Once,
when he was still learning his craft
of ushering the anxious and doubtful
from the shadows of falsehood
to the river of poetry
at the center of their own being,
and in a well-intentioned effort
to raise the general morale,
Hafiz gave away
two court-side seats
to the Explosion of the Sun.
Because,
as we all know,
sometimes
having something
to look forward to
can make all the difference.
In this particular case,
the tool selected may have been
a tad over-matched for the task,
because a general panic ensued
and Gabriel
had to rewind the Earth
two full weeks
to restore the equilibrium.
That was the day Hafiz discovered
a great many people
really were confused
about the validity
of Existence,
and not just acting
serially businesslike
out of some long-standing commitment
to a really, really
elaborate inside joke.
This realization
hit him like a wave
of granite headstones.
He crumpled over
and fell down in the street,
gasping for air,
stung by the magnitude
of this great Difficulty,
flooded with compassion
for each and every being
who had been given so much,
yet received so little.
That night,
as his tears dried,
he felt his heart tremble
and whirl into Life upon its moorings.
It began to speak
through him,
into the darkness
of a little room
in a forgotten place,
about the
One
Great
Desire
of all beings
for all beings…
You and I,
we live now
in the holy shelter
of that heart-talk,
and of the talk of every heart
that has remembered
the Same.
There are still a pair of tickets
available by the way,
if you want them,
but by now you
may have figured out
they were never more than a joke anyway–
a restatement of the obvious Truth
that Everyone and their Brother
will be there
on the day the Sun Explodes.
Embracing Forever 
Sssshh… You’ll give the really, really elaborate joke away!
And you think I’m just saying that because I already have tickets..
LikeLike
🙂
We’re just so damn thirsty for the punch line…
I hear the half time show is going to be pretty impressive.
Michael
LikeLike
Thank you Michael. Yet another reminder that I’m already here. And that this is it.
LikeLike
Thank you, Alison, for your visit and note. I need those reminders. I’m daily encouraging myself to plumb the depths of my already being here. There seems to be no ending to the sinking in of Truth. Each time I think I have accepted it fully, I bump into something new, and realize the urgency with which I should abandon the previous concept. Here is a wondrously big place in which to roam, wouldn’t you say?
Michael
LikeLike
Indeed. If only I’d stay here more often 🙂
LikeLike
Wow, M. You are giving me a kink in my matrix. It sure feels sometimes like we are in the spun back times, reliving ground we already covered, squinting up anxiously toward the glowing orb, unsure where our worry originated, a vague sense of excitement mixed with dread – wondering what we missed, going about our business on the replay screen.
LikeLike
Sometimes you have to jiggle the cord, or reset the router, M. Last night I called IT and spoke to an angel who lives in a clay hut on the land we now call West Texas, in the Year 32 AD. After venting to me for quite some time about the lack of culinary choices in the region, he told me to close my eyes, shut down all thought processes, purge all the data from my memory, count to ten, and then restart and discover the world all over again. He said if that doesn’t work, I probably need to contact my local service provider.
It does feel that way often, like we are in the spun back times, and the world is too many signals overlaid at once and we can’t quite get a fix on the one we want, like when you drive through a city and the power lines overhead and the canyons formed by encroaching buildings make certain radio channels whose wavelength won’t fit the space properly turn into static. I read a lovely passage of A Course of Love last night in which Jesus was saying every feeling of lack and wanting and anger and bitterness and confusion are intended to bring us back to a gentle precipice- the point of interface with the awareness that what we thought was true is not, so that we might accept who we really are.
That seemed to help also. 🙂
Michael
LikeLike
Thank you for making the call to IT; that “to do” chore too often gets put on the bottom of my list – but how can I work with all the static? (I wish I could send the dear angel some nifty little ethnic food joints to ease his station and assignment! I can commiserate here in fried green tomato land, my outpost:) The advice was magic. Wouldn’t it be great if the first page of the manual explained how any feelings of lack, anger, bitterness, etc. are such great messages across our screens? If we read the manual, maybe we wouldn’t get so worked up. I guess we eventually learn how the hard drive, software, and solar plexus speakers work – just in time for each upgrade. (I am grateful for the space you allow for playing! Such fun can be had as we go along – of which you are a great reminder…)
LikeLike
I wouldn’t worry about the angel. The response of Love to his frustration is the reason guacamole entered the Creation. 🙂
(And a grateful giving of thanks for your playing along here in the manual-free zone…)
Michael
LikeLike
Michael, can you recommend a good translation of Hafiz’s works? My daughter has one but when I read through it it was too modern for my taste.
LikeLike
Hi Theresa, I’m a little worried because I only know Hafiz through the interpretive renderings of Daniel Ladinsky. I think he is one of the popular sources of Hafiz in the English-speaking world, and his work definitely has a modern “edge” to it, so I think maybe that is what you have sampled?
I am not familiar with other sources, unfortunately. Those particular renderings seemed to have jump-started my inner Hafiz, and now when I write with/about him, it is with that particular feeling space as a muse.
If you find other sources you enjoy, I would love to know what you found. I did a quick search and found this link, which seems to be a nice way to compare English translations and sources:
http://www.thesongsofhafiz.com/hafizpoetry.htm
Michael
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks so much Michael. Yes it was Daniel Ladinsky that sampled. Maybe I should give him another chance. Thanks for the link.
LikeLike
I’ll take the tickets, even though I already have them. It just feels better when I think I earned them, or won them. Some Jedi mind trick, conccocted under the careful and loving collaboration of Michael and Hafiz. Well played, my friend, for it is true, something to look forward too makes all the difference in the world. I do so enjoy the heart-talk I find here; stories around the campfire of living.
LikeLike
Ok, well, what I failed to note is that they are e-tickets, and that when Heaven went paperless (a couple ten thousand baktuns before Mary’s heart-talk with Gabriel) this project was one of the first conversions. You know how THAT went. Hafiz told me not to worry, his poems are actually the copies of the printed receipts we’re looking for (Jedi mind trick kind of thing), and that at least one will crawl inside your heart and awaken your Name, and you will be Recognized at the Door.
Thanks for visiting the campfire, and throwing on some chunks of joyous wooden sunshine.
Michael
LikeLike
Wow… beautiful.
LikeLike
Thank you, Meredith. Your recognition lends validity to the universal meaning we all carry within and are seeking to offer to the world. I think this is how we are constructing, together, something New and True.
Michael
LikeLike
reminded me of one of my favorite quotes: “And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with love like that.
It lights up the sky.”
LikeLike
I love that one! The world is kind of a mind trip when it comes to learning to love this way. We don’t think we have the resources to really pull it off, so we feel that pull to place limits on our giving. Then the conundrum kind of flips over: giving love is giving our presence, giving our attention, not necessarily giving any “things”. The Sun doesn’t launch furniture at the Earth, just an unending stream of grace… 🙂
Michael
LikeLike