" MARY'S HIDING

Before these possessions you love slip away, say what Mary said when she was

surprised by Gabriel, I'll hide inside God. Naked in her room she saw a form

of beauty that could give her new life. Like the sun coming up, or a rose as it

opens. She leaped, as her habit was, out of herself into the divine presence.

There was fire in the channel of her breath. Light and majesty came. I am smoke

from that fire and proof of its existence, more than any external form. "

― Coleman Barks , The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems