the error of perfection

My love is beautiful -- one of her faults.

Delicate... soft... that's two and three.

But what's the reason people really shun her?

She's perfect, faultless, that's the sin they flee.

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

Key word: faults

I feel I'm living in a world of faults and errors, a world especially of arrogance and ignorance. Whenever I have close exchanges with Muslims, I come away with this creepy feeling. I think it is the jarring combination of the other's "I know it all" stand with my observation that the person knows very little that sends me into a frenzy of frustration. What makes it especially exasperating is that I can see that I have the same effect on the other.

So here is Rumi with an antidote for this pain. Here is his beautiful love, riddled with the faults of her perfection. Here is Rumi being most characteristic, laying opposites on top of each other. Error and perfection.

Yesterday, we examined the door that is often referred to as a rose. It's easier for me to imagine a rose, a perfect rose. Or because I especially fancy the hibiscus flower, I might imagine that. When it stands before me, in its brief moment of perfect bloom, there is nothing I can do. There is nothing left for me to do. I feel totally useless and without purpose.

It's quite different if I am confronted with a pile of dirty dishes or an overflowing wash basket. It's quite clear then what my purpose here on earth consists of. If I am confronted with an arrogant or ignorant person (a Christian creationist will do as well as a Muslim), I know quite well why God has placed me on this earth. But what happens if I see life, if I see the world, as perfect? What happens if I reach this beatific vision? I will suddenly be rendered useless!

We are born with this God-given gift for interference, for improving what is there, for striving for progress. We can never simply let things be. This seems to be Rumi's message here.

And yet, of course, by striving to reach others, by exerting the effort to compose these quatrains, Rumi is trying to improve us all. He is trying to increase the moments when each of us is simply contemplating the rose. He is trying to increase the number of people that do it consciously for at least a small part of every day. He asks us to overcome our fear of purposelessness and just let it be, just let it be.

And once we are rested and restored, then we can attack that pile of rubbish needing our attention. Only this time we might see it differently. We might see it as a rose after all.