Fatih Mosque

A story is like a water
that you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire
and your skin. It lets them meet,
and it cleans you!

Hz. Mevlana

lights from Fatih Mosque

Look! This Is Love

Oh, if a tree could wander and move with foot and wings!
It would not suffer the axe blows and not the pain of saws!
For would the sun not wander away in every night ?
How could at ev?ry morning the world be lighted up?
And if the ocean?s water would not rise to the sky,
How would the plants be quickened by streams and gentle rain?
The drop that left its homeland, the sea, and then returned ?
It found an oyster waiting and grew into a pearl.
Did Yusaf not leave his father, in grief and tears and despair?
Did he not, by such a journey, gain kingdom and fortune wide?
Did not the Prophet travel to far Medina, friend?
And there he found a new kingdom and ruled a hundred lands.
You lack a foot to travel?
Then journey into yourself!
And like a mine of rubies
receive the sunbeams? print!
Out of yourself ? such a journey
will lead you to your self,

It leads to transformation of dust into pure gold!

Hz. Mevlana
Mevlana Jalauddin Rumi

Fatih houses

Cukurbostan mosque and school

A moment of happiness


A moment of happiness
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.

We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden's beauty
and the birds singing.

The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.

You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.

The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar as we laugh together, you and I.

In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

Hz. Mevlana

Kulliyat-e Shams, 2114

Fatih streets

old man in Fatih Mosque

Old man is looking to the past

Only Breath

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,
not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East or the West,
not out of the ocean
or up from the ground,
not natural or etheral,
not composed of elements at all.

I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world
or the next,
did not decend from Adam or Eve
or any origin story.

My place is placeless,
a trace of the traceless.

Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only that breath breathing human being.

from The Essential Rumi translations by Coleman Barks

Hz. Mevlana (Mevlana Jalauddin Rumi)

visitors from Yavuz Sultan Selim Mosque