Rumi's Masnavi, with Alan Williams

One-week Residential Seminar
Chisholme House
11–19 June 2016

A sample of writings by participants, presented in the Mead Hall on June 17th.
For all the writings download the pdf here.

– to Alan Williams

For days the sun was covered by a veil
no eye on earth could spy its radiance.
No mortal sight is able to discover
this Radiance which makes us see the cloud.

Our minds, composed of shadow and of light,
do not find here a meaning to uncover.
The Light which lights the light within our hearts
has never seen the cover of a veil.

O You, Who don’t discover ‘I’ in me,
To Whom I do not count as ‘you’, and yet
You’ve dressed Your Love as ‘You’ to ‘I’, so that
I could resolve in You without a trace.

How could Light know of ‘no trace’, ‘you’ or ‘I’?
Cover your lips! Don’t speak of ‘beyond Light’.

Rokus de Groot, Chisholme, June 17, 2016

Who am I?

Am I the symphony of the birds that I hear
whenever I wander among nature within and around us?

Am I this tree that come to my eyes
whenever I walk along the paths and roam over
the hills that surround us?

Who am I?

Am I the scent of wet land that I sense
when this body of mine steps out of the front door?

Is this smell the same that I carry within me
since childhood?

How can the scent of the south be
the same of the scent of the north?

Is it a sign that North and South, East and West
share the same essence?

Is it a sign that the “astrolabe of God's mysteries”
which interprets the stars that shine up high is
the same for the ones that shine within?

Who am I?

Am I the symphony of the birds, the tree, the scent of wet land
or the energy that shakes my heart whenever
I approach this place?

Am I this cloth that covers the kernel of my being?
What is this cloth made of?

Am I the layers of rust that obliterate the image
in the mirror of my existence?

Am I a part of the whole? Am I a whole within the Whole?

Am I the questions? Am I the answers?

Who am I?

What is this battered heart beating for?

Is it beating for the forms? Is it beating for the essence?

Can we find essence without
the helping hands of the forms?

What is this bruised being longing for?

Is it not longing for a lost scent of the core?

Is it not longing for the light that is hidden under
the meanderings of my soul that flow to the sea?

Is it not longing for the encounter of the rivers,
the Amazon, that exists within my being?

Is it not longing for the light within Light?

Is it not longing for communion with Thee?

Is it not longing for Silence?

Is this longing of mine... 'Yours'?

Who am I?

'You' know...

Luciana Lago, Chisholme 17 June 2016