It’s been many years since I believed in a god the way I did when I was younger and I thought I wanted to be an orthodox rabbi. I’ve written here about one of the reasons I gave that belief up, but no matter how far I am from the person I was when the monotheistic god as the Jews understand him was central to how I understood the world, I am still moved by poetry steeped in spiritual and religious traditions, because even if you don’t believe in a god, you can’t deny the absolute nature of the unknown that lies beyond the boundaries of this life, and I do believe everything that is potentially good in human beings, including how we give our lives meaning, comes from the relationship we have with that absolute. Here, for example, is a passage from Saadi’s Golestan that moves me every time I read it:
A man of God immersed himself in meditation. When he emerged from the vision that was granted him, a smiling companion welcomed him back, “What beautiful gift have you brought us from the garden in which you were walking?”
The holy man replied, “I walked until I reached the rosebush, where I gathered up the skirts of my robe to hold the roses I wanted to present to my friends, but the scent of the petals so intoxicated me that I let everything fall from my hands.”
Learn love, O morning bird, from the moth’s
giving itself in silence to the fire.
Pretenders seek enlightenment in vain,
waiting to follow those who won’t return.
And You, who transcend all we can imagine,
whose existence we can neither guess at
nor claim to know as fact, of whose glory
all the world’s words—spoken or written—fall
immeasurably short, the end is here,
and we stand as we did when it all began,
tongue-tied lovers, awe-struck at Your beauty.
Cross posted on The Poetry in The Politics and The Politics in The Poetry.
I can’t deny it because I’m not really even sure what it means. :-\