For several years now, I've been interested in the work of Franciscan friar Richard Rohr and his colleagues at and around the Centre for Action and Contemplation, all of whom espouse what they call the "contemplative Christian path of transformation".

Having had dealings with a fair swathe of tyrannical religions, I found the work of Rohr and his associates a breath of fresh air. Instead of setting up walls ("them and us", "right and wrong", "with us or against us"), they emphasize non-duality and inclusivity. They put the focus on simplicity and love. The goal of the human being, they say, is to realize that unity with the divine is actually ours already, could we but recognize it. They advocate letting go -- letting go of our desire for security and prestige and possessions and control -- and opening ourselves up to God's love and presence through contemplation.

Now, in the interests of truthfulness, I have to say that my connection with the work of Rohr and his associates has to date stayed entirely cerebral. I would love to start to tread the path of contemplation. I would love -- so love -- to turn off that thing within me that constantly resists and strives and fights and struggles.

I find myself completely unable to do this, however. The never-ending pandemic, and now the bout of illness that continues to beset us this year (not to mention the war that is hanging like a cloud over Europe, and indeed the rest of the planet) -- these are the kind of dark times that can be seen by wiser people as an opportunity to slow the mind, and allow the spirit to find its own peace and equilibrium.

But I have kept resolutely busy throughout, as though fearing some great hole I'll fall into if I don't keep my mind well and truly occupied. I kind of know, deep down, that "leaning into it", instead of kicking and screaming and fretting, would be beneficial. But I somehow can't. It would feel like giving in, accepting that this shitstorm is somehow OK, when it's just NOT.

So I battle on, conscious that I'm depriving myself...


The church of St Francis, Siquijor, 2019

A quote:

"The art of letting go is really the art of survival [which is why I'm surviving so badly...]. We have to let go so that as we age, we can be happy. Yes, we’ve been hurt... Yes, our lives didn’t work out the way we thought they would. Letting go helps us fall into a deeper and broader level at which we can always say 'Yes.' We can always say, 'It’s okay, it’s all right.'... [Interestingly, this article offers a psychological take on the same process.]

"This means that the real life has started now. It’s Heaven all the way to Heaven and it’s Hell all the way to Hell. We are in Heaven now by falling, by letting go, and by trusting and surrendering to this deeper, broader, and better reality that is already available to us. We’re in Hell now by wrapping ourselves around our hurts, by over-identifying with and attaching ourselves to our fears, so much so that they become our very identity...

"Maybe this is why scholars have said two-thirds of the teaching of Jesus is, in one form or another, about forgiveness. Forgiveness is simply the religious word for letting go. Eventually, it feels like forgiving Reality Itself for being what it is."

Sigh... I am so not there. I would so like to be...



Anyway, Rohr and his fellow-contemplatives insist that what they're teaching is nothing new. It is in fact part of the "philosophia perennis", the shared universal truth of the wisdom tradition, which can be found in all world religions.

According to Rami Shapiro, this philosophy "refers to a fourfold realization: (1) there is only one Reality (call it, among other names, God, Mother, Tao, Allah, Dharmakaya, Brahman, or Great Spirit) that is the source and substance of all creation; (2) that while each of us is a manifestation of this Reality, most of us identify with something much smaller, that is, our culturally conditioned individual ego; (3) that this identification with the smaller self gives rise to needless anxiety, unnecessary suffering, and cross-cultural competition and violence; and (4) that peace, compassion, and justice naturally replace anxiety, needless suffering, competition, and violence when we realize our true nature as a manifestation of this singular Reality. The great sages and mystics of every civilization throughout human history have taught these truths in the language of their time and culture."

Which brings me -- very longwindedly, I admit -- to Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, the 13th-century Persian-language poet and mystic.


Shiraz, Iran, 2000. The home of another Persian-language poet and mystic, who came along 100 years after Rumi: Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz

As I read Gold (which consists of excerpts from poems by Rumi, freshly translated by vocalist, poet, and educator Haleh Liza Gafori, and published earlier this year), I couldn't help feeling that much of the content was strangely familiar...

++ On over-thinking, for example:

Don't think!
Quit pouring thoughts like kerosene,
on everything fresh and green,
burning it to the root.
***

Restless with longing,
my mind and body weave web after web.
My own heart's ensnared.

When they trust, they stop.
The path to you opens without a word.
***

Take the cotton
of the mind's doom-ridden chatter
out of your ears.

Hear the booming voice of the heavens,
the roar of fate,

the ruckus the muse makes.
***

++ Or on trying to let go, only to have the mind get in the way again:

I linked arms with death
and leapt into emptiness.

My mind second-guessed me,
chased me down,
tried to scare me out of surrender.

Why should I be afraid?
I give form to formless fear.
I write its every rant.

Once I lived in a prison of circumspection.
I thought I was being prudent and wise.
A prison. Why? What had I stolen?
***

Reason warns, "Forget union! Forget surrender.
The void is full of thorns."

Love replies, "The thorn is in you, my friend.
Constantly sounding the alarm. You call that existence?
Pluck the thorn from your heart.
Let the garden bloom."
***



++ Or on non-duality:

Where the soul counts one,
the mind insists on two.

Five senses, six directions -- drop the lot.
Leap forth. Let oneness
draw you closer and draw you in.

There you are a gold mine,
not just a nugget of gold...

Shatter the jugs. The water is one.
***

Blasphemy. Faith. War. Peace.
Love sets fire to all of them.

In the ocean of the heart,
Love opens its mouth like a whale
and swallows the divided world whole
***

++ Or on union with God:

You found me once again,
you thief of hearts...

Why do I run when no one can escape you?
Why hide when you've found me a million times?...

What a blessing to be sought and found by your eyes...

The moment you found me,
you gave me a cup brimming with Love's wine,
heavy enough to match the weight on my soul...
***

You are hope's beating heart.
You are a doorway to the sun.
You are the one I seek and the one who seeks me.
Beginning and end...

We lust after the afterlife.
We stew over trinkets.
We stage battles between black and white.
Our ears are plugged with twisted delusions.

You carry the cure...

Meet us in the land of insight,
camped under ecstasy's flag.
***



++ Or on enjoying the brief span of time we have on earth:

If you've made a habit of drinking vinegar,
don't blame the vine.

Ditch the vinegar
and ditch the vendor who doesn't deal in life's nectar.
Pour Love's wine and quit peddling misery.
***

Let's love each other,
let's cherish each other, my friend,
before we lose each other.
***



None of this familiarity is surprising, of course. Rumi was a Sufi, a mystic, very much plugged into the philosophia perennis.

Pivotal in his life was his encounter, in November 1244, with scholar and mystic Shams-e Tabrizi. I'm not at all qualified to judge Rumi's pre-Shams religious experience. This review of a biography suggests he was always charismatic and unconventional, but Gafori's interpretation is that, despite his success as a preacher and evangelist, he "hungered to actually feel what he called for in sermons: liberation from the cramped shell of self, union with a shoreless Love, with God". It was Shams who launched him on a new path, involving "mystical trance, revelation, ecstasy, and divine intoxication" (including the practice of Sama, the whirling dance in which "the dancer becomes a conduit between heaven and earth, engaging in a 360-degree embrace of creation").

Needless to say, there's lots more to be found out about here...

Understandably but somewhat ironically, Rumi has caught on in the West. Motivational snippets attributed to him circulate widely on social media, and he "is often described as the best-selling poet in the United States".

There are two big negative factors in this popularity, however. One is that the translations on which, for the most part, it rests (the one by Coleman Barks is perhaps the best known) are not necessarily optimal; the other is that the discourse on Rumi in the West has largely glossed over the fact that he was actually a Muslim...

According to Omid Safi, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at Duke University, "[Barks] is not a translator so much as an interpreter: he does not read or write Persian. Instead, he transforms nineteenth-century translations into American verse... He has minimized references to Islam... When I asked him about this, he told me that he couldn’t recall if he had made a deliberate choice to remove Islamic references. 'I was brought up Presbyterian,' he said. 'I used to memorize Bible verses, and I know the New Testament more than I know the Koran.' He added, 'The Koran is hard to read.'"

Safi does credit Barks with a role in introducing millions of Americans to the work of Rumi, and with a genuine love of the poems. Other versions are even further removed from the original. "Discussing these New Age 'translations,' Safi said, 'I see a type of "spiritual colonialism" at work here: bypassing, erasing, and occupying a spiritual landscape that has been lived and breathed and internalized by Muslims from Bosnia and Istanbul to Konya and Iran to Central and South Asia.'... Safi has compared reading Rumi without the Koran to reading Milton without the Bible: even if Rumi was heterodox, it’s important to recognize that he was heterodox in a Muslim context -- and that Islamic culture, centuries ago, had room for such heterodoxy. Rumi’s works are not just layered with religion; they represent the historical dynamism within Islamic scholarship."

(And here, by the way, Safi tells us about the even worse "erasure" that has befallen Hafez: "How can it be that about 99.9 percent of the quotes and poems attributed to one the most popular and influential of all the Persian poets and Muslim sages ever, one who is seen as a member of the pantheon of 'universal' spirituality on the internet are … fake?" Seriously? I find that really quite shocking...)



Gafori's new and very beautiful translations of Rumi are therefore very welcome, and have met with considerable critical acclaim.

And, finally, why "gold"? In her Introduction, Gafori explains that the word occurs repeatedly in Rumi's poetry. He is not referring to the precious metal, but to "a feeling-state arrived at through the alchemical process of burning through layers of self, greed, pettiness, calculation, doctrine -- all of it. In sum, the prayer of Sufism is 'teach me to love more deeply.' Gold is the deepest love."

All of which is very, very far from squabbles over where the poet is "from", and who would be entitled to play him in a movie...



They call the wide-eyed flower jasmine.
They call the wide-eyed flower a thorn.
The wide-eyed flower doesn't care what they call it.
I adore that freedom. I bow to it...

Bow to a human
and greet the angel.