Is the universe capricious? How vulnerable are we? These are the questions this poem inspires me to wonder about. We are anxious when in our cups and totally forgetting we are at the wheel. Perhaps we should not be driving at these times but we do. We are all traveling on this road. Either way, whether driver or passenger, we are not spared from having to witness roadside accidents, relating, and empathizing with someone's suffering and feeling that we lack an ability to alleviate their pain in any way. Empathy is the elephant in the room. Even if we manage to keep ourselves from the fray, we still have to experience and choose how to react to others who are caught in the crossfire of the violent changes in the world. We are ourselves and we are everyone, too, in the higher vibrations of our hearts and souls.
Hafiz speaks about our sense of vulnerability in this poem. We worry and want to protect new understandings, tender feelings, and untested ideas. In our cups, our minds are trying to reason and threaten us with reminders of the frailty of the situation. God becomes a clumsy elephant and we forget where these ideas actually stem from; we forget the source and its benevolence.
Thank you for listening.
https://pixabay.com/music/world-sufi-dance-109190/
Music: This song, I think It's Going To Rain Today was written by Randy Newman and is sung here by Norah Jones . She is wonderful and the video evokes that sense of witnessing so much. It is a song about what we notice around us that needs our attention. Our greatest challenge after learning to care for ourselves is learning how to be a helper in this world.
the video is by Jimbosity007
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.