2:07 PM
NK
O My Lord,
If I worship You
From fear of Hell,
burn me in Hell.
O My Lord,
If I worship You
From hope of Paradise,
bar me from its gates.
But if I worship You for Yourself alone
Then grace me forever the splendor of Your Face.
Rabia Al-Adawiyya
Iraq (717-801)
One of Sufism's most revered and beloved poet-saints, Rabia was born to poor parents who died of hunger when she was a young child, resulting in homelessness and permanent separation from her three siblings. She was found wandering on the streets of Basra, begging for food, by a criminal who seized her and sold her into slavery. Her master eventually freed her, awed by her holiness and by the light he saw shining from her face when she prayed.
Rabia pursued a life of solitary prayer in the desert, later taking up residence in a tiny house at the edge of Basra. Someone, perhaps a student, wrote that he saw nothing in the entire house but "a pitcher with a chipped spout which she used for bathing, a brick which she used for a pillow, and a reed mat on which she prayed." As her twelfth-century biographer, Attar, wrote, "She was set apart in the seclusion of holiness." She needed nothing because she had everything, and she refused to marry, even when a suitor promised her wealth. She replied that material riches bring only anxiety and sadness, while the life of surrender brings peace.
-- Mary Ford-Grabowsky
she used to pray":
"O my Lord, the stars are shining and the eyes of men are closed, and kings have shut their doors, and every lover is alone with his beloved, and here I am alone with Thee."
once a number of Sufis saw her hurrying on her way with water in one hand and a burning torch in the other. When they asked her to explain, she said:
"I am going to light a fire in Paradise and to pour water on to Hell, so that both veils may vanish altogether from before the pilgrims and their purpose may be sure..."
She was an ascetic. It was her custom to pray all night, sleep briefly just before dawn, and then rise again just as dawn "tinged the sky with gold". She lived in celibacy and poverty, having renounced the world. A friend visited her in old age and found that all she owned were a reed mat, screen, a pottery jug, and a bed of felt which doubled as her prayer-rug , for where she prayed all night, she also slept briefly in the pre-dawn chill. Once her friends offered to get her a servant; she replied,
"I should be ashamed to ask for the things of this world from Him to Whom the world belongs, and how should I ask for them from those to whom it does not belong?"
Rabi'a was in her early to mid eighties when she died, having followed the mystic Way to the end. By then, she was continually united with her Beloved. As she told her Sufi friends, "My Beloved is always with me"
http://www.mythinglinks.org/NearEast~3monotheisms~Islam~Rabia.html
