In line with the July muse, for this month I'll share a verse of mystical/sacred poetry every day.
Mevlana Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, seems an obvious jumping off point.
As the editor of a translated series of Rumi's poetry, Barks writes:
Rumi is one of the great souls, and one of the great spiritual teachers. He shows us our glory. He wants us to be more alive, to wake up. Mevlana comes from the same root as “reveille”—a bugle call to lift us from our spiritual torpor. He wants us to see our beauty, in the mirror and in each other.
Rumi’s message can be stated in many ways. It is the core of the core of every religion. It is the longing in a human being to live in unlimited freedom and joy, to move inside beauty, that most profound need of the human soul to flow with the namelessness that animates, luxuriates, burns, and transpires through form, enlivening what is as steam, mist, torrent, saliva, blood, ocean, cloud, coffee, wine, butterfly, tiger, hummingbird, energy, and delight
Contained in these poems are the powerful, timeless images in his writing about a mystical Truth that he dedicated his life's work to:
For the last twelve years of his life Rumi wrote, or dictated, one long luminous poem, the Masnavi, sixty-four thousand lines of poetry divided into six books.
What is your life's work? Will it be rememebred as timeless as this mystical verse?
A NORTHERN WIND
Every second the question comes, How long will you stay dregs? Rise. Do not keep stirring the heavy sediment. Let murkiness settle.
Some torches, even when they burn with spirit, give off more smoke than light.
No matter how hard you stare into muddy water, you will not see the moon or the sun.
A northern wind arrives that burnishes grief and opens the sky.
The soul wants to walk out in that cleansing air and not come back.
The soul is a stranger trying to find a home, somewhere that is not a where. Why keep grazing on why?
Good falcon soul, You have flown around foraging long enough.
Swing back now toward the emperor’s whistling. 1