What The Critics Said and What That Might Mean To You: Rumi

Ah, refreshment, and fixings. 😊And then comes a pause for reflection…

It’s a Libra moon currently 🌒and so I will start with the section I wrote about Rumi, and who was also chronologically the first poet discovered by me of these.

From medieval Persia born in the 13th century, September 30, 1207, and best-selling poet in our time, later critics would analyze him and write some things along the lines of “Rumi did not get any angels to come visit him. He was just mentally ill and not treated, and he wasn’t special…None were there at all; not for him, and not for anyone…” as if Rumi (and his angels) should just be banished right out of the sensible world because the critic said so.

As I’d glimpsed that article, I would notice my own nurturing, protective feelings towards the poet who just recently had an 814th birthday (of earth years), and I’d find incredible lasting wisdom and beauty in his poems, along with my endearing sisterly feelings of baby brother care toward him that are not contradictory. (This is all metaphor; I am not suggesting my own mom is old enough to have a son of this age!) And I’d think to myself with a soft smile, Let Rumi have his angels.

One of the very first poems I’d read of his I could feel and instantly loved but also admitted to myself then I didn’t fully comprehend it, yet I felt that I would maybe some years later, and memorized the lines without trying, and I did:

The moment I heard my first love story
I started looking for you
Not knowing how blind that was.
True lovers don’t finally meet somewhere;
They are in each other all along.

—Rumi

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🎶Angels Unaware🎶

Previously: In Which I Actually Answer A Question or Two