Some Rumi

If you could untie your wings and free your soul of jealousy, you and everyone around you would fly up like doves.

When love first tasted the lips of being human it started singing.

I see my beauty in you...a mirror that cannot close its eyes...a moth caught in flame's allure...

There is a moon inside every human being. Learn to be companions with it.

Your soul has become an invisible bee. We don't see it working but there's the full honeycomb.

With life as short as a half taken breath, don't plant anything but love.

Sometimes I praise love, sometimes love praises me.

The flower of what is true opens in the face.

Love is a language that cannot be said or heard.

Sit with the essence inside love.

A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable...than anything else that could ever be given you.

When the heart has a friend like you, the universe cannot contain their pleasure.

--The Enlightened Rumi by Coleman Barks

You Dance Inside My Chest

We're in San Francisco on the second day of celebrating Jerry's birthday week. We just got to our room in The Powell Hotel on Cyril Magnin St., right off of Market and 5th. We found the perfect parking spot right on Haight/Ashbury, which a perfect little restaurant right in front our space. We eat crepes for brunch and then Jerry made a beeline to Amoeba records and I meandered into various other little stores. I bought several new books, the new expanded edition of The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, The Indigo Children, by Lee Carroll and Jan Tober, Islam for the Western Mind, by Richard Drummond, and Spirit-Centered Relationships, by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks. Jerry found 3 new CDs for us to enjoy, Daniel Lanois' newest album Here Is What Is which we're listening to right now and I'm loving it. Also, Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster, Pin Your Spin (we saw him in Chico at the Sierra Nevada Big Room less than a year ago) and Nagual Site by Bill Laswell's Sacred System.

I found some other cool stuff at a store called Genesis Imports, and I stopped by New York Apparel, this wonderful little hole in the wall of a store where I've been shopping for thigh high stockings for years and my supply is now replenished again.

The weather is warm and beautiful and we are just resting up a little before walking over to the SFMOMA to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit.

Our friend D. had open heart surgery this morning and they gave him a double by-pass. Everything went really well and after his incision heals he should be better than ever. They didn't need to put him on the heart/lung machine which means he'll have a speedier recovery and there's been no damage to his heart. Supposedly he gets to go home on Tuesday. This is such good news after receiving such a scare yesterday. Considering the big, huge, life threatening deal this is and what could have been, I'm really happy.

Remember people, life is too short to eat bad bread.

Here's a Rumi poem for ya D. and Ren:

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

Love you guys.

The Peace I Seek

I've been contemplating the lines from Michael Franti's song One Step Closer To You:

Till I let go of a broken heart
I let go to an open heart

This is a powerful truth. This is my challenge. It's related to the challenge of letting go without shutting down. My broken heart shuts me down and my egoic pain body is very attached to this condition. It finds incredible justification in holding on to this identity. It fears the vulnerability of an open heart. It distrusts the egoic nature of Another and Separates me from the One. It wants justice, desires vindication, believes in wrong and right. It clings to this pathetic story.

My open heart allows me love and love dissipates all my suffering.

I am trapped in this cycle of continual choices as I struggle with the choices of Another.

Broken Heart--Open Heart
Shutting Down--Letting Go
Fearing--Loving
Separation--One

Beyond ideas of right and wrong there is a field, I'll meet you there.--Rumi

This is where I find the peace I seek.