A Little Early Birthday Gift for Rumi, for You

Rumi’s birthday is tomorrow, a poet having appeared often on this blog! Sometime at the very beginning of September the thought came to me…

”Rumi! Your birthday’s coming at the end of the month!.. How old are you going to be?”

😊💕😊

Although Rumi was born on September 30, 1207 AD, I’ve felt a kind of older sister nurturing care and appreciation towards him over time, even if he will be 814 years old tomorrow! yet as you know, those are the earth years.

I’d cherished Rumi as one of the first poets I’d read when I was interested in writing my own poetry and freely reading and discovering others’ poems, past and present.

I saw a list of names on a peaceful looking poetry website I’d found….Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda, Rabindranothe Tagore, and Rumi, along with clickable poetry themes. I saw his short, single name there and thought then, which type of poem is a Rumi…is it like a sonnet? Or, what was the ‘Rumi’ movement of poetry? And finally….is Rumi the name of a poet? And he was a poet.

And the gift now… the sharing of a favorite poem of his, just found today and an absolute favorite now. Oh no! Someone may say, how is that a gift for Rumi when he already wrote the poem?

In this season of my life, I’ve found liberating wisdom in my own mind and heart that feels more actualized now, rather than just considered while partly buried and hoped for, as it had…yet it began with listening to a truth that may come in the midst of my own experience and in my own space, without depending on anyone else to affirm it: one of these truths is that love which really fulfills and grounds us doesn’t require magnificent miracles, impressive ideas, exact standards, or prioritized perfection. It comes from the soul nourished by the Source, so that love is revealed in the soul to be the purpose and delight, realizing it for oneself, and finding it affirmed in the heart and also evidenced in one’s thinking and creating, so simply.

A great gift to give is the gift of your attention and appreciation of someone, could be like reading a poem of another writer, whether you have comments afterwards or just looking at (and sensing and feeling) what lines and words unfold.

As today I am feeling pretty physically unwell, weakened, and best while resting…(I’m fully vaccinated, yet I am getting a COVID test tomorrow, will keep you posted), and inwardly well: in honor of Rumi’s birthday tomorrow, I read more poems by Rumi today than any other day I can remember, as I liked that; they were restorative to read…and worked a little on my painting before that this morning, that contained a thing of nature he mentions in a new poem I’d found later on.

The painting needs improvement, an idea to rework as I continue, and yet that thing I saw in a poem of his I’d read afterwards, happened to look especially right this morning in my painting, within the look of failure all around it, currently.😅

I might think some ideas or feel them unsaid, not really in words, and then they may be unveiled and stated in a poem just read, and that has been more than once in a poem I’d find written by Rumi…

Let’s share this gift for the eve of his birthday to come, a small and incredible poem he’d written I’d very much enjoyed and had not yet before read:

What Was Told, That

By Rumi

(translated from the Persian)

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

Source: Poetry Foundation https://poets.org/poem/what-was-told

Previously: The Missing Basil Leaf and Other True Tales of My Life

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