Thursday, July 02, 2009

[Sunlight] Come Out and Give Something

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Come Out and Give Something

Every prophet is a beggar calling, "Something for God's sake!
Please lend something

to God." The people they ask this of are truly destitute, but
still prophets and teachers

go from door to door. Though all the doors of heaven are open
to them, they beg for

pieces of bread. They eat the bread they get, but they didn't
ask from appetite. In fact,

don't say they eat bread; they eat light. God has said be
moderate when eating and

drinking bread and wine, but God never said be satisfied
when taking in light.

God offers a teacher the treasures of the world, and the
teacher responds, "To be

in love with God and expect to be paid for it!" A servant
wants to be rewarded for what he does.

A lover wants only to be in love's presence, an ocean whose
depth will never be known.

This cannot be said! Let us return, Husam, to the story of the
teacher begging in the street.

Listen to him: "Love is reckless. Love makes the sea boil
like a kettle. Love crumbles

a stone mountain to sand. Out of love God says to Muhammad,
`But for you, I would not have

created the universe.' Love says, `This world is the egg. You
are the chick.' Everything

helps us understand this." The ground is low to give some
notion of humility. Spring's

green comes to reveal an alchemy that happens inside us.
Every experience begs

like a dervish for us to come out and give something.

-- Mathnawi V: 2694-2743
Version by Coleman Barks
"The Soul of Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 2001

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