Johns Hopkins University will host a three-day conference late this month on the 13th Century Persian poet, jurist and philosopher Rumi. It's not easy to go from Rickles to Rumi, but let's give it a try.
Rumi's work inspired creation of the Sufi Mevlevi Order. Witnessing the ritual of these whirling dervishes in person, as Pat and I did in Washington several years ago, is a breathtaking introduction to the Sufi Path. That performance inspired us all the way to Istanbul later that year. I originally encountered the power of Sufi devotional music at a Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn concert in the 1990s, having first heard the late Qawwali in some Peter Gabriel music.
Rumi possessed an astonishing ability to speak to the core of human longing. His gentle words shed light on the all-too-often darkness of humankind. His poetry conveyed the connectedness we should all feel to our land, our history, and our fellow human beings. He intimately understood the central role of music, dance and poetry in leading a spiritual and spirited life. His was a world of love that seems desperately needed these days.
Capturing a consistent theme of this blog, Rumi wrote that we possess "two kinds of intelligence." Here is his Two Kinds of Intelligence poem from the Coleman Barks translation, The Essential Rumi (1995):
There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in an out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already and completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. The other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.
The second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
As Danny DeVito said at the end of The Jewel of the Nile, " Sufis rock!" They certainly do.
Rumi's work inspired creation of the Sufi Mevlevi Order. Witnessing the ritual of these whirling dervishes in person, as Pat and I did in Washington several years ago, is a breathtaking introduction to the Sufi Path. That performance inspired us all the way to Istanbul later that year. I originally encountered the power of Sufi devotional music at a Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn concert in the 1990s, having first heard the late Qawwali in some Peter Gabriel music.
Rumi possessed an astonishing ability to speak to the core of human longing. His gentle words shed light on the all-too-often darkness of humankind. His poetry conveyed the connectedness we should all feel to our land, our history, and our fellow human beings. He intimately understood the central role of music, dance and poetry in leading a spiritual and spirited life. His was a world of love that seems desperately needed these days.
Capturing a consistent theme of this blog, Rumi wrote that we possess "two kinds of intelligence." Here is his Two Kinds of Intelligence poem from the Coleman Barks translation, The Essential Rumi (1995):
There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in an out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already and completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. The other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.
The second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
As Danny DeVito said at the end of The Jewel of the Nile, " Sufis rock!" They certainly do.