Ordinary human life starts with a few complex hydrocarbons and a Plan, then turns into a huge, often tragic tangle. When the Twin Towers fell, we all shared for a few impossibly astonished and alert minutes an unfiltered taste of the tragic. A curtain liften on a tougher world-view than the one we knew, and we shifted a little closer perhaps, to the truth of things. This life is a lift into light and a fall into ruin, both.

The Hebrew kings donned sackcloth to atone for the sins of their people, but the modern ruler prefers to maintain a happy face. Things may go a bit off at times, but there's no ill that American know-how and might can't put right. However, as the Book of Changes observes, It is only when we have the courage to face ourselves exactly as we are that a light will appear by which we can extricate ourselves from the present circumtance.

What are present circumstances? Andrew Harvey outlines the situation like so: We are in a massive psychic depression. This depression is everywhere and eats away at every resolve we take, at every passion and every attempt at health. It is a massive worldwide depression and its cause is a fundamental loss of our identity, our memory of our divine origin.

One of Rumi's strengths is his ease with jam-ups. Comic or messy, they spice up the story and create opportunities for soul growth. Sometimes it's only sitting in the pit that we get it, and a change of heart can take place.

How to learn in the ashes? Rumi suggests growth and healing happen if we can drop our resistance to how things really are, and just see and allow exactly what the moment is bringing. It's like the Zen story of the monk hanging from a cliff. Above a hungry tiger prowls, below, jagged rocks. What does he do? he sees a wild strawberry growing out of a crack beside him and tastes it. Not bad!

Acceptance can change everything!

Not optimism, not pessimism, just allowing a situation to take form, trusting in something deeper. Accepting yourself is another kind of acceptance that can turn lead into gold. Something stirs inside hardness; old patterns get unstuck, a new kind of love is felt.

Call it surrender. When we get off our tiptoes and stop reaching for future perfection, stop wishing that things were other than they are, we might find something a whole lot better.

Michael Green, One Song: The New Illuminated Rumi