Tossing Pebbles in the Stream

This blog is my place to sit and toss pebbles into the stream. The stream of Life relentlessly passing before us. We can affect it little. For the most part I just watch it passing and follow the flow. Occasionally, I need to comment on its passing, tossing a pebble at it to enjoy the ripple affect upon Life's surface.

Friday, September 30, 2005

Sufi Islamic Mystic

WISDOM FROM AGES PAST

I have recently been rereading some of the poetry of Jalal ud-Din Rumi, the Persian Islamic mystic. By coincidence, today is the anniversary of his birth in 1207. He was born in what is now Afghanistan and died in what is now Turkey both part of the Persian Empire at the time.

http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/sources/rumi_biography.html#Rumi_biography

Not long ago, I read his birthplace home is still in existence but in disrepair. It is sad it is not being preserved. In Turkey there is a great monument at the place of his death.

I have had a long interest in mysticism. It is the spiritual heart of all religion. Mystics of all faiths have more in common than mystics and non-mystics within a faith. it seems the mystical experience is a human experience transcending all faiths. One might even argue that it is what defines us a "human".

At a time, when there is so much negative thought and feeling toward Islam, we would do well to take some time to explore the Rumi's http://www.armory.com/~thrace/sufi/poems.html One I like in particular is on marriage,

This Marriage

May these vows and this marriage be blessed.

May it be sweet milk, this marriage, like wine and halvah.

May this marriage offer fruit and shade like the date palm.

May this marriage be full of laughter, our every day a day in paradise.

May this marriage be a sign of compassion, a seal of happiness here and hereafter.

May this marriage have a fair face and a good name, an omen as welcomes the moon in a clear blue sky.

I am out of words to describe how spirit mingles in this marriage.

Kulliyat667-i-Sham 2

If you are curious as to what hal.vah is.

http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook/halvah_sesame.htm

Reading Rumi, even in translation, can feed the soul and give one some appreciation of Islam and a kind of spiritualism which transcends all faiths.