As I get older I find myself turning often to the Persian poets Rumi and Hafiz and finding comfort there. Both Sufi mystics, Jalaluddin Rumi lived and wrote in the 12th century Sufi mystic and Shams al-Din Hafez a century later. In these years the Europeans were constructing great cathedrals – Notre Dame, Canterbury, Salisbury, Burgos – aiming for the heavens. Rumi and Hafez were going inward. Rumi’s best known poem, “The Guest House” reminds me – and us – to welcome all parts of ourselves – “A joy, a depression, a meanness.” He advises us to “Treat each guest honorably” and to accept with gratitude that “each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
Hafiz offers a similar teaching – to honor our dark places, indeed, to embrace them. Learn from them. In his poem “My Eyes So Soft” he tells us to hold our hurts close.
Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly.
Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice so Tender,
My need of God absolutely clear.
(trans. Daniel Ladinsky)
Rumi and Hafiz take me to the prayer I seem to need most these days:
Let tenderness come.
Let tenderness come.
Let tenderness come.
Annette Atkins
