born.

 

May your work be infused with passion and creativity

And have the wisdom to balance compassion and challenge.

 

May your soul find the graciousness

To rise above the fester of small mediocrities.

May your power never become a shell

Wherein your heart would silently atrophy.

May you welcome your own vulnerability

As the ground where healing and truth join.

 

May integrity of soul be your first ideal.

The source that will guide and bless your work.

 

 

 

~ John O'Donohue
from To Bless the Space Between Us
photo by Reuters

.

present

.

.

The incarnate Word is with us,

is still speaking, is present

always, yet leaves no sign

but everything that is.

.

~ Wendell Berry

from Given

IX, Sabbaths 1999

.

a pile of ashes

Your pride in yourself and your wanting,

these steal your energy along the road.

If you can kill these robbers

and become the servant of everyone,

you'll meet the Lord in meditation

and see what you used to protect

as just a pile of ashes.

~ Lalla

from Naked Song

translations by Coleman Barks

beyond the grey continent

It must be those brief moments

when nothing has happened - nor is going to.

Tiny moments, like islands in the ocean

beyond the grey continent of our ordinary days.

.

There, sometimes, you meet your own heart

like someone you've never known.

~ Hans Børli

.

if you love

.

You might quiet the whole world for a second

if you pray.

.

And if you love, if you

really love,

.

our guns will

wilt.

.

~ St. John of the Cross

.

to just be close

.

I was sad one day and went for a walk;

I sat in a field.

.

A rabbit noticed my condition and 

came near.

.

It often does not take more than that to help at times -

.

to just be close to creatures who

are so full of knowing,

so full of love

that they don't

- chat,

.

they just gaze with

their

marvelous understanding.

.

.

~ St. John of the Cross

from Love Poems from God

translations by Daniel Ladinsky

.