whatever I was looking for was always...

I've tried several times today to post some photographs from this weekend's snowstorm. It doesn't seem to be in the cards yet.

Christmas was good.

My heart's still aching, urging me to reach toward Mad-town even as I ask myself, "What more do you need to hear from him?" I don't need to be rejected again. But why this strong feeling that it's not over?

I have five things to say,
five fingers to give into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist, nor any other.

Second, whatever I was looking for
was always you.

Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,
and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?

Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?

So the lover speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union
of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others
are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not-being.

I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.
['Five Things', from Rumi: The Book of Love {trans. & commentary by Coleman Barks}. Rabia is "the woman mystic from Basra who said that a love for God should not come out of fear or hope but in response to the beauty in the heart. She once sat indoors with her eyes closed on a lovely spring morning to teach that external magnificence is only a reflection of inner kindness and generosity, and that is divine grace." Sema is, in the words of Coleman Barks, "the deep listening of the ecstatic turning."]

Well, my friends? What advice have you, for one who cannot - or will not - let go? Has this ache settled into my heart for some purpose? Or do I simply hold onto the pain so that my hand will not be empty?