Rumi and Shams: An Introduction
by Merri-Todd Webster
(20 April 1999)


Today, like every day, we wake up empty
and frightened.  Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading.  Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

***

In the year 1244 AD, a man named Rumi lived in the city of 
Konya in what is now Turkey.  He was already a husband, a 
father, and a teacher in the Islamic Sufi community, a devout 
and respectable man with a good reputation.  Then one day he 
met a wandering dervish named Shams from the city of Tabriz, 
and everything changed.  Through an exchange of mystical 
questions, Rumi broke through to an ecstatic love of God, 
revealed to him and even embodied for him in the person of 
Shams.

Rumi's love for Shams inspired a vast body of mystical poetry 
that ranges from lengthy teaching poems called *Mathnawi* that 
expound parable-like stories to pithy quatrains that, in English 
translation, resemble the poems of Emily Dickenson.  Rumi is 
also credited with inventing or discovering the whirling dance 
for which the dervish movement is best known.

Rumi remained in Konya while Shams came and went, but their 
friendship continued in unabated intensity until Shams disappeared 
forever, probably assassinated by disaffected disciples of Rumi.  
Later, other friends came to embody for Rumi the Face which he 
had first seen in the face of Shams, but Shams remained so vitally 
important in Rumi's life that he entitled one of his major poetry 
collections *The Divan of Shams of Tabriz*.  Their relationship
 was both mystical and slashy.

The following series of pieces were inspired by short poems of Rumi. 
As it incorporates pairings from two different shows, the whole series 
in its entirety is being posted exclusively to Allslash.  All epigraphs are 
taken from *The Essential Rumi*, translated by Coleman Barks.  I highly
 recommend all of Barks's translations, and if your library system owns 
the *Language of Life* series of videos, hosted by Bill Moyers, the 
one-hour interview with Barks entitled "Love's Confusing Joy" is 
fascinating and enlightening.

The Rumi and Shams series consists of:
	   I:  I'll Meet You There (X-Files, M/K, NC-17)
    II:  This Curling Energy (Sentinel, J/B, NC-17)
    III:  What a Bargain (X-Files, K/P, NC-17)
    IV:  All Along (Sentinel, J/B, PG)
    V:  These Do Not Matter  (X-Files, K/P, PG)
    VI:  Like This (X-Files, M/K, R)
    VII:  Both Wishes Are Foolish  (X-Files, M/Sk, NC-17)

Thanks to JiM, Amirin, MJ, Kass, The Spike, Alicia, Te, and everybody 
on JackbootSlashXF! for being impressed and supportive and not 
confirming my fears that this was a really weird idea.

Dedicated to all who see in the face of the Beloved the face of 
the Divine Lover.