The Question - a Rumi poem

[Guest guest]

here's a Rumi poem that I like alot...

 

The Question

 

One dervish to another, What was your vision of God's presence?

I haven't seen anything.

But for the sake of conversation, I'll tell you a story.

 

God's presence is there in front of me, a fire on the left, a lovely

stream on the right.

One group walks toward the fire, into the fire, another toward the

sweet flowing water.

No one knows which are blessed and which not.

Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly in the stream.

A head goes under on the water surface, that head pokes out of the

fire.

Most people guard against going into the fire, and so end up in it.

Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion are

cheated with this reversal.

The trickery goes further.

The voice of the fire tells the truth saying, I am not fire. I am

fountainhead. Come into me and don't mind the sparks.

 

If you are a friend of God, fire is your water.

You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets of mothwings, so you

could burn them away, one set a night.

The moth sees light and goes into the fire. You should see fire and

go toward the light. Fire is what of God is world-consuming. Water,

world-protecting.

Somehow each gives the appearance of the other. To these eyes you

have now, what looks like water, burns. What looks like fire is

agreat relief to be inside.

You've seen a magician make a bowl of rice seem a dish full of tiny,

live worms.

Before an assembly with one breath he made the floor swarm with

scorpions that weren't there.

How much more amazing God's tricks.

Generation after generation lies down, defeated they think, but they

are like a woman underneath a man, circling him.

One molecule-mote-second thinking of God's reversal of comfort and

pain is better than any attending ritual. That splinter of

intelligence is substance.

 

The fire and water themselves:

accidental, dome with mirrors.

 

Rumi (translation by Coleman Barks)