Creative Fire: Rumi

The 13th Century poet and mystic Rumi has been a touchstone of mine for decades. My own blog The Beauty You Love is an ode to his famous line: Let the beauty you love be what you do.

Rumi uses words the way that I use clay. He takes me places that are peaceful, pure, and sometimes, only music or Rumi can soothe the places that ache. It won’t make sense. And maybe the lesson here is that what we really need is something that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Do not grieve for what is lost.  Anything you lose comes round in another form.

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity.

We are pain and what cures pain both.

We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?

I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

………………………………………………………….

Click on any picture to find the artisan’s work.

Lee/OneClayBead

Creative Fire: The Journey

 

This Monday I’d like to share one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, and to highlight works that convey strong emotion. You can click on any image to see the listing.

The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.

It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver ~