Wednesday, September 2 “There is nothing worse than to walk out along the street
without you.”
Sometimes we bend into the strange work of study and teaching at the begining of full-time school after time away. Sometimes it takes days, , , and days . . . before the harness of work settles on my shoulders. “Why do this?” Maybe, I sometimes mutter, just to prove that I’ve still got game, just to keep my reputation, maybe just to win some advantage[s]. I call those gloomy, dogged, determined days.
Sometimes, though, I get the more in my life, not proving, not winning, not muttering. Sometimes just loving. When that happens the time of work comes alive in me and I want to go dancing.
Rumi’s “In the Arc of Your Mallet” says a time for dancing. A love song for sure.
Have a blest day. Read the poem out loud, if you can, with pauses.
john sj
In The Arc Of Your Mallet
Don’t go anywhere without me.
Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me,
or on the ground, in this world or that world,
without my being in its happening.
Vision, see nothing I don’t see.
Language, say nothing.
The way the night knows itself with the moon,
be that with me. Be the rose
nearest to the thorn that I am.
I want to feel myself in you when you taste food,
in the arc of your mallet when you work,
when you visit friends, when you go
up on the roof by yourself at night.
There’s nothing worse than to walk out along the street
without you. I don’t know where I’m going.
You’re the road, and the knower of roads,
more than maps, more than love
Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Rumi’s tomb in Konya, Turkey.