I'm so glad I listened to this and I highly recommend it to many. Anyone who loves the Bible parables Jesus uses to explain difficult realities to his followers will deeply enjoy Rumi's poetic style. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Moses. Though Rumi interprets Jesus' life differently than I, there is still so much to gain by reading Rumi's poetry about Jesus and other religious leaders, like Moses.
As a Roman Catholic, I latched onto the ways in which this renown Sufi author and I might perceive our spirituality more similarly than we differ. Rumi moves between the mundane and the celestial, the physical experience and the spiritual world to explain human behavior and provide words of wisdom. How fascinating this collection is! There is so much to unpack here. This is expertly narrated by Robertson Dean and includes 80 newly published poems, so I also recommend this Blackstone Audio production to veteran readers of Rumi's work. This being my first foray into Rumi's mystical poetry, I extremely appreciated the brief introductions to each section which I used as guideposts for greater appreciation and more thoughtful interpretation of the work therein. This collection of 13th-Century Sufi mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi's spiritual poetry is the revised and extended edition translated by Coleman Barks. I read this book right as the Coronavirus hit, but previous to this recent apocalypse, I took my wife and kids to Istanbul and one of the highlights was watching the dervishes in Galata twirl as the poetry of Rumi was chanted in a small, beautiful space, men spinning to God while the world seemed ready to veer into chaos. His words just dance and remind us that the divine exists and the divine is closer than we imagine. It twists and flutters, but never breaks. Rumi feels like a silk strand that connects the earth to the divine. Still, it isn't just Rumi's take on God (although I could make an argument that ALL his poems thread back to God), but his take on friendship, love, sex, wine, nature, etc., that all stand out. I think there is a truth that floats in the dance and patter of thy mystics that the dogmatic and the bureaucratic impulses of religion miss. Sufism, Zen, the Kabbalists, and gnostic anything. But beyond just poetry, I have always loved the mystical side of the major religions. "A gnostic says little, but inside he is full of mysteries." - Rumi God I love Rumi.
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