Bring Your Live Heart

Amy brought this Rumi poem to my attention this week:

Bring a hundred sacks of gold and God will say, "Bring the heart."

And if you bring a dead heart carried like a coffin on your shoulder, God will say, "O Cheat! Is this a graveyard? Bring the live heart! Bring the live heart!"

If you haven't any knowledge and opinions,

have good opinions about God. This is the way.

If you can only crawl, crawl to Him.

If you can not pray sincerely, offer your dry, hypocritical, agnostic prayer

for God in His mercy accepts bad coin.

If you have a hundred doubts of God,

make them into 90 doubts. This is the way.

O, Seeker! Though you have broken your vows a hundred times, Come again, Come again!

For God has said, "Though you are on high or in the pit consider me, for I am the Way."

When I received this poem, I was carrying a dead heart on my shoulders. Two and a half weeks into a serious cancer diagnosis has left me staggering. Daylight is great. I can find my way, sometimes gracefully, even with a bit of courage. When evening hits, all the personal demons come out to play. We are making room for all of this.

George and I are in an alternative treatment center in Florida for three weeks before we meet with Oncologists back home. I get sick to my stomach imagining what is ahead, but here I am spreading all of this out so I can see it, feel it, and find myself back into this body that is doing something I don't fully understand.

I plan to write here, now and then, so that I can stay in touch. So many of you have been in touch with me and I feel really loved, and I am overwhelmed with unpacking this experience so that I cant keep up with responding. This makes it easier to feel like we are all having a conversation. For now, thank you for signing in and listening. I love each of you.

Ali