It began innocently enough

Friends gave me their seaside cottage for the week, as a birthday present.

Now that we’re here, what are we supposed to ‚do‘ with all this idleness, this truly deafening quiet? A few gulls calling above the wind and a banditry of chickadees (?) singing „hey-sweetie“ among the blackberry bushes. Other than that, not much to entertain us. O yes, some geese honking overhead. Why did we come all this way, only to . . .

Later that night, around two thirty, hearing the dog’s nails tapping across the plank-floor, the master wakes from an important dream. What is it now? Ah: that darn ocean, it never sleeps. Endless waves washing over pebbles, rocks, and logs. Splash. Pause. Again. Regular as heart-beat.

Nothing we can ‘do’ about it: back to sleep. Cadence, from Latin, cadere, to fall, an act of falling. In the morning, i recall ‘falling’ asleep amid more dreams. Now I reach for one of Rumi’s 13th century poems. Perhaps he too woke from a dream one morning, got up, drank some wine, swirled like a Dervish, and then wrote these lines:

O head, you are cause within cause within cause.

O body, you are wonder within wonder within wonder.

O heart, you are searching within searching within searching.

O soul, you are joy within joy within joy.

(In: Kabir Helminski. “Living presence: The Sufi path to mindfulness and essential Self.” 1992/2017, p. 73)

My intention, for this day, is to open my/self to Rumi’s words: by listening to wave-sounds, to restlessness, to whatever arises. From there, who knows down which rabbit hole i’ll go. I’ll say more tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, what are your thoughts on Rumi’s words?