"Know that the thorn is that which you, because you are very greedy and very blind, has deemed to be a date. Your inclination is towards thorn bushes and sand; I wonder what roses you will gather from worthless thorns? O You, who in this search has roamed from one quarter to another, how long will you say, " Where? Where is this rose garden?" Until you extract this thorn in your foot, your eye is blind. How will you go about?
A human being, whose spirit is so magnificent that it cannot be contained in the world, becomes hidden in the point of a thorn.
God, in spite of the skeptics, caused spiritual gardens and plots of sweet flowers to grow in the hearts of His friends. Every rose is sweet scented within; that rose is telling you the secrets of the Universal"
Rumi (Vol 1. selections from 1964-2022)
Commentary: The Friend, the Beloved, is here to teach us about gardening. There are roses blooming in Worcester today. There are breathtaking roses blooming in our own hearts right now. As long as my attention is completely focused on that pesky thorn in my foot, I'm going to be missing the garden.
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The Mathnawi, Jalalu'ddin Rumi's master work, is a 1200 page poem. Having studied it in an intensive tutorial with a Persian scholar, Dev Prakash in 1979, I am now rereading it 30 years later,using the Reynold Nicholson translation. My hope is that you will find these short selections speaking to your soul, as they do to mine.
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