Love Dogs

One night a man was crying,
“Allah, Allah!”
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express
is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.

Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273)

He stopped praying because he never heard anything back. He states that he has never had a response in his life. I wonder why he is praising God at the start of the poem. If in fact he is giving thanks to God then he has at one time received a response. I personally think prayer should always start with a thank you rather than an ask.

This Rumi poem poses numerous personal questions … Does God respond to prayer? Could it be that the longing itself is the connection – the more the longing the more the connection like a dog in grief? What is God’s response to personal prayer? Is our prayer based on selfish desire – what we want. Is a non-response an appropriate response? How does providence provide an answer to prayer? And is God’s response internally within us all the time – the God within?

From Wikipedia … Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, Hanafi faqih (jurist), 
Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian (mutakallim), and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran.