The Story Of Moses And The Shepherd
Mariam Ispahani
Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying, "God, where are you? I
want to help you, to fix your shoes and comb your hair. I want to wash
your clothes and pick the lice off. I want to bring you milk and kiss
your little hands and feet when it's time for you to go to bed. I want to
sweep your room and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats are yours.
All I can say, remembering you, is ayyyy and ahhhhh."
Moses could stand it no longer and said, "Who are you talking to?"
"The one who made us, and made the earth and made the sky," the
shepherd replied.
Angered, Moses said, "Don't talk about shoes and socks with God!
And what's this with your little hands and feet? Such blasphemous
familiarity sounds like you are chatting with your uncles.
Only something that grows needs milk. Only someone with feet needs
shoes. Not God! Use appropriate terms. Fatima is a fine name for a
woman, but if you call a man Fatima, it is an insult. Body-and-birth
language are right for us on this side of the river, but not for addressing
the origin, not for God."
The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and sighed and wandered
out into the desert.
The a sudden revelation came to Moses. God's voice said, "You have
separated me from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to
unite, or to sever? I have given each being a separate and unique way
of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge. What seems wrong
to you is right for him. What is poison to one is honey to someone
else. Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship, these mean
nothing to me. I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one
another. It 's not me that's glorified in acts of worship. It's the
worshipers! I don't hear the words they say. I look inside at the
humility. That broken-open lowliness is the reality, not the language!
Forget phraseology. I want burning. Be friends with your burning.
Burn up your thinking and your forms of expression!
Moses, those who pay attention to ways of behaving and speaking are
one sort. Lovers who burn are another. Don't impose a property-tax on
a burned-out village. Don't scold the Lover. The "wrong" way he talks
is better than a hundred "right" ways of others. Inside the Kaaba it
doesn't matter which direction you point your prayer rug! The ocean
diver doesn't need snowshoes! The love-religion has no code or
doctrine. Only God. So the ruby has nothing engraved on it! It doesn't
need markings."
God began speaking deeper mysteries to Moses, and he left himself and
came back. Then Moses ran after the shepherd. He followed the
bewildered footprints and finally caught up with him and said, "I was
wrong. God has revealed to me that there are no rules for worship.
Say whatever and however your loving tells you to. Your sweet
blasphemy is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world is freed."
The shepherd replied, "Moses, Moses, I have gone beyond even that.
You applied the whip and my horse shied and jumped out of itself.
The divine nature and my human nature came together. Bless your
scolding hand and your arm. I can't say what has happened. What I am
saying now is not my real condition. It can't be said." And the shepherd
grew quiet.
When you look in a mirror, you see yourself, and not the state of the
mirror. The flute player puts breath into a flute, and who makes the
music? Not the flute. The flute player!
Whenever you speak praise or thanksgiving to God, it is always like
this shepherd's simplicity. When you eventually see through the veils
to how things really are, you keep saying again and again, "This is
certainly not like we thought it was!"
Note: This story is from "The Essential Rumi" translated by Coleman
Barks with John Moyne. It is from one of the many works by the
famous Jalal al-Din Rumi. I titled the story and edited it a little.
Reference is made to the Prophet Moses, but it isn't an event which he
actually experienced.
Regards,
Mariam...("_")
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