Lent begins today in the Christian tradition – a 40 day period of simplification in order to notice what is important.

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head, yet you go door to door asking for crusts. Knock on the inner door, no other.
Sloshing knee-deep in fresh riverwater,
yet you keep asking for other people’s waterbags.
Water is everywhere around you, but you see
only the barriers that keep you from water.
The horse is beneath the rider’s thighs,
and still you ask, “Where’s my horse?”
                                                        Right there, under you!
“Yes, this is a horse, but where’s the horse?”
                                                        Can’t you see it?
“Yes, I can see, but whoever saw such a horse?”
Mad with thirst, you can’t drink from the stream running close by your face. You are like a pearl on the deep bottom wondering inside the shell,

Where’s the ocean? Those mental questioning form the barrier. Stay bewildered inside God, and only that.
When you are with everyone but me, you’re with no one.
When you are with no one but me, you’re with everyone.
Instead of being so bound up with everyone, be everyone.
When you become that many, you’re nothing. Empty. 

Rumi, in Coleman Barks, Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing