“Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved” —Translation by Jonathan Star
Remember what I said. . . .
I said, Don’t leave, for I am your Friend.
In the mirage of this world
I am the fountain of life.
Even if you leave in anger
and stay away for a thousand years
You will return to me,
“The Acorn” by Dianne Bautch
The acorn grows into the grand oak tree,
not caring if the little sapling
longs to be something else …
a maple, a birch, an evergreen.
It becomes what it was created to be,
what it was meant to be.
“When I Was the Forest” by Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328)
When I was the stream,
when I was the forest,
when I was still the field,
when I was every hoof, foot, fin and wing,
when I was the sky itself,
no one ever asked me did I have a purpose,
no one ever wondered
was there anything I might need,
for there was nothing I could not love.
“Wrongly or rightly you think that I have a right to the name of Christian“ — Simone Weil
“Wrongly or rightly you think that I have a right to the name of Christian. I assure you that when in speaking of my childhood and youth I use the words vocation, obedience, spirit of poverty, purity, acceptance, love of one's neighbor, and other expressions of the same kind, I am giving them the exact signification they have for me now. Yet…”
“A Path Less Travelled” by Sean O’Laoire
I believe that we have to become serial killers in order to reach enlightenment. Firstly, we have to kill the ego, in the sense that it needs to be confined to its appropriate tasks (ensuring that I pay my taxes on time, stop at red lights and tie my shoe-laces) but not become my identity. Then I have to kill my father, by which I mean that I have to outgrow the cultural traditions into which I was born, and, instead, embrace a global identity.