Rumi, Journey and Discovery

Pilgrims
why are you turning round in circles,
what are you looking for?
The Beloved is here, why search in the desert?

If you look deep in your heart
you will find Him within yourself.
You have made the pilgrimage and
trod the path to Mecca many times.

You rave about the holy place
and say you've visited God's garden
but where is your bunch of flowers?
You tell stories about diving deep into the ocean
but where is your pearl?

There is some merit
in the suffering you have endured,
but what a pity you have not discovered
the Mecca that's inside.

J. Rumi

(Gardens of the Beloved)

Journey of Love

I feel myself revisiting Hajj 2005 in more than one way. And the process has led me down memory lane to scavenge for scraps of writing from that trip. I leave on Thursday for Saudi Arabia, to perform the Umrah pilgrimage with my loved ones. It will be the first time since that landmark Hajj four years ago. I also wonder how very much I have changed since that time... Some change is mandatory, some not so obvious.

In preparation for the Journey, I wrote this piece in November 2005:
The Pilgrim

I do hope that my style of writing has improved, although the space for reflection still exists, thankfully :) I wrote Struggling with GOodbyes just before I left, in December. (I still use words like 'whirr')

I kept a Hajj Journal for my varied encounters; for those days when I happily merged with the crowd to be a single mass of collective worship. A mass of Love. And this, the Journey of Love. I scribbled notes in the darkest hour of night when the camps in Mina finally laid to rest. And again when they awoke to the call of the early morning prayer, and the energy of people ascended to the heavens in one voice. I learnt surrender. I could not find the words to write it. I just knew. I wrote about The Hajj, soon after my return, in attempting to capture it all; but more because I wanted to reclaim that feeling once again. The evasive surreal. I could only try. My favourite piece: The Hajj.

I surrendered once more to the evasive surreal. I wrote a poem a week later: Perfect Circles suggested that even if I could not capture what was, I could own it. I made peace with me.