★★★★★ 5
Blessed Ruin: Lessons on the Stages of Love
Format: Paperback
Having already been enchanted by Daniel Ladinsky's previous rendererings of Hafiz in _I Heard God Laughing_ and _The Subject Tonight is Love_, Ladinsky's present effort is worthy of no less acclaim. In fact, his choices this time from the _Divan_(250 poems) bring home with exquisite precision that Hafiz, the Perfect Master is in fact, a Master of Love. The reader gets the clear message in Ladinsky's portrait that Hafiz has intermalized to perfection his teacher's (Mohammad Attar)lessons on the manifold levels of love and its demands: "I saw it was Hafiz who wrote all your notes of sadness, But also etched and gave you Every ecstatic wince of joy your face, body and heart has ever known." (p.38). This is no "New Age" nonsense, which at its worst hails the light and avoids the shadow, Hafiz (though seducing the beginner lover by his promises of sweetness and tenderness, that God could actually "become an infant in your arms"[p,56]) cautions that he "hold's the Lion's Paw whenever I dance."(p.57). Western culture has not received such lessons on divine love since Jesus and Plato, and unfortunately, the fresh images of their teachings on love have all been but lost to humanity, save a small remnant of sketches. Ladinsky's Hafiz both assures and challenges the seeker because any fully-alive being with such capacity for loving as Hafiz dwarfs our puny notions of western romantic love without shaming or condemning it. Only encouraging like a true teacher with compassion would: "You ask for a few words of comfort and guidance. I quickly kneel at your side offering you this whole book . . . Here's a rope, tie it around me, Hafiz will be your companion for life."(p83). Hafiz's language of love utilized the metaphor of his time and culture as Jesus incorporated the images of parable. Ladinsky courageously steps out of line (as surely did Hafiz) and takes the risk to be mundane without being irreverent when describing the labyrinth that is the heart: "There are different wells within your heart. Some fill with each good rain. Others are far too deep for that." (p76) Ladinsky's Hafiz teaches us of a divine being who walks among and talks with and celebrates his creation; yet challenges it to stretch beyond its boundaries of self-interest: " I want both of us to start talking about this great love. As if you , I, and the sun were all married and living in a tiny room, helping each other to cook, do the wash, weave and sew, care for our beautiful animals."(p.180). Ladinsky's fine portrait of this 14th century Perfect Master gives the West the certain bugal cry that God is not dead, but it is we who are dead to God. The success of this book will measure how many of us are indeed alive here, and how many are really interested in the more mature lessons of loving.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2001
