Call to Love

While I was in Charlottesville, I bought a wonderful book titled - Call to Love: In the Rose Garden with Rumi, by Andrew Harvey. I also read an article about Rumi I will be referring to in my next posts.

This small tome with exquisite photographs of roses by Lekha Singh, seemed an appropriate book to read and savor on a glorious weekend with so many trees in full bloom.

Here are some excerpts of these poems by Rumi:

The soul's extravagance is endless.
Spring after spring after spring...
We are your gardens dying, blossoming...

***

While the image of the Beloved burns in our heart
the whole of life flows in contemplation.
Wherever union with the Beloved exists
there is, in the middle of the house,
a flowering rose garden...

***

Love drives you mad
from revelation to revelation
through ordeal after ordeal
until humble and broken
you are carried tenderly
into the heart of the rose...

***

Before a flower can open in the rose garden
thousands of thorns come to pierce it.
Although the soul has received only grief,
Love has made her turn away from the world:
Look for the ecstasy of a lover of God--
all the joys of this world lie at its feet...

***

What was whispered to the rose to break it open
last night was whispered to my heart...

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