a wrapping

Wrap my secrets within your soul, and hide,

Even from myself, this state of mine.

Wrap me in your soul: face to face with me

Your faith will transform my worst blasphemy.

#1392: From Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

Search word: wrap

I woke this morning feeling wrapped in the arms of my lover, ecstatically content. The nights are a cool refreshment from the warmer summer days and it is freshest just before dawn. All night I had but a single sheet to cover me but then I needed to pull the light cotton blanket over. There's an excruciating delight in needing just a little extra cover like that when most of the day will be spent wanting to shed warmth.

And Rumi is at his most excruciatingly enigmatic here in this quatrain. There is a shadow play here as when a gentle breeze rustles the leaves of a tree and the mottled shadow on the ground below flickers from one form to another. Wrapping, hiding, covering up, these dance a merry dance with open confrontation. When they part and leave the dance floor bare then faith and blasphemy take their turn. What faith must I have faith in? What faith guides me now? The deeper I go into Rumi the scarier it gets. I feel I am being drawn in, converted, from whatever faith I had. I'm being asked to have enough faith to bear with this because that faith will make things right in the end. It is what we fear most, it is what we see as most blasphemous, this is what we need to complete our faith.

Me, I've always been the tactless one, the one with an eye for the missing piece. I see so clearly the hole in people's faith. The one omits God, the other omits this world we live in. The one is too focussed on the future, the other fails to plan. So much wisdom is applicable only to a moment of imbalance and the opposite lies waiting its turn. Look before you leap but he who hesitates is lost. Too many cooks spoil the broth but many hands make light work.

For me, today, Rumi's worst blasphemy is his own native faith. He strips Islam down to its bare essentials, he removes the wrappings of local and historical happenstance. He makes Islam so attractive that he is dangerous. I long to be wrapped, no, I am already rapt. I see this with horror and can't help worry for myself.

But 'twas only yesterday that Rumi asked that I welcome in all guests and so I welcome this welcome horror, I welcome this voice that asks me to tread with care.

And like a wrapping on the first welcoming, I renew my welcome to the person voice in Bob who subtly joins me in my quest and guides me.

Christmas is casting its spell on me, however much I try to ignore it.