This Just In From Rumi "This Longing"

Moses and the Shepherd
Jelaluddin Rumi (Persia, 1207-1273)
from This Longing, translation by C. Barks and J. Moyne

Moses heard a shepherd on
the road praying,

"God, where are you? I want to help You,
to fix Your shoes and comb Your hair.
I want to wash Your clothes
and pick the lice off. I want to bring You milk,
to kiss Your little hands and feet when it's time
for You to go to bed. I want to sweep Your room
and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats
are Yours. All I can say, remembering You,
is ayyyy and ahhhhhhhhh."

Moses could stand it no longer.
"Who are you talking to?"

"The One who made us,
and made the earth and sky."

"Don't talk about shoes and socks with God!
And what's this with Your little hands
and feet? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds
like you are chatting with your uncles.

Only something that grows
needs milk. Only someone with feet needs shoes. Not God!
Even if you meant God's human representatives,
as when God said, 'I was sick and you did not
visit me," even then this tone would be foolish
and irreverent.

Use appropriate terms. Fatima is a fine name
for a woman, but if you call a man Fatima
it is an insult. Body-and-birth language
are right for us on this side of the river,
but not for addressing the Origin,
not for Allah."

The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and
sighed and wandered out into the desert.

A sudden revelation came then to Moses.
God's Voice:

You have separated Me from one of My own.
Did you come as a Prophet to unite,
or to sever?

I have given such a being a separate and unique way
of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.

What seems wrong to you is right for him.
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.

Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
these mean nothing to Me.

I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.

Hindus do Hindu things.
The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.
It's all praise, and it's all right.

It's not Me that's glorified in acts of worship.
It's the worshipers! I don't hear the words
they say. I look inside humility.

That broken-open lowliness is the Reality, not the language? Forget phraseology. I want burning, burning.

Be Friends
with your burning, burn up your thinking and your forms of expression.

Moses,
those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.

Lovers who burn are another."

Don't impose a property tax on a burned-out
village. Don't scold the Lover.
The "wrong" way he talks is better than
a hundred "right" ways of others.

Inside the Ka'aba it doesn't matter which direction
you point your prayer rug!

The ocean diver doesn't need snowshoes!
The Love-Religion has no code or doctrine.
Only God.

So the ruby has nothing engraved on it!
It doesn't need markings.

God began speaking deeper mysteries to Moses.
Vision and words, which cannot be recorded here,
were poured into and through him. He left himself
and came back. He went to Eternity and came back
here. This happened many times.

It's foolish of me to try and say this. If I did say it,
it would uproot our human intelligences.
It would shatter any writing pen.

Moses ran after the shepherd.
He followed the bewildering footprints,
in one place moving straight like a castle
across a chessboard. In another, sideways,
like a bishop.

Now surging like a wave cresting,
now sliding down like a fish, with always his feet
making geomancy symbols in the sand,
recording his wandering state.

Finally Moses caught up with him.
"I was wrong. God has revealed to me
that there are no rules for worship. Say whatever
and however your Loving tells you.
Your sweet blasphemy is the truest devotion.
Through you a whole world is freed.

Loosed your tongue and don't worry what
comes out. It's all the Light of the Spirit."

The shepherd replied, "Moses, Moses,
I've gone beyond even that. You applied the whip
and my horse shied and jumped out of itself.
The Divine Nature and my human nature
came together.

Bless your scolding hand and your arm.
I can't say what has happened. What I am saying
now is not my real condition. It can't be said."

The shepherd grew quiet.

When you look in a mirror, you see yourself,
not the state of the mirror. The flute player puts
breath into a flute, and who makes the music?
Not the flute. The Fluteplayer!

Whenever you speak praise or thanksgiving
to God, it's always like this dear shepherd's simplicity.

When you eventually see through the veils to
how things really are, you will keep saying
again and again, "This is certainly not like
we thought it was!"

Peace
Keren