The Masnavi

Love is the poem’s answer to that longing. For Rumi it is not a mood. It is the force that draws the soul back, and it takes practice: patience, honesty about yourself and the wearing away of pride. The end of the path is fana, the passing away of the small self in God. Rumi does not argue for this step by step. He tells a story, breaks off, tells another and trusts the reader to feel where they point.

Two of the stories are lessons on this climb. In a dark room, each person touches one part of an elephant and names the whole. Each touch was honest, and each name ran ahead of it; a candle in each hand would have settled the matter. In the guest house, every feeling that arrives is to be met at the door, grief included. The lessons add one thing that is this site’s and not Rumi’s: a guest who is welcome still does not run the house. Readers of many faiths have taken these stories to heart, but read without their setting they lose what Rumi meant them for.