I recently spent the day in Grand
Junction, where Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, a poet I’ve know of for close to a
decade, was giving an afternoon workshop followed by a reading that evening.
The subject of the workshop was Rumi, a 12th century Islamic mystic,
whose poems can turn our beliefs and perceptions on their heads—much like
Christ’s teachings. One of the poems we discussed closed with the couplet: Take
sips of this pure wine being poured./Don’t mind that you’ve been given a dirty
cup. (Coleman Barks translation)
All but one of the poems Rosemerry
read that evening came from the same collection. Before starting, she told the
story of how that collection had come about. A fellow poet approached her about
doing a collection for a publishing house he’d just started. However, she was
going through a tumultuous time, and didn’t feel up to doing so. Nonetheless,
he patiently persisted, which wound up helping Rosemerry out of her dark
forest.
“One of the most important things
can we do,” Rosemerry said, “is to shine a light for one another.”
While I don’t think hindsight is
truly 20/20, things do often seem clearer after the fact. And we frequently
don’t initially recognize the assistance we’re being offered because it’s coming
from an unexpected source: say pure wine in a dirty glass. Likewise, I think we
often discount the times we’ve shone a light upon someone’s murky path, (or we
choose not to help even though we want to), because we’re too focused on our
perceived “dirtiness,” rather than the purity of our offerings.
The bumper sticker does have it
right: “We’re all alone in this, together.”
