Coleman Speaks of Love in "The Book of Love" by Rumi

[Guest guest]

A New Life - Coleman Barks

 

"As one becomes a lover, duties change to inspirations. Practices

become dance, poetry, creek music moving along. Impossible natural

images of transformation appear: candle becomes moth; a dry stick

breaks into bud. A chickpea becomes its cook (not so impossible, the

natural tasting!). Something enters that sponataneously enjoys

itself. Finding a purpose for acting is no longer the problem. The

soul is here for its own joy. Eyes are meant to see things. It's by

some grand shift of energy that we know love.

 

We have this great love-ache for the ocean and the seabirds sewing the

hem of her robe. That is the subject here. We long for beauty, even as

we swim within it. Abdul Qadir Gilani describes this region of the

heart as a baby. Bawa Muhaaiyaddeen also speaks of it this way.

Someone asked Bawa once what it felt like to be him. He answered by

closing his eyes and making little kissing noises like a baby

nursing. In this new life a baby is born in the heart. Purity comes

and a playfulness, an ease, a peace. Gilani says this new heart-baby

sometimes talks to the soul in dreams. Bawa says that this baby knows

the language of God. It understands every voice that floats on the

wind because it is in unity and compassion. This baby has none of the

exclusivity of loving, the limits we learn and later, hopefully,

unlearn from our families (the blood ties), our culture, religion,

tribe, and nation. Bawa says humanity is "God's funny family." That's

how the baby sees.

 

I saw this baby come into my father's eyes in the last weeks of his

life in 1971. Everyone felt it. My mother died (she was 64,

lung-cancer) on May 8, 1971. My dad died of a stroke on July 2, 1971,

at seventy-two. In the time between (fifty-five days), Dad lost all

judgemental tendencies. He met everyone with unconditonal love. He

would go out on any excuse to walk around and talk with strangers. He

had unlimited time and attention and helpfulness for everyone. So

beautiful. I see that opening in John Seawright's mother and father

too. To hear Rev. Ryan Seawright pray outdoors in the wind at a June

wedding, as I did recently, is about as much as a heart can stand.

Bawa used to go out rounding, which meant riding in the passenger's

seat of a car driving very slow and waving to people walking on the

sidewalk. Sometimes I'd go along. When pedestrians would see his

face, it was like they were struck full-power with one of those old

searchlights from Second World War airfields. Then they'd recover and

wave so tenderly, as to a baby.

 

The connecting extends to all living beings. My friend Stepan Schwartz

tells of an old farmhand who could stand at the edge of a field and

speak in a soft voice to a particular cow a couple of hundred yards

away. "Number forty-seven." That cow, who needed attention froma vet,

would detach from the herd and walk over. Pleasant, (the man's name)

would talk to the cow, looking in her face, about what needed to be

done, and he'd say, "That's good. Go on back now." then he'd call

another one, "Number twenty-four." Stephan swears that he was present

many times when this happened.

 

Bawa went into the jungles of Sri Lanka for fifty years to watch the

animals and learn about God. When your heart dissolves in this love,

books are beside the point. We learn from the taste of life events.

Jelaluddin Chelebi once asked me what religion I was. I threw up my

hands in the who knows gesture. "Good," he said. "Love is the

religion, and the universe is the book."

 

Escaping To the Forest - Rumi

 

Some souls have gotten free of their bodies.

Do you see them? Open your eyes for those

who escape to meet with other escapees,

 

whose hearts associate in a way they have

of leaving their false selves

to live in a truer self.

 

I don't mind if my companions

wander away for awhile.

 

They will come back like a smiling drunk.

The thirsty ones die of their thirst.

 

The nightingale sometimes flies from a garden

to sing in the forest.

 

~ Rumi, "The Book of Love"

 

 

Love comes sailing through and I scream.

Love sits beside me like a private supply of itself.

Love puts away the instruments

and takes off the silk robes. Our nakedness

together changes me completely.

 

~ Rumi, "The Book of Love"

 

 

 

LoveAlways,

 

Mazie

 

 

 

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