O My Mind! Be Like This Body

The year is new,

my ignorant habits rather old.

How my debts and deficits loom,

my incapacities mock me, my

incompetence, shortcomings, my

haste, my lethargy, my impatience, my

careless, reckless inconsiderations!

My little cruelties, liberties, the hurts and

injuries inflicted by my thoughtlessness.

I'm haunted by the petty past, disturbed

by the unlikely future, confronted daily by both.

Will creditors come knocking? there's a hole in my stocking.

Not even a good depression provides any refuge.

Existential angst and indecision, banal

and deadening in its itchy grip –

broken promises, broken trusts . . . and

Beloved Rumi says to come anyway, just come!

O my mind! be like this body:

humble, hale and hardy, robust and

full of the Lord's Name.

O my mind! contemplate this deeply,

with feeling, and with interest and passion:

sing it aloud, speak it over again,

whisper it in a murmur, breathe it,

let it ride on the breath resonating

day in and day out, all through the night

and into dawn.

Let it soothe your panic, buck you up –

the Lord's Name isn't some dried crust of the walking dead –

know it to be fresh and living! let it sweeten your tongue,

sweeten your atmosphere, guide your perspective!

It's a very refined and delicate undertaking, you see,

like guiding a silk thread through a fine needle's eye – to

sew the foundation seaming the gap in the sack

of potatoes you are hauling to feed all the neighbors.