The Harried Mystic

Colliding Galaxies

I was awakened this morning by the sound of a serious car crash on the road beyond the fence in our backyard. It was early and it was raining heavily. I startled awake and then ran to the window to see only one car with the passenger-side, front right, completely collapsed in toward the driver. There was an eerie silence.

I called 911 and reported what I could see. Then, I noticed my next door neighbour running toward his fence. He leapt over it and headed out toward the driver. Based on the commotion, I assumed there were injuries. I was heartsick at the thought; a knot in the pit of my stomach.

My thoughts ran quickly to the kind of car I was seeing and all those that I knew and the cars they drive. My niece was due to stop by, and so I immediately wanted to rule out that she was involved. Fortunately, she gad already arrived at school and was not due to travel to see us until later. Nonetheless, it was all terribly unnerving.

The sounds, the continuous horn from the severely damaged car, signaling a bad accident, and then the quiet, brought forward a flood of memories: one of losing my younger sister many years ago in an accident by which I just “happened to be passing by” on one of the many major highways here. All the horror of discovering that a loved one was involved, the trip to the hospital, the cold demeanor of the physician telling me that my sister was dead, and my mother, who was driving, and her inconsolable state.

Then, my thoughts ran to wondering about the age of the people involved and their condition, whether their families were quickly notified, and how all of this would work out for them.

So we see, in a single flash, how the world goes from quiet to horrifying, and back to quiet again. I thought of Haiti and the series of aftershocks and the terror of people buried under rubble and those searching for them. There is no time to waste. Life must be lived now.

The Beloved must be felt and seen both in bright light and in the darkest night. There can be no waiting, no delay, no putting off until a presumed tomorrow. Either we wake up now or we might never do so.

We need nothing more than we have. We are all that we have to be. All it takes is to open ourselves up totally in complete vulnerability to the Lover who calls out to us all day and all night. The Beloved is found both in the Heart, and in the wisdom of the poetic resonance in the mind, as we embrace words that point the way.

But, the words are just pointers. Consummation is not about words. We kiss. We embrace. We touch. We are one. We feel each other’s warmth.

That’s all. That’s everything.

We are as the flute, and the music in us is from thee;
we are as the mountain and the echo in us is from thee.

We are as pieces of chess engaged in victory and defeat:
our victory and defeat is from thee, O thou whose qualities are comely!

Who are we, O Thou soul of our souls,
that we should remain in being beside thee?

We and our existences are really non-existence;
thou art the absolute Being which manifests the perishable.

We all are lions, but lions on a banner:
because of the wind they are rushing onward from moment to moment.

Their onward rush is visible, and the wind is unseen:
may that which is unseen not fail from us!

Our wind whereby we are moved and our being are of thy gift;
our whole existence is from thy bringing into being.

Poems by Rumi, Masnavi Book I, 599-607

© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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