the whole of Rumi

It's morning. With my cup of wine in hand

I fall and rise and, drunk, again I fall.

Beside her cypress tall, I am low, small,

Soon nothing. There's nothing but her at all.

#165: From Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

Search words: success, triumph, win, compete, race, endeavour, try

I'm going to accept wine which Rumi mentions many times. None of the other words on the theme of competition came up in any first line. There is success and triumph in the air at our place but also exhaustion over the effort that was needed. We did drink a glass or two of wine to celebrate so it seems fitting enough to consider it now.

Rumi is also part of my morning routine. Examining a verse of his and reflecting on it is my first job at the computer desk. This verse, then, feels so very close at hand. The feminine spirit represented by a "cypress tall" has its parallel for me, a woman, in Rumi himself. He is the masculine spirit who holds the cup of wine from which I drink each morning. When I sip I sink into his world, back into the world of dreams. But then the sun of consciousness rises and I focus on the day's mundane requirements. And then again I sip and back I go. There is no end to the wine on offer from Rumi. I spend all day here, sipping. And because I am enveloped by a mood of eternity, it's true: I do spend all day here. All day is wrapped in this moment now.

And, like Rumi, I - or my "I" - is diminished, disappears. My concerns - my hopes and dreams, anxieties and fears - evaporate. There is nothing left but Rumi's presence just as for him, there was nothing left but the tall lady of the cypress, the anima mundi of the alchemist. She who is everything, the whole.