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From me, Rumi & my college professor, to You

Shopping, making plans, sitting in airports, jotting down our new year’s resolutions. So much hustle and bustle in a season that’s about peace and goodwill.

What if hustle & bustle is possible while feeling peace & goodwill?

(H & B + P & G)

We know they co-habitate. They are all us. At once.
Sometimes we’re sure of it. Sure of That.

Paradoxical yet true.  We’re mysterious.

H & B:
getting out of our routine to make our 

special traditions happen in our
thoroughly modern way.

Often, through it all, magically radiating the P & G.

This isn’t deep or esoteric.
Winter Solstice.
Hannukah. Kwanzaa. Christmas.
Pancha Ganapati (in honor of Ganesha).

Each seasonal tradition holds it’s own unique mystery in its stories and rituals.

But what I’m talking about now, and Rumi and Coleman
(my college English professor) portray below is The Mystery that peeks through so many moments of everyday life.

They’re quite simple. Close. All-natural.
The so-called “little things” we take for granted.
It’s us that makes them “little,”
yet we know they can grow so big.

Show Rumi a grand tradition binding people together for aeons and he’ll show you the everyday sparkle that the tradition is made of.

What’s the sparkle made of?
You know, that. Keep reading. Enjoy.

  
     

“What was Told, That”
by Jalal al-Din Rumi,
translated by Coleman Barks
, my college English Professor

What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest. 

What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that's happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane, 

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

– Rumi –

(translated by Coleman Barks, my former English Professor in Athens, Georgia
& a major influence on me)

I love the plain-spoken mystery
he found in his translation of this poem.
whatever it is, that is what I love.

I’m gonna be looking for some of that this holiday, what about you?