sign of the times

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of peace.
-----Ecclesiastes

Und alles Drangen, alles Ringen
Ist ewige Ruh in Gott dem Hernn.
----Goethe

As I turn to write of my woes,
the paper is infinitely still,
the pen is but a flame.
----after Amir Khursrau

I SPIN, I spin, around, around,
And close my eyes,
And let the bile arise
From the sacred region of the soul’s Profound;
Then gaze upon the world; how strange! how new!
The earth and heaven are one,
The horizon-line is gone,
The sky how green! the land how fair and blue!
Perplexing items fade from my large view,
And thought which vexed me with its false and true
Is swallowed up in Intuition; this,
This is the sole true mode
Of reaching God,
And gaining the universal synthesis
Which makes All—One; while fools with peering eyes
Dissect, divide, and vainly analyse.
So round, and round, and round again!
How the whole globe swells within my brain,
The stars inside my lids appear,
The murmur of the spheres I hear
Throbbing and beating in each ear;
Right in my navel I can feel
The centre of the world’s great wheel.
Ah peace divine, bliss dear and deep,
No stay, no stop,
Like any top
Whirling with swiftest speed, I sleep.
O ye devout ones round me coming,
Listen! I think that I am humming;
No utterance of the servile mind
With poor chop-logic rules agreeing
Here shall ye find,
But inarticulate burr of man’s unsundered being.
Ah, could we but devise some plan,
Some patent jack by which a man
Might hold himself ever in harmony
With the great whole, and spin perpetually,
As all things spin Without, within,
As Time spins off into Eternity,
And Space into the inane Immensity,
And the Finite into God’s Infinity,
Spin, spin, spin, spin.
---Dowden, E.

The words form Ecclesiastes are, I think, my favourite from any religious text. To some they may suggest a perfect hramony, an unchanging centre to our being, a place where still waters run deep. Each thing, each part of our identity, must find its proper place and time, be at one with its destiny. Peace would be an acceptance of the part of Being that is parceled out to us. But to me these words speak of just the opposite. Turn , turn and turn we must, but in the heart and not the body. Each thing has its time and place, its 'season'. Qalb: a constant uprooting. For anything to grow we must dance ourselves out of those former selves, must die into becoming.

A star-to our minds- gives the impression of permanence, but is in truth nothing but fire and light, a spark in the darkness that lives on through many a death, a flicker of time itself. The mountains melt beneath our feet, all is perishing just as so many new vistas open up before us. This is the the way it has always been, the way it always will be; ours is only to read the sign of the times and move on.

Let me run, run and
never find
---Shah Latif

~
there are always signs. even the lack of a sign is a sign of something.