The world recently celebrated the poet Rumi’s 801^st birthday. Rumi, a Sufi mystic poet from the 13^th Century, preached tolerance, compassion, and love above all else. While traditional Sufism leans towards religious language (referring often to God and prayer), I was never put off by it; when I discovered Rumi’s poetry about five years ago I was very skeptical and pretty much anti-religion. Rumi still managed to reach me and educate me, and ultimately help me be more open to ideas that are different than the ones I was raised to believe.

In the spirit of tonight’s lecture on Rumi at the ID Project, I’d like to share one of my favorite poems by Rumi.

Ghazal 1515:

The way of love is not a subtle argument.

The door there is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.

How do they learn it?

They fall,

And falling,

They’re given wings.

I think this poem is about suffering making you stronger. A bird is only able to learn how to fly if it makes that initial jump into the unknown abyss. Who knows what could happen? But the bird learns through that scary leap how to soar. By opening ourselves up to life experiences, even if we risk failing, this is how we grow – by dealing with difficult emotions.

Professor Majid M. Naini is a leading scholar on Rumi. He has a Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from UPenn. The following video is of a talk he gave last year. He’s an incredible speaker and has a beautiful grasp of Rumi’s poetic language.

Professor Naini ends his spirited talk with a quotation from another Sheikh, encouraging universal tolerance:

Whoever comes to this door, feed him.

Do not ask about his race and religion.

If the God of Love has found him to be worthy to give him a soul,

The least you can do is feed him.

Another interesting website I stumbled across is for an organization called Rumi Forum:

“Rumi Forum was founded in 1999 with the mission to foster interfaith and intercultural dialogue, stimulate thinking and exchange of opinions on supporting and fostering democracy and peace all over the world and to provide a common platform for education and information exchange…

The principal goal of the Rumi Forum is to promote peace in the world and contribute to a peaceful coexistence of the adherents of different faiths, cultures, ethnicities and races.  For that to be achieved, we believe that everyone must be respectful to the environment and to all creatures’ right to exist, believe in the sanctity of human rights and democracy and use all means at hand to make this coexistence possible. To this end, we promote education, exchange of information, opinions and expertise, with a special focus on including as diverse a range of viewpoints as possible in our activities.”