Like many, I am flooded with feelings of disappointment, confusion and helplessness in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. I accept his election, but I am having a hard time accepting this swirl of sadness, and the fact that America is different than I thought it was. As I lament and grieve, I receive some solace – and balance – from the Sufi mystic Rumi (1207-1273) A Persian poet, I recite the Guest House every morning. It helps.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
In the wake of the election, there have been cascading moments when I feel that my spiritual and emotional house has been swept empty of its furniture. Rumi invites me – invites us – to welcome the intrusion, because there is something to be learned. And the welcome can be a doorway to hope.
And another Rumi poem offers a pathway to freedom:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.
When my stomach settles down a bit, and when my tears no longer feel like they are going to burst out from my eyes, I will again make the journey to the field beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing. And I will meet people there. It will be a space of grace and hope, and the place of transformation. We will need to be a bit strategic in this journey, because there are so many who are so adamant in their rightdoing and so certain in their vicious attacks of wrongdoing – Donald Trump himself, his most ardent supporters, adherents of the New Apostolic Reformation, along with many others – that it will not be effective stewardship to expect to meet them in that field of openness. But there are millions of others who yearn for this level of freedom, and who hunger for an abiding hope.
We can discover that field. Together.
