There have been years in which I did very little with gatherings centred on Rumi and the Mevlevi tradition. I continued translating, the music remained part of my life, and my interest never really disappeared, but bringing people together around these things gradually moved into the background.
That is beginning to change.
In the coming period, several new books I have worked on for a long time will be published. Masnawī – The Kernel in the Grain brings together stories from the first three books of Rumi’s Masnawī. This will be followed by We Are Gold, with stories from Books IV, V and VI. And the words of Shams of Tabriz will also return in a new edition.
It feels as though several strands that have run alongside one another for a long time — translating, writing, music and my interest in the Sufi tradition — are beginning to come together again.
But differently from before.
No new order
I feel no need to form another closed group in which people are initiated or where someone has to decide who is a student and who is a teacher.
If anything, the research I have been doing into the history of the Mevlevi tradition has made that clearer to me.
A tradition does not need to be rebuilt as an organisation in order to remain alive.
We can also come together to read a story from the Masnawī. To explore why a text written seven centuries ago can suddenly speak to a question someone is struggling with today. We can listen to an ilahi or an instrumental composition in a particular makam, say something about its background, and then simply listen to what the music does.
There can be a poem. A story. Silence. And a conversation can arise without anyone having to decide at the end what the correct spiritual interpretation was.
These days, that kind of gathering appeals to me.
Not less serious, but perhaps simpler.
What has been preserved
My research into the Mevlevi tradition has made me more critical of certain claims to authenticity. But it has not made me less interested in the tradition itself.
Quite the opposite.
Once you let go of the need to prove that one particular group is the most authentic continuation, a great deal of beauty becomes available again.
There are the texts of Rumi and Shams. There is the centuries-old tradition of reading and commenting on the Masnawī. There is music. There is meşk: learning by listening, imitating and repeating. There is adab, not as a demand for obedience, but as attentiveness to the way we relate to people, things and situations.
And there are stories.
Perhaps those stories are still among the simplest ways in which Rumi can reach people today.
A king, a merchant, a donkey, a parrot, a lover, a thief, an ascetic, a frog and a mouse: Rumi does not need very much to show us something about ourselves.
Becoming Mevlevi
This brought me back to something Kudsi Erguner writes about becoming a Mevlevi.
What appeals to me is that being Mevlevi does not appear primarily as an identity someone can simply claim. It is not a matter of adopting a title, wearing the right clothes or being able to demonstrate who has recognised you.
It is about formation.
That also reminds me of something a Turkish fellow seeker once told me about his ‘ud teacher. After five years of lessons, his teacher said to him:
“We have removed what was rough; now we must give it a soul.”
The teacher died shortly afterwards.
Perhaps that is a beautiful image of what tradition can mean.
First you practise. You listen. You read. You listen again. You discover how much you do not understand. Slowly, you develop a feeling for measure, proportion and timing.
And then, perhaps, the form begins to acquire a soul.
Coming together again
That is why, in the coming years, I would like to bring people together from time to time again.
Not as a closed initiatory group, and not in order to establish a new Dutch branch of the Mevlevi Order.
Rather, as a cultural and contemplative activity centred on Rumi, Shams, Sufism, stories and music.
A reading group around the Masnawī, if there is sufficient interest. An evening in which music and poetry alternate. A conversation prompted by a story. Perhaps a lecture about Shams or about the history behind a particular tradition.
No one who comes needs to become a member of anything.
And if someone goes home afterwards with a single sentence that has stayed with them, a melody that continues to resonate, or a question for which they do not immediately have an answer, perhaps they have already taken enough with them.
An open door
After my research into authenticity and authority, I find that a hopeful thought.
We do not need to reconstruct the old tekke.
Nor do we need to pretend that seven centuries of history have not taken place and that we inhabit the same world as Rumi and Shams.
What we can do is keep the door open to what they left behind.
Read the texts carefully. Become familiar with the music. Take the history seriously. Explore together what this tradition may still have to say today.
Perhaps no one needs to prove that they are a Mevlevi.
Perhaps it is already quite something if we allow Rumi, Shams, the stories and the music to shape us a little.
And who knows — perhaps then the form will find its soul again.