April 2021: Rumi’s Call for Love - The Way to Resurrection!
/ای سرافیل قیامتگاه عشق
ای تو عشق عشق و ای دلخواه عشق
"You call for love like the angel Seraph,
love wrapped in love is your resurrection way!"
~Rumi
Source: Mathnawi III: 4693
Translated by Dr. Fariba Enteshari
© Rumi Educational Center
Reflection on the Quote:
A message from Dr. Fariba Enteshari, Founder & Executive Director
Rumi’s introduction to life was not easy. As a teenager, he was forced to leave his home town, Balkh, behind forever. Balkh was a major city in the eastern part of greater Persia, close to the silk road. Rumi’s father, an Islamic jurist, was facing challenges because of his mystical views of Islam. Rumi had to say goodbye to his sister, his beloved teacher, Borhan, leaving his home town at thirteen, joining his parents in a caravan full of his father’s followers, moving into the unknown.
Harsh years of traveling dominated the years of his youth. There was no place in sight to call home except the forever-moving caravan. Once they resided temporarily in the north west part of greater Persia, where his mother died, most probably due to the hazards of their traveling. He was only eighteen.
Like Rumi’s, my introduction to life was full of unexpected turbulence. When I was 18 years old, the Iranian revolution was in full swing, the schools were closed and my parents faced a difficult decision, whether to send out their first born child all by herself or to wait and leave together. They wanted me to go to school so they sent me first into ‘my unknown’. Shortly after they sent me to Germany, the Iran and Iraq war started. We lived in the city of Khoramshar at the border of Iraq. The city was bombed and half the city was taken over by Iraqi forces. My parents did not get the chance to join me. They had to deal with their own piece of an unknown journey sorting through the wreckage that the war left them.
While studying Rumi teachings, I was most puzzled by his view of the world! After tasting a flavor of his kind of bitter journey firsthand in the 20th century, I knew how hard it is to relate to life in an optimistic way when the introduction to life suddenly becomes all too confusing. Growing up in one land and leaving all you know behind for an unknown— not to mention the losses, the grief lived through at a young age; yet Rumi leaves behind the most enthusiastic poetic teachings always pointing us toward the abundance and generosity that life offers.
How is this possible?
I found my answer within the wisdom he gained through his connection to the Divine. Once he dived into his own depth, to his direct connection to the Source— he became a chanting, dancing, vibrant particle of the universe, always evolving in the flow of all there is.
Within this flow of harmonious currents he finds his resurrection place.
Listening to the call of love, wrapped in this harmony, he hears the call of love in the trumpet of Angel Seraph welcoming the journey that bore him within the love, where the perpetual creation transforms into perpetual resurrection within the flow. Love!
-Dr. Fariba Enteshari