the donkey path

'So what?' says the charming flirt to accusing eyes.

'So what?' says the love-struck fool to his bad name.

As we become sure-footed on the rocky path of love

So what if some other donkey is feeble and lame?

#1598: From Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

What a little treasure is here in this quatrain! The hero on life's path depicted as a donkey laden with his weaknesses and disabilities, yet not forlorn. He seems to tread lightly and with sure foot all the same. Who cares what other people think?

Mohammad on a camel, Jesus on a donkey @ sufischool.org

The latest news on Abdul Rahman is that he is being released partly based on evidence that he is mentally disturbed. If ever a lone donkey was walking steadfastly on, it is this man. In an AP report on this news, Rahman is quoted as follows:

"I am serene. I have full awareness of what I have chosen. If I must die, I will die," Abdul Rahman told the Rome daily, responding to questions sent to him via a human rights worker who visited him in prison.

"Somebody, a long time ago, did it for all of us," he added in a clear reference to Jesus.

He knows quite well that he is a Second Christ. This, alone, is enough for a diagnosis of madness. However, he is also serene and this is the clue that he is not, in fact, mad. He has a fresh but profound understanding of Christianity, not weighed down by centuries of tradition but nevertheless matured over the 16 years since his initial conversion. He is paying and has paid a high price for his faith in Christ. A lot of us in the West take this Christian heritage for granted for we have not needed to earn it or pay for it. I hope and pray that Rahman will escape death because his will be a powerful voice. He might even have a thing or two to teach the rest of us here in the West, not just to his fellows in Islam. We could all do with a touch of his courage in this simple stand for the moral truths that should underly any civilization worthy of the name. He is brave and very Christ-like to offer his life to the cause in this way but all the same, I would prefer that humanity wake up and not insist on a blood sacrifice here.