Tupelo Press

Description

Rumi has been known, in the history of religions, as a bridge between faiths, a dissolver of differences. Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists — as well as Muslims — came together at his funeral in 1273. Rumi’s poems contain the essence — the pure water — of praise and grief that lives at the core of the great mystery of being alive. His questioning, his honesty, his joy at being in a body, his ecstatic sentience, these are his gifts to us.

The Sufis have experimented for a thousand years with various forms of interiorizing concerts, or sema, the deep listening that comes when poetry and music and silence spiral together in a dance that takes us into the heart. The experiment is joyously continued in this rare evening of Rumi, humor, and poetry in the chapel at Williams College. There are moments of personal grief, spontaneity, jokes, granddaughter poems. Yet throughout, the listener will discover a relaxed generosity that we hope allows the majestic presence of Rumi, and his Friendship with Shams of Tabriz, to flow through.

What is the soul? Consciousness. The more awareness, the deeper the soul, and when such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around. It’s so simple to tell one who puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from the real thing. We know the taste of pure water...