On Pagan Godspell, Sara has quoted this delicious poem by Kabir:
The Time Before DeathAnd on Quaker Pagan Reflections, Cat has given us this gentle leading from Quaker meeting for worship:
Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think…and think…while you are alive.
What you call “salvation” belongs to the time before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is, Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.
"Up!"What can Walhydra do save thank the grace which moved these two wise women to move her in turn...and to share her own contribution, from Hafiz:
Early in meeting for worship today, I was all caught up in my head--in ideas about what is ministry and what is faithfulness, and whether or not I'm "doing" Quakerism "right."
And then an echo of the Song of Songs came to me: "I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine." And everything changed, and the words washed away in just being with the Beloved. And the Light grew so bright and good around me and inside me, that I could just about bear it:
There is an hour, every week, during which I get to drop all the hard work of trying to be something, and just be what I'm supposed to be. I don't have to be strong, or wise, or clever. I don't have to anything at all, because the Beloved is there, and it's just fine...
At those times, the image comes to me, of myself as a tiny child, almost too young for speech. Have you ever seen a little girl, one just barely walking, make her way solemnly to her mother? That's me. And when I get there, I lift my arms up in the air, stiffly, the way that toddlers do.
"Up!" I say, in that toddler way. "Up!" with all the quiet confidence of the completely loved, completely trusting child.
And I go up in those warm, strong arms, and turn my head into that safe neck and shoulder, and I let go and clasp on, and I'm free in a way I have mostly forgotten how to be.
And you know, everything else--the hundred thousand words we use to strap ourselves in, corset-like, to being faithful to the Light we're given, all the Quaker or Pagan or philosophical apologetics--is really beside the point.
I am my Beloved's. And my Beloved is mine.
"Up!"
And everything follows from there.
I know the way you can getAnd so it is.
I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:
Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.
Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.
Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.
O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.
I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.
That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.
That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!
All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!
From: I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Blessèd Be.
