^z 28th September 2023 at 8:37am
As translated/paraphrased/recreated by Coleman Barks, a Rumi fragment about true friendship:
| A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank. They sit in a nook of the ground and talk. Each morning, the second they see each other, they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets, empty of any fear or suspicious holding-back. To watch and listen to those two is to understand how, as it's written, sometimes when two beings come together, Christ becomes visible. The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn't thought of in five years, and the telling might take five years! There's no blocking the speechflow-river-running- all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is. Bitterness doesn't have a chance with those two. The God-messenger, Khidr, touches a roasted fish. It leaps off the grill back into the water. Friend sits by Friend, and the tablets appear. They read the mysteries off each other's foreheads. ... |
... Yes, and...
(from Mathnawi VI: 2632-..., in This Longing: Poetry, Teaching Stories, and Letters of Rumi; cf Meditation - Sound, Music, Silence (2014-10-06), The Pearl Buys Itself (2015-07-22), There's Nothing Ahead (2016-11-06), Be Ground (2016-12-27), In Your Light (2018-01-04), ...) - ^z - 2018-07-04