One day feeling creative
I planted a seed in an ugly place
The seed germinated
And grew itself into a great tree
Birds came to eat its fruit
And carried its seeds every which way
Now there is a grand forest.
I have made this my home
Why don’t you join me?
I won’t be mad if you choose
To cut down my trees to build your cities
But it is so much more fun
To climb their branches
And listen to the wind.
Best pressed down and there to find
Mother mud open wide
And bathing in sweet shit to see
So very little left of me
O, to have the heart of a weed!
That stops for nothing nor has need
Of all the demands of flow’rs thirst –
Flourishing in sweet famine’s dearth.
Then as shadows of this dark night
Swallow faith and leave without sight
These eyes so oft governed by sun
Blind through steely earth would I shunt
And should by evil’s hand my shoot
Be ripped from moor I’d know my root
In holding fast would ne’er death feign
And life would birth this weed’s heart ‘gain.
I dreamt last nite of a fictional girl on the streets with whom we were working with. She called very late one evening, saying she wanted to leave the streets and could I come pick her up. In my dream I leapt from my bed, quickly readied myself, and drove to the central plaza where we had agreed to meet. That is all.
Moments later the alarm on my phone went off announcing a start to a new day. I slowly dragged myself out of bed and stumbled downstairs in the still dark morning to greet brother sun and the God that made him.
Now I am thinking two things.
First off, I am thinking why in my dream was I so quick to mobilize in order to pick up the street girl, yet to arise and speak to my Lord this morning I struggled. One answer may be that I focus so much more on my doing than on my being. Another, and not exclusive to the first, may be that whether going to the girl or to God, I am also going to the other – that the girl is God disguised, and that through prayer to God I can engage with those I pray for. Yet, with the face of need it is easier to run to God, than in the cloak of silence and invisibility in which one often finds Him in the silence of prayer and meditation.
Second, that the joy that accompanied the event of helping this girl leave the streets was not part of the dream, but a real joy waiting to be fulfilled. This was not a dream about flying or pink elephants. The streets are real, the kids are real, the need is real. Thus, the dream is real. What remains to be seen is if my reaction is real.
It rained last nite – an exciting thunder and lightning storm after a spell of dryness. I got to thinking about how worms, when it rains, boot it to the surface, flop around in the wet, and more often than not get eaten up by birds. Maybe God is a bird, and is sending rain to coax us out where she can gobble us up and make us a part of her.
Hafiz, climbing up a mountain into the clouds, encountered Rumi, who was descending. Their eyes met, laughter erupted, and in a loving embrace they leapt to the ground and began to roll downwards, tumbling to the base of the mountain where they landed in a large pit of mud.
Around this pit passed many roads, and on these roads were people of all sorts. When the two men arrived, making such a scene with their playful laughter and grapplings, the people formed a crowd around the pit and began to discuss the situation.
A wealthy sheik from the area looked with distain at these two adult men rolling around in the mud, spoke to those around him about how the struggling economy, indeed, was turning a great many fine men into nothing more than swine.
A pious mullah, who had been passing by with a group of young men, was equally disturbed. He used the display as an example for his young followers of why a God-fearing man must at all costs avoid strong drink and degrading relations.
A shrewd professor from a nearby university, speaking with his colleagues, suggested that the men clearly lacked a decent formal education, which most certainly would have corrected such miscreant behaviour.
All the while, the two men wrestled in the mud, giggling and seemingly ignorant of the dialogue going on about them.
A group of children who were in the crowd and who did not understand the talk of the adults, and who were quite hot from sun rising overhead, without much thought at all ran into the mud pit and began laughing and splashing about alongside Hafiz and Rumi.
The mothers of these children ran after them, at first to try to stop them from participating in such a scandal. What happened then, however, was that one of the mothers tripped and fell face-first into the mud and all those who came after her stumbled. They attempted to put themselves aright on their feet, but the mud, which clung and was very slippery, refused to allow such dignity. Resigned, the mothers laughed at their own feeble attempts of escape and began to play alongside their sons and daughters.
Well, as you can imagine, from there things simply spiraled out of control.
Some of the men, envious of the women, jumped into the mud of their own accord. Soon the pit was full of men, women and children, laughing and embracing, wrestling and falling to the ground, completely covered in mud.
Those who remained outside, concerned that allowing such conduct would give the region a bad reputation, called the authorities to restore order and clean up the mess.
The authorities, upon arrival, saw how large the muddied crowd was and decided they were to far gone to assist and too large to overcome. So, they built a fence separating the pit and mountain on one side and the roads and everything else on the other, with a big sign on it that read “keep out – dangerous mud pit”.
From this point, everything else is history. No one from the mud pit has ever attempted to leave it, nor have they wanted to. However, there have been and still are to this day those on the other side who, passing along the road, have seen mud flying or even been splashed upon, and who out of sheer curiousity have climbed the fence to investigate, and who seeing the savage and playful community in the mud, have tripped over the top of the fence and never been seen again.