Covers Her Face With Both Hands

What

We speak

Becomes the house we live in.

Who will want to sleep in your bed

If the roof leaks 

Right above

It?

Look what happens when the tongue

Cannot say to kindness:

“I will be your slave.”

The moon

Covers her face with both hands

And can’t bear

To look.

–Hafiz 

from The Gift,

translated by Daniel Ladinsky

 

That mystical mischievous ecstatic poet and lover of God, Hafiz, has become an extraordinarily accurate and timely spiritual advisor for me lately. Many of us have often used books like the I-Ching, thowing them open to a random page that we will take as the perfect personal message for us that day.  I tried it with the phonebook once and came upon the name J. Fraumgarten, and failing to discern the hidden meaning, my use of that method went downhill from there. The I-Ching itself, without fail, always told me something like “the Superior Man crosses the Great Water,” and I would do my best to digest that, then go about my business, never quite locating the Great Water, thus failing to cross it. 

Hafiz on the other hand, in the briefest and softest of language, has the uncanny ability to speak right to my heart and my thoughts. For example, the poem  I posted above appeared this morning the very day after I had an unusual-for-me conversation with someone I had never met before, about “language generating being.” I also just completed an entry for another blog (see link below) in which I speak of the possible impact of one’s  internal conversation on the experience of  aging.  

So Hafiz today is right on schedule:  

What

We speak

Becomes the house we live in.

What if it’s true? What would it mean if I really grasped  that the very way I use language, in my private mind as well as speech, is literally creating my experience of reality? It would make me want to go into silence for two years.

 

Which is why I’m calling this the Mostly Silent Blog:

I want to see what kind of house I can build here. 

 

P.S. See my guest posting on Thursday at Serene Ambition, a blog about aging.

This will be the active link on Thursday:  http://www.sereneambition.com/blog/jimselman/entry/embracing_what_is 

 

 

 

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