Good morning, Beloved!

The Shadow of the Beloved

“In truth everything and everyone

is a shadow of the Beloved,

and our seeking is His seeking,

and our words are His words…

We search for Him here and there,

while looking right at Him.

Sitting by His side, we ask:

‘O Beloved, where is the Beloved?’”

                          Rumi

         Rumi is the best known poet in the Western world, yet he was born in Persia in 1207. His poetry, more than any other I have read, speaks with the profound clarity of a child, and the wisdom of a sage. When I read the short piece above, while I would change the pronoun Him to God, or Your, I feel the depths of his love. His words exactly mirror the words of Jesus when he said, “The kingdom is within you and all around you and you do not see it.”

         I wonder why it is so difficult for us to see God in our world—in the beauty of nature, in the eyes of a child, in the voice of a man or woman. Is it because we want to believe in a supernatural God that lives above the sky and is utterly removed from us, or is it simply that putting God out there in the stratosphere keeps us safe—out of God’s sight, so to speak. That is reminiscent of the children of Israel who begged Moses to ask scary old God not to come among them in all that fire, lest they die. We don’t want to look into the face of our neighbor and see the face of the almighty, because that would mean that we too wore God’s countenance. How terrifying is that? Can you imagine looking in the mirror every morning and saying, ‘Good morning, Beloved; hope you slept well’!

         Yet, there it is again, God is us—our seeking is God’s seeking—our words are God’s words. We are not separate and God is not a supernatural being out in space. God is here, within and without; God is in the bonds that connect us and in the chains that bind us and in the freedom that makes us sing. God is all that there is, and when we are able to see that, even for a nano-second, our hearts open and our spirits soar.

                          Have a good day, Beloved,

                          Jane