Alone upon her roof under the eastern sky, Rabi’a of Basra used to pray:
"O my Lord,
the stars are shining
and the eyes of men are closed,
and kings have shut their doors,
and the every lover is alone with [the] beloved,
and here I am alone
with Thee." (1)
“Alone—with Thee.” Among the whirling stars that spin so slowly across the sky, Rabi’a knows loneliness and sleeplessness, and she turns them into gifts of the presence of Allah, the One God Who pervades everything. Her love is not distracted by love for anyone or anything other than God, nor is her divine ardor muffled by sleep. She awakens, dancing, spinning, turning as the galaxies and the planets turn, with the One Beloved.
Recently I stepped outside my door at midnight to share Rabi’a’s dance. I invite you to share it now. Here, now, indoors, the roof gets in between us and the sky. And above the roof, the sun makes the sky opaque, a blue curtain that veils the stars. Or is it a woolly gray-white fog that blocks our sight? No matter. Here, now, close your eyes, so you’ll have even more layers of veiling: eyelids, roof, clouds, blue sky.
Now in your mind’s eye see the stars, up there, dancing the whirling dance of the universe. You don’t see them; but you know they are there, companions to your wakeful turns of thought.
"This is how I would die
into the love I have for you.
As pieces of cloud
dissolve in sunlight." (2)
Did Rumi read Rabi’a? Did the same stars sing Allah’s song to both of them?
Let yourself spin, slowly, slowly with the universe as you say:
LA ILLAHA ILLA 'LLAH HU.
There is no God but God; none else exists. (3)
"Don’t sleep now. Let the turning
night wheel through this circle
Stay awake with these
lights. Don’t sleep." (4)
Years ago, in a wet climate, on a damp summer night heavy with cloud, I put a canoe into the water. It was cloudy and the moon was dark: no stars. I paddled slowly, languidly, across the lake and into a flooded swamp of trees. Fireflies shone among the branches. I stopped paddling and let the boat drift. The water grew still. The lights of reflected fireflies flickered in the waters below. Above me, around me, below me, a net of fireflies shining in the dark, spinning, dancing. Like being lost in space, among the whirling stars.
LA ILLAHA ILLA 'LLAH HU.
There is no reality except the One Reality.
Lose yourself. Lose yourself in space. Lose yourself in time. Lose self. Stay with the One Great Love, and say again with Rabi’a:
"O God, Another Night is passing away,
Another Day is rising --
Tell me that I have spent the Night well so I can be at peace,
Or that I have wasted it, so I can mourn for what is lost.
I swear that ever since the first day You brought me back to life,
The day You became my Friend,
I have not slept --
And even if You drive me from your door,
I swear again that we will never be separated.
Because You are alive in my heart." (5)
In the far north woods and taiga, making his way, year after year, ten thousand miles across Turtle Island, my father watched the stars and the planets and the northern lights, wheeling above his tent. He rose in the night to see the moon and the planets moving among the fixed stars. Each evening, as the veil of sky thinned, he named each light as the brightest ones shone through first. Each morning he said farewell to them by name as the dawn’s curtain thickened. In his journal he recalled ecstasy under those stars.
LA ILLAHA ILLA 'LLAH HU.
There is no God but God; none else exists.
In the words of Rumi:
Stars burn clear
all night till dawn.
Do that yourself, and a spring
will rise in the dark with water
your deepest thirst is for." (6)
When you can’t sleep, when your loneliness seems unbearable, remember that you are never alone. You don’t exist separate from the Great Heart that holds you. Wakeful, turn to that Great Heart full of bright shining love.
LA ILLAHA ILLA 'LLAH HU.
There is no reality except the One Reality.
There is no God but God; none else exists.
"Dear Love, among the shining stars
I am alone with you."
_____________________________________
SOURCES
1. Rabi´a al-Adawiyya of Basra. Margaret Smith, The Way of the Mystics: The Early Christian Mystics and the Rise of the Sufis, NY: Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 222 Found online at http://www.mythinglinks.org/NearEast~3monotheisms~Islam~Rabia.html
2. Rumi. In Birdsong: Fifty-three Short Poems by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Coleman Barks, Arthur John Arberry. Maypop, 1993, p. 30.
3. From “Sacred Phrases and Translations” of the Dances of Universal Peace, found online in March 2009 at www.pdxdances.org/sacred.html.
4. Rumi. Birdsong, tr. Barks, p. 44.
5. Rabi´a al-Adawiyya of Basra, found online in May 2009 in many collections such as http://shakurlatif.blogspot.com/2008/10/rabia-al-adawiyya.html.
6. Rumi. In Birdsong, tr. Barks, p. 44.
