Out Beyond Identities

Out beyond identities of Democrat and Republican and Independent
Out beyond affiliations of Tea Party and Occupy movements
Out beyond the economics of privilege and lack
Further out beyond the colors of skin—
yellow, black, brown, red, white and mixed
And out beyond gay and straight and bi- and transgendered too
Even out beyond Catholic and Baptist and Sunni and Shia,  Hindu Buddhist Jew and Pagan too
Way out beyond nationalistic identities of American, Chinese and Pakistani or Iranian…
name any country or ethnicity any of us might claim
And yet still further out…
out beyond hope for the future or despair of it  — yet further out…
out beyond scale and feather and antler and fur and fin and skin and bark and leaf or twig too

There is a story of wholeness
growing in a Heart field of community and of belonging
belonging to Life — to the Tree of Life

I will meet you there, which of course is after all, Here… too
Celebrating you, me, us and them
Celebrating our diversity

Celebrating too, our Oneness of Being
Here, now, today
Come what may

Will you…might you…join me there?
Here?

Note: I offer this post with a nod of gratitude to Rumi for these lines of frequent inspiration to me:

Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, and even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.”

— The Essential Rumi, Colman Barks

Here’s one beautiful site with more of his poetry: Mystical Poetry of Rumi