Rumi Time Three...

"There's a morning when presence comes over your soul... At that moment, soul reaches total emptiness. Your heart becomes Mary, miraculously pregnant... Now the heart, which is the source of your loving, turns to universal light, and the body picks up the tempo and elegance of its motion... and... you fall... into space..." -- Rumi

"Love's glory is not a small thing." -- Rumi

Quite a number of years ago, I was sitting in our Soup Kitchen at one of the tables that would soon be filled with the homeless, talking with a guest about something -- I no longer remember what. A volunteer from the Kitchen suddenly called out, "Look! There is a bird in the dining room trying to fly through the window!" I turned around to look, and sure enough there was a bird: not just any bird, but a teeny hummingbird. It would hover and poke at the window and bounce along until landing again...

The volunteer grabbed a towel, began waving it around, and started to run down the isle shouting at the little bird. I asked her to stop and wait for a minute. I went to the broom closet and pulled out an old wooden ladder. Placing the ladder near the window and the interior alcove, I climbed towards the bouncing bird. Reaching eye level with the hummingbird, it landed. I pulled my cap off my head and covered the bird. I reached under my hat and gently held the bird. As I climbed down and walked outside into the garden, I could feel the beatings of the hummingbird's heart against my hand. I sat the bird down under a rose bush. It sat for a moment before flying off...

"Moon and evening star do their
slow tambourine dance to praise

this universe. The purpose of
every gathering is discovered:

to recognize beauty and to love
what's beautiful..." -- Rumi

There is music in the whirl of atoms, in the spin of planets, and in the dance of the Universe... And in that music that endlessly sounds, there are pregnant pauses -- interludes of silence -- that invite a slip and slide into the fertile recesses of Remembered Divinity... It is towards the rEvolution of ecstasy that we are called: "rEvolution" because everything must change: "What is the possible meaning of profit to the man who kills the last tree?" This question should compel an increase in the will for an activated compassion...  

Everyone has within them the capacity for living in the wisdom of a wild and uncompromising love: but for too many of us, we tend to settle for the safety of a religion and a politics devoid of genuine life: form becomes habit, habits become excuses: and blame fills out our bill... And we all willingly pay: even if it means the wilting of our thinking minds and the shrinking of our souls... Rumi -- through his poetry -- would have us entertain other possibilities...

Behind every word and behind every form there is the Mystery and the Beauty: giving up the language of mortality and the conviction of death, there is a cup: a Singing Bowl, if you will. Gently sound it: not by striking, but by swirling the striker around the outer edge: a hum arises: a vibrational liberation... An invitation is issued: descend descend descend into the music into the interludes into the Magic... we are returning to our Nature... Amazed, you might open your mouth: you will certainly release your fist: you will look into the Mirror and see your Face before "you" were manipulated into a masterful identity...

Awe floods... you get to choose Love! You get to choose loving! In this surprising Oneness you may walk, as it were, as one who has been re-born: with a certain stumble in your gait: there is no longer anyone so low that you will not notice and care. "Why?" will be painted red on your forehead. The dirt under your nails will now mean something. That smell of your perfume will be the justice that is not for sale...

Waking and walking into intimacy with Mystery, is your initiation: you have both meaning and purpose now: your life is the grandeur of passion released into your daily ordinary: you will make love to the minutes: your ecstasy is the new politics and economics... Your opened heart and opened hands are the new Spirit mirroring the Beloved who is now Everywhere and Everyone... Adoration will be your name... Awakening is the rEvolution... And this moment is glory: become Mary, and give birth to the Divine: unleash that which animated Yeshua!