rumi

Julia Alvarez 5-25-2021
Many paint colors are swirled together.

Illustration by Jon Han

OFTEN, WITH MEDITATION, I’m reminded of many people’s reaction to poetry. “I don’t get it,” they say, a little embarrassed to be admitting this to a writer and a former English teacher.

The first thing I think is: You must have had a really lousy teacher who taught you that poetry is something you “get”—a message you extract for a good grade. Poetry-phobes might feel a bit more relaxed when I tell them that’s not how poetry works. Often, with my favorite poems, I never fully get them. All I know is that reading and rereading them, the mystery stirs inside me again. In her lovely poem “Self-Portrait with Religion and Poetry,” Kate Daniels describes what happens to her when she deeply connects with a work of art:

... I lie down in the silence
of my mind and touch the world all over.
Clouds fly through me. Trees break the sky
above a frozen lake, and a footprint
startles its crust of snow.

Then I can type another page, or nurse
my hungry infant. I can take from the cupboard
the bread and the wine, the eggplant and garlic
my hands will transform into sustenance.

"A portrait of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, known usually as 'Mevlana' in Turkey." Via Nathan Hughes Hamilton / Flickr

Today, the United States and Iran are two countries on the precipice of war with ruling elites who quote Rumi.

Born in present-day Afghanistan in the early 13th century, Rumi fled the Mongol invasion along with his family and traveled extensively through the Middle East before settling in Turkey. The poet’s work continues to have enduring popularity globally and has been translated into multiple languages.

In bringing his life to the silver screen, Franzoni and producer Stephen Joel Brown said they are hoping to line up an A-list cast. Leonardo DiCaprio, who won his first Oscar in February, has been named as their favorite to take on the role of Rumi.

Eboo Patel 9-09-2011

Ten years on, I'm remembering the literature I read and the music that kept me going in the days and months after 9/11. I had Rumi and Whitman on my bedside table, reading them back to back, alternating between selections of the Mathnawi and poems from Leaves of Grass, sometimes feeling like the two were one, the soul of America, and that the soul of Islam were intersecting at some point beyond where the eye could see:

Whoever you are!, motion and reflection are especially for you, The divine ship sails the divine sea for you. -- Walt Whitman

Come, come, whoever you are, Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving, Ours is not a caravan of despair. Even if you have broken your vows a thousand times It doesn't matter Come, come yet again, come. -- Rumi

Until then, the Quran for me was a book of personal spiritual guidance, a convening symbol for my religious community. But after 9/11, I viewed it as a balm for my country's pain, especially lines from Ayat al-Kursi: "His throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them."