Tipping Point

21 Jan

Tipping Point

Beth Blog 0 0

A week of business travel and tests of mind, body, and heart, set between two Rumi bookends:

The Old Woman and the Falcon

When you give a noble falcon

to a fussy old woman who knows nothing of falconry, she will clip its wings short, for its own good.

Young man, where has your mother been that your toenails have gotten this long? Those talons are how the falcon hunts its food.

The old woman fixes him tutmaj, dumpling stew. He won’t touch it. Too good to eat my tutmaj, huh? She ladles some broth and holds it to his beak. Her anger builds, and suddenly she pours the ladle of hot soup over his head.

Tears come from those beautiful falcon eyes. He remembers his former life, the king’s love-whistle, the great circling over the ocean, the distances that condense so quickly to a point.

Falcon tears are food for a true human being, perfume for Gabriel.

Your soul is the king’s falcon,

who says, This old woman’s rage

does not touch my glory or my discipline.

And the other bookend:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

Life isn’t as punctual in handing out test grades. We can go through the entire curriculum and not know how we performed. And then, one has to ask, with whom or what am I competing?

A doorsill plane window. A sliver moon at sunset. Two worlds touching. A different kind of falcon’s wings. No competition. Only a heart soaring on falcon’s wings vowing never to go back to sleep. Awake in the beauty of loving and kneeling.