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Standing on the Edge of the Roof
"Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof."I confess that when I first read the little quote by Jalaluddin Rumi that I have included on your orders of service, I just assumed that the experience he was describing was one of ecstasy. Yes, I know what he means, I thought. Intoxicated by life itself or by the sheer beauty of the universe, made drunk by all that blesses one’s life: I think I know what he is talking about. "Sit down and be quiet." Take the time to savor and enjoy your one-time life before it is too late. Be careful, because it is all so precarious: you are standing at the edge of the roof. Every thing that is precious to you is mortal. Enjoy even these seemingly endless winter days, for they have a beauty all their own, and all too soon they, too, shall pass: days of your life, no matter how you slip and slide through them.-Rumi
But then I began to think: maybe it’s not about ecstasy. It is ambiguous, after all. "Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof." You are drunk. Maybe, I thought, it’s a threat or a warning. Maybe the poet is scolding us. Sit down and be quiet before you fall down. In a world which threatens to send us over the edge in anger and frustration and disappointment, in a world filled with so much sorrow and sadness, so much grief and tragedy, so many lies and half-truths, so much cruelty and hate, sometimes we simply need to acknowledge that reality and to stop what we are doing, and be still.
Either way, it works.
Rumi is a popular poet these days, part of a personal spirituality trend that began at least twenty years ago. Interestingly enough, given contemporary world events, this thirteenth century Sufi poet was born in Afghanistan. At age thirty-seven Rumi "discovered the inner Friend, the soul, the Beloved, a constant reminder of God’s presence" [Lynn Ungar].
I suppose it is my sometime-skepticism about that presence of God, and about the existence of the soul, which makes me cynical at times. This world may well be the edge of the roof, but whether it is the edge of ecstasy or of doom I am unable to say. Either way, the advice to sit down and be quiet is worthy of our serious consideration.
For centuries spiritual practitioners have extolled the virtues of quiet and rest from worldly things and desires. The word quiet comes from the Latin "quies," which means "to rest." Thomas Merton, the great twentieth century spiritual writer and monk, has written in his book The Silent Life,
The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Not all men are called to be hermits, but all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally. When that inner voice is not heard, when man cannot attain that spiritual peace that comes from being perfectly at one with his own true self, his life is always miserable and exhausting. For he cannot go on happily for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul.If you can get by his undegenderized language, I think you might agree that he has a point: "Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof."
As time goes on, I more often than not feel myself teetering on the edge of that roof of blessing or curse. For as I grow older, I am more and more easily moved by all that is beautiful and good, I am more and more amazed by my own good fortune, I take it all less and less for granted than I used to. I know that it could all change in the blink of an eye. I know that the beauty which I see before me today is passing, and I need to stop and remember that at every opportunity I have.
I am also more and more discouraged by the state of the world. I find myself more and more disappointed by stupidity and greed, by ignorance and narrow-mindedness, by hatred and "the evil that men do." I hate this war that rages in Iraq, even as today I pray for those who are trying to go to the polls in that country and for those who are trying to protect them. I hate the terrible waste of resources: material, human, and yes, spiritual, that is ever and always the final product of war.
And I abhor the negative role of religion in all of it. Because, for me, religion is mostly about the ecstasy: otherwise, why bother? More and more, I find myself feeling like a stranger in a strange land: as a citizen, as a religious person, as a human being. I’m sorry, folks, but this is not the country that I love. That country is somewhere north of here among the spruces and the good salt air and a bunch of people many of whom are dead. I don’t know this other place of intolerance, belligerence, and bellicosity, of selfishness and greed, this place of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny, and to hell with everyone else. I’m sorry, but "freedom" has an empty ring for me these days.
So I need to sit down and be quiet. Quaker Douglas Steere writes [in "On Speaking Out of the Silence"] that the Quaker practice of silence owes its efficacy to
. . . the faith that there is something going on in our silent waiting, something beyond our surface minds’ capacity to grasp; that there is a yearning communication that is continually operative, and that an unprogrammed silent meeting for worship is a wonderful climate for communi- cation to break through; and that when vocal ministry comes out of this ground of communication and articulates it for the needs of those gathered together, conditions for inward transformation and strengthening are optimum indeed.Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof. Today, when so many politicians and pundits, terrorists and evangelists, claim to know the mind of God, and invoke God’s blessing on their side, I say, "be quiet!" Barbara Brown Taylor, from whom I read to you this morning, writes [in The Silence of God] that,
. . . Silence becomes God’s final defense against our idolatry. By limiting our speech, God gets some relief from our descriptive assaults. By hiding inside a veil of glory, God eludes our projections. God deflects our attempts at control by withdrawing into silence, knowing that nothing gets to us like the failure of our speech. When we run out of words, then and perhaps only then can God be God.Why can’t they all just shut up and let God be God? What arrogance leads them to believe that they, any of them, are acting in God’s behalf? We are standing on the edge of the roof, alright, and they are threatening to send all of us over it. What if instead of all their empty words, they just sat down and were quiet for a while? And we are not innocent, either: we are complicit.
Isaac of Niniveh, a Syrian monk, wrote that,
Many are avidly seeking but they alone find who remain in continual silence. . . . Every man who delights in a multitude of words, even though he says admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you with God. . . . [quoted in The Silent Life, by Thomas Merton]That, at least, is my hope. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, there is always ". . . the possibility that silence is as much a sign of God’s presence as of God’s absence--that divine silence is not a vacuum to be filled but a mystery to be entered into, unarmed with words and undistracted by noise--a holy of holies in which we too may be struck dumb by the power of the unsayable God."
Sit down and be quiet. Shut up and let God be God. You are standing on the edge of the roof. While Rumi is popular these days, I prefer the poetry of Kabir, the fifteenth century Indian mystic master poet and weaver. Kabir was influenced by both Sufi poets and Hindu idealism, but in the end he trusted neither completely. Curiously, he was illiterate. He said,
Saints, I see the world is mad.Why does this seem so relevant? But Kabir was a realist. He wrote,
If I tell the truth they rush to beat me,
if I lie they trust me.
I’ve seen the pious Hindus, rule-followers,
early morning bath-takers--
killing souls, they worship rocks.
They know nothing.
I’ve seen plenty of Muslim teachers, holy men
reading their holy books
and teaching their pupils techniques.
They know just as much.
And posturing yogis, hypocrites,
hearts crammed with pride,
praying to brass, to stones, reeling
with pride in their pilgrimage,
fixing their caps and their prayer-beads,
painting their brow-marks and arm-marks,
braying their hymns and their couplets,
reeling. They never heard of soul.
The Hindu says Ram is the Beloved,
the Turk says Rahim.
Then they kill each other.
No one knows the secret.
They buzz their mantras from house to house,
puffed with pride.
The pupils drown along with their gurus.
In the end they’re sorry.
Kabir says, listen saints:
they’re all deluded!
Whatever I say, nobody gets it.
It’s too simple.
What’s the world like?And he wrote,
A flock of sheep.
One falls in the ditch,
the rest jump in.
Joy is small;He wrote:
grief at the start, grief at the end.
The mind rushes on, a drunk elephant.
Can you forget joy and be free?
You leave truth and run after lies.
Fire and light blaze; you burn
like a moth, pleasing your eyes.
Think: what’s the way
to end sorrow?
Break your engagement with lies.
Your birth is guttering out in greed,
old age and death crowd close.World tied up in confusion,
everything comes and goes.
You got a human birth.
Why are you so deceived?
If you know you’re alive,This is the edge of the roof, and whatever intoxicates us on this day, whether of joy or grief, of blessing or curse, we had better sit down and be quiet in the face of the mystery of it lest we find ourselves slipping over into oblivion. But let us take courage in this community of faith, in the friends we are making here, and in whatever generosity of spirit we find here, as we join in singing together our final hymn [text by Rumi]:
find the essence of life.
Life is the sort of guest
You don’t meet twice.
Come, come, whoever you are,Amen.
wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
Ours is no caravan of despair.
Come, yet again come.
(poetry selections by Kabir are from his Bijak)
The Rev. Harold E. Babcock
