The Blind Men and an Elephant

I read an interview this morning with Ellen Burnstyn (who was in, among many other movies, Requiem for a Dream), and something she talks about rings so true with me, makes me feel less alone in my feeling that there isn't ONE right way to pray, to believe in God. There isn't one true religion. She is a Sufi (poet Rumi is a Sufi), and she talks of her initiation on top of the Alps, of how her teacher lit a candle to each of the major religions of the world and read from each of the sacred texts. How beautiful. Like the analogy of the blind men, each one feeling a different part of an elephant and forming their truth based only on the small part they felt, or like rivers and how the thousands of them all lead to the sea... I think we are all right. "The differences are in the dogma," E.B. says, "and the essence is very, very similar."

Here is a poem of Rumi's:

"Soul, Heart, and Body One Morning"

There's a morning when presence comes
over your soul. You sing like a rooster

to your earth-colored shape. Your heart
hears and, no longer frantic, begins

to dance. At that moment, soul reaches
total emptiness. Your heart becomes Mary,

miraculously pregnant, and body like a
two-day old Jesus says wisdom words.

Now the heart, which is the source of your
loving, turns to universal light, and the

body picks up the tempo and elegance of
its motion. Where Shams-i Tabriz walks

the footprints become notations of music
and holes you fall through into space.

I wish you a happy Thursday!