Sunday, July 6, 2014

Asleep With God

Tonight I fell asleep with God on my shoulder.

          I've taken this Hafiz verse in a multitude of ways, that you can stay close enough to God that each night He falls asleep on your shoulder. That a beautiful day or meaningful conversation can cause you to believe that tonight God is working so deeply in your life. Or that, romantically, you believe wholeheartedly "to love another person is to see the face of God" and as love of another person overflows your cup, you fall asleep with God on your shoulder.
          After Mary married, Gibran and her met less frequently. However, on March 12, 1922 they met again and Mary recorded his words of selfless comfort in her journal: "The deepest thing of all, never was moved. That deepest thing, that recognition, that knowledge, that sense of kinship began the first time I saw you, and it is the same now - only a thousand times deeper and more tender. I shall love you to eternity. I loved you long before we met in this flesh. I knew that when I first saw you. It was destiny. We are together like this" (he clasped his hands together) "and nothing can shake us apart. You cannot change our relation; I can't and God himself can't. If I had been able to love women, I have had plenty of chances. In Boston I knew them. In Paris I met many. But you and I have a kinship; fundamentally we are alike. I want you to remember this always. You are the dearest person in the whole world to me. That kinship, that togetherness in our spiritual being, would not be changed if you should marry seven times over, to seven different men."
           There is such grace in these words, could many find the goodwill to share them?

Eight Days a Week (1964), The Beatles

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