ras babi presents: a woman from Iraq..... her name is Rabi'ah al Adawiyya…

she says:

My Greatest Need is You
Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure
Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word
My choicest hours
Are the hours I spend with You --
O Allah, I can't live in this world
Without remembering You--
How can I endure the next world
Without seeing Your face?
I am a stranger in your country
and lonely among your worshipers
this is the substance of my complaint.

Reality
In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
true description from the real taste.
The one, who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of something
in whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?

My Beloved
My peace, O my brothers and sisters, is my solitude,
And my Beloved is with me always,
For His love I can find no substitute,
And His love is the test for me among mortal beings,
Whenever His Beauty I may contemplate,
He is my "mihrab", towards Him is my "qiblah"
If I die of love, before completing satisfaction,
Alas, for my anxiety in the world, alas for my distress,
O Healer (of souls) the heart feeds upon its desire,
The striving after union with Thee has healed my soul,
O my Joy and my Life abidingly,
You were the source of my life and from Thee also came my ecstasy.
I have separated myself from all created beings;
my hope is for union with Thee, for that is the goal of my desire.