The Larger Love: 800th Birthday of Rumi

Mystery and wonder, beauty and the Spirit of Life
surround us, fill us, and grow among us.

The Spirit of Life knows no bounds
and is expressed everywhere among everyone.

Our Universalist ancestors proclaimed that Spirit
will ultimately triumph over all enmity and strife,
all division, all illusion of separation.

Do you believe it?

Eventually no enemies, all will be one?

In San Francisco this week religious leaders gathered
for a press conference on the Amicus Brief
filed in the California Supreme Court
by 389 religious leaders and faith groups
in support of marriage equality for same gender couples.

As the press were arriving, the gathered religious leaders,
all in our liturgical garb, joined hands.
The Muslim leader smiled, saying,
“Ahh, the Muslim is holding hands with the Jew.”

Oh, the sweetness of seeing the Muslim in his head covering
and the Jew with his prayer shawls, hand in hand!

The Rabbi said Jews have survived for 4,000 years
because they have evolved.
The laws of Leviticus no longer apply.
The Jews do not have slaves. No blood sacrifice is required.
To use the laws of Leviticus to keep to keep two people who love each other
from legal marriage recognized by the community is an abomination.

Religion, like everything else, survives by evolving,
by opening to new truth.

The Rabbi said, we’re trans, trans-faith, that is.

Today we celebrate the 800th birthday of Rumi,
who says, of the various wisdom traditions,
“The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same…”

Rumi, the most popular poet in America and in Afghanistan,
bridges East and West, saying,

“Out beyond all ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field.
I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
Doesn’t make any sense.”

We here are trans-faith,
open to wisdom that is found universally,
including the revelations of Rumi,
this 13th century Persian Muslim Sufi poet
whose love of a man, Shams,
was so intense and ecstatic
that it led to his experience of divine love..

Can we too move beyond ideas, language,
where even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense,
where all is one?

All wisdom is like a finger pointing to the moon.
The wisdom, the finger, is not the moon itself.
The moon is larger, more mysterious, more wondrous.

The full moon this week lit up the world.

As I walked in the dark under the moon’s glow
along the Richmond Marina Bay,
the water was calm.
The masts of the sailboats reflected in the water
made the boats appear to be held up by stilts.
What I was seeing looked surreal,
but it was the real reflection.
Poetry is like that, sometimes odd, but reflecting truth.
Poetry tries to show us the moon.

Rumi says,
“…a moon appeared,
Descended from the sky
Turned its burning gaze on me…
When I looked at myself, I could not see myself
For in this moon, my body, by grace, had become soul.
And when I traveled in this soul, I saw nothing but moon…”

Rumi’s poems say we are searching for beauty and divine love
when all the while this larger love is all around us
and we are one with all.
There’s nothing but moon.

So why aren’t we all just glowing, letting our light shine,
feeling safe in the embrace of this love?

Each of us has known pain, longing, suffering,
self-doubt, cynicism, fear, anger, grief.

We know the world is full of suffering.

Each of us has made mistakes, small or terrible ones.
We’ve done things we should not have done,
and left undone what we should have done.
Knowledge of our flaws and failures can make us doubt
the love that embraces us as we are.

How do we make sense of the reality of the pain of life and its failures
with religious and poetic proclamations of everlasting light and love?

Are everlasting light and love just metaphor? hyperbole? dreamy idealism?

Will a time ever come when some one is not singled out as the other?
Will a time of no enemies, no division ever be?

We human beings are good at setting up someone or something else
as the other, as foe, as evil, as the cause of all the pain.

Jungian Analyst Wolfgang Geigerich describes
making of The Other in 5 stages.

There’s The Enemy or Crusade Stage
when a distant people are labeled bad,
and wars begin.

There’s the Heretic or Witch Hunt
when people within a community
are seen as the cause of the problems-
all who believe or look or love in a way different than the majority.

Third is the Turncoat or Subversion Stage
when an individual known within a community is singled out
as the troublemaker.

The Fourth Stage is Mea Culpa when we blame ourselves,
judge ourselves as guilty and bad.

We blame whole other countries, other groups other individuals.
We blame ourselves. Blame isn’t so pretty.

No wonder we aren’t glowing, shining.
No wonder we aren’t feeling safe in the embrace of love.

When some situation or somebody upsets you,
it’s easy to want to react to the messenger, the upsetting event or person.
Get some time alone and describe to yourself your emotions.
Rumi says, “a little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else.”
Get the message of what you are feeling.
Be present and feel the emotions.

Feel within you what you initially thought was happening “out there.”

Rumi says “Put [even] your vileness up to a mirror and weep.
That’s when the real art, the real making, begins.
A tailor must have a torn shirt to practice his expertise….
….Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?”

When you love what you think of as your own vileness,
you need not project it out on to others.

Rumi lifts up the larger truth of who you are,
“Inside you are sweet
beyond telling…”
everything is soul and flowering.
Everything is soul and flowering.”

Offer your self compassionate attention.
Give your self the love you want.
Then rather than reacting to what upsets you,
you can respond in a way that matches your values.

“The cure for the pain, says Rumi, “is in the pain….
Love is the cure….”

There is so much health and beauty in you.

In Jungian Analyst Geigerich theory of the making of the other.
The 5th and last stage is The Hospitality Stage.
We accept that what we have an urge to label “the other”
is really a part of us, and we accept that part of us, whatever it is.

We welcome and integrate our whole selves shadow and light.
Then we grow to be present to whatever comes our way.

When we compassionately embrace all the parts of ourselves,
all we feel and think and experience,
then we can know and share this Larger Love.

Loving your whole self is a practice to keep peace in the clan, the country, the world.
This is a practice to bring you peace of mind.

When we know compassion for ourselves
we can bring it to the world.

This compassionate hospitality
is the greatest service we can offer to humanity.

This is what Rumi talks about in his poem The Guest House.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some newdelight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes,
Because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Rumi and Shams spent months
in mystical conversation and mysterious friendship.
Some people were jealous.
Shams was killed.
In his grief Rumi began circling a pole in his garden
and speaking poetry.
His turning became a moving meditation,
a whirling dance,
in concert with the galaxies.
Rumi’s companionship with the divine, his oneness with all,
his ecstasy began in grief.

The love you are searching for is inside you.
“There is a fountain inside you,” Rumi says,
“Don’t walk around with an empty bucket….

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,
yet you go door to door asking for crusts.

Knock on the inner door, no other.
Sloshing knee-deep in fresh river water,
you keep asking for other people’s waterbags.

Water is everywhere around you, but you see
only barriers that keep you from water….

Mad with thirst, you can’t drink from the stream
running close by your face…
Beg for love expansion.
Meditate only on that.”

“We are pain and what cures pain, both,” the poet says.

Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, and do it for yourself.
Then give it to others.

Love yourself, love others as you would be loved.

Give and you’ll find life given back, with bonus and blessing.
Giving, not getting, is the way.
Generosity begets generosity.

Acknowledge your shadow to know your light.
Feel your anger, fear and grief and give yourself love.
Practice welcoming and entertaining all—
joy and sorrow, promise and pain.

“Beyond despair,” Rumi says, “lies joy.”

Through 800 years, Rumi calls to us, dance. No matter what, dance.

“Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.”

“Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
And let the spirits fly in and out.”
 ♦