“What was said to the rose
that made it open
was said to me
here in my chest …Whatever put eloquence in language
that’s happening here.”
— From the Persian mystic poet Rumi
“Everything you see has its
roots in the unseen world.
~Rumi
The world’s most renowned scholar on Rumi, the Persian mystic who wrote love poetry as fresh today as it was eight centuries ago, is Coleman Barks.
Barks happens to have the greatest Southern drawl ever, but never mind that.
As an antidote to all the noisy, hateful buzz in our ears these days–to all the lack of eloquence in language–chill out with some love language for the ages.
Have a mellowing bottle of love and beauty from Rumi.
“He (Rumi) says fall in love in such a way that it frees you from any connecting. This is not about relationship. This is not country music–it’s not, ‘he left me, she left me, she came back, she left again.’ . . .
“It’s not Romeo and Juliet, where the power of connection and separation is the love story.
“With Rumi, the love he’s talking about is friendship, but it’s different. It’s a weather that you walk inside. It widens out to become a region that you live in . . . Everything is part of this love atmosphere so that the human beings in it become love.
“It’s difficult to talk about–you have to hear him to sense what he’s talking about.”
— Rumi scholar Coleman Barks
Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you. — Rumi
Jitterbugging for Jesus 
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