How do I define my life?

Brothers and sisters, remember that your life situation will not last. It is only that which you fall through so that you can fall into your actual Life, and that Big Life ironically includes death (which is the falling). For Paul the word for that Life Force field is “Christ.” Yes it is personified and summed up in Jesus, but he also says it is everywhere and always available to all who “fall through” (read “are transformed”).

Everybody takes their present life’s situation as if it is their one and only life. It is not! So wait for those moments when you fall through your life’s situations into your real life, which is Christ, or Christ Consciousness (1 Corinthians 2:16), if you prefer. What you are doing in prayer is consciously choosing to let go of your grasping mind and its identification with passing life situations so that you can fall into your Real Life which is always much bigger and better than you, and shared by all. It is the Eternal Life of Christ.

(Richard Rohr, OFM)

True Love...

True Love...

The many odes written about true love... Clergy, ulama and other guru try to define it... Yet, only those consumed by it truly understand what it is all about...!

Dante wrote in The Divine Comedy: ‘The day that man allows true love to appear, those things which are will made will fall into confusion and will overturn everything we believe to be right and true.’

Paolo Coelho wrote in The Zahir: ‘Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.’

‘This force is on earth to make us happy, to bring us closer to God and to our neighbour, and yet, given the way that we love now, we enjoy one hour of anxiety for every minute of peace.’

Cradle of Love by Rassouli

Jelaluddin Rumi, "Cry out in Your Weakness"

Cry Out in Your Weakness

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can’t be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness."
Where lowland is,
that’s where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.
And don’t just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she’s there.

God created the child, that is your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.
________________________________________
Jelaluddin Rumi, "Cry out in Your Weakness." The Essential Rumi. Trans. Coleman Barks, with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, and Reynold Nicholson. Edison, New Jersey: Castle, 1997, pp. 156-157.