Love asks us to enjoy our life
For nothing good can come of death.
Who is alive? I ask.
Those who are born of love.
Rumi (C13th Persian poet and mystic)
5th March 2016
I chose this quote because I was sent a review copy of a small paperback called ‘Love: The Joy that Wounds,’ published by Souvenir Press. I’ve been quoting from Rumi for years, because something in his wisdom speaks to me at the deepest level. But I didn’t know this one.
Jelalaldin Rumi was born in Persia in 1207 and composed thousands of poems that are still recited during religious ceremonies today. He founded the order of the Whirling Dervishes of Sufism, which spread through out the Muslim world after his death. There is something of their trance-like ecstasy in his writing, which appeals to so many people, across cultures, that Rumi is the world’s most popular poet, outselling all others.
Why should this be? His words are, on the surface, very simple – take this verse, for example. Surely nobody would take issue with the first two statements.
On the other hand – who or what is ‘Love?’ Why does ‘it’ ask for enjoyment? Whether Love is the feeling between human beings or ineffable divine beneficence, one thing is clear – it exhorts us all to live in the moment, because ‘nothing good can come of death.’ This is far from any idea of life after death, isn’t it? No rewards in the afterlife promised here, or reincarnated improvements in your state.
No, Rumi is talking about living in the NOW, because that is all there is. No deferred gratification here! No puritanical self-denial either. And it is ‘Love’ (define it as you will) which bestows that insight. The heightened awareness borne of love enables us to realise that we must treasure every single moment, because when the living moments are all done, we know there is ‘nothing good’ waiting beyond.
The second two lines ram this point home. Love and Life are, it seems, indissoluble. The person who knows love is fully alive. The phrases ‘born of love’ should not, I think, be taken literally. We are all ‘born of love’ in the sense that we are products of the sexual act. But I take this to mean ‘born again of love’ – in other words, re-born into a new intensity, through knowing what love means and experiencing its true power.
So, rather as the Whirling Dervishes turn round and round, so we are set (if we are lucky) on a continuum: you live and love, and loving properly you can live to the full. Then living to the full, you love all the more, and loving all the more allows you to be reborn into your own life, living and loving and living and loving…on and on.
I feel gloriously dizzy just thinking of it.