“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
— Rumi
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I always thought Rumi wrote an additional last line to this: “There are hundreds of ways to find your way home” and yet I can’t find it. Must have made that up!
But that’s what he’s talking about: Finding your way home.
The question is:
Given you can believe anything you want in today’s world (and many do, literally, believe anything), what do you put your faith in?
Given it seems so simple to get stuck in the hurts and the confusion and the drudgery of life, how do you keep your dream alive? How do you keep it present, here, now?
Given there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground and to find your way home, what do you actually do?
What makes you come alive?
What gives you meaning?
How do you, and who do you, celebrate life with?
Who sustains you, and who do you sustain?
Because it’s so easy to forget, isn’t it? And that is the secret sauce: How do you remember?
How do you remember the presence and the aliveness and the joy and the gratitude and the compassion so you can carry it through into the sorrowful and frustrating and blah moments? How can you remember so well, these moments vanish?
Wouldn’t THAT be something?
How do you remember and remind yourself to make the effort to create and remember meaning? What are the rituals – sacred and otherwise – that lift your chin, that lift your heart and soul?
Because it’s so easy to look out in the world, to look within our hearts, and think we’ve all gone mad. That we’ve lost our way. That the deepest of our dreams – and maybe that is as simple as it’s all going to work out okay, that our loved ones will be with us – won’t come true, aren’t possibly true.
Just because it’s easy to slip, doesn’t mean having faith is not worth something.
Just because it’s easy to forget, doesn’t mean it’s not worth practicing to remember.
Just because you haven’t called home for a while, doesn’t mean there’s no such thing.
I think this is the most important of our tasks, because it makes everything worth something. Here, we claim the power of definition over our own lives.
There’s nothing wrong with being stuck in a rut. But be in one that’s constantly expanding, not contracting. Uplifting habits are everything.
Remember. Think on the possibilities for your life of kneeling and kissing the ground so much, you forget to forget.
Go well!
Arjuna