Excerpt from Rumi’s poem “Moses and the Shepherd”

… Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.

It’s all praise, and it’s all
right.
It’s not Me that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshipers! I don’t hear the words
they say. I look at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning,
burning.
Be friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression!

Moses,
those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn
are another.

Don’t impose a property tax
on a burned out village. Don’t scold the Lover.
The wrong way he talks is better than a hundred
right ways of others.

Inside the Kaaba
it doesn’t matter which direction you point
your prayer rug!