what Jesus runs away from...

JELALUDDIN RUMI
(1207-1273)

What Jesus runs away from



The son of Mary, Jesus, hurries up a slope
as though a wild animal were chasing him.
Someone following him asks, 'Where are you going?
No one is after you.’ Jesus keeps on,
saying nothing, across two more fields. 'Are you
the one who says words over a dead person,
so that he wakes up?’ I am. 'Did you not make
the clay birds fly?' Yes. 'Who then
could possibly cause you to run like this?'
Jesus slows his pace.

I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind,
they are healed. Over a stony mountainside,
and it tears its mantle down to the navel.
Over non-existence, it comes into existence.
But when I speak lovingly for hours, for days,
with those who take human warmth
and mock it, when I say the Name to them, nothing
happens. They remain rock, or turn to sand,
where no plants can grow. Other diseases are ways
for mercy to enter, but this non-responding
breeds violence and coldness toward God.
I am fleeing from that.

As little by little air steals water, so praise
Is dried up and evaporates with foolish people
who refuse to change. Like cold stone you sit on,
a cynic steals body heat. He doesn't feel
the sun. Jesus wasn't running from actual people.
He was teaching in a new way.