nat-a-tat-tat

My daddy for waking up and going to work before the sun comes up. Its been his purpose for thirty some odd years and still counting. My mama-her love is disarming. smurfette "OUR DEEPEST FEAR IS NOT THAT WE ARE INADEQUATE. OUR DEEPEST FEAR IS THAT WE ARE POWERFUL BEYOND OUR MEASURE. IT IS OUR LIGHT, NOT OUR DARK THAT MOST FRIGHTENS US, WE ASK OURSELVES, WHO AM I TO BE BRILLIANT, GORGEOUS, TALENTED, FABULOUS? ACTUALLY, WHO ARE YOU not TO BE? YOU ARE A CHILD OF GOD. YOUR PLAYING SMALL DOES NOT SERVE THE WORLD. THERE IS NOTHING ENLIGHTENED ABOUT SHRINKING SO THAT OTHER PEOPLE WONT FEEL INSECURE AROUND YOU. WE ARE ALL MEANT TO SHINE AS CHILDREN DO. WE WERE BORN TO MAKE MANIFEST THE GLORY OF GOD THAT IS WITHIN US. IT'S NOT JUST IN SOME OF US; IT'S IN EVERYONE. AND AS WE LET OUR OWN LIGHT SHINE, WE UNCONSCIOUSLY GIVE OTHER PEOPLE PERMISSION TO DO THE SAME. AS WE ARE LIBERATED FROM OUR OWN FEAR, OUR PRESENCE AUTOMATICALLY LIBERATES OTHERS."-MARIANNE WILLIAMSONEarly one morning at the bakery a worker who delivered the bread was sick, and he had to deliver to a certain quarter of Shiraz where the rich, ruling Turkish upperclass lived. At a mansion, Hafiz’s eyes fell upon the unveiled form of a young woman who was standing on a mansion’s balcony. Her name was Shakh-e-Nabat, meaning ‘Branch of Sugarcane’. Nabat’s unique beauty immediately intoxicated Hafiz and he fell hopelessly in love with her and he almost lost consciousness. He could not sleep or eat. He began to write ghazals inspired by her. He heard she had been promised in marriage. Still, the vision of her beauty filled his heart and his thoughts were constantly with her. Then one day he remembered the famous ‘promise of Baba Kuhi.’ Baba Kuhi was a Perfect Master-Poet who had died in Shiraz in 1050 and had been buried four miles from Shiraz on a hill named after him. Baba Kuhi had composed a ruba’i that had summed up Hafiz’s position perfectly and gave him some hope ..._ The promise that Baba Kuhi gave was that if anyone could stay awake for forty consecutive nights at his tomb he would grant them the gift of poetry, immortality, and his heart’s desire. Hafiz, interested in the third, vowed to do it, and; he’d had plenty of practice in not sleeping. Every day Hafiz would go to work at the bakery then he would eat, walk past the house of Nabat, who had heard some poems that of his in praise of her. She had noticed him passing, each day more weary, but with fire in his eyes that had lit the lamp of her heart for him. Hafiz was in a kind of trance. The only thing that kept him going was the love in his heart and his determination to keep the lonely vigil. On the fortieth day she ran out and threw herself in the dust at his feet, declaring she had lost her heart to him and no longer would marry Abu Ishak, but, he stumbled single-mindedly towards his quest. She remained in love with him for the rest of her life and was his muse through whom he saw and praised God’s Beauty in the most perfect of human form, the female form through which can be contemplated both the creative and the receptive nature of God. The next morning the arch angel Gabriel appeared and gave Hafiz a cup containing the Water of Immortality and declared he had also received the gift of poetry. Gabriel asked him his heart’s desire. Hafiz could not take his eyes off Gabriel. So great was the Angel’s beauty he had forgotten Nabat. He thought: ‘If Gabriel’s so beautiful, how much more beautiful God must be.’ ‘I want to be united with the Beauty of God!’ He declared.