Thoughts...

Poem:

The garden of
Love
s green without
limit
and yields many
fruits other than sorrow
and joy.
Love is beyond either
condition:
without spring,
without autumn,
it is always fresh.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi

I'm not a thinker. I'm too impulsive to be a thinker. I am not one of those people who sit and contemplate the world and people and what is going on around them. I am aware that this is something I should cultivate in myself - a muslim should always be looking inward as well as outward. A Muslim should always be contemplative and introspective. For this is the only way to make sure you are on the straight path, and are staying on it. That you are doing the best you can.

I like Rumi, as you may have guessed. He was a great Sufi, and a great thinker. His poetry makes me wish I could speak and read arabic, because if its beauty transcends to english, then how beautiful must it be in Arabic?!

This poem is amazing to me. It is so simple and yet the more I read it the more complex the message seems to be. Yet it is still so simple. Love is always fresh. It never grows old or stale. My love for Allah, for the Prophet (SAW), for my deen, even my mom and my dad - is fresh. How can it age? And how aptly he describes love as a garden, because love is a garden - because gardens yield beauty and bounty.

I could go on but I wont.

But the message I walk away with from this poem is this: Love should be kept fresh. It should be kept like a garden. A garden needs to be tended, to be taken care of to really prosper. We should look to our garden of love - and we should take care of it.

So.... what put me in this introspective mood? Well, I was working at IslamExpo (please read up about it at: http://islamexpo.info) and a lady brought in something rather special for the exhition. If you people dont come for anything else, come for this! She brought in a Quran that has been passed down her family for generations - a Quran almost 300 years old that was given to her family by King Babar of the Moghul Empire as a thank you for help they gave him. The story goes that King Babar and his entourage were going through this hilly area near Jelum in what is now Pakistan. And as you can imagine the main way to travel back then was horses and camels in those times. Apparently there was some problem with the horses and many of the King's horses died - and this ladies family provided the King with more horses to aid him on his journey; and in gratitude this Quran was presented to them.
Isnt that amazing? It was a stunning Quran, hand painted, all the calligraphy done by hand, bound in deer skin and what might be gold. It was awe inspiring and humbling to have this Quran and to touch it...

Subhanallah what an experience!