“This body is a guesthouse each morning someone new arrives.

Welcome them all for they may be messengers from the invisible.

Each time a thought enters your heart treat it as an honored guest…

Be grateful for all you receive, good and bad alike, for it may be a gift from the treasury of Spirit that will bring fulfillment of your most secret desire.”

Excerpts from Rumi’s Little Book of Life: The Garden of the Soul, The Heart, and the Spirit p.16 (trans: Mafi/Kolin)

Listen!

Who is that, knocking at our own door right now?

Oh what to do? What to do?!?!

So hard to decide:

Stay or Go?!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

What if we choose “No”?

Refusing to answer

Because our heart rides river rapids filled with dread

Buoyed by belligerent resentment

Maybe afloat on the ballast of invincible assurance of our “rightness”, another’s “wrong”.

Or perhaps instead we are submerged by waves of fear, watching as our confidence…

Water in a desert…

Trickles away to nothing?

With “No” I will risk

Never knowing:

…Who took the time

To stop by.

…Who would explain the “Why?” of their presence

At this exact moment.

…What unlikely Visitor would deliver a message carried miles for me alone?

“No” says:

“I elect to live with a Lesser Stream of water

One less turbulent…

Tho it leave me

Wondering

Forever…

What was mine in that moment…

Now gone.”

So then I muse,

“Just how long could one truly and fully sustain a life with such choices?”

Time would surely float past

The water closing ever so slowly overhead

Barely perceptible but…

Inexorable

Ever.

Always.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless…

~~~~~~~~~~~~

…we chose instead “Yes”…?

No matter how our Visitor may frighten us?

Anger us?

Sadden us?

No matter how ill-timed their arrival may be?

Consider:

The new possibility gifted to us

At the sound of every knock.

Imagine instead choosing a “Yes” called Curiosity.

Trembling hand on the door knob

Poised in stillness

For a mere single droplet of a moment

We

Oh…

Lean away just a degree or two from our

Hammering heart hesitations

Only long enough

To peer out…

There.

Just a fraction

Beyond.

Beyond…

What we thought surely must be there.

Slowly now

Shhhh

Gently

Finding in the act of opening

Of looking…

We are gifted instead

With a sharp knife of

Crystal

Clear

Vision

Slicing the shadows cleanly away.

We now see

On our doorstep

One small lost piece of our True Self

Forlorn

Wearied

Huddled

Hidden

Hoping…

To hear “Yes! You belong. Your respite is here.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Yes” promises

We need never live

In doubt

Or fear

Again.

“Yes”

Assures

We will Seek

And Find

Always

Our own Miracle Visitor…

With every knock.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh say “Yes”,

Evermore..

Vow never again

To close that door.