If they are in the spirit, people turn their thoughts to love on Valentine’s Day. It would be fitting to honor someone who never took his thoughts away from love: Rumi, A.D. 1207-1273, the greatest of Persian poets. No one has made more sense of ecstasy, raising the fleeting impulse of passion into something permanent and abiding.
The dust of the centuries hasn’t dimmed Rumi’s amorousness, which began with the flesh and ended with God. Actually, that’s not right. His passion was for the flesh and God at the same time, without the slightest gap between them. In the middle of one verse he burns for his lover:
My sweetheart
You have aroused my passion
Your touch has filled me with desire
I am no longer separate from you . . .
Don’t let me wait
Let me merge with you
This could be the panting of a young Romeo dreaming of himself between the sheets, but what about the first verse of the same poem, which seems to come from another world?
Oh God
Let all lovers be content
Give them happy endings
Let their lives be celebrations
Let their hearts dance in the fire of your love
Here we taste the other extreme of Rumi’s love, which reaches for the divine. Yet in both verses the theme is the same: merging. Rumi knew, as we all do when we are in our right minds, that sexual ecstasy and romantic yearning are temporary. And yet they feel complete and undying while they last. This separation between the ideal and the worldly gave Rumi the same challenge all lovers face, including now.
I remember a dry comment from a psychologist who said, “Bursting rapture is all well and good, but you wouldn’t want it around the house.” Rumi would retort, “Why not?” For him, every day brings an opportunity to bridge two kinds of love. In modern terms we’d call them conditional and unconditional love. Conditional love is based on change; unconditional love is unaffected by change.
They sound different, but both kinds of love reside in the same world. The beauty of Rumi’s love is that in the scent of perfume, the soft warmth of flesh, and a tender smile he also glimpsed eternity. While reading his poems, we can glimpse it, too.
I’m your lover
Come to my side
I will open
the gate to your love
Come settle with me
Let us be neighbors
to the stars
In every lover’s ache and yearning Rumi hears an answer from God — therefore, no love goes without fulfillment. Every passion serves to awaken the soul.
I yearn for happiness
I ask for help
I want mercy
And my Love says
Look at me and hear me
because I’m here just for that.
I call this making sense of ecstasy because Rumi sees that fickle everyday love is actually a secret door to the steady, ever-present, nourishing love that is the basis of consciousness. To go through the door, one must surrender to love. By a wondrous twist of fate, to be defeated by love is to win everything.
The sky was lit
by the splendor of the moon
So powerful
I fell to the ground
Your love
has made me sure
I am ready to forsake
this worldly life
and surrender
to the magnificence
of your Being
For Rumi, to be alive is to be a lover, and I think the greatest spiritual teachers say the same thing. In fact, Rumi is one of those teachers, and among them he is the most tender and lovable. He stands for the wisdom of the heart, and what better wisdom could there be on Valentine’s Day?
