Arise oh day! The atoms are dancing!
For him, the spheres and wind are dancing
Souls ecstatic with joy are dancing
I’ll whisper in your ear where they are dancing
Each atom in the wind or desert
Is good-natured, like this, we are enchanted
Each atom, whether happy or sad
Is bewildered by the sun, happy without reason
-- Rumi
What is Allah? All that is known and unknown is Allah. Can we then say that Allah is the totality of nature?
O wind of the dawn, I say to the gazelle
it only makes me thirstier, the water of this well
I have a beloved whose love lives within me
And if she likes, she walks on my cheeks as well
Her spirit is my spirit and my spirit is her spirit
If she wills, I want, and if I want, she wills
-- Marcel Khalife, translated by Sulayman Ibn Quiddees
In order to meet the beloved, one needs to cross a bridge with love. So intense this love.
Is then Allah love? Is the law of nature, therefore, love, not Darwinism?
O Morning breeze, go tell the gazelles of Najd
that, “I’m true to the vow you know of”
And if what she says is true and she
has for me the desperate longing I have
for her, then in the heat of noon we’ll meet
in her tent secretly, with the most sincere promise
-- Ibn ‘Arabi, Tarjuman Al-Ashwaq, translated by Sulayman Ibn Quiddees
If love is to Allah, what gravity is to nature, then let us put away harsh words, shame, and disgust in the name of piety.
Let us learn, again and again, the nature of love.
O wind of the dawn
Blow into my breast
Make the embers of my heart
Rise up from their death
O wind of the dawn
Blow into my breast
Sway my veins and let them shake
Love’s birds out from their nests
O wind of the dawn
Blow into my breast
Make my blood ripple
your reflection with your breath
O wind of the dawn
my heart’s caught in your grasp
your spirit’s within
whirling round inside it trapped
You can’t hold it in
and I can’t give it back
whisper something in my ear
take my soul with each gasp
-- Sulayman Ibn Quiddees
Shireen Pasha is a contributor.
