Longing

Poems, that fill the moment, from this Sufi poetry site:

Awakened by your love,
I flicker like a candle's light
tryin to hold on in the dark.
Yet, you spare me no blows
and keep asking,
"Why do you complain?"


Rumi - "Whispers of the Beloved" - Maryam Mafi & Azima Melita Kolin

Let sorrowful longing dwell in your heart,
never give up, never losing hope.
The Beloved says, "The broken ones are My darlings."
Crush your heart, be broken.

Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir - "Nobody, Son of Nobody" - Vraje Abramian

Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,
and what you want to happen
in time, sacrificed.

Rumi - The Essential Rumi - Coleman Barks

paradoxes

October 5

My sun is gone and I am cold and gray

October 6

And after the sun leaves, there are the long dark walks. The sharp wind carries away all thought, and I am cold and clean and empty.

October 13

I walk again in the dark--skin pricked with cold, yet I am warm. What is lost feels nearer than before, what is given up lingers in my smile, what I possess no more fills the cold night. Longing hushed, presence overwhelms me. In the dark, light glows beneath my eyelids. In the cold, warmth radiates out of me.

Those old Sufi poets knew this--when they sang of their beloved, Spirit beyond flesh. Those theologians of the early church with their allegories, who saw Deity between the lines of the lover. Solomon's Shulamite made God.

He is gone, yet He is here. No longer mine, he is Everywhere.

Love fills the night, so that the darkness is yet another aspect of light, the cold so that frozen air is yet another side of warmth.

I leave behind the whispering of the sky and the wind and the trees, yet the wonder stays with me.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī says:

All through eternity
Beauty unveils His exquisite form
in the solitude of nothingness;
He holds a mirror to His Face
and beholds His own beauty.

He is the knower and the known,
the seer and the seen;
No eye but His own
has ever looked upon this Universe.

His every quality finds an expression:
Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space;
Love, the life-giving garden of this world.

Every branch and leaf and fruit
Reveals an aspect of His perfection.
The cypress give hint of His majesty,
The rose gives tidings of His beauty.

Whenever Beauty looks,
Love is also there;
Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek
Love lights Her fire from that flame.

When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night
Love comes and finds a heart
entangled in tresses.

Beauty and Love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.

They have together since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step.

--



This is love:
to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.

From:
The Divani Shamsi Tabriz, XII

from http://www.mikeshane.org/rumi/rumi_lovepoems.htm#This_is_love

"An Intellectual Christianity" by my friend Voz Nocturna

A fantastic post by my friend Voz Nocturna expressing a manifesto for an "intellectual" Christianity.

The juice of life

Moving tomorrow, I have spent hours in my room today filing papers, receipts, letters--and in the midst of filing new letters in an old letter file, I come across a letter written to a boy I had loved in college. This was post-college when he was (at that time, briefly) engaged to someone else, but we were still exchanging letters. Rereading them now, I am struck with nostalgia, by that bright young girl I was--just out of college, living in New York with my best friend, in love with everything. Reading over those letters and feeling the warmth in them, I wonder why we parted in anger in 2001. Six years later, I no longer resent him. I am free of him, free of the need for him, and therefore can appreciate again the beauty in those words we once wrote to each other. And I wonder--should I try to contact him again (he is sitting there on Facebook... [damned Facebook]), for the sake of the friendship we once had, or let it lie?

In honour of my recent birthday, I'll quote the P.S.S.S. from the letter I had written him in March 2000 (i have the fault of never being able to throw away anything I've written, and thus I [used to] photocopy my letters.) I was twenty-two.

"It's a bit scary how time seems to race (sorry for the cliche) more and more these years, where the twenties blur past. Soon, we'll be thirty and wonder where it all went. But no, there will be years then. There is so much juice in life--so much sun and wind to gulp in. Sometimes, I just have to pause in the middle of these flurried sidewalks and look past all the buildings at the spring sky. This morning, I didn't jaywalk like usual but stopped and waited for the Walk sign. The sun came down and touched me. I was still for all of thirty seconds. That occasional stillness--that is what makes life worth it--those brief moments of God.

Here's a Fish for you: the benevolence of armed robbers

an exerpt from my dad's latest journal re-cap letter:

More Robberies

Unfortunately, the armed robbers continue their nefarious acts. A.G., our handicapped friend who heads up the Beautiful Gate Handicapped Initiative was at our house this week and reported that he had had his robbery experience the night before. He was going to take some wheels for the wheelchairs to a little town about an hour south of Jos to a person who puts the spokes in them. He was passing through a ridge of low mountains when he saw a big truck that appeared to be jackknifed in the road. What had happened is the thieves had put big stones in the road and when the truck tried to avoid them he had partially run off the road. However, this place A. thought was an accident was a blocked road manned by armed robbers. They at first demanded his phone and his money. He had about $150 that he was going to give to the man for his work. He handed these things over. He had a little portable DVD player with him [on which] he shows [a video about his ministry].... The thieves wanted to know what it was. They started to take it but A. pushed the play button on it and it started showing all these handicapped children crawling on their hands and knees. They told him he could keep it. A. said that once they found out he was handicapped (he drives a vehicle with hand controls), they were very nice to him. At one point A. asked them, "Why are you doing this?" One of the said, "Sorry, sir, we don't like to do it but we just have to do it." They had blocked off the road and there were maybe ten cars that they were robbing. At one point, they found a woman with a big dried fish. They took it from her but I guess they decided it would be too much for them to carry into the bush so they came around to where A. was sitting and said, "Here, handicapped man, here is a fish for you." They were making everyone get out of their cars and lie on the ground. However, when they saw A. was handicapped, they told him he could sit in his car. A. asked what would happen if one of the robbers came around and did not realize he was handicapped. He said he thought he should get out and lie down too. Finally, the young robber agreed. After a couple of minutes, the robber saw A. was lying partially in the road. He came around and said, "Excuse me, oga (sir), I don't think it is good for you to lie there. If another vehicle came along, they could run over you. Why don't you move over here where it is a little safer?" So while the robbers were quite nice to A. they still took his phone and his money.

Our good friends, C. and B. [...] were also hit by armed robbers three weeks ago on Sunday evening, the 10 th of February. They [...] returned about 7:30 PM. Unfortunately, they met the thieves trying to get in their gate. The gate man had so far kept them out. However, when C. drove up and they put a gun to his head, the gate man was forced to open the gate. The robbers went into the house, stole money and their phones and beat them around a bit. B. had to go to the hospital the next day with some kind of concussion. C. and B. are made out of tough stuff. They [...] have had remarkable attitudes since that time.

We have heard of a number of other armed robbers in the last couple of weeks. One of the Christian ministries known as CRUDEN was hit one night last week. One of M.'s good friends was having a party for a young lady who was getting married with about thirty ladies attending. The robbers came into the party and took all their money and all of their phones. The lady who lives across the street from us was at a Bible study last week when the robbers came into that Bible study and demanded phones and money from all who were there.

The robbers are getting more and more brazen. This makes us sad and also has forced us to be a bit more careful. We have installed a new door in our house that is basically bullet proof and locks automatically when it is shut. We have also installed a new security lighting system as well as an alarm system. We believe that these measures will help discourage thieves but certainly will not prevent them altogether. We rest in the fact that our protection is in God who is abundantly able to take care of us.

Poetry and art of governance in Nigeria By Wale Okediran

Has been snowing all day here. An hour ago, the air was veiled in white. Inside, it is nice and cozy. In the meantime, here is a very interesting article, relevant to my thesis, "Poetry and the art of governance in Nigeria" by Wale Okediran published in the Vanguard; the only thing is that I can't seem to find the second page... (BTW, Has anyone else noticed Blogger dropping words/changing letters? My posts seem to be full of typos these days. I just had to edit this post because once it published Okediran's name was spelled Akediran... Maybe I'm just fumbling the keys...)

Dem call am Human Rights.

Article 13
Everione naim get right to go anywhere wey e wan go, weda na to go see im friend o, or to go anoda town o, or to travel comot for where e de live to anoda place. Dat na im own palava.
Everione naim get right to comot im kontri if e wan go to anoda kontri and make e come back if e like, e no concern anybodi.
Article 14
Everione naim get right to go anoda kontri, wey e like to tell dem say im wan live for dat kontri, sake for say dem de look for am for im own kontri or dem won arrest am for im kontri, wen im no do any bad ting.
But if dat person really do bad ting o, for im own kontri and e come run comot to wan go live for anoda kontri, sake for say di goment of im kontri de look for am, di goment of di kontri wey e run go, no go gree at all, at all o. Even sef, di meeting of di whole world wey we de call United Nations, say dis ting no good at all and dem too gree say if person do bad ting for im kontri, e good make im eye see wetin e de look for, as e do di bad ting for im kontri.
Article 15
Everione naim get right to say na any kontri wey im like, im go call im own.
Nobodi fit talk say di person no get right to belong to di kontri wey e like or if e like make a say im no wan belong to im kontri again, na anoda kontri im wan belong to. Make dem say e no fit change to di kontri wey e like and make e call im own.

An exerpt from the Nigerian Pidgen version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights