Yesterday evening a friend reminded me about a sermon I once preached in which I quoted from a variety of mystic poets. I hadn’t thought about that sermon in a long time, so it was fun to look it up and revisit it. It was originally preached early in January, but since every moment in whatever time of year offers us a chance to shift our perspective and begin again, it seems to me that it works just as well here at the ending of the year as it does at the beginning. I share it now with you.

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The new year is only a couple of weeks old. The sense of new beginnings and fresh possibilities is still hanging in the air. And so, in that spirit, I offer an antidote to the old, narrow understandings of God in which we sometimes get stuck. Our spiritual senses were made for wider vistas than that. Fortunately there is help for expanding our horizons. Today, rather than offering a lot of my own words, I choose instead to offer you the words of some old friends of mine. When I say “old” I’m not referring to how long I’ve known them, since I was only introduced to them relatively late in my life. I really mean “old.” Some of them from as far back as the 8th-century. I want to share with you some spiritual insights from a variety of mystics – folks from various faith traditions who experience God at a very intimate level through the path of the heart. Their poetry inspires me, and I hope will inspire you as well.

As you listen to these poems you will hear a variety of names for God, including “Beloved” and “Friend” and “Guest.” One of the interesting things about these writings is that it is often difficult to tell what particular faith tradition they are a part of. In the face of such an intimate encounter with the Holy, doctrines and dogmas just seem to fall away.

I will warn you, however, that you may need to set aside some of the images and understandings about God that you grew up with. I know that has been true for me. And oh, what freedom we discover when we do. So, sit back, relax, and listen to some sacred love poetry from folks who have learned to dance with the Mystery of God.

Hafiz was a man from the 14th-century, a Sufi poet from Persia. His poetry, like many of the mystics across the centuries, often imagines God as lover.

Like a pair of mismatched newlyweds,
One of whom still feels very insecure,
I keep turning to God saying,
‘Kiss me.’

Meister Eckhart, 14th-century Catholic monk from Germany, speaks with some humor (another quality shared by many of the mystics) about how unimaginable life would be apart from God’s intimate and ongoing presence.

If God let go of my hand,
I would weep so loudly,
I would petition with all my might,
I would cause so much trouble
that I bet God would come to God’s senses
and never do that again.

Thomas Aquinas,13th-century Catholic theologian from Italy, had these thoughts about the difference between genuine connection with God and the false understandings which so often seem to get in the way of that connection.

Sometimes we think what we are saying about God is true
when in fact it is not.
It would seem of value to differentiate between what is God’s nature
and what is false about Love.
I have come to learn that the truth never harms or frightens.
I have come to learn that God’s compassion and light
can never be limited.
Thus any God who could condemn is not a god at all
but some disturbing image in the mind of a child
we best ignore,
until we can cure the dark.

St. John of the Cross was a 16th-century Catholic friar from Spain who was persecuted by the Church for the form his faith took. Sadly, persecution is also a trait shared by many of the mystics when they dare to speak about God in terms other than those officially sanctioned by the “powers that be.” For St. John of the Cross, he was able to endure the experience because of the connection he shared with the Sacred.

“What is grace?” I asked God.
And God said, “All that happens.”
Then God added, when I looked perplexed,
Could not lovers say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms
was grace?
Existence is my arms,
though I well understand how one can turn away from me
until the heart has wisdom.”

Mira was a 16th-century woman from India who had a very earthy, sensual way of describing the experience of being in relationship with the Divine. This is another trait which is common among the mystics.

I know a cure for sadness:
Let your hands touch something that makes your eyes smile.
I bet there are a hundred objects close by that can do that.
Look at Beauty’s gift to us –
her power is so great she enlivens the earth, the sky, our soul.

and

God left His fingerprint on a glass the earth drinks from.
Every religion has studied it.
Churches and temples use the geometry of those lines
to establish rites and laws and prayers
and our ideas of the universe.
I guess there is just no telling how out of hand –
and wonderfully wild things will get
when our lips catch up to God’s.

Many of the mystics write of the profound joy which comes from an intimate experience of the Holy. Meister Eckhart wonders why so many people miss this experience.

How long will grown men and women in this world
keep drawing in their coloring books
an image of God
that makes them sad?

Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century Catholic nun from Spain, speaks about this experience in her own life.

Just these two words God spoke changed my life,
“Enjoy Me.”
What a burden I thought I was to carry –
a crucifix, as did He.
Love once said to me “I know a song, would you like to hear it?”
And laughter came from every brick in the street
and from every pore in the sky.
After a night of prayer,
God changed my life when God sang
“Enjoy Me.”

and

How did those priests ever get so serious
and preach all that gloom?
I don’t think God tickled them yet.
Beloved – hurry!

Another quality common among the mystics is seeing the presence of the sacred in everything that is, and especially in all people. Tukaram, a 17th-century Hindu mystic from India offers this humorous bit of insight:

I could not lie anymore
so I started to call my dog “God.”
First he looked confused,
then he started smiling,
then he even danced.
I kept at it:
now he doesn’t even bite.
I am wondering if this might work with people?

Kabir was a 15th-century Indian man who understood what it was to be misunderstood by those around him:

If I told you the truth about God,
you might think I was an idiot.
If I lied to you about the Beautiful One
you might parade me through the streets shouting,
“This guy is a genius!”
This world has its pants on backwards.
Most carry their values and knowledge in a jug
that has a big hole in it.
Thus having a clear grasp of the situation
if I am asked anything these days
I just laugh!

Catherine of Siena was a 14th-century Catholic nun from Italy who fell passionately in love with God from a very early age. She lived the rest of her short life filled with an awareness that God is everywhere. She wrote:

All the way to heaven is heaven.

This awareness often put her at odds with the power structure of the church.

All has been consecrated.
The creatures in the forest know this,
the earth does, the seas do, the clouds know
as does the heart full of love.
Strange a priest would rob us of this knowledge
and then empower himself
with the ability to make holy what already was.

Rumi, a 13th-century man, was a Sufi poet from the region we now know as Afghanistan:

With passion pray.
With passion make love.
With passion eat and drink and dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish
in this ocean of God?

Rabia was an 8th-century Sufi mystic from what is now Iraq. She was sold into sexual slavery at an early age. She gives expression to the transcendent quality of being in relationship with God.

In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church
where I kneel.
Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.
Is there not a region of love where the sovereignty
is illumined nothing,
where ecstasy gets poured into itself
and becomes lost,
where the wing is fully alive
but has not mind or body?
In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church
that dissolve,
that dissolve in God.

Hafiz expressed much the same thing this way:

I have learned so much from God
that I can no longer call myself
a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.
The Truth has shared so much of Itself with me
that I can no longer call myself
a man, a woman, an angel, or even pure soul.
Love has befriended me so completely
it has turned to ash and freed me
of every concept and image my mind has ever known.

Teresa of Avila put it this way:

God dissolved my mind – my separation.
I cannot describe now my intimacy with God.
How dependent is your body’s life on water and food and air?
I said to God, “I will always be unless you cease to Be.”
And my Beloved replied,
“And I would cease to Be if you died.”

One of the powerful themes which is found in the writings of many of the mystics is the oneness we share with God and with all things. Hafiz must have laughed out loud when these words flowed from his pen:

Resist your temptation to lie
by speaking of separation from God.
Otherwise, we might have to medicate you.
In the ocean a lot goes on beneath your eyes.
Listen, they have clinics there too
for the insane who persist in saying things like:
“I am independent from the sea.
God is not always around
gently pressing against my body.”

There is an immediacy which comes when God is experienced in such profoundly intimate ways. Kabir put it this way:

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think . . . and think . . . while you are alive.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten –
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

And finally, coming full-circle from where we began, these words from Rabia, inviting us into an image of God as divine lover:

God is sweet that way,
trying to coax the world to dance.
Look how the wind holds the trees in its hands
helping them to sway.
Look how the sky takes the fields and the oceans
and our bodies in its arms,
and moves all beings towards God’s lips.
God must get hungry for us.
Why is God not also a lover who wants the beloved near.
Beauty is my teacher
helping me to know
God cares for me.

May we open ourselves ever more fully to the intimate experience of God’s presence in our lives and in our world.

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All poems are taken from:
Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East & West
translated by Daniel Ladinsky ©2002