I Come Before Dawn

I was reading today, and came across this poem in the book I have. It really made me think about how some things change, and then they seem to always be the same. This guy wrote this, making observations of the religious in his environment 800 years ago. I really connect with what this guy was tapping in to, even back in “the day.”

Rumi is always writing of the supreme spiritual experience, of falling in love with God, and of being surprised and amused through these holy connections.

It doesn’t work quite right being translated into English, but in the Farsi he wrote in, these would rhyme and flow, with plays on words. You also have to picture him singing these in an ecstatic state, while whirling around and around in circles around a pillar, to the beat of drums and the cries of flutes and horns.

“I COME BEFORE DAWN,” by Rumi (Julal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, 13th Century Sufi poet)

(Coleman Barks Translation)

Muhammad says, “I come before dawn

to chain you and drag you off.”

It’s amazing, and funny , that you have to be pulled away

from being tortured, pulled out

into this Spring garden,

but that is the way it is.

Almost everyone must be bound and dragged here.

Only a few come on their own.

Children have to be made to go to school at first.

Then some of them begin to like it.

They run to school.

They expand with learning.

Later, they receive some money

because of something they’ve learned at school,

and they get really excited . They stay up all night,

as watchful and alive as thieves!

Remember the rewards you get from being obedient!

There are two types on the path. Those who come

against their will, the blindly religious people, and those

who obey out of love. The former have ulterior motives.

They want the midwife near, because she gives them milk.

The others love the beauty of the nurse.

The former memorize the proof texts of conformity,

and repeat them. The latter disappear

into whatever draws them to God.

Both are drawn from the source.

Any movings from the mover.

Any love from the beloved.

Ali was told a secret doctrine by Muhammad

and told not to tell it, so he whispered it down

the mouth of a well. Sometimes there’s no one to talk to.

You must set out on your own.