How does your garden grow? is this week's challenge over at Inspiration Ave .

In mystical Sufism tradition, it is said that the original rose was white.

Perfect-white-rose-bud

One night a Nightingale encountered a a particularly beautiful rose and was struck by a love so intense that he he began to sing the most beautiful song ever heard (before this night, nightingales only croaked and chirped). Finally, overpowered by his desire for her, he embrace her with such ardor that her thorns pierced his heart. From that time on, the rose was stained red by his the color of his blood."

Red Rose Bud

When the rose is gone and the garden faded

you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.

The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.

The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.

If love withholds its strengthening care,

the lover is left like a bird without care,

the lover is left like a bird without wings.

How will I be awake and aware

if the light of the Beloved is absent?

Love wills that this Word be brought forth.    

Teachings of Rumi (The Masnavi): The Spiritual Couplets of Jalaludin Rumi