Years ago I had an exchange on social media with a friend of ours – Peggy Payne (she’s a wonderful writer, so check out her books). Here’s two of my responses…

1) Hi Peggy, I’m with you and the Gnostics. The Divine is not a head game of information and doctrine. God, Reality, Consciousness (whatever we care to call it) is a first-person experience. No one can tell us about it. We have to experience it for ourselves. That is why it can be said, “God has no grandchildren.”

2) Hi Peggy and company, The statement “God has no grandchildren” did not come from my poetry. I am not sure where it came from. If I read it, heard it or thought it. Where ever it came from, I believe it to be true. “Mystery school and libraries” sounds like a conflict; but I don’t think so. Spiritual truth lies in paradox.

I was reminded of this exchange recently and the phrase, “God has no grandchildren.” At a meeting last week, someone referenced this line from a Rumi poem, “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” I think we’re using different words, but talking about the same idea.

Here’s Rumi’s poem in its entirety…

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.

But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, so everyone will understand
the passage, We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling
the wings you’ve grown, lifting.