Humalit A56 September 29, 17

Noah Sison (11609168)

Rumi Reflection Paper

Rumi is a poet whose poems are one of compassion, kindness, piety, faith, spiritual insight
and enlightened living. Each poem he wrote was dedicated to his lover, Sham, showing how much of
an influence another individual can be. The poems he wrote focused on the beauties, longings and
joys of the human heart. Love was the most important thing to Rumi with reason and faith being
secondary to him. In most of his poems Rumi is usually compared to weak and fragile items as
compared to Sham who is seen as strong and hard. One example of such is in the poem “Granite and
wineglass”, where Rumi is the wineglass and Sham is granite. Rumi believes that all types of love are
one and the same, whether it would be divine or not divine. Being a hermit himself Rumi kept to his
religion and its practices, performing all the rituals yet was not officious or dogmatic about it. Rumi
was seeking for the balance between the two instead of keeping love and religion away from each
other as society did during his era. One example of such is in his poem titled “Like This” it is seen
how he mix and matches both concepts together. We are invited by Rumi to go beyond what we know
and express such ideas even further than what they are. To show how one value or trait can be the
center of our expressions, in Rumi’s case being love. As seen in another poem “I saw you last night in
the gathering.” Where something so short can have so much meaning. It was only around four to five
stanzas but Rumi’s message and underlying messages were all expressed and sent to both the reader
and his lover Sham.