CHAPTER THREE  -  Rumi. 

WEEK FOUR. conversation by clair and anna

"Sit down in the circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you".

Rumi

 ~ ~ ~

Am I a wolf?  Today I don't feel like the wolf.  Today I feel like the lamb.  No, not even the lamb, the rabbit.  Today I feel like a rabbit in the middle of a busy road, surrounded by flashing lights and roaring engines and swerving cars.  My husband is leaving me.  I discovered this morning, and by this afternon we've resolved to be grown up, and mature about it, we're civilised, we're appropriate, we're doing our best not to be socially awkward, but he's leaving me, and I feel like a rabbit on a busy road.  Maybe that's the fallacy of the western world -that even in your weakest, most vulnerable, most dangerously isolated moment you're still part of an economic and political system that makes you the wolf.  

anna

dear anna, 

we start out our writting week toether as strangers, i read your words above as my first contact with you and this contact seems to be at a very intense moment for you.   i feel your expression and honestly and your heart. 

~ ~ ~

for me it is the polical system, it is the govenment, it is the bank that it the wolf.  not me. and not you.  

~ ~ ~

i am a frowning light.  i am everso concerned with the unsoundness i see on earth.  and i am light.

i too, today,  have lived an emotionally difficult day ...

clair

Hi Clair,

So where is the line you have to cross to go from being lamb to being wolf?  From oppressed to oppressor?  Is it when I accidentally buy something that isn't ethically produced?   Is it when I switch over when the guilt-inducing charity ads come on the tv?  Is it when my (albeit meagre) savings are in a bank which invests in the arms trade?  Is it when I accept a system that is based on greed?  Is it when I turn on Friends instead of writing to an MP/CEO/Decision maker?  Is it when I don't hold my politicians accountable for their actions?  Is it when I buy another pair of shoes that could feed a family in sub-saharan Africa for a month?  Is it when I don't fight against the system with every penny, every second, every drop of blood, as I surely would if it was me, or my family being oppressed instead of some nameless other 6000 miles away?

I don't know.  But I'm reminded of that saying of Jesus' "It's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven" and think today that might say: "It's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a westerner to live an ethical lifestyle"!  I think it's a balancing act - maybe we have to find a way to live with the tiny things we do which make us complicit with the wolves without losing our minds, still never completely absolving ourselves of any blame at all?
Anna x

i hear you.    ... eventually,  i believe we ourselves are our best ownner, our best parent, our best  guide and our god.   looking after ourselves is our most precious and greatest responsibilty and only in doing this can we give the best to the earth, its animals and each other.  it is not selfish,  it is not greedy to be the best we can be and to give ultimate support to ourselves in this quest.

what we decide is' best' will be personal specific and part of being the best we can be,  is to make this decision wisely as well and re-jigging it where necessary.  and part of  fully  looking after ourseleves will involve our acceptance of things that are too difficult to sustainably do or feel....and to give ourselves some breathing space and acceptance for the fact that we are living in the western comsumerist world we do.

sustainability is of massive importance for burn out not to become a limiting factor so being too hard, too harsh, too disiplined or to be unforgiving, would call for eventual collapse/inability and dis ease and is not the way to ultimate heath.        

as they say, disipline the disapline

clair x 

I partially agree with you - our fundamental needs are for our own survival, but I think the problem (almost all of the problems, in fact) stems from situations when we consider our own survival in isolation.  I think to look out for yourself without giving any consideration to those around you allows you to disregard anything you do that hurts someone else.  This is what I think Rumi's saying about the circle - everyone is eye-to-eye in a circle, and you can't ignore the impact of your actions and words on others.  There's an old traveller saying that a story is told 'eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart'.  Not a bad lesson to live by? 

Anna x

exactly, part of looking after ourselves is to look after others treating them with respect and love... we completely do ourselves over if we treat people, other animals or our earth in any other way,  and, i belive, if we are well, our natural way will to be to do so.

 Sit down in the circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.  rumi

this is a beautiful image... i feel today that the wolf  is all the distractions....all the drink and other drugs, all the consumption... all the kidding ourselves, all the desception and the lies... all the lies...all the ones to ourself and to the other...

clair X

 

definition of Complicity.   implies that one has significant, though not necessarily principal, responsibility.