Words of wisdom from Rumi, the 13th century Sufi mystic:
Though a mother’s love is filled with kindness,
a father’s strength is God’s amazing grace.
Look at him. Look at him as your father,
and not as the husband of your mother.
Cherish your relationship with your father
while he is still alive and still around.
Not talking to him is a wrong thing to do.
You won’t become a righteous child
by blaming all your failures on your father.
Blaming him to hide your own bad choices
will only make you stay in total denial.
Listen to your father, since you are his child,
and he considers you as his power.
Give your father a hand, help him out
until the break of dawn if you have to.
See the divine beauty emanating from
your father’s ragged old face.
If you’ve become successful and prosperous,
it’s thanks to your father’s constant prayers
and supplications to hundreds of saints and prophets.
O the child of enlightenment,
learn from your devout father who constantly
begs the Almighty for your sins to be forgiven:
“Forgive us, O Lord! We have wronged ourselves.”
The world has inherited this irrefutable fact
for thousands of years now:
When a father dies, his child becomes the future.
From http://sologak1.blogspot.com/2013/06/honor-thy-father-poem-by-rumi.html with gender revisions by Barbara Taylor
