“Hatred only brings more hatred.”
You gotta love a woman who has survived a death camp, over 100 years on the planet and who STILL says that she loves everyone. Look at her eyes, you know it’s the truth.
I haven’t thrown a Rumi poem in here for awhile, so in honour of Alice, I am including the following:
Someone who goes with half a loaf of bread
to a small place that fits like a nest around him,
someone who wants no more,
who is not himself longed for
by anyone else.
He is a letter to everyone. You open it.
It says, Live.
I just saw this video of Alice the other day- what a beautiful woman.
By the way – on your recommendation from our train trip together during the Olympics – I just finished David Benioff’s City of Thieves. Wow. His writing made me feel like such an amateur writer… 🙂 Just gorgeous.
I’m glad you’re part of the Love Alice fan club 🙂 What spirit huh?
And yes, every time I read another great writer I find it equally part devastating (as in, I may as well give up now) and inspirational. All part of the deal I suppose.
Beautiful, a double Rumi day, and here I’d never heard any before. How amazing, to write strings of words that travel through hundreds, thousands of years, like beads on a string, growing more dazzling with every sharing.
Here’s the other one I was gifted with today, as it seems to be finding its way here
On the day I die, when I am being carried
Toward the grave, don’t weep. Don’t say,
He’s gone! He’s gone. Death has nothing
To do with going away. The sun sets and
The moon sets, but they’re not gone.
Death is a coming together. The tomb
Looks like a prison, but it’s really
Release into union. The human seed goes
Down in the ground like a bucket into
The well where Joseph is. It grows and
Comes up full of some unimagined beauty.
Your mouth closes
here and immediately
Opens with a shout of joy there.
OH. I’m sure I’ve never read that one before. Isn’t he amazing? I’m not going to write “wasn’t” he, because he feels to alive through these words. Between Rumi and Mary Oliver, I think I’m set for words of wisdom 🙂 Thanks for this Laurie.