#theprophet

Khalil Gibran: The Voice of the Universal Soul

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Note on the text: The Prophet by Khalil Gibran as published in 1999 by Alfred Knopf

Khalil Gibran is a wonderful poet who writes beautifully about love, especially regarding the amount of freedom that love needs in order to really thrive.

The main thrust of his argument comes from when his protagonist, the prophet Almustafa, is asked to talk about marriage. he says that those who are bound together in marriage "shall be together even in the silent memory of God" (15). Yet he also tells those same married couples to

let there be space in your togetherness, and let the winds of Heaven dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Rather let it be a sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another bread but not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand close together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow (15-16).

Love needs freedom in order to thrive. True love cannot be coerced or forced, it must be freely given and freely received in order for it be the great gift that it is.

He says something similar tells parents that "your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they with you [] they belong not to you. . . . You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth" (17-18).

Love is not possessive. It does not own anybody. Parents do not own their children nor do spouses own each other.

The Farewell

Farewell to you and the youth I have spent

with you.

It was but yesterday we met in a dream.

You have sung to me in my aloness,

and I of your longings have built a tower

in the sky.

But now our sleep has fled and our dream

is over, and it is no longer dawn.

The noontide is upon us and our half

waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.

If in the twilight of memory we should

meet once more, we shall speak again

together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.

And if our hands should meet in another

dream we shall build another tower in the sky.

~ Kahlil Gibran

The way they treated you has left wounds

Cut deep, filled with greasy mold

Breaking down your insides, making it hard to breathe.

Your body has turned to mulch.

In the torn up bits of your being I see something growing.

Something beautiful with tender green leaves.

Your soul is breathing in fresh air again.