One of the best things about finding oneself on the lee side of normal and accepting the self warts and all, is the repurposing the bits broken by circumstance and catastrophe. There are a number of characteristics that I sport that do not fit well socially or within cultural norms. The ones that are hard wired in me and are not coping mechanisms require that I give them jobs. Some of this gainful employment has not been invented yet requiring some parts of me left only to interpretive dance. I've done my best in this and I now have a cadre of misfit toys running around in my psyche doing errands, monitoring my wild, and setting fires where needed (but are rarely wanted). I gave all these parts jobs. Advancement has a lot more to do with whether I'm killed or caught than if there is any bacon brought home.
A broken person can be left to steep in worries and deep concerns for health and safety. All energies can be focused on keeping the ramparts reinforced and sturdy with worry, bravado and vengeance. The truth is one cannot hold both worry and faith unless that faith is based in worry. It is either one or the other. To merge both is to eliminate both and be fixed into a self fulfilled prophesy of victim hood. We worry because we were modeled it or adopted it as a way to feel falsely safe in the world. It is not real safety but - by god - dangers and upset - as phantoms or real - are not going to come sneaking up on a person! In this way, worry is something of a comfort which can feel better than nothing. One can rejoice in, "I knew it!" but it is cold comfort to chase a never ending cycle of suffering.
Worry is draining. It serves in the moment and it is easy. Faith is fulfilling but it is hard as it is cultivated over time and through experience. Faith and worry require we be in a relationship with them and like any relationship, it must be tended to regularly. The energy of our experiences are processed into reality through our living our lives. We can take these experiences and give them to learning or we can use them to support our expectations of consistently unfortunate outcomes. Some people choose religion and they like that kind of structure and some religions even integrate a person's obsession with worry into their dogma. Others, like myself, enjoy engaging in a more organic alliance in cultivating an autonomous and sincere connection with spirit. My worries are concerns and they are not allowed management positions.
In this poem, Hafiz encourages us to seek better employment when we are agents of fear constructing monsters and misfortune.
Thank you for listening.
https://pixabay.com/music/world-kolkata-in-the-distance-16558/
Music: I listen to this album Rough and Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan when I'm in the pool, so this song conflated into what I was writing today. I listened about parts both shattered and found. In the song, My Own Version of You Dylan seems to be picking out what he's dissembled and discovered to create what he wants with the parts. The song plods along deliciously imitating the pedestrian business of construction of faith. He doesn't waste time worrying about much.
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here. Also, my thoughts on this series a year into these poems, HERE.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.
My book can be purchased HERE. E-book HERE. The Season Two blogcasts with audio excerpts from my book begin HERE: in Behind The Lines. This reading of the book excerpts in a mixed media format is Season Two of this blog. These recorded excerpts are outside the chronological order in which the book was written. Podcasts with audio only beginning with episode 22 can be found HERE.
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