"To show suspicion and greed at the table of Majesty is ingratitude"
Rumi (Vol 1:86)
Commentary: Suspicion distances us from reality and one another. Assuming bad faith, disappointment or duplicity moves us into isolation. Greed, on the other hand, hurls us rapidly in the direction of the other. But it is a wanting and a longing that is prone to use force, bullying and deceit. Charles Dicken's fictional character Scrooge was a perfect marriage of suspicion and greed. He was blind to goodness, in every circumstance.
If we wish to dine, actually be nourished, this Thanksgiving, or in any encounter with a feast of abundance, if we wish to know gratitude and grace, then along with our favorite foods, we should consider bringing some trust and some generosity to the banquet. With the opening of our own hearts, we'll realize that we have always been most welcome at the "table of Majesty".
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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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