word from a friend

[Julie Smith]

Dearest Tova,

Sometimes when I hear your voice, I don't know how to respond.  What you
experience each day is so different from what I experience that I don't
know if I can find that place in me that will meet with you where you
are.

After reading your last e-mail, I knew I didn't have the words I needed
to send back to you.  I sent out a hope for something to come to me that
I might share with you, something that might ease your burden just a
little.

Yesterday my son asked me to take him to our favorite bookstore.  As I
was browsing there, I found a book of poems by Rumi. In reading the book
last night, I found the words I was looking for.  Here are two poems
from Rumi, through me, to you.

----

The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.

----

I was happy enough to stay still
inside the pearl inside the shell,

but the hurricane of experience
lashed me out of hiding and made me

a wave moving into shore, saying loudly
the ocean's secret as I went, and then

spent there, I slept like fog against
the cliff, another stillness.

----

Much love,

Julie

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