Published in The Essential Rumi. Harper Collins, 1995. websource.
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 made the
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're
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's 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
then came 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 each being a separate and unique way
of seeing and knowing 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 at the
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 Kaaba
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, poured into
and through him. He left himself and came
back.
He went to eternity and came back here.
Many times this
happened.
It's
foolish of me
to try and say this. If I did say it,
it would uproot our
human intelligences.
It would shatter all writing pens.
Moses ran after the shepherd.
He followed the bewildered
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.
Moses
finally 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 to. Your sweet blasphemy
is the
truest devotion. Through you a whole world
is
freed.
Loosen
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's
happened.
What
I'm 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 flute
player!
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!"
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Modern Languages / Anthropology 3043: Folklore &
Myth. |
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