The countless hands in my imagination stand for the patience, the pride, the dedication of the vast multitude whose labor prepared this very spot for me to step on. Reverently i put my foot down.
Dear Friends,
In Austria, where I am right now, Thanksgiving Day is just another Thursday, but my heart will be celebrating with you. Above all, i wish you the joy of discovering ever new aspects of grateful living. For me, an oriental carpet, of all things, has recently triggered a new perspective on living gratefully and i would like to share with you my exciting discovery.
Today’s lifestyle has little room for huge rugs, and so, wealthy donors sometimes give them to monasteries. One of them, at Mount Saviour, keeps our floor warm in the crypt and i’ve been most grateful for it at Vigils during winter nights. At Gut Aich, a similar one adorns the Lady Chapel. There often are 6,000 knots per square inch in a fine rug of this kind. With this in mind, i’m overcome by awe, whenever i step on it. I envisage brown fingers tying knot after knot – thousands a day; i see fingers twisting fibers into threads, purple fingers of those who dyed the threads, and fine fingers tracing intricate designs. Behind those i see the hands of their teachers in those various crafts, and their teachers’ teachers hands, generation after generation. (More than 2,000 years ago, the Greeks already treasured Persian rugs.) The countless hands in my imagination stand for the patience, the pride, the dedication of the vast multitude whose labor prepared this very spot for me to step on. Reverently i put my foot down. And my foot, in turn, represents all those without whom i would not be here. My ancestors alone, add up to more than a billion, if i go back a thousand years, and humans who looked like you and me go back 200 times as long. Their lives form a texture, incomparably more intricate than the texture of the carpet; and the lives of those whom the carpet represents form an equally vast, inextricable web: Life that brought me to this moment meets Life that comes towards me, as my foot touches the rug.
And isn’t something similar happening at every moment? At every moment i am the point where all of life meets all of life. When this happens, a spark jumps – a spark of joy and praise. The essence of the carpet is praise of beauty; and so is the reverence with which I tread on it. This joy, this praise is thanksgiving.
Let’s be aware of this, when glass clinks on glass at the festive table. Here’s to you – in gratitude!
Your brother David
This letter, sent to friends on November 21, 2017, is printed with kind permission from Br. David.
Br. David Steindl-Rast
Dear Brother David
Thank you so much for your words and perspective.
Today I noticed a dragonfly with problems; it got stuck inside my kitchen. I helped and it flew away. I felt so happy because this is simple, so simple and so wonderful; every life.
My life is better since I living gratefully, thank you!
With fratenal love, Cintia
Viver agradecidos from Brazil
Dear Brother David
I trust this finds you warm in the Arms of Joshua Emanuel the Christ and Very well in energetic physical heath also.
I share with you an admiration for Oriental rugs but also a Germanic sense of humour. So please allow my “smart guy” comment here to “knot” be seen as sarcastic.
I smiled at the missing “k” in your sentence “I envisage brown fingers tying knot after not – thousands a day;”
I “appa”-preciate the visual effect of this “missing “k”” because now, everything I step of an Oriental Rug, I will see / feel / hear Rumi’s poem “Only Breath”, 6 thousand nots per square inch, better! 🙂
ONLY BREATH
Not Christian not Jew
not Muslim
not Hindu,
not Buddhist
not sufi
not zen.
not any religion
not cultural system.
I am not from the East or the West,
not out of the ocean or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal,
not composed of elements at all.
I do not exist,
I am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story.
My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.”
RUMI
Dear Ed,
Thank you for your very interesting take on the missing “k” – and for drawing that typo to our attention. I have corrected it, but now I’ll always think of Br. David’s essay AND Rumi’s “Only Breath” when I step on an Oriental carpet!
Dear Margaret
You are most welcome ….and …as the Sufi say “Thanks” …they Say …”Thank Us because all we Truly have is each other.”
Also, while reading Br David’s letter I thought of Rumi’s line…
“There are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground” ( adding now, carpet, wood, stone, even water and air, if one is attained enough!)
I love that Rumi line, Ed!
~Margaret
Thank you. I love the way you have reframed my understanding of a toast and the clinking of glasses at a holiday or everyday life gathering. Peace.