The final stanza of Rumi’s The Guest House reads like this: "Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond." We have looked this week at how it is good for our souls to pay attention to what shows up at the front door of our “guest house” – the “momentary awareness”, the joy, the shame. But what if, even more than it just being helpful not to reject these parts of our human experience, there is actually something more – God speaking to us through these very things? Someone once called dreams “unopened letters from God”. What if these “guests” we’ve been welcoming this week are also just that? Ways in which God-in-our-deeps, who knows exactly what is happening in the places of our soul that are darker to us, invites us to see, to open, to heal? How might you not only welcome what comes to the door today, but also be grateful for each one? Not just tolerate the noisier, smellier guests, but thank God for their presence in your awareness today, their voice speaking things you wouldn’t have known without them? Read through the whole poem again, with an eye to this nuance, of God in each “guest”. "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." What do you discover? How does your soul respond? Welcome that response. Be hospitable to your messengers. And then, as we have been practicing, let them go.

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2021-01-15 14:43:50 UTC