Peace
Meadowsounds
We’ve come again to that knee of seacoast
no ocean can reach.
Tie together all human intellects.
They won’t stretch to here.
The sky bares its neck so beautifully,
but gets no kiss. Only a taste.
This is the food that everyone wants,
wandering the wilderness, “Please give us
your manna and quail.”
We’re here again with the beloved.
This air, a shout. These meadowsounds,
an astonishing myth.
We’ve come into the presence of the one
who was never apart from us.
When the waterbag is filling, you know
the water carrier’s here!
The bag leans lovingly against our shoulder.
“Without you I have no knowledge,
no way to touch anyone.”
When someone chews sugarcane,
he’s wanting this sweetness.
Inside this globe the soul roars like thunder.
And now silence, my strict tutor.
I won’t try to talk about Shams.
Language cannot touch that presence.
~Rumi
The Seeker and the Sufi
A seeker journeyed to a far village in search of a certain Sufi renowned for his wisdom. At the village he learned that the Sufi lived on a nearby mountainside. Although darkness was falling, he set off up the mountain towards a bright light, certain that it was there he would find the Sufi.
When he reached the source of the light he was surprised to find nothing but an oil lamp with moths fluttering around it. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, the seeker noticed a dim glow a short way off.
Walking over to it, he discovered the Sufi reading by the light of a candle. “Why are you sitting here in the near darkness when there is a much brighter light over there?” asked the seeker.
“As you can see,” replied the Sufi, “the bright light is for the moths, leaving me here in peace to study by the light of my candle.”
From: The Little Book of Sufi Wisdom
- Marge and Tom Sexton: You Can’t Be Alive
- JC: Joel Goldsmith On The Soul
- Mayanna Anderson: The Sufi Greeting
- Ena da Silva: The Sufi Greeting
- Ena da Silva: The Sufi Greeting