If this is your first time
In the Conference of the Birds,
You must expect all kinds.
It is easy to fall in love
With the swallows, eagles
And nightingales.
But less easy to fall
For birds of lesser plumage,
Though you are one yourself.
But it is ever true
That the less easy path
Is the best for you.
For being
More accepting,
You would be
Less damning,
Not only of others,
But more succinct,
Of yourself.
Silence! The chair-bird
Is speaking,
“We are here, o’ seeker,,
To help you find
And accept
You.”
“We are here, o’ wanderer,
To help you defeat
The enemy’s devices,
To bear your ashes
To the Master,
And hence from
A phoenix
Rises.”
Farid-Ud-Din Attar is a prince amongst poets when he wrote the mystical poetry entitled The Conference of the Birds in the 12th century. A Persian sufi in the way of Rumi and Hafez annotating the unyielding attraction of man to God. I myself was not invited to the conference, not being on the mailing list of sufi birds. I am Taufiq, who is a thief amongst sinners, plying my trade with lofty text scribbled while I sit hunched behind a pillar in the Halls of the Wise. If you ask any of them, they shall not know me, inscrutable as I am, hidden in the shadows.
If you think however that I extol what I do not know, then you err - For I hear the church bells ringing, and I hear the muezzin calling, and by the sea, words of love pour forth from an Ocean of Infinite Mercy. I do not know poetry very well, but what I hear, I record, just like No.104 above. May we be guided if we are wrong, but if it is by His Plan that we are lost, then I am happy to be lost in His Hands.
Tomorrow is Sunday, sunshine. Bless the day by remembering who you are and where you came from. By His Grace, surely you shall return to Him in a happy carriage of smiles, a phoenix rising.
Pax Taufiqa.
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