Disputed texts

Glennon Melton shares a beautiful poem from Hafiz and a beautiful story from the Gospel of John.

Maybe. The lovely poem — “dropping keys for the beautiful, rowdy prisoners” — is in English, and I’m not sure if it’s a translation of the medieval Persian poet or if it’s one of the many Fitzgerald-esque English poems “inspired” by Hafiz.

And the story from John’s Gospel bears a cautionary footnote in most translations of the Bible, warning that “The most ancient authorities lack John 7:53-8:11 … some mark the passage as doubtful.”

If you regard canon as a magical category that imparts to a text some greater import than the actual words of that text, then I’m afraid that neither the poem nor the Gospel story will be quite as satisfying to you as they might be if their canonicity were confirmable with greater certainty. In that case, I suppose, it won’t matter that both the poem and the Gospel story are good, beautiful and true.

I like the poem, whether it’s from Hafiz himself or from Daniel Ladinsky.

And I love this story from John’s Gospel. (And I loved seeing Pamela Raintree embody that story at a Shreveport, La., city council meeting.) That footnote following this passage in John 8 also makes me proud of my former profession — the ancient and honorable guild of copy editors. Someone — some inspired copy editor whose name is lost to history — inserted (or possibly re-inserted) that story into the Gospel of John, and we should be forever grateful that they did so. There should be a plaque or a statue somewhere honoring that.

Anyway, here’s another poem by Hafiz, or probably by Ladinsky. Is it canonical? No, but I like it:

What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?

The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move

That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.