Don’t be sad any longer, your sadness is blasphemy,
Blasphemy against the Hand of Splendor
pouring you joy….
Why batter your head forever against the jail wall?
Look, the door has swung open to a rose garden
A mystery of Light is melting the barred windows.
Why go on gaping and slavering like a whore
At the fading paintings on the bathhouse wall?
Spit at the moon: the spit flies back in your eyes;
Try to tear His robe, it’s your own that tatters.
A million million fools boil angrily in this Cauldron
Don’t you know yet resignation is the way to Truth?
One day a hedgehog swallowed the tail of a snake,
Threw back its head, rolled itself into a ball.
And what did the snake do? Poor idiot!
It rammed itself against the hedgehog’s spines
And screamed and died, riddled all over with wounds.
Had it had patience, it might have wriggled free.
Be careful! Be calm! Pray! Say to yourself:
“Even the eye of the hurricane closes in the end.”
The Lord of the worlds has promised: “I am with the Patient.”
O Patient One, grace us a drop of your Patience.
I’ve given you all I know; now you must do what you can.
Silence! My Lover is smiling: that smile makes all words ash. — Rumi

Quit fighting. Quit trying to make something that it isn’t. Somewhere deep within you, find patience that will revive you. Hold onto it and you will find freedom. God ministers to your wounds, your frailities, your despair, your desperate circumstances. Pray for patience through the storm of life that you find yourself in and you will find the door that has swung open to the rose garden.