Rumi as a Soul Friend

Intimacy and Informality with the Divine

Numerous languages have quite pronounced formal and informal modes of speaking. In English, it is less overt. In Korean, the way you address someone and the turns of phrase you choose indicates the nature of your relationship – be it a stranger, an elder, or a close friend or lover.

Certain Persian colloquialisms have a poetic quality. In Farsi, delam barat tang shode translates as, “My heart has tightened for you,” or we might say, “Your absence constricts my heart.” In other words, “I really, really miss you!”

Doret begardem means, “I circle around you.” It is an affirmation of the centrality of someone, our desire to rotate around them, to do anything for them. In numerous spiritual traditions, as diverse as pre-Islamic Arabian goddess worship to Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism, circumambulation—or circling around a sacred idol—is an act of religious devotion.

“In his native Aramaic, Christ called God, not Father, but something closer to ‘Daddy’. This reveals an informality and ease which arises not from a lack of respect but from genuine intimacy.”

The mystic knows that the divine relationship is an amalgam of unknowable mystery, passionate eros and unconditional friendship. That divine bond exists in every heart and is somehow simultaneously transcendent of this world and very much part of our daily lives.

I wanted to include these lyrics to demystify mystical love somewhat, and express it as a natural inclination of the human heart.

May your relationship with the Divine be as intimate and real, loving and genuine, as your heart yearns for it to be.

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Gratitude for art by Rassouli from the Rumi Oracle.

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