You Left a Thousand Women Crazy

You Left a Thousand Women Crazy

Beloved,
Last Time,
When you walked through the city
So beautiful and so naked,

You left a thousand women crazy
And impossible to live with.

You left a thousand married men
Confused about their gender.

Children ran from their classrooms,
And teachers were glad you came.

And the sun tried to break out
Of its royal cage in the sy
And at last, and at last,
Lay its Ancient Love at Your feet.

~ Hafiz

Yes, he is talking about God's abundant presence walking through the streets of time and city, but his images come from human fascinations and feelings. Yes, he is talking about seething human desire, but he is also convinced that it is a sweet path to God. Why has this integration, this coincidence of seeming opposites, occurred with relative rarity in religion traditions? It is more common in native spiritualities, and a bit more common in Hinduism (witness the HIndu temples and rituals) and among the Islamic mystics. But one would think that if there were any religion that would have most welcomed this integration, it would have been Christianity. After all, we are the only world religion that believes that God became a living human body. We Christians are the only believers in a full, concrete, and physical enfleshment of God. We call it the "incarnation" and we call him "Jesus".

~ Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs